It was April, and cold enough at night for Bryony to be grateful for the warm fire Hayden kindled in their room every evening before they went to bed. But by mid-afternoon the sun could still be surprisingly warm, and the grass on the hillsides was still a golden brown, waiting for the refreshing rains of winter.
Despite the cold nights, Bryony watched in vain for a blaze of autumn color in the surrounding bush. As the days shortened and wood smoke drifted on a freshening breeze and birds filled the sky, no deep reds and oranges and yellows appeared to splash their vivid hues across this strange, gray-green countryside. She didn't realize how much she was missing them until one day when Hayden surprised her with a cart full of familiar saplings— ashes and chestnuts and oaks and elms.
She fell laughing upon his neck, and he kissed her with swift, surprising tenderness. "They're only trees, Bryony. You act as if I've just handed you a chest of jewels."
"You have," she said, her voice muffled against his chest. "You have."
She was kneeling in her garden later that day, firming the earth around one of the young chestnuts, when she looked up and found him watching her from the veranda. She eased back on her heels and lifted her hand to shade her eyes so she could see him better. She knew him well now. Knew by the closed look on his face and the uncompromising line of his shoulders that he had something to tell her she wasn't going to like.
"What is it?" she asked as he stepped off the veranda and strolled down the graveled path toward her. The autumn sun was warm on her back. The smell of freshly turned earth filled her senses.
He stopped before her. She saw he had a cigar in his hand, and he lit it before he answered her. "A messenger just rode in. We're going to have company."
"Company?" She was annoyed at the way her voice squeaked.
"Sir D'Arcy Baxter. He wants to see for himself how my sheep-breeding is progressing."
"Oh." It could have been worse, she decided. The man could have been bringing his wife and daughter with him. She watched Hayden frown down at his cheroot, and she knew there was more. "He's bringing his wife and daughter with him, isn't he?"
He nodded. "And I don't think they're coming to talk about sheep." He drew hard on his cigar, then expelled a long stream of smoke. "From one or two not-so-subtle hints dropped by Lady Priscilla last spring, I suspect she's more interested in bridals. Her daughter's bridals."
Bryony felt the earth rise and sink beneath her in a movement oddly reminiscent of one of the
Indispensable
most sickening, foul-weather lurches. "You mean Amanda?"
He nodded again. "And unfortunately, since they're already on their way here, I don't see how I can forestall them."
A wallaby loped slowly toward the edge of the gum trees, heading for the creek. Bryony stared at it in silence, feeling the blood drain from her face. She couldn't think of anything more calculated than this to remind her of what her true position was.
She rose to her feet and carefully wiped her dirt-stained hands on her apron. "Well, do tell me, what is the normal procedure in circumstances such as this? There surely must be no shortage of precedents, given the proliferation of convict mistresses among the officers of the
New South Wales Corps. What a pity I've never met Hetty Abrahams, so that I could ask her advice. I understand she's been living as Major Johnston's concubine for... what? Fifteen? Twenty years now? Tell me, what does Hetty—and her eight children—do when you come calling on the major? Wait on you at dinner? Or quietly disappear?"
"Bryony, I am not interested in Amanda Baxter."
He would have taken her in his arms, but when she jerked away from him, he let her go. She stared at him from across a space of perhaps five feet. "Where the hell are they even going to sleep?" she demanded.
"Sir D'Arcy and his wife can sleep in Simon's room. We can put up a bed in the dressing room for Amanda, and Simon can sleep with us."
"Us?
I can't sleep with you with the Baxters in this house! There's another bed in the kitchen lean-to. I'll make it up and sleep there."
"You will not." He closed the distance between them with two long strides. "Damn it, Bryony, I'm not ashamed of having you in my bed."
"Oh, Hayden," she sobbed, collapsing suddenly against his shoulder. "Don't you understand? I'm ashamed of myself."
"I will not sit down to dinner with those people," Bryony said, scooting around to the far side of the bed.
She was wearing a delicate white muslin dress embroidered all over with a tiny yellow and green flower motif, with a matching spencer and yellow and white satin shoes. Bryony had had nothing to blush for in her dress when she'd stood on the veranda beside Hayden earlier that afternoon to greet Sir D'Arcy, the exquisitely arrayed Lady Priscilla, and their beautiful daughter Amanda. But as she'd watched the ladies' knowing gazes slide over her finery, Bryony had found herself wishing for her old brown or gray work dress. For nothing marked
her as Hayden's mistress more clearly man the expensive clothes she wore.
"Yes," he hissed, "you will." He regarded her stonily across some four feet of counterpane. "What do you think I'm going to do? Make you eat in the kitchen? This is my house, damn it. I wouldn't take you to her house and expect her to sit down at the table with you, but she's the one who decided to come here."
He hadn't said it to hurt her, she knew. But, God, it hurt. It hurt like hell.
'They wouldn't have come here if they'd known you had me living with you openly as your mistress," she said quietly. "I heard Lady Priscilla say so to Sir D'Arcy. She said it's one thing if a man tumbles his servants
occasionally,
or even regularly, as long as he still treats them like the servants they are. But it's something else entirely if he singles out one of them and actually begins
consorting
with her outside of bed."
One corner of his lips twitched, as if he were trying hard not to smile. "She couldn't have said that."
At any other time Bryony might have found it funny, too, but at the moment she was in no state to be amused. "She did. She reminded him that her father was a Devonshire squire—"
"She would."
"—and that whatever might be the custom among the officers of this colony, she was a lady born and bred, and even if it was
your
father who had been the viscount, she would rather die than utter one syllable to some degraded creature who had not only been shipped out to this colony as a convict, but who was obviously willing to spread her legs for any man who offered to buy her a pretty dress or hair ribbon."
"Would she, by God?" The amusement died out of his face, to be replaced by something cold and decidedly lethal. "That can be arranged."
He spun about on his heel and had almost reached the
door when Bryony, moving around the edge of the bed, got there first.
"Hayden, no." She laid her hand on his arm. "I can understand how she feels, and you should be able to, too. How would Laura have reacted if she had been expected to sit down to dinner with some thieving whore? How would
you
have reacted if someone had asked her to?"
He fastened his hands about her waist and hoisted her up against the door, leaning hard against her, the heat of his anger flowing over her since she'd balked him of his original target. "You're not a thieving whore, damn it."
"She doesn't know what I am. She doesn't know anything about me—"
"Then, she shouldn't judge you."
"—except that I'm a convict, and that I've allowed you to make me your mistress. What else does she need to know?"
He let her slide slowly back to the floor and pressed his forehead against hers, his breathing a little unsteady. "As if you could have stopped me that first night. I laid you back on that damned table and just took you."
"Oh, Hayden. I didn't try to stop you. I didn't
want
to stop you." Her mouth found his, and she tasted his forbidden, sinful lips. "Please don't make me sit down to dinner with that hateful woman," she said softly, curling her arms around his neck. "I don't care what she thinks of me. I just don't like the way she makes me think of myself."
He slanted his mouth gently back and forth across hers. "All right." He fumbled to undo the tie at the neck of her dress so he could push it down. "But for your sake, not for hers."
Her bared breasts filled his seeking hands, and he smiled against her mouth. "And now, I'm going to tumble my servant right here against this door." He reached down to ruck up the frilled hem of her fine dress. "And as long as I don't consort with you afterward, I
have it on the expert opinion of a Devonshire squire's daughter that it is all perfectly acceptable."
Bryony might have escaped dinner, but she still had to pour the tea, since Ann McBride couldn't be trusted not to trip and dump the contents of Laura's delicate china cups down the front of their guests' finery. It was only quick action by Hayden that had saved Sir D'Arcy from getting a bowl of soup in his lap at dinner, for Hayden had refused to allow Bryony to wait on them at the table. He was unhappy enough that she'd insisted on cooking the dinner herself.
But pouring tea was a genteel occupation. Bryony had been well tutored by her Aunt Eunice, and performed the office with a skill that raised Lady Priscilla's eyebrows, although she still refused to utter one syllable to Captain St. John's convict mistress. Neither she nor her daughter even said thank you when Bryony handed them their cups.
Bryony would have left the room immediately afterward, but Hayden snagged her arm and pulled her down beside him on the settee, beneath Lady Priscilla's affronted gaze.
She sat there, feeling stiff, feeling branded as a whore by her presence in this house, by the delicate muslin dress she wore, courtesy of the man beside her... the man whose use of her body earlier that evening she could still feel as a slight but pleasant soreness between her legs.
Lady Priscilla lifted her teacup, flashed Hayden her most brilliant smile, and said, "It's a pity about Thornton, don't you agree?"
Hayden fixed his uninvited guest with a level stare. "What about Major Thornton?"
"Why, he's to be court-martialed. Didn't you know? The fool actually
married
that woman of his—she was off the
Earl Cornwallis,
I believe, wasn't she?—and had
the affrontery to attempt to take her into society." She took a sip of her tea, then rested the cup carefully back in her saucer before adding, "He'll be cashiered, of course."
Beside her, Bryony felt Hayden stiffen. Lady Priscilla turned her gaze on Laura's harp and sighed, as if in sympathy over the passing of its former owner.
"What a pity you don't have a pianoforte, Captain St. John. Then my dear Amanda here could play for us. It's always so pleasant to have a bit of music in the evening, don't you agree?"
"Of course. What an excellent idea," said Hayden, a wicked smile spreading over his face. "Mrs. Wentworth here shall play the harp for us. Won't you, Mrs. Wentworth?"
It wasn't really a request. He was already raising her with a firm hand beneath her elbow. She tried to demure, but he pushed her down in the chair beside the harp and, under the guise of taking the cover off the instrument, leaned over to say under his breath, "Play, damn it, before I strangle the bitch and end up on manslaughter charges myself."
Her eyes flew to his. They sparkled with amusement and something more. Something that filled her with a warm, happy glow. Something that enabled her to play for him, and to make it through what was left of that hideous evening.
Sir D'Arcy Baxter spent the next morning with Hayden, looking at his breeding stock and talking about sheep and wool and the new lamb crop. Then he announced that Lady Priscilla was anxious to spend the evening with friends in Green Hills and very sensibly bore his scandalized wife and daughter off as soon as possible after the midday meal.
"Will he ever visit you again?" Bryony asked when Hayden strolled back onto the veranda after seeing the small party off.
"Baxter? Of course. Although he'll make sure he
comes alone next time. There's a lot I don't like about the man, but I'll say this for him:
he
couldn't give a damn about my domestic living arrangements. God knows they're common enough in this colony."
"So it's only the ladies who object to being asked to consort with a man's convict mistress?"
"Yes, I suppose so. Although even Baxter might complain if a man started taking his mistress around in public with him."
He would have gone into the house, but she stopped him. "Like the officer who is to be court-martialed for marrying a convict woman?"
He swung slowly back around. "Yes. What's your point, Bryony?"
"I just want to know where I stand. Some of the subtleties of this colonial code of conduct escape me."
"Like hell." He walked up to her. "Nothing escapes you, Bryony."
She sucked in a deep breath. "And what about the children of these
irregular unions!"