Night in Eden (7 page)

"I'm not suggesting you are," he said gently. "But you have recently birthed a child under rather unfavorable conditions. And you were a guest of His Majesty for—how long? One year? More? Things happen to women."

Bryony felt her cheeks grow hot and looked away.

"There's no shame in it," he said gently. "Or, at any rate, not for the women who are the victims. The shame lies with the people in charge of the system. But it would still be best if you let me examine you."

So she let him, and studied the stubby candles in the wall sconce above her head until he was finished.

He left almost immediately afterward—going downstairs to report the results of his examinations to St. John, she supposed.

It was while she was refastening her bodice that the most likely reason Captain St. John had asked the doctor
to examine her suddenly occurred to Bryony, and her fists clenched so violently she almost ripped the cheap material of her dress.

Oliver had once told her military officers were unusually careful about making sure that the women they bedded were disease free. He'd told her some joke about Mercury and Venus, but she'd been so young at the time she hadn't really understood it, and he'd laughed at her for her innocence.

She was standing beside the window, Simon in her arms, when Captain St. John walked back into the parlor.

He carelessly tossed his broad-brimmed hat onto a side table near the door, then picked up the decanter and poured himself a new glass of wine before going to stretch out in one of the wing chairs near the empty fireplace.

She'd noticed that today he had bowed to convention and was wearing a cravat. It should have made him look more civilized, but it didn't.

He tipped his dark head back against the rear cushion, took a sip of wine, and sat regarding her over the rim of his glass for a moment before saying, "Dr. Redfern tells me you're taking good care of my son."

Not even twelve months in prison had quite taught Bryony to guard her tongue. "I don't believe in visiting the sins of the fathers on their children."

His eyes narrowed, but only for a moment. Then to her surprise, he laughed. The harsh lines of his face eased, and his normally cold eyes sparkled with amusement. He had such blue, blue eyes—startling blue, she thought, the color of the bay outside. Then he stopped laughing, and his gaze settled on her hair. She fancied she could feel the warmth of his gaze there, as surely as if he'd touched her.

"I see you found a cap."

"Yes... sir."

He stretched his buckskin-clad legs out in front of him in a careless sprawl and took another sip of his drink. "Why do you always say it that way?"

She shook her head in confusion. "What way?"

"As if the
sir
is an afterthought—and a grudging one, at that."

She stared at him, nonplussed. He tilted up his glass again, and she watched the smooth play of muscles in his tanned throat as he took another swallow of his wine.

She turned quickly away. "I bought everything you told me to today," she said, carrying a sleepy Simon to his cradle. "Including a new cloak and dress."

"Only one? You should have bought two."

She glanced back at him from where she knelt by the cradle. He had his glass resting negligently against one hard thigh. His pose looked relaxed, but she could feel the tension in him, the restlessness.

She stood up. "I ordered material to make some things for Simon. If I have to, I can make a dress for myself." She picked up one of Simon's blankets and began to fold it. "I was never particularly clever at it, but I—"

"Bryony," he said softly.

Her hands stilled at their task. She looked up slowly, feeling a strange heat warm her cheeks.

He regarded her in silence. She tried to swallow, but she couldn't. It was as if every muscle in her body had tightened, closing off her throat. There was something about the light in his eyes as they rested on her that made her aware of the fact that he was a man and she was a woman, and they were alone in this room with an entire night stretching ahead of them.

And that he owned her.

He jerked his head toward the door. "Go on and get yourself something to eat. I'll watch Simon for
a
while."

She let her breath out in
a
long sigh. "Yes, sir. Thank you... sir."

She fled the room.

Behind her, Hayden sat holding his empty glass, staring at it without really seeing it.

He knew he'd been aware of her in the way a man was aware of a woman, and it both surprised and annoyed him.

But he still wished he hadn't told her to buy that damn cap.

In the cool, sunless light of false dawn, the bay below lay as flat and colorless as a tin plate.

Bryony wrapped a second blanket around the baby and took up a perch on the mounting block outside the inn door. In the harbor below a small boat shipped oars and began to row out toward a sloop anchored in the cove. She was too far away to hear the splash of its oars, but she could see the low, V-shaped wake that slowly spread out over the smooth silver surface of the water behind it.

The early-morning calm of the distant waterfront formed a sharp contrast to the scene immediately before her. Men swore. Restless animals stomped and shook their harnesses and filled the cold air with the steam of their breath.

Captain St. John had assembled some dozen men, four wagons, and a variety of stock in the street in front of the inn. There was one dray pulled by a team of horses, and two more pulled by bullocks, plus the small cart drawn by a pair of bullocks in which she and Simon were to ride. Gideon called it a "tilted cart." It had two wheels and a hard plank seat, and a canvas shelter rigged over the back.

Bryony wasn't sure how she felt about leaving Sydney. It wasn't simply a matter of leaving the vaguely familiar for the totally unknown. It was... it was as if the harbor and the ships within it were somehow her last link with home. To leave was to sever one more tie to her past,
to put more miles and more obstacles between her and Madeline.

Somewhere up the street, a bullock bellowed. Bryony turned toward the sound and saw Hayden St. John walking down the line of his wagons. He ran his eye over the harnesses, checked the lashings of the loads, gave last-minute instructions to his men.

To see him among other men was to realize just how tall and broad-shouldered he was, Bryony thought. There was only one other man who was anywhere near his size: a big, red-bearded Scotsman in charge of the three graceful greyhounds that cavorted playfully around the wagons. But whereas the Scotsman was a hulking bear of a man, St. John was well-proportioned, lean, and lethal-looking.

He wore his black, broad-brimmed hat pulled low over a face set in forbidding lines. He seemed more distant this morning than ever before, and Bryony thought she might almost have imagined that strange and rather frightening moment of intimacy last night.

Then, as if he sensed her watching him, he turned, his cold gaze meeting hers and holding it across the street full of stomping horses and shouting men. Only there was something in his expression that wasn't cold at all. Something that brought a heat to her insides and a flush to her face.

She looked away quickly, panicked as much by her own reaction to him as by what she had seen in his face.

For it was no use trying to pretend he didn't have an effect on her, because he did. And although she disliked and feared him, what she felt when she was around him went beyond simple fear or dislike. It was...

Awareness. That's what it was. An intense, physical awareness of his masculinity, of his power. His power as her master. His power as a man. Because the fact was, he could take her anytime he wanted to. And they both knew it.

He walked up to her. "I told Gideon to have you wait inside where it's warm until we're ready to leave."

She tilted back her head to look up into his dark, shadowed face. "I didn't know it was an order."

For a moment, the taut lines of his features eased with what might have been amusement. "Do you
ever
do what you're told?"

"I..." She licked her suddenly dry lips, then regretted it when his gaze dropped to her mouth. "I am trying."

He propped one foot up on the block beside her, leaning forward as if about to say something. But at that moment Gideon came out of the inn, carrying the baby's red trunk. St. John straightened up and turned back to his men.

She didn't see Hayden St. John again until she'd taken her place beside Gideon on the wooden seat of the cart, with the baby settled in her lap.

He was mounted on a high-stepping bay gelding that looked as restless and edgy as the man who rode it. It was a big animal; it needed to be big to carry a man his size comfortably. But St. John controlled the spirited horse with the inimitable ease and grace of a born horseman.

As she watched, he lifted his arm and shouted something, something that was lost amid the cursing of the men and the snap of whips and the creak of the slowly turning wagon wheels as the whole line began to move. The cart jerked forward, bouncing and rattling over the rutted street.

They wound down the ridge, toward the outskirts of town. At first it seemed to Bryony as if they traveled almost southward. Then the road curved around until it headed west. Ahead of them, a jagged, wild-looking range of mountains loomed blue and menacing in the distance.

Soon the town gave way to open country. Magpies sang. The golden light of the rising sun spilled across stump-filled pastures and fields planted with scraggly
rows of corn and wheat. There were only a few scattered houses, most of them pitiful, slab buildings that reminded Bryony of the huts in the Rocks. Then, with an abruptness that was almost startling, the cleared ground ended, and they were in untouched bushland.

Bryony was struck as never before by the untamed wildness of this place. Strange, gaunt trees and grassy slopes that looked as if they'd never known the touch of man rolled on and on until swallowed up by the same blue haze that shimmered around the rugged mountains on the horizon.

The land seemed so lonely, so empty. It frightened and excited her at the same time. Everywhere she looked she saw something strange, something startling. Rock lilies seemed to grow out of the very stones. Gray wallabies and kangaroos grazed on the hillsides like deer, loping about with their peculiar, thumping hops. Even the trees were unfamiliar, with odd, silver-green leaves. Some had incredibly smooth trunks, but there were others with bark so ragged it hung down in tattered strips.

"What kind of trees are those?" she asked Gideon, pointing to a stand with almost white bark.

"Eucalypts. The Cap'n says they're almost all eucalypts. Those there are called white gums. And that one there—see it?—it's a red gum. Even those bushes on the side of the track, they're all some kind of eucalypt." He stared at the oxen's rumps for a minute, resting his elbows on his knees, then said, "Mrs. St. John, she hated the gums. Said they were eerie."

Bryony tilted back her head, staring thoughtfully up at the pale, drooping leaves of the overhead canopy, trying to imagine what it must have been like for the beautiful, gently reared daughter of a viscount to suddenly find herself in the middle of this harsh, unforgiving landscape. "I guess they are, in a way." She caught a flash of bright red and yellow and blue flitting through the upper branches of one of the trees and realized it was a bird. "Look at that," she cried, pointing. "What's that?"

The day had dawned clear and sunny, with just a few high, scattered clouds. But as the morning wore on, the clouds steadily thickened until eventually it looked as if it might rain again.

Even from his place at the front of the line, Hayden could hear Simon fussing constantly. The convict woman had her hands full trying to hold him, as he refused to settle down because of the bumpy, rattling motion of the cart. She finally disappeared under the tilt with him. The squalling ceased abruptly, and Hayden knew she had put the child to her breast.

A sudden, loud crack of thunder rumbled through the surrounding trees. A great gust of wind came up, hurtling dry leaves and small branches before it. At the front of the line, a horse whinnied its apprehension. The sky opened up and poured.

Hayden pushed his broad-brimmed hat down on his head and hunched his shoulders against the rain. The deluge was savage but short. Within ten minutes the rain ended. Breaks in the clouds showed deep blue sky waiting above.

But as brief as it was, the storm had done its damage. The washboard, half-dried-out road became a slippery quagmire. All up and down the line, whips cracked, cattle bellowed, men swore. First one wagon, then another bogged down. Bullocks, horses, men, all slipped and fell repeatedly in the mud, until men and animals alike were covered with the stuff.

Gideon in particular seemed to be having a hard time with his bullocks. First one, then the other would lie down and refuse to budge. He'd crack his whip and shout, but it usually didn't do any good. Twice Hayden
sent McDuff and his greyhounds back to help. The dogs barked at the beasts and bit their noses. The bullocks stretched out their necks and bellowed, then heaved back up onto their feet and started off again.

After he'd dispatched McDuff the third time, Hayden rode back himself. He reined his bay in beside the tilted cart and looked down at Bryony Wentworth. Simon was still asleep in his cradle in the back of the cart. She cast him one quick, nervous glance, then looked pointedly away, her back ramrod straight on the hard plank seat.

"We need to lighten the load on the cart," he said. Her head snapped back around. "You'll have to get off and walk."

He expected her to complain, perhaps even try to argue with him about it. What he hadn't expected was for her to smile.

It was a slow smile, one that lifted the corners of her lips, chased the shadows from her pretty brown eyes, and lit up her whole face. It was the first time he'd seen her smile, and he didn't like the effect it had on him. He felt as if the blood in his veins had been heated, and there was a definite stirring in his loins. He waited only long enough to see her climb down out of the cart, then he wheeled his horse around and cantered back up the line.

But he couldn't seem to banish the image of her from his mind, no matter how hard he worked to keep the wagons moving.

It wasn't long before the sun was out again, strong enough to raise a sweat. Steam rose from the wet roadway and the animals' soaked hides. Then the flies came out. If there was one thing Hayden hated about Australia, it was the flies. They landed on the men's mouths and hovered about their eyes and drove the animals crazy. One of the horses pulling the front dray was so maddened by the swarming black things that it did a little half buck and managed to get itself tangled in its harness. The whole line had to stop while the horse was unharnessed, then reharnessed again.

Hayden was just swinging back into the saddle after getting the wagons moving again, when he saw her. She walked along the verge of the road, staying out of the mud as best she could, although the grass and shrubs were still wet from the rain and the skirt of her new gray dress was already soaked to the knees. She had left Simon in his cradle in the cart and was striding along with the leggy, easy gait of a woman born and bred in the country.

It was obvious she was glad to be off the jolting cart. She seemed fascinated by everything she saw, whether it was the glorious sight of a banksia in bloom or something as simple as a lizard, scuttling off a sunbaked rock at her approach. As he watched her, a flock of galahs swept overhead, billowing up and wheeling like a great pink and gray cloud scuttling before the wind. She stopped, her hand coming up to shade her eyes from the sun as she followed their flight. For a moment a slow smile of pleasure once more lifted the sadness from her face, and it touched him again, in a way he hadn't expected.

He started to ride toward her, then wheeled and spurred the bay away instead, up and over the hill. He intended to check on the creek crossing at the base of the slope. But as he stopped his horse beneath an ironbark and sat for a moment watching the sunlight filter through its leaves and dapple over the surface of the clear water of the stream, he found himself thinking about the convict woman instead.

He liked the way the woman's chin jutted up and her eyes flashed when she had to say
yes, sir.
He liked the way her flame-licked, dusky hair curled around her face, making her look as if she'd just gotten out of bed. And when he saw his son at her breast, he found himself wondering what that breast would feel like under his hand. He wanted to put his hands on her.

He wanted his new servant woman.

He dismounted and loosened his saddle girth, letting the horse have a drink while he stepped a few yards
upstream and hunkered down to splash the cold, fresh water over his face, as if it might somehow cool the heat in his loins, too.

Laura's death had left a painful ache, deep within him. But he was a healthy young man, with all of a man's physical needs. He supposed it was inevitable that those needs would become increasingly insistent as time went on. He just hadn't expected it to happen this soon.

Or to find that he could be so aroused by the resilient spirit and ripe body of a convict woman whose wary, hate-filled eyes seemed to follow him wherever he went.