Chase the Dawn (11 page)

“In order that the wagons can get away. We cannot risk them hearing us, now, can we?” That same smile disfigured his face.

There was nothing about this Benedict that remotely resembled the one she knew. He was glorying in the prospect of ambushing the unwary troop, with a pleasure that seemed to have little to do with the need to secure the safety of the laden carts. Black-faced men were slipping out of the shadows, forming a circle around their leader. They had knives in their hands, the blades dull gleams in the dimness, and pistols in their belts. Was Benedict going to order and supervise the deaths of those men who were laughing and singing in the unwariness of drink? Bryony knew that it was not a question she could bring herself to ask, yet her eyes asked it.

His own became flat, expressionless, opaque as they read the question and denied the answer she wanted so desperately to hear. “Little girls should not wade in waters too hot and too deep for them,” he said, his voice tinged with mockery. “You will go now to the wagons. Joshua is responsible for you. It’s a responsibility that he would as lief not have, so I suggest you avoid making your presence felt.”

“I would prefer to remain with you.”

Anger, dark and fearsome, engulfed his expression, and she took an involuntary step backward. “Your preferences are of
no
importance,” he said with soft finality.
“Your safety is all that concerns me at present. It is a safety that you have wantonly jeopardized, but I will not do so. Neither will I risk that of my men for some foolhardy whim of yours.” Without waiting to see if she obeyed, he turned from her. His hand moved in a brief signal to those around him, and they seemed to melt into the shadows as they stole toward the unwitting redcoats.

Bryony went back to the wagons. Joshua and the two boys were in position, ready to drive the carts out. Tarpaulins covered their mounded contents. She hesitated at the lead wagon, waiting for some sign of acknowledgment from Joshua. She received nothing, so she clambered aboard to sit beside him.

“Ye’ve no business here,” he growled.

“If I hadn’t been here, you’d have had a nest of redcoats on your backs,” Bryony retorted.

Joshua’s eyes flicked sideways, a glimmer of surprise in their depths. Then he snorted, a curious sound, half laugh, half exclamation. The silence in the clearing became almost palpable, and Bryony could not get out of her head the image of the dead body lying by the plundered armory. How soon before it would be discovered? Were there more? And what in the name of all that was good was happening down the road? She waited in dread for the sound of shots, the clash of steel, shouts, but there were only the cicadas, shrill and monotonous.

Hours seemed to pass, but she knew it was only a matter of twenty or thirty minutes before Joshua raised his hand to those behind, clicked softly at the horse, and the wagons moved onto the track. The journey seemed infinitely longer this time, even though she could breathe and see and was not in fear of imminent discovery. But she
could feel the tension in the burly figure beside her, the straining into the darkness for the sounds of pursuit, and her own thoughts were a roiling turmoil of fear for Benedict, of the avalanche of awakened memories, and of how the disclosure of those memories was going to affect the idyll in the woods.

D
awn was streaking the sky when the wagons turned into the yard of Joshua’s farm. They were driven into the barn, and the solidly comfortable figure of Bertha appeared immediately, tucking her hair into her cap.

“I’ve been worried sick wondering where you’d got to!” she scolded Bryony, wagging a ferocious finger. “If you were one of mine, I’d take a switch to you … going off like that without a word.”

“Leave her be, Bertha. She’ll have trouble aplenty with Ben,” said Joshua, unhitching the horse from the traces. “Besides, she did us a good turn.” He handed the reins to Bryony. “You can do us another one, and get this old lady out of harness and bedded down in the far stall.”

Bryony, glad to have something useful to do and not at all unwilling to be out of the way of Bertha’s rough tongue, took the horse off cheerfully. It was not a task she was accustomed to performing, Sir Edward’s stables being amply staffed, but she set to it with a will,
reflecting that recently she had learned to do a great many things that Miss Bryony Paget in normal circumstances would never have expected to tackle.

Bertha was caring for the other horses while Joshua and the two lads were pitchforking hay over the wagons. Bryony, having fed and watered her charge, grabbed a fork and joined in. It was backbreaking, scratchy work, with dust and straw flying around, sticking to the sweat on her brow, and getting in her nose and mouth. Her hands, still sore from their combat with the fishing line, blistered rapidly, but she persevered, refusing to give up before anyone else. Bertha joined them and seemed every bit as strong as the men, swinging the pitchfork with an enviable rhythm. She glanced at Bryony and pursed her lips.

“Not used to this sort of thing, are you?”

“Is it that obvious?” Bryony paused for breath, leaning on her fork.

“Clear as day,” the other woman said bluntly but without rancor. “You’re all wore out, I shouldn’t be surprised. Go on up to the kitchen. There’s a pot of coffee in the hearth.”

It was a tempting offer. “No, I’ll do my share.” Bryony resumed the forking, feeling that in some way she had to redeem herself in the woman’s eyes.

“How long do you think the others will be, Joshua?” The question didn’t manage to sound as casual as she had hoped, as calmly confident that they
would
be turning up at any moment.

The farmer grunted, paused in his efforts for the time it took to wipe his brow with a bright spotted handkerchief. “Only Ben’s coming here. The others’ll be off their separate ways. We got to lie low for a while after this
night’s work. Don’t want to draw attention to this place … not with this lot under the hay.” He gestured to the three haystacks that had replaced the wagons.

“So, how long do you think he’ll be?” she persisted, tossing another forkful onto the haystack.

The answer was unhelpful. “No telling. Depends how much of a fight the redcoats put up.” He propped his fork against the barn wall. “Reckon that’ll do. Let’s go up to the house. My belly’s cleaving to my backbone.”

Bryony, however, found the keenness of her own appetite blunted by apprehension. She was quite incapable of doing justice to the steaming pile of griddle cakes that Bertha set before her, or to the ham and beef that the farmer’s wife carved in lavish thickness. Bryony’s eyes kept sliding to the door, her ears pricked for the sound of footsteps, and several times she slid off the long bench to go to the window.

The sun was now high, shedding its merciless illumination on anyone who was abroad and wished to be inconspicuous. There was bound to have been a hue and cry when the theft and the body at the armory had been discovered. And what about the redcoats? Twelve men lying with their throats cut! Oh, God, if it had taken that to bring Benedict back safe and sound, she would live with it.

“Ben’s got himself out of worse trouble than this, m’dear,” Bertha said, her eyes softening as she came to put an arm around the younger woman’s shoulders. “He’ll not come here until he’s certain there’s no pursuit. He’d not risk us, so he might not come till dark.”

“I don’t think I could endure waiting that long!” exclaimed Bryony. She was filthy, almost febrile with exhaustion, yet quite incapable of doing anything about
either condition. “I could make my way back to the clearing.”

“If you even think of running off again, my girl, you’ll be a lot more miserable than you are now!” Bertha threatened. “Ben left you here in my charge, and here you’ll stay. You understand?”

Benedict certainly picked convincing guardians, Bryony reflected with a rueful grimace, returning to the bench. She had just reached for the coffeepot when the door opened. Benedict strode into the kitchen. His face was drawn and tired, the black eyes heavy with weariness. He was as dirty and disheveled as Bryony, but much of the fatigue seemed to leave him when he saw her, relief lightening his eyes.

“Ben!” She skittered across the floor and into his arms. “You’re safe!” He smelled wonderful, of dirt and sweat overlaid with earth and sun and the acrid tinge of gunpowder. His hands moved briefly over her head resting against his chest.

“All well, Joshua?”

“Aye. And with you?”

“All but Tod.”

Bryony looked up into his face and saw the gray cast of sorrow, the dark agony of remorse in his eyes. He was not indifferent to death, then, at least not to the death of his own.

“We thought we had them all,” he continued, his voice expressionless. “Then one came out of the bushes with a knife. He stabbed Tod a second before I shot him.”

There was a long brooding moment of silence while the loss was absorbed, the colleague mourned, then Bryony heard herself ask in a voice that sounded stiff, as
if after long disuse, “Did you kill them all?” She stood back from him, meeting his gaze.

Ben said nothing for a minute, and his expression was unreadable. Then he spoke, slow and soft. “They were drunk and unarmed, all but the one who knifed Tod. Only he died. I cannot bring myself, even in bitter hatred, to perpetrate murder in cold blood, but …” A low intensity entered his voice and his eyes burned. “I would have given much to have had them sober and armed. There would have been no quarter then.”

Bryony shivered at the power of the hatred, the force of a feeling that could so transform the gently humorous, tender lover. Surely it went deeper than the quarrel between American and British, Patriot and Loyalist? But he had not killed in cold blood, and the relief was naked on her face.

“You
have some explaining to do now,” Benedict said suddenly, taking her wrist.

A pot clattered in the hearth under Bertha’s busy fingers; a chair scraped on the wooden floor as Joshua rose ponderously to his feet and made for the outside door.

Bryony met the black hawk’s gaze steadily. “I caused you no harm—quite the opposite, as I recall.”

Ben took her chin between thumb and forefinger. “You could have been killed.” It was a stark, uncompromising truth.

“So could you,” Bryony returned with equal absence of adornment.

“I am prepared for defense, and I do not take risks without understanding their nature or their gravity.”

“And you assumed that I did?” Bryony shook her head vigorously in spite of the fingers that remained on her chin. “I decided that I preferred the risks of
embracing your fate last night to those of finding myself alone, without memory, with no present or future either, if you were not there to inform them.” Now was the moment to tell him that she no longer wandered in the trackless wastes; so, why didn’t she?

“Mmm.” A slight smile appeared in his ebony eyes. “A lawyer’s defense, Miss Bryony. You appear to have turned aside my entirely legitimate wrath.” The copper head bent and he kissed her, his lips warm and reassuring. With a shuddering little sigh, she dropped her defenses and her fears and cuddled into his hold.

“You’ll eat some breakfast, Ben,” Bertha pronounced with another expressive clatter from the hearth.

“Gladly.” He straightened but kept his arm around Bryony. “I reckon I’ve walked halfway round the county this night, in an attempt to ensure I wasn’t followed.”

“Is that why you were so long?” Bryony poured coffee for him and perched on the corner of the table as he took a seat on the bench.

“Mmm.” Ben nodded through a mouthful of pancakes. “We split up, and it’s to be hoped everyone made it home. We were well away by the shift change, at least.”

“Change of guards at the armory?” The image of that dead body intruded, sullying her newfound tranquillity.

Ben looked up at her, read her expression, and spoke briskly. “Yes. Now, no more questions. The answers are not those I wish to give or that you will wish to hear.”

Bryony played with her fingers for a minute as she accepted the inevitable. She had strayed of her own free will into that dark corner of Ben’s life, and if she did not care for what she found there, then she had only herself to blame. She still knew almost nothing about him and
seemed to understand even less. And she could not tell him about herself yet, not until she had had time to become thoroughly reacquainted with that self.

Ben laid a calming hand on her fiddling fingers. “You are repulsively dirty,” he said with a teasing smile. “Just what have you been doing?”

She returned the smile. “Hiding under flour sacks first, then running like the wind, forking hay …” She shrugged. “I cannot think of what else.”

“It’s quite enough. I think we’re both due for a dip under the pump.” He put down his beaker and wiped his mouth. “Bertha, that was the best breakfast ever to pass my lips.”

Bertha protested this flattery, but a betraying flush tinged her cheeks. “If ye’re to use the pump, I’ll find ye some toweling.” She bustled over to a chest of drawers made of black walnut.

Bryony stared at Benedict. The pump? She mouthed the two-word question incredulously, and he burst out laughing.