Chase the Dawn (27 page)

“My daughter is inclined to have some fanciful notions, sir,” Eliza said, distinctly flustered. “I beg you will take no notice of her. It is merely playful.”

“I was only speculating, sir, on whether you had a preference for a dinner companion,” Bryony said sweetly, blind to her mother’s distress under the lamentably selfish urge to indulge her quick wit in a little wicked fencing with Benedict. “There are many young ladies I am certain would be overwhelmed by the honor of being your choice.”

Eliza whimpered a little but was quite unable to halt her outrageous daughter without creating an even more embarrassing scene. Ben smiled reassuringly at her, his gaze warm and containing not a trace of sarcasm. “Your daughter flatters me, ma’am, but I must confess to feeling chagrin at the thought that I am to be denied my customary partner.” He directed a mock bow at Bryony.

“Oh, no, Mr. Clare, there is no question of any such thing,” Eliza hastened to correct this unfortunate impression.

“I meant no discourtesy, sir,” Bryony interjected. “Quite the opposite. It was your pleasure that was my concern and it seemed possible that you might prefer a little variety in your companionship.”

“Oh, yes, indeed, just so, just so …” stammered Eliza, patting at her towering coiffure with nervous hands. “I beg you will excuse me. Bryony, you will look after Mr. Clare.”

“Of course, Mama.” Bryony curtsied at her mother’s departing back and cast a look brimming with mischief at Benedict. Only to suffer something of a shock. Mr. Clare did not appear to be in the least amused.

“I fail to see what pleasure you can achieve from embarrassing the poor woman in that manner,” he said.

Bryony’s jaw dropped. “Are you taking me to task?”

“There was no call to make game of your mother in front of me,” he said shortly.

Bryony began to feel distinctly uncomfortable, but she retorted, “How very pompous you have become, Mr. Clare. You hold my family and all it stands for in such disdain that I cannot imagine why a little filial teasing should produce this display of righteous indignation.”

Ben’s eyes narrowed. “Do not confuse opposition
with disdain. I hold neither of your parents in contempt for all that I am bitterly opposed to your father’s politics. If you must tease your mother, I suggest you do so in private.” With that final piece of advice, he strolled away from a thoroughly discomfited Bryony, who, even through her annoyance, was obliged to admit the justice of the rebuke. She had not been able to resist the byplay with Ben and had thus thoughtlessly embarrassed her mother.

“Why so mournful, Bri?” Francis sipped a glass of punch and regarded her pensively over the rim.

“I am a prey to self-reproach,” she returned with a little laugh. “My wretched tongue got the better of me, again, and poor Mama suffered, I fear.”

“Not an unusual occurrence,” her companion observed. “Was Mr. Clare a witness to this unseemly display?”

Bryony flushed slightly. “Why should you think so?”

The color of his eyes deepened. “Don’t play me for a fool, Bri. I don’t know what is between you and that gentleman, but if it concerns us, then I should like to be told. I have the right, do I not?”

“What possible reason can you have for imagining that there is anything between Mr. Clare and myself?” Bryony tried to infuse the question with lighthearted indignation, but she knew she had failed.

Francis, however, merely shrugged. “It’s as plain as day for those with eyes to see. I suppose you’ll tell me in your own good time.”

The gong sounded for dinner, bringing a reprieve, although for how long, Bryony could not guess. She was obliged to return her attention to the still grave
Benedict, who offered his arm without a word as they joined the procession into the dining room.

“May I help you to some salmon, Mr. Clare?” she asked with soft hesitancy once they were seated and she found the fish at her elbow.

“Thank you.” He passed his plate, and for a while she was fully occupied in serving the salmon to all those near her who desired it.

“If I might have a little of the curlew, sir,” she ventured when her own serving duties were in abeyance. Benedict took her plate and expertly dissected one of the little birds on the silver platter before him.

“There may still be some bones,” he said solicitously. “Take care as you eat. I should not wish to be responsible for one becoming lodged in your throat.”

“You are already responsible, sir, for the taste of contrition,” she murmured, “which does not enhance enjoyment.” She watched his expression out of the corner of her eye as she toyed with the meat on her plate.

Ben smiled, his eyes warming, and moved one hand beneath the table, where it became lost in the stiff folds of the damask cloth until it found Bryony’s knee and her own hand, which had followed a similar path. A firm squeeze signaled that the matter was at an end, and Bryony, for one, felt an immense sense of relief. It was not at all pleasant to be at odds with Benedict, as she had discovered long ago, and most particularly not when she had been in the wrong.

The dining room’s long windows stood open to the driveway, and Bryony heard the pounding hooves before the horseman came into view and swung his mount around the gravel sweep to pull up sharply before the steps leading to the front door. Several others whose
seats also faced the windows looked curiously across the mahogany table with its handsome burden of silver and china, and the steady flow of conversation faltered. Neither Sir Edward nor Lady Paget made a move as sounds of commotion from the hall filtered unmistakably into the room. After a minute, the butler made stately, measured progress into the dining room, treading ponderously to where Sir Edward sat at the head of the table.

There was a low-voiced consultation, then Paget, with a smile of excuse to the ladies on either side, rose, paused to say something in Major Ferguson’s ear and again in Lord Dawson’s. The three men went into the hall.

“Something unprecedented has occurred,” Bryony stated matter-of-factly. “I don’t remember a time when my father has left his own dinner table with such lack of ceremony.”

“Wars tend to cause people to behave in unfamiliar fashion,” said Benedict, equally prosaic, but Bryony could feel the tension in the muscle-hard thigh against her own. The buzz of voices around the table increased in volume as excited speculation rose, transcending the rules of civilized social congress. Interest in food waned as interest in the contents of the wineglasses waxed; eager anticipation of some momentous news hovered over the group.

The three men came back to the dining room, the solemnity graven on their features belied by the springing step, the sparkling eyes, the joyous air of messengers with portentous news.

Bryony felt Ben relax, leaning back in his chair, his fingers now loose on the stem of his glass, twirling it
idly, his breathing slow and even. How did she know that the pose was requiring a supreme effort, that he was somehow preparing himself for the worst, ensuring that he would evince no visible effects of whatever this news was?

“My friends.” It was her father speaking, his eyes alight. “You will excuse this interruption of our dinner, but I feel sure you would not wish me to waste an instant in imparting to you the news that has just reached us.” He paused, smiling down the long table in the expectant hush. “My friends, Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Cornwallis have taken Charleston, and General Lincoln’s entire defending force is captured. Finally, victory over those damn traitorous rebels is in our hands!”

The room exploded in laughter and cheering, and Benedict Clare sat smiling quietly in the midst of the joyful throng. He glanced sideways at his host’s daughter and, with a mocking lift of one eyebrow, raised his glass in silent toast.

Y
ou don’t seem in the least concerned.” Bryony sat on her bed, hugging her drawn-up knees beneath the demure white nightgown, her hair tumbling over her shoulders and around her face as she looked in intent puzzlement at the insouciant visitor to her bedchamber.

Benedict chuckled. “I have other things on my mind at present, lass. Much pleasanter matters.” Leaning over, he twisted a lock of hair around his finger as he brought his mouth to hers. Bryony resisted, pummeling his chest, trying to turn her head away from the capturing mouth. Ben laughed, his warm breath mingling with hers. Taking her face between both his hands, he held her still, her fists imprisoned between their bodies, until he had finished what he had started.

“But I want to know what you are going to do!” Bryony gasped breathlessly, fighting the insidious surge of desire creeping up from somewhere in the region of her toes.

“I will tell you what I shall do if you don’t decide to
be a little more accommodating,” he said, beginning to unbutton his shirt. “I did not climb that creeper at great risk to life, limb, and honor simply to discuss a turn of events over which, at present, I have no control.”

“But why are you not upset?”

“Persistent creature!” He swooped down on her, catching her beneath the knees and toppling her backward on the bed. “When will you learn to accept the inevitable?”

Bryony’s indignant squawk was reduced to a snuffle as her legs were doubled over her head, and she struggled vainly to pull down her nightgown to achieve some degree of modesty, a condition that Ben seemed determined to deny her. It was at this interesting point that there came a soft but determined knock upon the door. Ben released his hold, and Bryony’s legs swung down to the bed. She looked up at him, pink-cheeked and disheveled, her eyes bright with the promise that had been on the verge of fulfillment.

The latch on the door rattled. “Bryony? Are you asleep, child? Why have you locked the door?” It was Eliza—and a most insistent-sounding Eliza, at that.

“It may smack of farce, but sometimes the old ways are the best ways.” Ben dived for the floor, rolling beneath the bed to keep company with the dust balls and the chamber pot.

A bubble of almost hysterical laughter welled in Bryony’s chest. She mumbled something that would hopefully reach her mother through the door and stumbled off the bed, kicking Ben’s shoes beneath it as she ran to the door.

“I beg your pardon, Mama. I must have been asleep.” Bryony rubbed her eyes vigorously with the heels of her
hands in an effort to appear red-eyed and drowsy. “What is it?”

“You must have fallen asleep with the lamp burning.” Eliza in nightgown and cap bustled into the room. “Your father noticed the light beneath your door when he came up to bed and wished to be sure that you were not unwell.”

Bryony sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed, afraid to put her full weight on the mattress lest the bed ropes sag onto the flattened figure beneath. “I’m quite well, Mama. Just very tired. It’s been a fatiguing evening, after all.” She offered a tentative smile, but Eliza did not respond. She was frowning deeply.

“Why was your door locked, child? You can have no secrets, surely?”

She had committed a cardinal sin, Bryony knew. Privacy was a rare condition, the desire for it most unusual, and the right to it unheard of. Only mischief could be taking place behind a locked door. Her eyes dropped to her lap, and she played restlessly with her fingers. “Forgive me, Mama. I know it’s silly, but … but I have had such a fear since … since that night last summer.” She did not dare look up to see how her confession was affecting Eliza and continued in the same hesitant little voice. “Supposing I had walked in my sleep? It could happen again.”

“Oh, my poor child.” The bed ropes creaked in protest as Eliza sat stoutly on the bed beside her, wrapping her in her arms. “Why didn’t you say something earlier? I will have someone sleep in here with you.”

Sweet heaven! thought Bryony as that dreadful bubble of laughter threatened to explode with devastating consequences. If you only knew! “No, please, Mama,
that is not necessary. I can’t sleep with a bedfellow, you know that.”

Eliza patted her daughter’s back and said diffidently, “You will have to become accustomed to it, dearest. There must be no parting of beds in marriage.”

Bryony wondered desperately if this was really happening. Beneath the bed lay Benedict Clare, spy in her father’s house and seducer of her father’s daughter. While upon the bed, her mother seemed settling in for a maternal exposition of the facts of connubial life.

“It will be different then, Mama,” she managed in a choked whisper. “I do understand that.” A prodigious yawn engulfed the words and she allowed her head to fall heavily upon Eliza’s shoulder.

“Well, we will talk a little more about it another time,” Eliza stated, rising. “It’s time you were in bed, Bryony. We have another full day tomorrow with the picnic, and the men will have so much to prepare for now that the war, thank God, is so nearly finished. One final effort, your papa says, and it will all be over.” This last was said in tones of complete confidence.

Bryony, making no response beyond a weary smile, allowed herself to be tucked beneath the covers, but when her mother bent to kiss her, she put her arms around Eliza’s neck and hugged her tightly, wishing that the absurd charade did not have to be played, that they could behave in a fashion that more accurately expressed their relationship than this socially dictated mother/daughter inequality that they both knew was not really applicable to their situation. Eliza returned the hug, blew out the lamp, and left the chamber, adjuring Bryony to be sure to sleep soundly.