Chase the Dawn (28 page)

Total stillness and silence reigned in the moonlit room
for long minutes, neither of its occupants daring to make a premature move. Then Bryony hopped out of bed, relit the lamp, and ran to the door, once again turning the key. She stood still, curious as to why Benedict did not reappear, and for one dreadful moment wondered if he had suffocated under the weight of the bedropes and the clouds of dust. “Ben?” She tiptoed back to the bed and then yelped in shock as her ankle was suddenly grabbed.

Ben dragged himself out of hiding, hauling on her ankle as he did so, and lay on his back, laughing up at her. “It seems I have occasion to scold you yet again for a lamentable lack of respect to your mother,” he said. “What a disgraceful pack of lies! Sleepwalking, indeed!”

“What would you have had me say?” she demanded, laughing with him, although she felt a little quavery quite suddenly as the fearful tension dissipated.

“Not the truth, I grant you. Come down here.” A swift jerk unbalanced her, and she toppled onto him, lying along his length, relaxing against him as his arms encircled her, holding her tightly as if he understood that the last minutes had been no real laughing matter.

He ran his hands through the fragrant mass of her hair, drawing it forward to enclose them both in a dark silken tent as his lips sought hers in a kiss of searing sweetness that for the moment contained no passion, and she drew hungrily at the well of comfort and reassurance, feeling his heart beat steadily against her breast, seeming to calm by example her own tumultuous pulse. When he felt the peace enter her, Ben spread his hands over her back and rolled sideways, turning her to feel the rich carpet beneath her shoulder blades. Propping himself on one elbow, he leaned over her,
brushing a stray lock of hair away from her brow, tracing the delicate planes of her face with one long finger.

Bryony lay still, waiting for him to articulate the thought that she could sense forming behind his pensive midnight-dark eyes. When he remained silent, she extended her own hand and ran a fingertip over his lips. “What are you thinking?”

He smiled, nipping her finger. “A thought that I had best keep to myself, lass.”

“You have so many secrets,” Bryony said in a fierce whisper, surprising herself with the force of an anger that had arisen unbidden and without warning. “I don’t understand why I am not to be trusted. What have I done to deserve your mistrust? I cannot help who I am, but I have never—”

“Hush!” He spoke sharply. “It’s not a question of trust, as I said to you once before. If I did not trust you implicitly, would I be here at all? Running the risk of a noose around my neck, or worse?”

“You are here because you have a task to perform and this is the best place to perform it,” she said dully. “My presence, I assume, is simply a bonus. And you must take some considerable satisfaction out of hoodwinking so dramatically and completely a man you hold in such enmity.”

Silence wreathed them; stillness held them. Bryony, unable to meet his steady gaze, turned her head on the rug and wished she had not said those words. What good did it do to wish for more than one could have? It just created this sourness that curdled the sweetness and left a bitter void. She waited for him to get up and leave her, back through the window and into the darkness.

Then Ben spoke very softly. “I was thinking that I loved you.”

She turned her head again to look up at him, wonder shining with the tears in her eyes. “I love you, too. Why would you not tell me?”

He sighed. “It is not a fact that can profit either of us, lass, and is best left unacknowledged.”

The words of denial rose to her lips, but by some stroke of witchcraft they were stillborn. The answer to Bryony was so simple, so obvious that she could not imagine why Ben did not see it, but some saving grace warned her that now was neither the time nor the place. “Love me,” she commanded, drawing his head down to her bosom. “Love me now, Ben.”

“So importunate,” he murmured, unfastening the tiny pearl buttons of her bodice, parting the sides to bare her breasts. “Will you be had on the floor, sweeting, or shall we repair to the softness of feathers?” His breath whispered across her skin as he pushed the nightgown off her shoulders, his palms cupping their soft roundness. The urgent arching of her body was sufficient answer, and he slipped the garment down to her waist, kneeling astride her as he played with the creamy, lamp-lit swell of her breasts, smiling as the deep languid glow of desire built in her eyes. The raven’s-wing hair, spread out in startling contrast to the gold and ivory tones of the rug, shimmered against her skin. A skin like mother-of-pearl in the lamplight, he thought, needing suddenly to see the rest of her, to have her laid out before him in all her glorious wanton nakedness.

Slipping a hand beneath her, he raised her hips, drawing the wadded material of her gown from under her, holding for a minute the warm roundness of her
buttocks on the shelf of his palm. He could feel the wire-sprung tautness as her muscles tensed in anticipation of what she knew was to come; the banked fires in her eyes flared as, still holding her up, he bent his head to stroke her stomach with his moist tongue. Her hips arched in involuntary invitation, her thighs falling open to the dewy caress.

“I want you,” Ben stated, softly, definitely. “I want all of you, my Bryony.” His tongue darted, flicked, probed with deep eroticism until she could no longer hold back the soft moans of submission to the joy he was bringing as she yielded her self.

The lamp burned low during the long hours of play, and Bryony, aware that Ben wanted her passivity tonight, her total acceptance of his loving, gave herself unreservedly to that loving. He turned her, positioned her as the fancy took him, possessed himself of every millimeter of skin, every pulse, every vibrant nerve center until Bryony ceased to belong to herself, to exist in any universe but this one, where the heady scent of her own arousal filled the soft night air, where the hands on her body were not her own, yet were inextricable from herself, where her skin and the rich texture of the carpet were enmeshed.

Ben gazed down at her, ivory and pearl, the blue-black triangle at the apex of her thighs matched by the fanned mass spread, as abandoned as her body, across the carpet. He wondered how he would manage to leave her, to face the life that stretched ahead without her. His clothes had been shed long since, and now, with fierce urgency, he knelt between her widespread thighs, drew her legs onto his shoulders and drove deep into her center.

Bryony gasped as her body stretched to receive his length, felt the throbbing press of him filling her more completely than ever before. He held her hips high as with each thrust she took him into herself, bound him in the silken toils of her body, and watched his face melt in joy, glorying in her turn in the power of the pleasure giver, possessing him in joy as he had possessed her. And then, even while she thought she was in control of her thoughts, draining the last dregs of conscious delight from the observation of her lover’s pleasure, the wave of her own satisfaction engulfed her. So intent had she been on Ben that the slow, seeping sweetness had crept insidiously upon her, now to burst in full flower.

As before, Ben stopped her climactic cry with his mouth, gathering her tightly to him even as he withdrew from her body the instant before they fell from the heights, the world settling again on its axis.

“No, don’t leave me.” As he moved infinitesimally, preparing to roll onto the carpet beside her, she ran her hands over his back, every ridge now familiar to her fingertips, the scars intrinsic to the beloved body.

Weary with the night’s exertions, he kissed the corner of her mouth and lay heavily atop her as her slow caresses continued, and the couple drifted in peaceful, fulfilled languor until the flickering lamp finally guttered. They lingered on the moon-washed carpet, readying themselves for the now unavoidable moment of separation.

“Sweeting, I must leave you,” Ben groaned, “if I am to touch ground before the break of dawn.” Kneeling, he took her hands and hauled her into a sitting position. “Come, into bed with you.” He stood up, drawing her upright, toppling her onto the bed.

“Stay with me.” The plea encompassed much more than the immediacy of the moment, but if Benedict realized, he gave no sign.

“Do not be foolish,” he chided with a teasing smile, tucking the covers around her. “I cannot spend the entire day in hiding beneath the bed! And I shall not succeed in escaping unseen down the creepers once the household is up and about.”

For the moment, she would accept his inevitable loss. Bryony met and matched the lingering touch of his lips in farewell, then watched as he dressed, then swung himself with an agile twist through the casement. The right moment would come to bring him to an understanding of the realities and the possibilities, and she would begin preparing the groundwork in the morning.

Bryony wasted no time. Her plan required Francis’s cooperation, and as soon as breakfast was over, she followed him out of the dining room, catching him in the hall. “Francis, I would speak with you for a minute.”

He turned, looking at her with surprise at the whispered urgency of her tone. “Speak away.”

“Not here,” Bryony said, glancing around the thronged hall. “In private.”

“Now?”

“It may as well be now as later.” She turned toward the door leading to the rear terrace.

“I give you good day, Miss Paget.” Benedict strolled across the terrace from the garden. “It is a beautiful morning, is it not?”

“Delightful, sir,” she agreed, somewhat distracted as memories of the night flooded back to mingle awkwardly with the need to avoid his company for the next few minutes as naturally as possible. “Mr. Cullum and I
are going to walk down to the landing stage before Reverend Elstree conducts Sunday prayers.” The absence of invitation to join them was glaringly obvious, and with Francis standing beside her, smiling blandly, Benedict could hardly invite himself.

He bowed. “Then I’ll delay you no longer.” Frowning, he watched them move off. Miss Paget had not seemed at all pleased to see him. What was she up to? Had she taken some notion into her head to allay her betrothed’s suspicions? If so, Ben strongly suspected that she would tie more knots than she would unravel. Francis Cullum did not strike him as easily deceived, and a less than truthful explanation would only give rise to further questions. A horrible thought struck him. She could not be intending to make a clean breast to Francis Cullum, could she? The thought was father to action, and he set off toward the thicket of oaks that had just swallowed the two figures.

In the center of the thicket, Bryony stopped and Francis solemnly halted beside her. “This is very cloak and dagger, Bri.”

She shrugged. “You will understand why soon enough.”

“I am all ears.” He lounged against a broad trunk and regarded her with a smile in his green eyes. “You look as if you are about to unburden yourself of a weighty pronouncement.”

“Do not mock, Francis. Normally, I don’t mind, but this is very serious.” She flicked at the lace-edged apron ornamenting the rose cambric of her gown, and the impatient gesture set her hoop swinging. “You said yesterday that I would tell you in my own good time about what lies between Benedict Clare and myself. You also
said, rightly, that if it affected our situation, you were entitled to know.”

“And I am about to?” The smile had left his eyes, his languid air now masking the tautness of his body as he waited for something that he knew he would not enjoy hearing.

“Yes. You should know that Benedict Clare and I are lovers—”

“What?” Francis interjected before he could stop himself. “Are you run mad, Bri?”

She was very pale but continued resolutely. “I am not run mad. I tell you this so that you will have an unimpeachable reason for breaking off our engagement. It is, as you once said, the only acceptable reason you could have, and I wish you to use it.”

“And what of you?” He stared. “You will marry Clare?”

A smile trembled on her lips. “It is what I wish, yes. But there are difficulties. However, I think I can persuade my father that—”

“Your powers of persuasion are not in doubt.”

Bryony whirled around in a swirl of rose. Francis pushed himself away from the tree. Benedict stepped into the enclosure, where the sun barely showed through the umbrella of April foliage and the air was as soft as the greenish light.

“Ben … I … I haven’t said anything about—”

“Then do not start now,” he interrupted in those quiet, decisive tones that she knew well. “Go back to the house, please. Mr. Cullum and I have some things to discuss.”

Bryony stood her ground. She had every right to take Francis into her confidence without betraying Ben, but
Benedict at this moment bore the mien of the man who fired barns and killed sentries and tied people to beds. She took a deep breath. “I don’t imagine you can have anything to discuss that does not concern me.”

The hawk’s eyes impaled her, held her motionless, the only sounds the insistent call of a blue jay, the rustle of some small scuttling animal. Even Francis seemed immobilized, standing on the sidelines watching a play whose outcome would bear upon his own life, yet whose action had nothing to do with him.

Ben said in the same soft tones, “You will not, I trust, oblige me to compel you, lass.”

Bryony drew breath sharply, memories of the clearing, of his demand for a parole that she could see no justification for giving taking on the lines and contours of reality again. She could not imagine how he would compel her to leave, but she knew that he would do whatever he deemed necessary, and she was not prepared to face a humiliating defeat in front of Francis. Without a word, she turned and walked away, a gauzy shimmer of rose, her hoop swaying gracefully as she slipped through the gray trees, the dark crown of her hair gleaming in the dim green light.

“My God!” murmured Francis in awed tones. “I think she believed you would.”

Ben looked at him, uncomprehending. “I beg your pardon.” Then his frown cleared and he shrugged, saying dismissively, “She knew I would.” Francis smiled slightly and leaned back against the tree, folding his arms. “What did she tell you, Mr. Cullum?”