Chase the Dawn (31 page)

“It is a favorite spot of mine.” She managed to respond quite normally. “One of my old childhood haunts. Papa used to take me in a canoe when I was very small. Francis knows it well, also.” She turned to include her other neighbor, and the three of them carried on a polite conversation, quite unremarkable to any audience, offering not the slightest hint that the holders of the conversation were bound together in a conspiracy of knowledge and silence.

The boat rounded a bend of the James River, and the trees that crowded the banks right down to the water-line gave way on the right to a broad, lush stretch of green grass. Smoke curled from a fire pit that had been dug on a small beach cutting into the bank. An ox was roasting on a spit over the pit, as it had been doing for the last twelve hours, tended by a succession of slaves who formed part of the army busily seeing to the arrangement of the long trestle tables set up upon the bank and the positioning of chairs in the shade of bush and tree for the elderly members of the party. As one body, the workers ran down to help beach the rowboats, assist their passengers to dry land, and unload the canoes. Laughing, chattering like so many bright-plumaged birds, the guests clambered up the bank, took glasses of punch and negus from napkin-covered trays presented by beaming servitors, and exclaimed delightedly at the pleasures of alfresco dining.

“I must talk to you,” Bryony said in a low voice as she mounted the bank with Ben’s assisting hand at her elbow.

“I will come to you tonight,” he replied, barely moving his lips.

“No,” she hissed fiercely. “I cannot wait until then. No one will notice if we wander away a little. The usual rules are suspended on occasions of this kind.” She moved away from him, saying over her shoulder in tones as clear as a bell, “I will show you the plant I mean, Mr. Clare. It grows just within the woods. I am certain it resembles the Solomon’s seal that you talk of.”

Benedict followed the rose butterfly because to refuse would assuredly give rise to comment after such a public statement of intent. Not even Eliza looked disturbed by her daughter’s going away with their guest. Once within the shadow of the trees, Bryony stopped. “I don’t understand what has happened, Ben.”

“What has happened, lass, as far as I can see, is that you chose to involve Cullum, both dangerously and unnecessarily, in matters that do not concern him,” Ben replied sharply. “What you hoped to achieve, I tell you now, once and for all, is not possible. Do you understand
that?”

“Just listen for a minute,” Bryony pleaded, feeling the ground slide from beneath her feet under the unexpected attack. She had been concentrating so much on the strangeness Ben was exhibiting that she had put aside the business of the early morning. “Papa will accept you as son-in-law, once he is forced to face the truth about us and Francis steps aside willingly. He need not know that you are a Patriot until it’s too late…. I hate to deceive him in that way,” she rushed on before he could get a word in edgeway, “but it seems the lesser of two evils—”

“Enough, Bryony!” He took her by the shoulders, his
eyes holding hers with the power of his own invincible truth. “It cannot be. You
must
accept that for both our sakes.”

“Why?” Her voice sounded weak beside the strength of such conviction. “In love—”

“It is not sufficient, lass.” He sighed, relaxing his grip. “I have told you before, sweeting, that there is much about me that you do not and may not know. I must leave here in the morning, take to General Gates the news that Ferguson is marching to South Carolina….”

“No, please, you cannot go in that manner.” Her fingers scrabbled on his sleeve, desperation etched her voice. “You cannot sever love for principle. I will embrace your principle.”

“It is a severance that cuts far deeper than mere principle, my love.” He spoke gently.

“Then tell me what it is!”

Tell her that he was a traitor, an escaped bondsman whose life was worth not a day’s purchase. Tell her who and what and why he fought. Tell her that he was a man with no roots, no family, no future but the ephemeral one that he would carve for himself out of war—a future based on the wormwood of hatred. No, he could not tell her those things.

She saw his face close, the eyes dull, as he withdrew into himself, and slowly she stepped back from him, drawing on pride now to salvage what she could. “Then we must take from one night a lifetime’s sweetness. You will come to me?”

“Aye, love, I will come to you.” He touched her lips with a finger. The blue eyes were shaded by the brim of her bonnet, but he could feel the haunting power of them, cutting him to the quick. The rich creamy luster
of her complexion glowed against the dark of her hair and the crisp white of her hat, and a lifetime of loss waited in the wings. “If it could be otherwise, I would have it so, my sweet Bryony. I beg you to believe that.”

Her mouth curved in a sad smile against his finger. “I do believe it, Ben. Just as I also believe that it can be otherwise. But if I cannot convince you, then …” She shrugged. “We should return to the picnic. Even a search for wildflowers must come to an end or draw remark.” She walked away from him, back to the sounds of laughter and the chink of glasses, back to those intent on merriment, for whom the bright day contained no shadows.

R
oger Martin sat glowering in the shade of a tall poplar. His sweaty scalp itched beneath his wig, and he pushed it up irritably to scratch at the shaven skin. It was too damned hot for this cavorting about on riverbanks. His belly was stretched, drum tight, pushing against the waistband of his satin britches, but he continued to fork the rich ox meat into a mouth already shining with grease. He took a deep draft of claret, chewing stolidly as he did so, and belched profoundly.

The scene in front of him should have gladdened the most jaundiced eye, sweetened the sourest temper. A boisterous game of blindman’s buffet was engaging every picnicker below the age of twenty, the noise vying with the scraping of a fiddle and the pipe of a flute as the next generation performed an informal galliard on the bank. What the dance lacked in ballroom elegance, it made up for in enthusiasm, and the elders of the party, those who were awake, sat smiling and nodding, tapping their toes on the grass as they reminisced about the pleasures of their own youth.

Roger Martin’s temper, however, was not to be sweetened. Through the fumes of alcohol befuddling his brain, something nagged at him as it had done since he had arrived at the Paget house that morning … or rather, since he had been introduced to that damned supercilious Irishman. Martin was a tenacious man as well as an impatient one, and this thing—whatever it was—that hung on the periphery of sense was driving him to distraction. He stared at the Irishman, who had moved out of the dance, some pretty little filly on his arm. And as Roger Martin stared, it was as if an invisible string tightened between them. Benedict Clare raised his head and gazed directly back. The power of the hatred in his eyes would have pierced the thickest hide, and Martin felt a strange cold prickle touch his scalp. He had been on the receiving end of that same stare from those same black eyes before. But God’s blood! Where and when?

Benedict cursed himself silently as he turned without apparent haste to look away from his enemy. He should avoid eye contact at all cost. He knew that perfectly well, just as he knew that he must control the surging temptation to close his hands around the man’s neck, to squeeze the life, slowly, chokingly, from him, to see those pale bloodshot eyes start from their sockets….

“Mr. Clare, are you quite well?” A hesitant voice spoke at his elbow, and he realized that he had drifted away again.

“Why, Miss Millicent, what man could be otherwise in your company,” he said with a smile that set the maiden’s heart aflutter. “But I think I should return you to your mama. She was most anxious that you should not spend overlong in the sun, and one can only commend her concern for such a delicate complexion.” The
pretty words came so easily, he thought with a sardonic quirk.

The young lady was returned, and Ben left the circle of embroidering matrons and went in search of wine and a little peace and quiet for thought. By this time tomorrow, he must be on his way south. The party would break up in the morning, and it would be assumed that he would then join forces with Ferguson on the march to South Carolina. Was there an excuse he could find to delay his recruitment so that his true allegiance would remain unknown for a few more vital days? The longer the Tories remained in ignorance of the spy they had harbored in their camp, the greater time advantage Gates would have when Ben brought him the news of Ferguson’s movements.

“How long d’ye say ye’ve been in the Colonies, Clare?” God dammit! That truculent voice rasped in the remembered belligerence that habitually preceded some needling taunts that would hopefully prick the bondsman to a punishable insolence. Ben could feel himself slipping back, could feel his shoulders drooping slightly, his eyes lowering as he concentrated on breathing, deep and even, as he sought for the innocent, placatory response. And then he remembered that he was no longer Nick, that he was Benedict Clare, guest of Sir Edward Paget, that to behave like Nick in such a situation would be as dangerously revealing as a bold declaration of the truth.

“Three months,” he replied briefly, continuing to saunter across to the still-laden tables.

“Where’d ye land?” Again that belligerence.

“Boston.” The Irish lilt became yet more pronounced. It was not something Martin would associate with Nick.
Ben reached for a glass, took the chased silver ladle from the matching punch bowl, and filled the glass with the potent brew. “Do you care for punch, Martin?” Still holding the ladle, he reached for another glass.

An expletive derived from the barnyard greeted the polite inquiry. “That muck is fit only for milksops! Give me the brandy.” This last was bellowed at a hovering slave. When the boy hesitated, looking for the required bottle, Martin’s hand shot out in a backhanded clout that sent the lad reeling.

The ladle shook in Ben’s hand, its contents spilling upon the white damask cloth, and blood pounded in his temples. Then a hand, cool and quiet, came to rest over his, easing it down so that the ladle was returned to the punch bowl. “Perhaps I can help you, Mr. Martin.” Bryony spoke, her voice glacial, sounding remarkably like Sir Edward Paget’s. “I must apologize if the service offered does not meet with your satisfaction.”

“Is something amiss?” Sir Edward appeared as if from nowhere. He looked from the lad, still clutching the side of his head, to Bryony, white and stiff, to the crimson, sweating Martin, and then at the motionless figure of Benedict Clare. In the silence, men moved slowly across the grass, drawn by the emanating tension, by the certainty of an impending explosion. It could no more be mistaken than the storm clouds presaging a thunderstorm.

Ben caught Martin by the shoulder in a movement shocking in its abruptness and spun him round to face him. “Brutality may be your creed, Mr. Martin, but it is hardly courteous to practice it upon another man’s property!”

Bryony stepped away from Ben, nausea churning in
her belly as she felt the shape of an imminent horror. A rustle, maybe of agreement, maybe of disapproval, ran around the gathering circle. Paget opened his mouth to say something in an attempt to end what was about to happen before it began, but the horror could not be forestalled, had passed beyond all possibility of intervention three years since.

“You
dare
lay hands on me!” Roger Martin twisted in outrage, flinging off the hands on his shoulders, his face suffused. There was a moment when the two men were quite alone in a world that excluded the immediate circle of spectators, the plaintive offerings of fiddle and pipe, the excited whispers of servants gathering in an outer circle, the urgent demands for explanation from those in the background wanting to know what had transpired. They were alone in a time and place long past, and Roger Martin gaped as the incredible, unbelievable memory became reality.

“God’s blood,” he said again. “Nick!”

“What the devil are you talking about, man?” demanded Paget, not troubling to disguise his anger.

Martin extended a shaking finger. Indeed, his entire body seemed to quiver under the force of an ungovernable rage. “A runaway cur!” he hissed. “My bondsman, bought at the dock at Charleston five years ago!”

“Get ahold of yourself, man,” Paget insisted, taking his arm. “You babble.”

“Indeed I do not.” A fleck of saliva clung to Martin’s lip as he gazed with sickening triumph at the man he owned. “This piece of scum ran away, owing me twelve years’ labor!”

Say something, Ben, Bryony prayed with such
intensity that she could not believe he didn’t hear. But he just stood there, pale and unmoving.

“What the devil’s he on about?” someone demanded petulantly. “Can’t say things like that about a gentleman.”

“Gentleman!” spat Martin. “He belongs to me, and I demand you put him in irons, Paget. I’ll drag him back to Georgia at my stirrup.” Suddenly, he grabbed the ruff of Ben’s shirt. “D’ye need proof? I’ll show you the scars I put on his back. Take your shirt off, cur!”