Chase the Dawn (36 page)

An idea glimmered wickedly as she picked through the assortment of nuts and berries, identifying those she
was certain were edible, her nostrils all the while assailed by the luscious aromas of roasting fowl. There was one way to get Ben’s attention.

“Is it these berries that look like blueberries that are actually nightshade?” she mused in carrying tones, raising one of the small bright berries to her lips. In no more than the beat of a bird’s wing, she was nursing her red, smarting hand, gazing indignantly at her hoard of nuts and berries scattered to the four winds under the force of Benedict’s forestalling slap. “That was my dinner!” she reproached, glaring up into his black eyes. “It took me all day to collect those.”

“Your father has a great deal to answer for!” Ben pronounced savagely, seizing a thick swatch of hair at the nape of her neck and yanking her to her feet. “Unfortunately, I fear that it is too late to rectify his errors!” Maintaining his grip on her hair, he propelled her across to the fire. “You are the most ill-conditioned, obstinate girl it has ever been my misfortune to meet!” A hard hand on her shoulder pushed her to the ground, and Bryony, well satisfied with this turn of events, sat down.

Ben went over to her original spot and picked through the scattered berries. Gathering some in the palm of his hand, he came back and sat on his haunches on the far side of the fire, glowering at her. “You did not eat any of these?”

“You didn’t give me a chance,” Bryony said, managing to sound aggrieved. “I am so hungry, I couldn’t care whether they are damsons, blueberries, or nightshade.”

Benedict sighed, accepting defeat. He tossed the dusky purple berries away. “They are nightshade, as you knew.”

Bryony drew her knees up and hugged them, her chin resting atop them as she regarded Benedict quizzically. “You will not be rid of me, Ben. I shall always be beside you, closer than your shadow.” She spoke in the same quietly confident tones of yesterday morning, and Ben, reflecting on her performance since then, began to believe it.

“Do you not understand that I do not want you?” he demanded, searching for the most cruelly blunt words of rejection he could find. “I do not want you.” He stood up, towering over her as if to reinforce his statement.

“You do not love me?” she asked, seemingly unmoved.

“Love you!” cried Benedict. “What has love to do with it? I am a man who must walk alone, do you understand that?”

“Why?” Her eyes held his unwaveringly. “Because of your past? Because you are ashamed of having been a bondsman? That does not matter to me.”

Ben paled beneath his suntan. “It does not matter to
you—
an idealistic, fanciful, privileged girl with her head in the clouds.” He laughed, a bitter sound in the quiet forest. “You know nothing of the world, Miss Paget. You have known nothing but indulgence, sheltered by wealth and love from the distasteful realities of the world. You do not know what you are talking about, but I tell you now—it may not matter to you, but do you dare imagine that it does not matter to
me?”

The angry, bitter words punched her, each one with the power of a body blow, propelled by the depth of an emotion that she had been appallingly guilty of failing first to predict and then to perceive. She didn’t know how to apologize for such insensitivity as the full horror
became manifest. The Benedict Clare that she knew was a proud man, assured and confident in everything he did. He moved with all the hauteur of one born to an ancient lineage—and he had belonged, in servitude, to a swinish drunkard.

God alone knew what hell he had endured, above and beyond the torture that she knew of, and slowly, on the edges of her soul, she sensed the monster of degradation. Her mind filled with the images of slavery, images that had been an intrinsic part of her life, unquestioned by her or by anyone else that she knew. Benedict had experienced that condition, and the fact that she knew it, could imagine what he had become in that dreadful time, had driven this wedge between them.

She looked up at him with haunted eyes and saw only a twisted mockery in the flat black orbs above, watching as her thoughts played, undisguised, across her countenance.

“Not a pretty picture, is it?” he said in a voice as dry as dust. “Now, perhaps, you understand why I walk alone.”

The words of denial rose to her lips, but she swallowed them. Too much pain had been revealed in the last minutes to allow for repetition of her own unmitigated defiance of his determination. Later, after quiet reflection had increased her understanding, she would return to fight the battle on which their love depended. She understood so much more now, but still not everything. Why and how had a Clare become a bondsman in the first place? What heinous crime had he committed for such a sentence to be passed on an aristocrat? And even a bondsman’s past did not truly explain that puzzling, unfocused hatred that she had felt so often and that he
had said had nothing specifically to do with her. He loathed everything her father stood for, but she would swear that Sir Edward was not simply tarred with Roger Martin’s brush. There was something else.

After a minute, when it became clear that Bryony was not going to respond, Ben turned his attention to the rapidly crisping turkey. “You will find dock leaves by that patch of nettles,” he said matter-of-factly. “Bring me some that we may use to hold the meat. It’s too hot for bare hands.”

It was an instruction of a kind that she had received often enough in the past, delivered in much the same tones. To that extent, it offered reassurance, but reassurance that Bryony suspected was false. She brought the leaves and obeyed the curt order to fill the kettle at the stream so that water for coffee could heat while they ate.

“Eat slowly,” Ben adjured, passing her a leaf-wrapped drumstick. “I don’t wish you to be sick. The meat is rich, and you have not eaten properly since yesterday morning.”

As if she was unaware of that fact, thought Bryony with a flash of ordinary irritation. Her mouth filled with saliva as she looked at the succulent leg, steam rising from the charred, crisp skin. Her tongue ran over her lips and she cast Ben a quick glance. He was smiling unconsciously and her heart flipped. But his expression became stern and forbidding the minute he caught her eye, and Bryony, pretending that she had not noticed that momentary softening, took a large bite of turkey.

A full belly was a miraculous possession, she thought, half an hour later, wiping turkey grease from her chin with the dock leaf. She never would have realized how miraculous if she had not experienced the
opposite condition quite so thoroughly. There was something to be said for the appreciation—it certainly enhanced one’s pleasure. The coffee that followed was the elixir of the gods but did nothing to alleviate the overpowering drowsiness that struck without warning. Her eyelids, weighted with lead, dropped, but she forced them open, staggering to her feet, hoping that action would provide sufficient stimulus to avert the threatening unconsciousness. Somehow, she managed to wash the beakers, but all the cold-water splashing in the world could not infuse her drugged limbs with life.

“What on earth are you doing?” Benedict pulled her up as she knelt by the stream, quite unable to force her limbs to perform the motions necessary to get her to feet. Water dripped from her face and hands, dampening her tunic. “You’re dead on your feet. Go and sleep by the fire.”

Bryony shook her head. “I am afeard to sleep.”

“Why should you be so, lass?” It was suddenly the old Ben speaking. “I am here. Nothing is going to harm you.”

Bryony gnawed her lip and spoke with some difficulty. “I am so tired that I am afraid I will not be able to waken when you leave in the morning.”

There was a moment’s silence, then Ben said roughly, “I will not leave you here, and I do not deserve that you should believe such a thing of me. Now, go to sleep!” He gave her a shove in the direction of the fire, and Bryony stumbled over, too exhausted for further argument. It seemed an eternity since she had last enjoyed a full night’s sleep. Her cheek pillowed on her hand, her body curled toward the comforting glow of the embers, she passed into dreamless slumber.

Benedict lay down beside her, arms flung above his head as he gazed up at the wedge of night sky revealed in the opening of the trees. By noon tomorrow, they would reach Tyler’s plantation, and he would ask Paul’s help in returning Bryony to Sir Edward. It was not going to be an easy request. And it would not be an easy parting, either. Bryony, beside him, suddenly moaned softly and rolled over into the hollow of his shoulder. Quite insensible, she had traveled in her sleep like a bee returning to its hive; feeling the familiar warmth and shape and automatically cuddling in the remembered fashion. With a little self-mocking smile, Ben moved his arm to enfold her, adjusting her warm, malleable limbs against him. Her hair brushed his chin, and the scent of her filled his nostrils—a scent composed of earth and sweat and the eternal richness of her skin. He smiled again, but it was a pleasanter smile, as he thought of the different vision this Bryony presented from the elegant young lady, exuding rose-water fragrance, rustling in satin and lace. And he didn’t think he would be able to state a preference if such a choice were ever demanded of him.

Benedict fell asleep eventually, as determined as ever to pursue the course he had laid down for them both. They would part painfully, it was true, but as friends, and Bryony now understood much that had been hidden from her. That understanding would surely ease the parting and resign her to accept the inevitable.

Bryony woke to the smell of coffee and the most wonderful sense of bodily ease. Even though Ben was no longer beside her, the shape and feel of him remained imprinted on her body, and she knew that he had held her throughout the night. She stretched and yawned
luxuriously, before hitching herself onto one elbow and regarding him sleepily. “I give you good day, sir.”

“Good morrow, lass.” Ben smiled at her over the lip of his beaker. “I was beginning to think you would sleep forever. If you wish to have time for breakfast, you had better see to your ablutions with all speed.”

Bryony got to her feet and stretched again, feeling her muscles expand as she breathed deeply of the fresh morning air, which was as clear and heady as champagne. “Am I not to receive a good-morning kiss, Mr. Clare?” she teased, going over to him and dropping onto her haunches beside him.

Benedict kissed the tip of her nose lightly. “Hurry up, now.”

“That was not a kiss,” she protested, putting her arms around his neck.
“This
is a kiss.” It promised to be a remarkably thorough demonstration until Ben broke her hold abruptly and took her face between his hands.

“It will only make matters worse, lass,” he told her gravely. “In a few hours we must part, and I cannot bear to be reminded so powerfully of what is now finished.”

Bryony’s mouth set, then she shrugged and stood up. “I will go and wash.” She took her time over her preparations, her mind trying to separate and order the ideas jostling for precedence. It did not seem sensible to confront Ben prematurely, here in the forest. She didn’t know the destination that was to bring the parting of the ways, and she didn’t know how Ben intended to leave her. Presumably, he intended making some provision for her return home, but Bryony couldn’t begin to imagine how a self-styled vagrant, moving undercover to join the American forces, could possibly do such a
thing. When she understood his plan, then she would be better able to counteract it.

They walked in silence, but it was not a hostile silence today; rather, it was one indicative of their absorption with private thoughts. When the forest quite suddenly gave way to a stretch of meadowland, Benedict halted, waiting for her to come up beside him. “We walk for about two miles in the open now,” he informed her. “We will reach the house from the back.”

“Whose house?” Bryony peered into the distance, but the sun was too bright for her to see very far ahead.

“A friend of mine,” Ben told her without expansion.

“A Patriot?”

At that he chuckled. “What do you think, Miss Paget?”

“A Patriot,” she stated. “Will he assist you in joining up with General Gates?”

“I trust so.” Ben set off across the meadow. “I need a horse, that is all.” And a little help in restoring Miss Bryony Paget to her own, he added silently.

“Does he have a name, this Patriot?” Bryony pressed, half running to keep up with him. It seemed most unjust that, loaded down though he was, he could move so much faster than she, who carried nothing but her cloak bundle.

Ben looked at her. “If he wishes you to know it, he will tell you himself.”

She shook her head at this implication that she was an unsafe confidant, but she swallowed her irritation, prepared to harbor her resources for the greater battle.

A solid two-storied brick house roofed with red pantiles came into view, set amid green lawns. There was no elaborate landscaping, though, Bryony remarked, unlike
her own home, and the lawns gave way naturally to paddocks and meadowland. It seemed an affluent establishment, although not lavish—more that of a wealthy farmer than a planter.

“We will use the side door,” Ben said, swinging to the right in the direction of the paved yard beside the house. Obviously, he was utterly at home in this establishment, Bryony reflected as she followed him, a prickle of unease undermining her earlier assurance. Benedict was presumably expecting some potent reinforcements to lie within doors, and one woman, even with all the determination in the world, could not hope to prevail against superior numbers.

“Ben, my friend! I have been expecting you since the news of Charleston reached us!” a deep voice boomed from the doorway, and a tall, sunburned man with a shock of white hair and powerful shoulders came into the yard with a seven-league stride.

“Paul.” Ben dropped his burdens and the two embraced with a warmth that bespoke a friendship of more than ordinary depth. Bryony stood to one side, feeling slightly awkward, like an unwitting intruder, until they stepped apart and Paul Tyler noticed Ben’s companion for the first time.