Chase the Dawn (51 page)

They crossed the Dan River into Virginia at the beginning of March, and there, for the first time, paused. They were not followed. Ben wrapped Bryony in her cloak as if she were a baby and put her to bed in one of the wagons. She took his hand, her eyelids fluttering as she struggled to stay awake for one more minute. “I miss you, Ben.”

He smiled and squeezed her hand before tucking it under the cloak. “I miss you, too, lass.” She fell asleep as he kissed her, and he sat on his haunches for a minute, looking at her. He missed her to a point beyond pain, sometimes. The splendor by the tree in the churchyard seemed to have happened to two other people in another lifetime. He had not even seen her naked since then. And he longed for her body, would sometimes feel her movements against him, hear the little whimpers and cries of pleasure. But they were waking dreams that brought him to an erect and throbbing arousal despite exhaustion, and had to be banished with stern resolution.

When Nathanael Greene took his rested and reinforced army back into North Carolina to await battle at Guilford Courthouse, Bryony was left in Virginia. Nothing she could do or say would persuade Benedict to take her.

“I will come back for you, sweeting,” he promised, holding her as she wept angry tears.

“You may not be alive to do so!” she reminded him, pulling out of his embrace.

“Then you will be better off here.” He took her shoulders, looking into her eyes awash with grief and foreboding. “If I do not return, you may make your way to the British army or go on to your home. Either option will be possible for you. The horse will carry you, and you still have the silver fillet. It will buy you what you need.”

“I need
you,”
she said with fierce passion, rising on tiptoe to take his mouth with hers.

“And I need you.” He groaned, tasting her sweetness, feeling her body, taut and demanding, against him. As one body, they moved backward into the wagon, heedless of who should see and guess their intention. They came together with the desperate hunger of the long deprived, pushing garments out of the way, mouths locked as their bodies twisted to fit into each other with the wonder of a long-lost but ageless familiarity. And when the summit was reached, it held the sharp piquancy of a climb that perhaps would never again be made by these two together.

Ned beside her, she watched the army out of sight. It took a long time for over four thousand men to disappear, but they went eventually, and the woman and child were left with the wounded and the unfit. For a week, they waited, news reaching them sporadically, the accounts inconsistent, so that it became impossible to judge the truth. There had been a big battle. The British had won—no, the Americans had won…. Cornwallis had camped on the battlefield and issued a victory proclamation, calling on “all royal subjects to stand forth and take an active part in restoring good order and government.” But there had been no response. British casualties had been heavy—no, they had been devastating; the army was destroyed …
but still the earl claimed victory…. American casualties were negligible … but the Virginia militia had run from the field in disorder….

Bryony eventually ceased running when each new messenger arrived; battered by conflicting reports, she let the tales wash over her. Whichever side could really claim victory, the possibility of loss was as great for her. Her husband and her father would have met on that battlefield, and through the long days of waiting, she had come to see clearly that one could not submerge a fundamental part of one’s self because another part demanded it. She was still Bryony Paget even while she was Bryony Clare, and her father’s death in battle would strike as deep into her core as that of her husband.

Benedict Clare came back, unscathed and bearing the truth. Technically, it had been a British victory, but another such Pyrrhic victory would ruin the British army. Cornwallis had lost a quarter of his force, whereas General Greene had counted only 78 dead and 183 wounded.

Bryony searched Ben’s face and knew that he did not have the answer to her question. If he had news of her father, he would not have been able to hide it from her—good or bad. “So, where do we run to now?” she asked, looking around the disorderly camp that had become home. “Ned has settled well here.” She laughed. “He has become a great favorite with the men who were left. I rarely see him from sunup to sundown.”

“Are you wearied of running, lass?” One eyebrow lifted quizzically, but the deep seriousness of the question could not be hidden.

“Not I,” she said firmly, meeting his gaze. “For as long
as you run, Benedict Clare, I run with you. Have I not always said so?”

“Always,” he said, drawing her into his arms.

“Ben! Ben! I can ride a mule, Ben!” Ned raced over to them, plunging between them, wrapping his arms around Ben’s knees, bouncing on his toes, eyes shining. “Come and see!”

“I think you’ll have to settle for me, Ned.” Charlie, with an amused chuckle, yanked the bouncing child out from under. “Ben will come later. Won’t you, Ben?” Laughter and conspiratorial understanding glimmered in his eyes, and they laughed back at him.

“Word of honor,” Ben said, tickling the child beneath his dirty chin. “And if you really can ride, then you shall do so, all the way.”

“All the way where?” Bryony returned to the original question as she returned to his embrace.

“To Tidewater, Virginia,” he said against her ear. “The endgame will be played there.”

F
or pity’s sake, Ned, stop whining!” Bryony snapped in exasperation as the child’s insistent voice finally penetrated her preoccupation.

“He wasn’t,” Ben said without looking up from the pistol he was cleaning on the plank table.

“Wasn’t what?” Frowning, she turned to observe him, noticing absently how the bent copper head caught a finger of evening sun coming through the small window.

Ben sighed and put down the pistol. “He was not whining, Bryony. He has been asking you the same question for the last five minutes, but you have taken not a blind bit of notice.” His eyes probed her face, and she felt her cheeks warm under the scrutiny that, while it was far from unfriendly, was uncomfortably minute.

She resumed her scouring of a skillet, asking casually, “What is it you want, Ned?”

“My ball,” the boy said. “It’s after supper.”

Bryony’s expression was blank, and Charlie reminded
her, “You took it away from him because he was throwing it through the window.”

“And you said I could have it back after supper,” Ned put in, an unusually aggrieved note entering his voice.

“Oh, I forgot. I am sorry.” Bryony dried her hands and reached up to the top of the dresser. “Here.” She handed the prize to Ned, who ran out into the August evening with it. “Could you not have given it back to him?” Bryony asked Ben, trying not to sound irritable.

“You took it away from him, lass, not I,” Ben replied, reasonably enough.

“And I suppose I should not have done so?” This time she could not prevent the irritation.

Benedict rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “On the contrary. Indeed, if it had been I, he would have lost it a great deal sooner and for much longer.”

Bryony chewed her lip. “I didn’t mean to snap. I beg your pardon.”

“What is troubling you, sweeting?” Ben stood up, coming over to put his hands on her shoulders.

“I think I’ll go and play ball with Ned.” Charlie, with his customary delicacy, left the little waterside cottage on the outskirts of Williamsburg.

“What is it?” Ben tipped her chin, peering into her eyes, which slipped away from his inspection.

“It’s nothing.” She fixed her gaze on a crack in the clapboard wall of the cottage. “Just the heat. It is damnable, is it not?”

“Yes,” he agreed quietly. “But it has been so for the last three months, when we have trailed across Virginia under the broiling sun, and you have not once complained—even on a twenty-four-hour forced march.”

“I expect it’s just an excitation of the nerves.” She attempted a smile, a little shrug. “The time of the month.”

“No, not that,” he contradicted. “I know your cycle as well as you do yourself, lass.”

“Better, it would seem,” she muttered, moving to twist away from him. Ben’s grip on her shoulders tightened.

“I wish to know what’s troubling you, Bryony.”

“Do you not have to post pickets at the line?”

Ben sucked in his breath sharply and ignored the question. “Ever since we have been quartered here, you have been like a bear with a sore head. Now, what is it?”

“I have told you, there is nothing the matter. But if you keep worrying at me like this, there soon will be!” She pulled back, and this time he let her go with a gesture of exasperated frustration.

“You are as stubborn as a mule! But I am warning you that if you do not snap out of this mood before I return in the morning, you will tell me what is the matter if I have to wring it out of you.” With that, he picked up his pistol and banged out of the cottage on his way to post pickets for night duty at the line of men that stretched across the peninsula just outside Williamsburg, where the bulk of the Marquis de Lafayette’s Continental Army was quartered.

Bryony sat down at the table, dropping her head wearily into her hands. How could she tell him what had happened to her almost the moment they had reached this part of the world that was so achingly, hauntingly familiar? They had marched down the Williamsburg road, right past the entrance to her father’s house, but Ben had not been beside her. He had ridden ahead with the marquis, and she doubted whether he had even
made the connection, so involved was he with matters of warfare. She could understand his engrossment. For the last five months they had dodged around Virginia, meeting up with the Frenchman and his force at Richmond at the end of April, and from then on they had skirmished, sometimes fleeing the British, sometimes pursuing them. They had fought last-ditch battles and marched day and night, but now Cornwallis had taken up defensive positions at Yorktown and across the river at Gloucester. From Williamsburg, Lafayette was trying to hold him fast in the trap until General Washington arrived with reinforcements from the north.

It was an exciting time for this army that had gone through so much hardship and had battled near insuperable odds. Lafayette was full of youthful enthusiasm, bubbling with energy, and his spirit infected all those who worked with him. The French fleet was approaching the Chesapeake Bay, and so long as Lafayette could hold Cornwallis in Yorktown, the allied concentration would bring victory.

But for Bryony, it was a wrenching time. Her father was seven miles away, facing the humiliation of defeat, and she was joined with those who would defeat him. She could express none of this turmoil to Ben, who saw the matter with such clarity, with no emotional tangles, no division of loyalties, none of this exquisite anguish. She had pledged herself to his cause, had renounced the other loyalties, or so she had believed. It was something he believed, at least, and bitter experience had taught her that if they were to live in peace together, he must continue to believe that she had disavowed the tainted blood of the Pagets.

So, she could not tell him what she had done this
morning, could not tell him how she had agonized over the decision but in the end was unable to keep herself from making the six-mile walk to her childhood home. She had found it closed up, only old Mary in residence as caretaker. Mary, weeping tears of joy and sorrow, had told her that her father had sent a message, instructing Eliza to go to friends in the North once the raiding had begun in Tidewater, Virginia. She had exclaimed in horror at Bryony’s thinness, her sun-browned complexion, her threadbare attire. She had wept bitterly over the heartbreak that Bryony’s disappearance had caused in the household. And, as Francis had done, she had demanded to know whether the girl was happy.

Bryony had been hard-pressed for a truthful answer because she no longer knew whether she was or not. To be with Benedict was happiness, but to be torn in this way was misery. She had tried to write to her mother, but it had been impossible to say what was in her heart, and anything less would add insult to the injury she had already done her parents. So, she had simply asked Mary to say, when the next messenger came, that she was well and that she loved her.

Then she had walked the six miles back to this little cottage, which Benedict had found for them with such smug satisfaction. Its owners had fled during the raiding and burning of the Tidewater country by the traitorous Benedict Arnold and his men, and Ben, riding in the van into the town, had staked his claim to this snug little dwelling. There was no shortage of food, either, these summer days. Now that they were settled, Ben was able to hunt and fish when not on duty, and the game augmented their army rations, which were more generous here than in Charlotte. After the privations, the fears,
the endless journeying, Bryony thought that she should find her present circumstances idyllic. Benedict was still in danger, but it was not as acute as it had been so often in the past, and the one-room cottage had a loft where they were assured of some privacy. It was the presence of these luxuries that made her miserable preoccupation and snappish impatience inexplicable to Ben—and to Charlie and Ned, although they were less importunate in demanding to know the reason.