Chase the Dawn (53 page)

“You cannot go into the town,” Ben said flatly, concentrating on the one issue of which he was certain. What she had said, he could not grapple with at the moment. “Washington intends blasting them into submission. He has ordered the heavy guns brought up, the battering cannons and mortars. There will be nothing left of the town if Cornwallis does not surrender.”

“Then that is all the more reason why I must go. If my father is killed and I have not made peace, I will not be able to live in harmony with you, or with myself.”

“I cannot let you go!” It was a cry of anguish. “Into such danger, Bryony. I will not risk losing you for such a whim. Afterward, you will find him….”

“He may not be there,” she said with quiet stubbornness, burying deep the hurt that he should judge as whim an imperative of such magnitude. “You once said, when this began between us, that you would not hold me.” This time there was defiance and challenge in her voice. If he would deny her his understanding and acceptance of this need, then she must fall back on his promise, which he was bound to honor. It was a bleak substitute for a lover’s compassion, but all that was left to her. And she would not dwell upon the paucity of a spirit that embraced only bitterness.

Had he ever expected her to invoke that promise, made at a time when he did not know her as he now did? He had loved her then, certainly, but she had not yet entered his soul, become one with him. Now she would sever the bond of love, cut herself out of him, leave him
mutilated by loss. And she would do this because she was ultimately a Paget, and those ties had proved more binding than any with which he had tried to hold her.

Disillusion chilled him. Despair stood stark in his eyes. Dull anger infused his voice as he bowed to compulsion. “In the morning, when we have crossed the swamp, I will send you under flag of truce.”

And so it was that a small figure, accompanied by two soldiers, crossed the barren, sandy plain between the opposing armies, to be received within the enemy fortifications. Benedict Clare, filled with an aching sense of loss, betrayal leaden on his soul, watched her go, back to her own people.

S
ir Edward Paget stood in the dining room of Thomas Nelson’s handsome Yorktown house, listening to the wrangling. “If we cross the river by night, we can destroy the allied boats on the north shore, drive back Choisy’s force, capture their horses, and be one hundred miles inland before Washington realizes.” The plan was described in impassioned accents by a bewigged staff officer.

“Indeed, then we can join Clinton in New York,” another stated with a sage nod.

“Or go south and regain the Carolinas.”

The plans of desperate men flew around the room like locusts, and Sir Edward wandered to the window, looking out over the York River, where the French fleet threatened and their own few remaining ships bobbed at anchor in the harbor. He was tired, sick to death of this campaign. Sick of the fight, of the cause, of the rhetoric. There was no savor to life. But then, there hadn’t been for longer than he could bear to remember.

The door opened and the contentious buzz in the
room paused. “There’s a woman, my lord.” The lieutenant addressed the earl, in such haste that he was in danger of forgetting the courtesies. “Came under flag of truce from the enemy lines. Wishes to speak with Sir Edward.”

Paget swung round as the buzz broke out with renewed vigor at this extraordinary piece of news. Deserters on both sides were a plague to which they were all accustomed, but women, bearing the white flag? … “Who is she, Lieutenant?”

“Won’t give her name, sir. Says she must speak with you alone.”

“Well, go to her, man,” Cornwallis said testily. “She may have valuable information.” Sir Edward hid the sardonic gleam in his eye with a punctilious bow and a formally uttered excuse.

Bryony stood in the hall, between two troopers, and as her father appeared she drew herself up and looked steadily at him.

For a long moment, he returned the look, searching her face for clues. He saw a slender woman in a threadbare riding habit—a woman from whom all the frills and the fancies had been pared, revealing the essence that shone clear and candid from adult eyes. Then the weariness dropped from him as if by magic. This
was
a kind of magic—this miraculous apparition; his daughter, for all that she bore the marks of one who had gone through the fires and emerged, honed, tempered, strong enough to take what was allotted her. He held out his arms and she ran into them with a little sob of pain and joy.

A coughing and shuffling of feet brought Paget back to a sense of reality. “That will be all,” he said crisply to the soldiers. “Come into the parlor, child. Whilst I am
overjoyed to see you, I could wish you had chosen a more orthodox method of reappearance.”

Bryony began to laugh weakly. “Oh, Papa, you are not in the least changed.”

Her father paused on the threshold of the parlor, regarding her with a quiet gravity. “We are all changed, Bryony. In many cases, out of all recognition.” She bowed her head in silent acknowledgment and preceded him into the graciously furnished room, whose handsome appointments seemed somehow incongruous in this besieged town.

“Tell me,” her father invited. “You are not here because you have run away from anything.”

She smiled slightly. “How can you know that?”

“Just by looking at you. You have found what most of us seek and few discover.” He took her hand where the thin gold band encircled her ring finger. “Is it Benedict Clare?”

“How did you know?”

“Your mother knew immediately.” He shrugged. “When I thought about it, of course, it seemed obvious—odd moments that I recalled as puzzling … your outrageous appearance at the duel. But I am not blessed with a mother’s intuition.” He released her hand. “He is with Washington?”

Bryony nodded. “There are things I cannot tell you, but he has no love for the British.”

“Then why are you here?” There was a sudden sternness to the question that took her aback. “He is your husband. You made your choice and you cannot renege.”

“I wished to see you.” Bryony opted for the simple truth. “If only to say farewell.”

“And he permitted this? Permitted you to enter a
doomed town?” Sir Edward’s eyebrows lifted. “I do not know what kind of a rogue your husband may be, daughter, but I suspect that he is not the kind to see his wife go into danger without remonstrance.”

“He is the kind of rogue, Papa, who will not stand in the way of a personal imperative.” It was a bare statement that her father sensed left much unsaid, but he would not probe. Bryony spoke again, her voice low. “Do you feel that I have betrayed you?” It was the question she had come here to ask. He had received her as his daughter, but that did not necessarily mean that he was untouched by her defection.

Sir Edward seemed to take a long time considering his answer. Then he shook his head. “After what I have seen these last months, differences in principles and beliefs seem singularly unimportant beside the ties of family and love. That is your belief, also, is it not?”

Slowly she nodded. “But not my husband’s.”

So, that was it. Sir Edward nodded. “Mayhap, he will learn it.”

How long could it go on? Ben could almost feel the earth shudder as the barrage continued to tear apart the village. From where he stood, on the browning grass, amid bear-paw cactus and sere sedge, he could see the tall houses of Yorktown shuddering as the cannonballs plunged through roofs and shattered walls. Where was she in that kitchen of hell? On the riverfront below Yorktown, a torrent of fire raged, enwrapping the British ships as the French lobbed red-hot shot in among the crowded vessels, and cannon and mortar bludgeoned the town from behind. Now and again, a shell would sail
over the town to plunge into the river, exploding in a foaming jet that shot into the sky, cascading down, tinged with the flame-brightness of the night. How could anyone still be alive in there? he thought with stabbing desolation. Close to four thousand shot had fallen upon the town and harbor in the last twenty-four hours, and the slaughter within must be horrendous.

Hour by hour, American and French troops dug the trenches that would bring them close enough to the town to force the British surrender. Only two British redoubts, far in front of the defense line, stood in the way of allied advancement, and they were to be taken that night in a concerted attack. Benedict was to join Lafayette’s men, storming the Rock Redoubt, and he was under no illusions about the danger of the mission. It would be a desperate battle with cold steel in hand, no quarter possible in the confined space. They had been told to empty their muskets, relying only on the bayonet to achieve their goal. But he would play his part with grim determination, knowing that success would bring this damnable business to an end all the sooner, and if Bryony was still alive, then her chances of staying so until he could reclaim her would be greatly increased.

During the days since her departure, he had made endless bargains with fate, with God, and with the devil. If she was alive and well, he would care for nothing else. And he knew now that nothing else mattered beside her love. He had said and done things that should have destroyed that love, but it had remained as shield and buckler for both of them. She had struggled to steer a path between abiding loyalties while maintaining her personal integrity, and he had made it as difficult for her as he could. She was who she was—his wife, his lover,
his friend and companion. And she was also the daughter of Sir Edward Paget—just that and nothing more. At last he could see her clearly, separate from the entanglements with which he had insisted she be bound.

Benedict was filled with a deep peace even through his terror that he would be denied the chance to share the peace with her, to tell her that he had laid down the burden of hatred because she had shown him its insignificance beside the gift of love.

Bryony had seen carnage in these last months, but nothing as dreadful as this. The village was a ghastly landscape; bodies littered the main street; bits of bodies lay scattered—heads, arms, legs. It was impossible to take more than a few steps without running into huge shell craters and half-covered trenches. The houses were devastated, riddled with shot, windows smashed, roofs caved in. And still the cannonade went on. It was like living in the midst of a never-ending earthquake, her ears bruised by the constant, deafening battering, her body almost fragmented by the violent shaking.

Thomas Nelson’s house had been so severely battered that Cornwallis had been obliged to move his headquarters. They now cowered in a shallow cave below the marl cliff, looking out over the river, where two blazing ships drifted across the black water to the far shore.

Bryony sat huddled at the back of the damp grotto. She had not wanted to come down, feeling her position anomalous in this tense and desperate group. But her father had assumed his mantle of parental authority. She had endangered herself sufficiently, he had stated, and she owed it to her husband to protect herself as she
could. There had been little to be gained in argument, so now she sat and listened to the debate, the comings and goings of grim-faced men bearing the incessant reports of the slaughter at the fortifications, and she wondered where Benedict was; if he still lived; what he was thinking. He had not bidden her farewell, had not given, by touch or look, any hope of a softening. As far as he was concerned, she had simply regretted her choice of loyalties and wished to embrace the old ones. She had tried to explain that it was not that, but his face and heart had been closed to her—as they always would be closed to a Paget.

She blinked back the tears and wished she could sleep. That state had been denied her so long that to attain it seemed like an impossible dream.

“If you lose your gun, don’t fall back—take the gun of the first man killed.” The whispered instruction went around the assault force, halted a quarter mile from the redoubt. Benedict took Charlie Carter’s hand for a minute in silent farewell—the acknowledgment that in less than a quarter of a mile, their days on earth could come to an end.

Charlie was to take part in the “forlorn hope” that would launch the first attack, climbing directly over the wall. Ben watched him creep off into the fog and wished that Bryony had been given the chance to bid their longtime friend and companion farewell. She would have wished for it, he knew.

Then there was no time to think of anything. A flaming volley burst from the British lines. Obviously they had been alerted by something, and the American force
now stood exposed upon the field. With a bellowed command, he led his own company at a run to the trench below the parapet of the redoubt where the first assault was already in progress. Men fell all around him, and he thought for a minute that the British volleys were wiping out the force. But in the yellow light of the powder flashes that illuminated the scene, he realized that the men were falling into shell holes, scrambling out to rush forward again, and again falling. He led the way through the palisade and saw Charlie in the eerie light, half a dozen bayonets lunging down at him from above. Ben rushed to his aid, and the two beat off the attack with their own bayonets. Hand grenades fell into the trench, lobbed by the British from the wall above.