by Jane Feather
Astray wisp of raven’s-wing hair was tickling Ben’s nose. Smiling, he moved it aside and rolled over to examine the hair’s sleeping owner. Miss Bryony was, he decided complacently, a little too good to be true. Long summer days in the sun had kissed her complexion with a delicate gold and produced a most surprising scattering of freckles over the bridge of her small, slightly upturned nose. A certain deep contentment, engendered by the soul’s peace and the body’s fulfillment, lent a suppleness to her features, a translucency to her skin, a languid grace to her movements. The slight hesitancy of the unsure had yielded to the full, rounded beauty of the mature woman—one who took as much pleasure in the giving as she did in the receiving.
His smile broadened as he slowly drew the blanket down her body, carefully because he didn’t want to wake her just yet; he wished to savor the moments when her body lay in all its sensual beauty, for the moment uninhabited by the vigorous spirit, the bubbling energy, the eagerly inquiring mind that led her to plunge into new experiences, from baiting fish hooks to making love in company with the fish in the creek. The lady’s soft and so very white hands were now brown, the nails broken and not always perfectly clean.
It was near impossible to look and not touch, Ben decided, teasing himself with his restraint as he allowed his hands to imagine that they were globing the small, soft hillocks of her breasts, now flattened over her rib cage as she lay on her back, arms flung above her head, hands curled like those of a sleeping child. Just the lightest flick of his fingertip, and the sleep-tight buds of her nipples would lift and harden and her hips would writhe in sympathetic arousal.
He allowed his gaze to roam with lazy anticipation over the delineation of her ribs, the slender curve of waist and belly, the soft flare of her hips, the raven-black fleece at the apex of her thighs. With a little sigh of resignation, he yielded to the inevitability of needy passion and placed his hand at that apex, fingering the mound beneath the silky fleece, one questing finger pursuing its own course until she stirred, her hips lifting, a contented little moan escaping her lips, parted in the relaxation of sleep.
Bryony luxuriated in the twilight world of half sleep, where nothing existed but this dreamy arousal as lips nuzzled, a tongue stroked hot and demanding, teeth nibbled with playful intensity, and hands possessed every inch of her sleep-warmed skin until the prickles of pleasure ran like wild fire, connecting every nerve ending, until she was forced to abandon all pretense of sleep and enter the world of powerful sensations that refused to be denied.
He rolled her onto her side, her back to him, molding himself against her curved shape so that he could continue to play, to probe, and to stroke over the exquisitely sensitive center of her arousal as he slid within her moist, welcoming chamber. His breath rustled against her neck on an exhalation of supreme joy when his turgid flesh, in throbbing intensity, found its home. Bryony whispered her own pleasure, moving backward against him, her bottom warm against the taut flatness of his belly as she held him within the enclosure of her body.
“I’ve a powerful need, sweeting,” he murmured into her hair. “Bear with me.”
She smiled, a woman’s secret smile at the knowledge of her power to arouse and of her unique ability to satisfy that arousal. Her body softened, welcoming his release, and she drew her own pleasure from this moment of giving, knowing in her newfound wisdom that the pleasures of loving came in many and varied forms and it was not necessary for two always to share the same form at the same moment. Her own moment came, as she had known it would, when the inexorable spiral of sensation coiled her body beneath his fingers, clamped the muscles in belly and thighs, and her blood sang in the joy of expectancy; then the spiral burst asunder, the coil unraveled, and utter languor flowed like butterscotch through her veins.
Later that morning, Bryony, according to instruction, was husking ears of Indian corn. Benedict, a preoccupied frown corrugating his brow, paused in the process of untangling a fishing line that she had earlier contrived to snarl in the branches of an overhanging tree by the creek. “There is going to be a slight disturbance in the even tenor of our existence, lass.”
Bryony looked at him curiously. The announcement had been made in that soft, determined tone that she knew meant business and certainly would not permit objections. Did it mean that he was expecting her to object to whatever he was about to say? “A pleasant disturbance?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Not really. But tonight I have something planned—something that means I must put you in a safe place, in the care of one who will be able to look after you until you regain your memory in case I should find that I cannot.”
“If you’re killed or taken?” Bryony demanded directly. A small nod was her answer. “What are you going to do?”
“The less you know, the better, lass.” He frowned over a particularly recalcitrant knot in the line. “I must teach you to be a little less enthusiastic when you cast.”
“Oh, bother the fishing line!” she said with a gesture of impatience. “Why won’t you tell me what you’re planning? I know so much already, what difference can it make?”
“You know a great deal more than I am happy with,” he informed her in the same soft tones. “I am not about to add to the sum.”
“Then I’ll husk no more corn.” Bryony tossed the ear to the ground and glared at him.
“Then you’ll have no dinner,” he responded, serenely unperturbed. “After the dinner that you won’t be having if you refuse to do your share, I shall be taking you to the farm of a friend of mine. His wife will care for you until I return.”
“He, of course, will be going with you.” Bryony resumed work on the corn. She was always far too hungry these days to contemplate going supperless over a pointless defiance that would not achieve her object anyway.
“That is so.” He smiled at her. “Don’t scowl, lass. If the wind changes, your face will be stuck like that, and it is not at all pretty.”
That made her laugh, as he had known it would. “My nurse used to say that to me.”
“What was her name?” He asked the question casually, hoping, as always, that this unexpected memory, produced so naturally, would start a chain reaction.
But Bryony shook her head ruefully. “I do not recall. But she did say it.”
“How can you be so sure it was a nurse and not your mother, perhaps?”
“I don’t know.” A look of desolation crossed the mobile countenance. “How long is this going to continue, Ben? It is so frustrating to have these little, tantalizing glimpses into the abyss and then … nothing!”
“Just give it time.” Ben smiled reassuringly as he stood up with the now untangled fishing line. “Come along. Let’s see if you can catch our dinner without catching a tree first.”
Bryony did what she could to put aside thoughts of the coming night. It was clear that Benedict intended to be no more forthcoming than he had been, which left her in possession of remarkably few facts and a wealth of anxious uncertainty. She did not want to be disposed of like a child in need of a caretaker, but neither did she want to spend the night alone in the cabin wondering if he would ever return. If only he would tell her what he was going to do, then the dread would at least have a shape, and she could perhaps calculate his chances of returning safely.
“You’re not concentrating,” Ben chided, standing behind her, holding her hands tight around the fishing rod. “What did I just tell you to do?”
Bryony nibbled her bottom lip. Even if she had not been preoccupied with her fears of the coming night, she would have found it difficult to concentrate in this proximity. The skin of her back was alive and rippling at the feel of his chest, bared and warm, pressed against her. Her eyes seemed riveted on his fingers, long and strong, linked around her hands. “Why don’t you catch the fish and I’ll sit on the bank and watch you?”
“Because you will never learn like that and you cannot spend your days in idleness. Just flick your wrist, like this.” Her wrist flicked under
the tutoring of his fingers, and the line snapped across the surface of the creek in perfect order. “See how easy it is.” He released his grip. “Do it on your own this time.”
The attempt was a miserable failure, and she looked mournfully upward as the line took on a life of its own and doubled back into the branches of the weeping willow overhead, twisting itself with malevolent momentum round and round a branch.
Benedict sighed. “You are not trying, Bryony. At this rate, we are going to go very hungry.”
“Oh, why won’t you do it?” she implored. “I do not think I want to be a fisherman.”
“Well, this time you are going to have to untangle that line yourself,” he said briskly, picking up a second rod from the bank. “I will catch our dinner while you do so.”
Untangling fishing line was a most unpleasant task, Bryony discovered, her fingers slipping and sliding over the slick twine, which had a nasty habit of slicing deeply into her hands when she was least expecting it. The cuts were tiny but bled copiously and hurt like the devil; only her innate stubbornness and a refusal to admit further failure to her effortlessly competent companion prevented her from throwing in the towel.
“Finished?” Ben glanced over his shoulder in inquiry. Two shining silver mullet flapped on the bank at his feet.
“Almost,” she said, wiping her bloody palms on the grass, swallowing a yelp of pain.
“What in the name of the good God have you done to yourself?” Ben exclaimed, dropping his rod and coming over to her. “Show me your hands.”
“There’s nothing the matter with them,” she said in emphatic denial, holding them curled against her sides. “See, I have almost finished.”
Benedict would not be distracted. He went down on one knee beside her. “Show them to me.”
Reluctantly, she uncurled her palms and turned up her hands for his frowning inspection. “Why on earth didn’t you stop?” He looked at her in exasperation, and Bryony’s mouth set firmly.
“I like to finish what I have started. I cannot help being incompetent, but I’m not going to admit defeat in a battle with a piece of twine.”
The exasperation in his features faded, and he chuckled. “Such an indomitable will is an unusual possession for a young woman of your kind. You are supposed to be submissive and accepting of your fate.” His voice was teasing, but Bryony had the feeling that he was at least half serious.
“I wonder why I am different, then?” she said.
“We shall find out soon enough. Go back to the cabin and put some of that salve on those cuts.” He returned to his fishing, lips pursed thoughtfully. In his far-from-limited experience, young ladies of good parentage and substantial estate received only the most rudimentary learning, the main focus of their education being on acquiring the skills to equip them for marriage and motherhood—in short, to ensure that they were able to provide the necessary degree of comfort in a man’s life, whose life would form the pivot of their own. Miss Bryony, he had discovered, possessed a knowledge of the classics to match his own, and her skill at mathematics far exceeded the simple demands of housekeeping. She had an analytic turn of mind that had clearly been fostered by someone. She accepted nothing without question and gave in only when the odds were insuperable. He somehow doubted that she would willingly subdue her own needs and desires to those of another, be he her lord and master according to the laws and vows of matrimony or not.
The sickle of the new moon hung low in the sky, offering only slight illumination, when Benedict extinguished the oil lamp in the cabin and followed Bryony outside. He stamped out the last glowing embers of the fire in the stone hearth and took one final look around the clearing. The black eyes, sharp as a hawk’s, saw nothing untoward, and he gave a short nod of satisfaction. “Let us go. It’s an hour’s walk through the woods.”
Bryony, who had never walked in the woods at night, found herself prey to her vivid imagination. Every rustle, every whispering murmur made her jump. Her companion, on the other hand, strode unerringly along almost invisible trails, no wider than the span of a man’s hand, where the undergrowth was barely trodden down. Bryony pressed on behind him, grateful for the hand he held at his back, into which her own occasionally disappeared, her fingers clutching convulsively around his. Benedict didn’t seem disposed for conversation, and since Bryony could think of nothing but the questions she wished to ask, questions that he would not answer, silence reigned supreme.
After an hour of this, they broke through the trees into a field. Across the field, the lights of a building winked in welcome.
The group of men waiting in the kitchen, dark clad, their faces smeared with soot or burned cork, stared at the figure blinking bemusedly beside their leader.
“What’s she doing here?” William demanded.
Benedict ignored the question. “Joshua, is your wife around?”
“Aye, shutting up the chickens, I reckon,” the farmer said, puffing on his pipe.
“I want her to look after the girl.” He gave Bryony a little push in the direction of the oak settle by the hearth. “Sit over there, lass.”
“You be leaving her here, then?” William spluttered. “So she can tell about this place, about us, about—”
“She knows nothing,” Benedict interrupted. “How’s she going to recognize you, blacked up as you are? And we came through the woods. She’d never be able to find her own way.”
“Aye.” Joshua nodded sagely. “Makes sense, and he couldn’t leave her alone in the cabin. Bertha’ll be happy to have her company.” He got to his feet. “There’s three wagons out back. The lads and I will bring them along once ye’re well on the way.”
“Right.” Benedict glanced round the circle. “Everyone knows what to do. Let’s get to it.” He gave Bryony a smile as he stood at the door, and her heart lurched. What would become of her if he did not return? Would he not kiss her in farewell? But she knew that he wouldn’t, in order to save her embarrassment. His men might think what they pleased about what went on in the cabin in the woods, but Benedict would give them nothing on which to base their conclusions. The fact that Bryony did not care in the slightest what they thought would probably not weigh with him, so she kept her seat on the settle and watched them go, all but Joshua and two lads in their mid-teens.
“How long do you wait?” she asked tentatively. “Before you follow them?”
The farmer shrugged. “A quarter hour. They’ll be off through the fields. Us with the wagons must take the high road. Take us half the time.”
“I see.” Bryony nodded and thought fast. She was not going to stay here in this isolated farmhouse with the unknown Bertha, waiting in trepidation for the return or not of the only solid factor in her present trackless existence. She would hitch her fate to the Patriot’s, embrace his destiny this night, because at the moment her life without him was unthinkable.
Bertha, a comfortable woman in holland apron, linen cap, and heavy boots, plodded into the kitchen. She listened to Joshua’s laconic explanation for the stranger on the settle, accorded Bryony a friendly nod, and began to bustle around the room, trimming lamps, straightening the rush-bottomed chairs left askew by the departing men. Bryony sat quietly, waiting until it became clear that Joshua and the two boys were preparing to leave.
“I’ve a need of the necessary house, ma’am,” she murmured in polite explanation, slipping out into the dark yard. The three wagons, already hitched, stood in the shadow of the barn. It was the work of an instant to hop into the back of the lead cart and to burrow beneath a pile of coarse sacks whose generally dusty condition suggested that they had been used to transport flour. She would look like a wraith, Bryony thought, her hair floured, her face deathly white. But such considerations were of little importance. She cowered against the side of the wagon, praying that the men would come to start their journey before the length of her visit to the necessary house became marked. Once she was away from here, there was nothing Bertha could do about her truancy.
After what seemed an eternity, a square of light showed from the farmhouse door, and low voices drifted across the yard. She dived back beneath the sacks, praying that she would not sneeze from the irritating burlap and the dust. The wagon creaked in protest, the frame shaking as someone clambered onto the bench. Joshua, she thought. The other two were too slightly built to have that effect. A soft clicking noise encouraged the horse forward, and the wagon moved out of the yard with its unseen passenger.
It was a long journey on a warm night, and Bryony struggled for breath beneath the sacks, not daring to raise her head from the hard planking of the wagon’s floor. It was a bumpy ride since she had nothing with which to brace herself, and just when she was beginning to regret the impulse that had condemned her to this suffocating, jolting, bruising misery, the motion mercifully ceased. Holding her breath, she waited. Discovery at some point could not be avoided, but it mustn’t be too soon. If Joshua found her before his rendezvous with Ben, he might decide to take her back to the farm, and that would defeat her object, as well as jeopardize whatever goal this mission carried. That last consequence was one she was not prepared to face.
The wagon creaked and sighed as Joshua descended. Bryony lay motionless, concentrating on every sound in the blackness of her hiding place. A whisper on the wind, and then there was silence, utter silence. Gingerly, she emerged from the sacks, shaking her hair free, wiping her sweating brow with the back of her hand. Smearing dirt and flour dust, no doubt—she dismissed this half thought as totally irrelevant. The crescent moon was visible but shadowed in mist, the stars blanketed in high cloud, the air filled with the near-hysterical chorus of cicadas—an inevitable part of the backcloth of these summer nights.
