Chase the Dawn

by Jane Feather

  Bryony shivered at the power of the hatred, the force of a feeling that could so transform the gently humorous, tender lover. Surely it went deeper than the quarrel between American and British, Patriot and Loyalist? But he had not killed in cold blood, and the relief was naked on her face.

  “You have some explaining to do now,” Benedict said suddenly, taking her wrist.

  A pot clattered in the hearth under Bertha’s busy fingers; a chair scraped on the wooden floor as Joshua rose ponderously to his feet and made for the outside door.

  Bryony met the black hawk’s gaze steadily. “I caused you no harm—quite the opposite, as I recall.”

  Ben took her chin between thumb and forefinger. “You could have been killed.” It was a stark, uncompromising truth.

  “So could you,” Bryony returned with equal absence of adornment.

  “I am prepared for defense, and I do not take risks without understanding their nature or their gravity.”

  “And you assumed that I did?” Bryony shook her head vigorously in spite of the fingers that remained on her chin. “I decided that I preferred the risks of embracing your fate last night to those of finding myself alone, without memory, with no present or future either, if you were not there to inform them.” Now was the moment to tell him that she no longer wandered in the trackless wastes; so, why didn’t she?

  “Mmm.” A slight smile appeared in his ebony eyes. “A lawyer’s defense, Miss Bryony. You appear to have turned aside my entirely legitimate wrath.” The copper head bent and he kissed her, his lips warm and reassuring. With a shuddering little sigh, she dropped her defenses and her fears and cuddled into his hold.

  “You’ll eat some breakfast, Ben,” Bertha pronounced with another expressive clatter from the hearth.

  “Gladly.” He straightened but kept his arm around Bryony. “I reckon I’ve walked halfway round the county this night, in an attempt to ensure I wasn’t followed.”

  “Is that why you were so long?” Bryony poured coffee for him and perched on the corner of the table as he took a seat on the bench.

  “Mmm.” Ben nodded through a mouthful of pancakes. “We split up, and it’s to be hoped everyone made it home. We were well away by the shift change, at least.”

  “Change of guards at the armory?” The image of that dead body intruded, sullying her newfound tranquillity.

  Ben looked up at her, read her expression, and spoke briskly. “Yes. Now, no more questions. The answers are not those I wish to give or that you will wish to hear.”

  Bryony played with her fingers for a minute as she accepted the inevitable. She had strayed of her own free will into that dark corner of Ben’s life, and if she did not care for what she found there, then she had only herself to blame. She still knew almost nothing about him and seemed to understand even less. And she could not tell him about herself yet, not until she had had time to become thoroughly reacquainted with that self.

  Ben laid a calming hand on her fiddling fingers. “You are repulsively dirty,” he said with a teasing smile. “Just what have you been doing?”

  She returned the smile. “Hiding under flour sacks first, then running like the wind, forking hay …” She shrugged. “I cannot think of what else.”

  “It’s quite enough. I think we’re both due for a dip under the pump.” He put down his beaker and wiped his mouth. “Bertha, that was the best breakfast ever to pass my lips.”

  Bertha protested this flattery, but a betraying flush tinged her cheeks. “If ye’re to use the pump, I’ll find ye some toweling.” She bustled over to a chest of drawers made of black walnut.

  Bryony stared at Benedict. The pump? She mouthed the two-word question incredulously, and he burst out laughing.

  “Yes, lass, the pump in the yard. It’ll make a welcome change from the creek. No fish in it.”

  “But … but …”

  “Dear me, has the cat got your tongue?” he inquired with feigned solicitude as she struggled to express the problem that he had already guessed.

  “You are detestable!” she declared. “You know quite well what I mean.”

  “You haven’t said anything yet, so how can I know what you mean?” His eyes widened innocently.

  Bertha came to her rescue. “If it’s an audience you’re worried about, m’dear, ye need not. Joshua and the boys are out in the top field, and there’s no one else but me, and I doubt ye’ve anything under that tunic to surprise me.”

  “No, I do not suppose I have,” Bryony said wryly, accepting the towel with a smile. “But there’s those amongst us who might refrain from taking advantage of a momentary embarrassment.” She glared at Benedict, who was rocking with laughter.

  “Come now, you did not expect to escape completely unscathed after last night, did you, Bryony lass?”

  Her jaw dropped. “If you think, after that warning, I am going anywhere near the pump in your company, Benedict, you must think again.”

  “Truce.” He held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “I swear I will take no unfair advantage.”

  “We should perhaps agree on a definition of unfair,” she said, eyeing him warily.

  Her wariness was entirely justified. For answer, Ben lowered one shoulder and swept her over it before she had fully realized what was happening. “That definition is mine, and not subject to interpretation,” he declared, striding with her out into the sunny yard, where he set her down and dusted off his hands with an air of great determination. “Take off your clothes.”

  “I will not!” Bryony stamped one foot to express her indignation, but her dancing eyes expressed much more.

  “Oh, is that so?” He advanced on her, and with a squeal Bryony turned and fled into the barn. The three cart horses moved restlessly at this disturbance of their peace as Ben pounded after her, diving for her knees as she reached the ladder to the loft. They collapsed together into the thick, fragrant nest of straw, where laughter yielded to the surge of passion, renewed when the spring of the night’s tension finally broke. He held her with the weight of one leg across her thighs, arms braced on either side of her as he gazed down into her eyes.

  “I very much fear, Miss Bryony, that for your sins you are about to be tumbled in the hay like any farmer’s lusty wench.” The light words, the teasing note could not disguise the throb of desire, and he could read the matching hunger in the slight narrowing of her eyes, the way the tip of her tongue peeped from between her lips.

  “Then I must sin more often,” she murmured, raising her hand to touch his face in almost wondering exploration.

  Shifting his weight onto one elbow, Benedict brought his free hand to palm the knee revealed by her tunic, which had climbed to mid-thigh during their wrestling. He ran the hand down over the firm, slender length of her calf, feeling the skin beneath his fingers quiver with anticipation. Her body stirred in the rustling hay. Slowly, his hand retraced its path over her knee to trail up her thigh, pushing up the hem of the tunic inch by inch.

  Bryony felt the wondrous tension build as the tunic slipped up over her belly and the warm air stroked her bared skin, adding to the sense of vulnerability, of her openness to the invasion of the stroking hand and the piercing intensity of the black-eyed gaze that seemed to encompass every inch of her. Her thighs parted beneath the insistent pressure of the leg that held her, and his lips whispered across her stomach as his fingers danced over the satin softness of her inner thighs before sliding beneath her, lifting her bottom to free the tunic, which he then drew up her body and over her head.

  “That is better,” Benedict murmured contentedly, cupping one breast in the palm of his hand, lifting the nipple with a grazing finger. “I find the dearth of underclothes in your present wardrobe to be a matter for great satisfaction. It gives me much pleasure to know that these treasure centers are so readily accessible.”

  Bryony shivered at the words so expressive of possession, a possession that with hands and lips and tongue he was now making complete. The callused hands of
the soldier-woodsman spanned her waist as his tongue brought moist fire to her breasts, stroked deeply in the hollow of her throat and upward, tracing the length of her slender neck to tickle beneath her chin. He laughed softly when she squirmed, and stilled her with the weight of his imprisoning leg, moving his hand to hold the now moist and throbbing center of her body as his tongue plundered her ear with the wicked knowledge of its keen sensitivity. She thrashed wildly beneath this exquisite torment and each movement thrust her core against the warm hand that held her. She was mounting now toward some turbulent, ravishing plane of bodily bliss where the mind holds no sway, and he was taking her there with unerring knowledge of the paths that would lead her, allowing no pause in the wild spiral of delights succeeding each other in ever-ascending intensity, until she reached that space and time where only the trembling paroxysm of pure sensation existed.

  Ben kissed her gently as the violent pulsating of her body’s core slowly subsided against his warm palm, and her heart juddered into its normal rhythm. She smiled weakly at him, touching his face, running her fingers over his lips in benediction and gratitude for the gift of love.

  “Have I taxed you beyond further endurance, sweeting?” he asked with a quizzical lift of an eyebrow. For answer, she unbuttoned his shirt, pushing it off his shoulders, raising herself to kiss his nipples, to run her tongue through the light dusting of silky copper curls on his chest. He unfastened his britches and kicked them from him before lowering himself over her.

  “This straw is very scratchy,” Bryony teased, curling her legs around his hips.

  “That is easily remedied.” Spreading his hands beneath her back, holding her locked against him, he rolled over, reversing their positions. Bryony gazed down at him, a startled look in her eyes, and he chuckled softly, running his hands down her back, molding every curve and hollow of her body to his length. “This way can bring you much pleasure, lass, as I trust you are about to find out.” She nodded with a considering gravity that brought laughter sparking in his dark eyes, then she lowered her mouth to his, savoring the pleasures of initiation as her body, already alive with sensation, registered the feel of him, the silky tickle of the hairs on his chest against her breasts, the steady jarring of his heart, the ridged muscles of his abdomen against the soft roundness of her own, the taut hardness of his thighs, and the throbbing heat of his manhood pulsing against her lower belly.

  With a soft groan, Benedict seized her hips in an urgent clasp, raising her and guiding her onto the impaling shaft. Bryony gasped as she took him within herself, finding the sensation quite new. He smiled. “You are in control of your own pleasure now, sweeting.”

  “And yours, also?” She palmed his nipples, her lips curving in a smile as knowing as his.

  “And mine,” Ben agreed, drawing one breast into his mouth, suckling with a hungry fervor that seemed to tug at her belly and fill her with a host of sensations hitherto unexperienced. She wanted to make him a part of herself, blood of her blood, bone of her bone, sinew of her sinew. She moved around and over the part of him she possessed, drawing him ever deeper within, consuming him with her own fires, discovering the nerve centers of her own pleasure as she moved, and imparting that pleasure to the one whom she possessed at this moment as surely as she had been possessed. He was moving with her now, reaching up into her depths, seeking the refuge and the joy she offered. And the joy burgeoned, surging between them under the savage, thrusting tempo of their fusion, to burst finally in an explosion that ripped through them, ravaging in its completion.

  Bryony lay beached upon him in the straw, as wanton and as thoroughly tumbled as any farmer’s lusty wench, and the image of Sir Edward Paget, the leanly ascetic, fastidious aristocrat, rose unbidden and unvanquishable. She laughed with what little strength remained to her, her face buried in Benedict’s shoulder, inhaling the musky, earthy fragrance of his skin that mingled with the glorious pungency of their loving.

  “What has amused you, sweeting?” He patted her bottom in a soft caress, a note of sympathetic laughter in his voice. But Bryony could not begin to explain, and, unfortunately, neither could she stop laughing. “Hey!” The pats became a little more forceful. “If you cannot share the jest, my love, it is only common courtesy to desist.” He sounded a little puzzled, a little uncertain, and Bryony realized that after such a shared loving, her laughter could well appear a strange reaction.

  “I beg your pardon,” she gasped. “I think that you have quite overset my reason. Coming after so many other shocks, you understand?”

  “I am not sure that I do, but I do have the cure.” With a monumental heave, he lifted her, heavy in the languor of fulfillment, onto the straw beside him. He stood up and reached down for her hands. “Bath time.”

  “I do not think I could stand the shock,” she implored, resisting the pull of his hands. “I am so warm and languid … and sleepy!” The last word was a cry from the heart.

  “You will sleep better when you do not reek of sweat and the stable; as will I.” With a degree of callousness that Bryony found impossible to resist, he pulled her to her feet and shepherded her, protesting feebly, into the yard.

  “I am unaccustomed to taking baths in public,” announced Bryony in dignified accents, the effect somewhat diminished by a wide-mouthed yawn.

  “The only audience I can see is a somewhat ancient dog, six chickens, and a pig,” Ben responded cheerfully, seizing hold of the pump handle. “You can perform the service for me, afterward. It will warm you up and give you full opportunity for revenge.”

  Bryony howled and danced under the stream of cold water, but she made no attempt to run from it, and Benedict correctly interpreted her gyrations as the entertainment they were designed to be. She moved with the lithe grace of a dancer. Presumably, it was an activity that had occupied much of her time, coming as she must from that pleasure-centered faction of Southern society whom he had cause to know so well, and to remember with so much bitter loathing. His lips tightened at the thought and the memories—the women, fluttering their fans, passing their days in idleness and gossip, issuing orders in that careless manner that implied that those who fulfilled them belonged to some lower form of life; and the men, as idly dissolute as their womenfolk, and as blindly, dangerously contemptuous of those who were responsible for ensuring their comfort. And Bryony? Where did she fit into the pattern? Even as he asked himself the question, watching the mischievously sensual invitation of her dance, he realized that he did not want to know the answer. This Bryony, with only a present, belonged in some way to him. The Bryony of the past and future had other allegiances, ones that perhaps ran counter to his own, ones that would assuredly bring an end to their shared idyll.

  “Your turn, sir!” Gasping and laughing, she ran out of the stream and laid her hands over his on the pump handle. “I am so clean, I squeak.” The deep velvety blue eyes held the residual glow of loving, and the sun-brushed complexion had a translucent radiance that, as she looked up at him, seemed to dim for a minute. “Why so somber, Ben? You look quite forbidding.”

  “Heaven forfend!” Taking the wet mass of her hair, he wrung it out between his hands, and his smile chased the shadows from his expression. He kissed her lightly before yielding his place at the pump handle.

  Bryony put all her remaining strength into the task as the sensuous embrace of the sun dried her skin and the effort of pumping sent the blood coursing through her veins. Benedict’s bath was very thorough and as much designed for her entertainment as hers had been for his. “You are outrageous!” she exclaimed as he paid considerably more attention than strict hygiene demanded to certain portions of his anatomy. “Whatever will Bertha think?”

  “If she’s watching,” he replied, chuckling, “then she must accept what she sees.”

  Half an hour later, they bade farewell to the farmer’s wife and set off across the field to the woods.

  It was a steamy afternoon, and the woods were infested with clouds of midges and mosquitoes. Bryony�
�s weariness was bone deep, and she could barely put one foot in front of the other, stumbling along the single-track paths behind Benedict’s broad back, her eyes on the ground because her head was too heavy to lift, feebly swatting at the darting insects that seemed to find her blood maddeningly sweet.

  At last they reached the clearing and the log cabin that to Bryony’s eyes this afternoon appeared more welcoming and luxurious than the Pagets’ elegant country mansion above the James River, or their handsome town house in Williamsburg. She fell onto the straw mattress with the sigh of pleasure she would have accorded her own bed of hand-carved cherrywood with its sumptuous hangings of richly embroidered brocade, and the deep feather mattress and pillows.

  Benedict removed her moccasins then raised her against him to pull off her tunic. “It is too hot to sleep in,” he said when she protested this postponement of promised bliss.

  “Are you coming to bed, too?” she managed to mutter as her eyes closed under the leaden weight of their lids.

  “I’ll doze in the sun a little,” he replied, tossing the sheet over her, but Bryony didn’t hear the answer.

  When she awoke, enveloped in the most wonderful dreamy lethargy and aware of a powerful hunger, it was to find the cabin in darkness, no hint of daylight coming through the ill-filled cracks between the logs or through the square window. Benedict was sleeping beside her, sprawled on his stomach, one arm curled heavily around her waist. She could feel the dampness of her skin beneath the weight. Far from being uncomfortable, it was a reassuring sensation of the immediacy of their bodily intimacy, of its earthy existence, which seemed both to spring from the vibrant world of reality and also to shape it. The rounded edge of her shoulder prickled as his head moved on the pillow and his beard brushed against her skin. Francis Cullum’s beard was coarse against her cheek when he offered the chaste salute permitted between betrothed couples, but the texture of Ben’s was as silky smooth as the glossy thatch on his head.