by Jane Feather
Anything further from the primitive simplicity of Ben’s log cabin in the woods would be impossible to imagine, she reflected, flexing her toes beneath the fine linen sheet. It was no wonder he had teased her so often about her luxurious tastes and overly refined habits.
Bryony bit her lip. Such thoughts were not going to facilitate her return to the life to which she had been born, and she could not allow herself to be distracted by melancholy in company. Her mother already seemed to suspect something untoward and must not be given further food for suspicion.
“Why, whatever’s the matter, Miss Bryony?” Mary, her face twisted with concern, came over to the bed. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
That was what she must guard against! “No ghosts, Mary,” she responded cheerfully. “I am still trying to become used to being home again, that’s all.” She offered a teasing smile. “I have not had anyone to wait upon me in the last weeks, and it is proving a novel experience.”
The explanation appeared to satisfy Mary, who turned her attention to the contents of the armoire while Bryony took a bath in a tub within four walls for the first time in an eternity. Half an hour later Bryony stood in front of the pier glass, examining her reflection with critical curiosity. She should look different, surely? But, apart from the freckles on her nose and the delicate suntan, she appeared to be quite unchanged. Her stays felt uncommonly constricting, and she toyed with the idea of telling Mary to loosen them, or to remove them altogether, but the elderly housekeeper would probably swoon away at such a sacrilegious request.
Mary shook out the folds of an elegant French sacque of turquoise silk and dropped it over Bryony’s head. The flowing gown fell unconfined from her neck to her ankles at the back while molding her figure at the front and the sides. The elbow-length sleeves were edged with lace ruffles threaded with dark blue velvet sleeve-knots. A similar ribbon held the luxuriant mass of black hair away from her forehead to tumble artlessly to her shoulders. Would Ben approve of the effect of this finery? This amazing transformation from grubby gypsy in a doeskin tunic to lady of the first style of elegance, the epitome of the English aristocrat … No, he would not like it. He had loved the Bryony who had no history, no family, only a present that he shared … but shared no longer.
“There, now.” Mary finished fussing over the set of the gown. “You’ll want to wear the pearls, I daresay.” She opened a japanned jewel case on the dresser, drawing out the rich creamy string of pearls, then clasping them around Bryony’s neck with a little sigh of satisfaction. “Beautiful,” she pronounced. “To look at you now, no one would ever know what you have been through.”
Exactly so, thought Bryony desolately. It might never have happened. She went downstairs, praying that her armor would hold, would be strong enough to withstand sharp eyes or keen questions or, more dangerous, the sudden, unbidden surge of memory and wanting that would show on her face. Was Ben worried about her? Had he searched for her? The news of her safe return would be around the town already. Someone would have told him….
“Bryony, dearest. Are you quite rested?” Eliza stood up from the brocade upholstered sofa in the drawing room in a stiff rustle of lavender satin. She wore a crimped cap with lace lappets hanging down the sides of her face, a style that Bryony privately thought made her mother look older and dowdier than she had any need to. But Eliza was most insistent on dressing according to her perceived advanced matronly state, for all that she was barely six and thirty. “See, Sir Francis has come to offer his congratulations on your safe return, and Francis is here, of course.” Eliza gave a satisfied little nod. “He was far too anxious to know that you are in good health to stay away another minute. Is that not so, Francis?”
Francis bowed and murmured that, indeed, it was so. Bryony received a chaste salute from both Cullums then was subjected to her father’s minute scrutiny before he, too, kissed her in greeting.
“It’s a relief to see you looking like my daughter again,” Sir Edward declared. “There was a moment yesterday when I wondered if you would ever appear respectable again.”
“Oh, dear,” Eliza fluttered, fanning herself vigorously. “The least said the better, sir, do you not think?”
“I am not about to be ashamed of my dress, madam, when it was furnished by those who offered me only kindness,” Bryony said, thus indicating to all in the room that her conduct and personality had undergone no changes during her disappearance. However, she smiled and took her mother’s hand, kissing the faded cheek. “Indeed, Mama, I do not know what would have become of me without them.”
“No, no … and we are forever in their debt,” Eliza said hastily. “I wish I could tell them so myself. I only meant that … well …”
“That my scandalous disappearance and equally remarkable reappearance will provide food for the gossips as it is,” Bryony finished for her, taking a glass of sherry from the silver tray held by the butler.
“For which reason we shall not broadcast any details, miss.” It was the nearest to a reproof that Sir Edward was likely to come, and his daughter simply inclined her head in acknowledgment.
“Quite so … quite so,” concurred Sir Francis heartily, patting his wig with one hand as he held his glass to be refilled with the other. “Best to withdraw from society for a while, my dear, on account of your ordeal, you understand. It’ll be a nine days’ wonder, you mark my words.”
Nothing had changed, absolutely nothing at all, Bryony thought, except for herself. She was radically changed and could allow no one to see the change. How was she to confine her expanded soul in this rigid mold again?
Dinner was interminable, and Bryony found that her belly had grown unaccustomed to the richness and variety of a meal where woodcocks on toast vied with roasted turkey and buttered apple pies, where the aroma of roast beef surrounded by horseradish and pickles at one end of the table fought with the scent of gravy soup and chicken and bacon at the other. Catfish broiled over an open fire on a flat stone, hare in a pot with turnips and carrots, fried hominy … She placed her fork carefully on her delicate delftware plate. Ben, like most backwoodsmen, had only knives and spoons and wooden trenchers and leather tankards.
“Are you not hungry, dearest?” Eliza inquired anxiously across the expanse of snowy damask, where silver glinted and the late-afternoon sunlight was trapped in the intricate cuts of the glassware.
“Perhaps if I wait for a little while, I will be able to eat a bit more.” Bryony smiled reassuringly at her mother and picked up her glass, holding the rich ruby claret up to the window to catch the light. The wine was making her feel light-headed. She had drunk only cider, ale, and some brandy in the last six weeks.
“I would dearly love to hear something of your life among the Indians, Bryony.” It was Francis, uncannily tuning into her thoughts. She looked at him sharply and saw speculation in the green eyes.
“Why, I would tell you gladly, Francis, but details are not to be broadcast, as I recall.” She smiled with a trace of her old mischief, hoping thus to set his mind at rest, to still the speculation.
“Your fiancé is entitled to hear as much of the story as he wishes, child,” Sir Edward pronounced. “Indeed, I think you are obliged to satisfy his curiosity to the most minute detail.”
Blue eyes met green across the table. “But of course. After dinner, perhaps we could walk a little, Francis? If Mama permits?”
“By all means, dear, but you must not overtire yourself,” said Eliza. “You are by no means recovered from your ordeal and must have a care how you exert yourself.”
Nods of agreement ran around the table, and Bryony, with a rueful little smile, accepted the role she must play for public consumption. Despite the fact that she was in the best of health after six weeks of Benedict’s woodland regime, she would lie upon a sofa in a darkened room when considered well enough to receive the courtesy visits from neighbors. She would remain in seclusion until all talk died down, this tale superseded by another. It was a role that su
ited her own purposes perfectly. It would allow her time enough for the raw throb of memory to fade and some practical path through the turmoil to reveal itself.
She played with a lemon syllabub, sipped her wine, and when the covers were removed, drank the toast to King George without the blink of an eye. Then she rose with her mother to withdraw and leave the gentlemen to their wine, talk, and further toasts.
Francis appeared in the drawing room within a very short time, and they received leave to stroll about the garden from a smiling Eliza, who was looking forward to a nap before her husband and Sir Francis decided to join her.
“Do not go out without a hat, Bryony,” she adjured. “The sun has not gone down yet.”
“No, Mama,” her daughter murmured meekly. “I will send someone for it.” She went into the hall, followed by Francis, and made straight for the door opening onto the rear terrace overlooking the James River.
“Your hat, Bri?” Francis reminded. He only used the childhood shortening of her name when they were alone, and somehow its use always established the mood of friendly sparring and teasing with which they were most comfortable.
“Bother the hat!” she replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I have not worn one for six weeks and have been out in the hottest sun and come to no harm.” She stepped through the door that had opened as if by magic, perfectly in accordance with the smooth running of Sir Edward Paget’s household. “Let us go down to the river.”
“Yours to command.” Francis executed a magnificent leg and they both chuckled. Then the merriment died as they each remembered that they had little to be merry about. Bryony walked across the terrace and onto the broad walk flanked by lawns studded with curving borders in full bloom.
“Shall I tell you of the Indians, Francis, or shall we talk of what concerns us both most nearly?”
“You remember, then?” His voice was so soft as to be almost inaudible, but, unlike that dreadful night at Trueman’s, he was perfectly collected.
Bryony nodded. “I went for a walk in the early hours of the morning, trying to clear my head, to decide …” Her shoulders lifted in a gesture expressive of helpless resignation. “Something happened to me while I was walking…. I hurt my head, and the rest you know.”
“Did you decide anything?” The question was asked almost casually, but Bryony was not deceived.
She laid a hand lightly on his silk-clad arm. “Only that I know I cannot marry you, my friend. It is not that I am any the less fond of you … but—”
“But what?” he broke in, softly but urgently. “I have promised that it will never happen again, and if you still regard me with friendship—”
“How can you promise that it will never happen again?” Bryony turned across the right-hand lawn in the direction of a thicket of young oaks. “From what I understand, Francis, such desires do not strike once, like lightning.” She looked sadly at him over her shoulder. “Let us be truthful, at least. I have no desire to hurt you, but you hurt me by deception.”
“It is no deception when I swear that you would not suffer in the least degree from marriage to me. I would make no demands, would not curtail your freedom in any way.”
“And children?” she asked bluntly as they moved into the seclusion of the thicket.
“It would be expected,” Francis responded as bluntly. He swallowed and cleared his throat. “I see nothing to preclude such a happening.”
“By which you mean you would perform a distasteful duty in order to keep matters straight in the eyes of the world. You must pardon such unmaidenly candor, but you know that I am not one to pretend to false ignorance and a delicacy that I do not possess.” Bryony stopped and turned, leaning back against a tree trunk. “That was not meant to be unkind, Francis, but the unvarnished truth is often hard to hear.”
He was very pale and his hands shook slightly as he brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the sleeve of his emerald silk coat. “A marriage of convenience,” he said. “Is it so unusual?”
“No.” She shook her head. “But I wish for more or for nothing at all.” Now more than ever. But that was a thought Bryony kept to herself.
“I do not understand why it need be any different now from the way it would have been.” His voice held the desperate ring of a man who knows he is fighting the last-ditch battle, who recognizes the shape of his inevitable submission. “You would never have known from the way I would behave with you, from the way we would conduct our marriage, and there is no reason why that should alter. There will be no indication ever.”
“No!” She pushed herself away from the tree trunk and began to walk briskly away from him, out of the thicket. Francis caught up to her as she emerged onto the lawn in sight of the house. She slowed instantly, and they resumed their walk down to the river as if they were discussing nothing of more moment than the pleasant evening and local gossip. “I am sorry, Francis, but I could not live that lie. We would make each other wretched, and I would rather die an old maid.”
“You cannot understand to what you condemn me?” he said with a painful throb. “To be reviled, cast out, brought to trial, even—”
“No,” she interrupted swiftly. “I will not betray you. You cannot imagine I would do such a thing.”
“Then what reason will you give for wishing to break off the betrothal?”
Bryony gave a deep sigh. They had reached a large fish pond graced by an ornamental Roman temple standing on a small mount in the middle. “That is what I have not yet decided.” She sat on the grass beside the pond and drew her fingers absently through the water, pushing aside the huge flat lily pads. “Have you ever seen the monstrous carp that lives at the bottom of this pond?”
“No.” Francis stood above her. “I don’t actually believe it’s there. You’ve promised to show it to me so many times, and it has never appeared to order.”
Bryony smiled. “Matt, the gardener, says it must be at least a hundred years old. When you reach such a great age, you learn a few tricks.” A huge goldfish swam serenely in the gloom beneath the bright surface, and Bryony flicked at it with the tips of her fingers. “Can you think of a reason for crying off, Francis?”
“For me?” He looked startled. “There is only one reason, as you well know, why a man might be permitted to withdraw from an engagement.”
“Mmmm.” Bryony said nothing for a minute, trailing her hand in the water, feeling its silkiness coat her fingers, remembering what it was like to immerse oneself naked in the cool, clear waters of a creek. She could give Francis his reason. Could tell some of the truth of her experiences, release him, and shoulder the blame. But the disgrace could destroy her father, drive her mother over the brink of sanity. It was not a right she had—not when there was no alternative bridegroom to make all right.
Shaking the water off her hand, she held it up to him imperatively. Bending, Francis took the hand and pulled her to her feet. “We can buy a little time,” Bryony declared, smoothing down her skirt. “I am supposed to be recovering from a horrendous ordeal. No one will expect wedding plans to be made for a while. Maybe something will occur to us during the respite.”
“Was it a horrendous ordeal?” Again that speculative scrutiny from the green eyes.
Bryony shrugged, averted her gaze. “It was not always pleasant.” That, at least, was true.
“It must have been very strange,” Francis responded with careful neutrality. “A very different way of life.”
“Oh, it was quite different! Incalculably so,” she agreed. “It will take a long time for such an experience to fade into memory.”
Her arms crossed over her breasts in an involuntary, unconscious hug, which did not escape her companion. But he made no remark, merely suggested that perhaps they should return to the house since she was not to overexert herself. The conspiratorial smile she gave him in response was designed to return their relationship to its customarily easy footing, but it was a very thoughtful Francis Cullum who eventually left the Paget mansio
n. There was a lot more to Bryony’s story than she was prepared to reveal, of that he was convinced; but in what manner, if any, such a revelation would bear upon the problem he and she shared had yet to be seen.
Ben saw the man fall even while the cold hard press of the trigger remained imprinted on his finger.
“My thanks, Ben.” Dick Jordan, bleeding copiously from an ugly gash in his shoulder, his face blackened with smoke, struggled to his feet from where he had fallen, an exposed target for the rifleman on the bank below them. “That was too close.”
“The entire operation was,” Ben responded shortly. “Someone must have alerted the guards. Get going now. I’ll cover you.” He raised the musket again.
Dick vanished into the trees at Ben’s back, leaving the man with the musket firing steadily down into the crowd of men milling around in the river shallows where the flat rafts floated aimless and upturned, the barrels that had contained their shipments of gunpowder bobbing, now empty, on the surface.
Ben swore softly and fluently to himself. They had lost two men on this raid, and three, counting Dick, had been injured, and the mission was only half-successful. They had intended overpowering the Loyalist guards and floating the rafts with their precious cargo downriver to the waterfront of Tyler’s plantation, where men waited to unload and secrete the purloined explosives. Instead, they had succeeded only in destroying them, emptying the barrels into the river so that neither side would gain the benefit. He had been told to expect two guards to a raft, and there had been four, clearly alerted to the possibility of a raid.
