Chase the Dawn

by Jane Feather

  She smiled slightly. “Ben is in a temper because General Gates wants to take a shortcut to Camden. And I imagine he would not listen to Ben’s impeccable advice, delivered, I would suppose, in his customary uncompromising language.”

  “It is no laughing matter!” Ben exclaimed. “And I’ll thank you to be a little more respectful to your commanding officer, madam.”

  Bryony, who was already kneeling on the tent floor, bowed her head in elaborate obeisance. “I crave pardon, your high and mightiness, for forgetting my place. One must not make mock of a newly appointed colonel.” Her voice quivered with mischievous laughter, and Ben, his eyes dancing, seized the heavy black braid hanging down her back and yanked her head up.

  “Disrespectful hoyden,” he scolded. “It is fortunate that my sense of consequence is sufficiently great to withstand your raillery.”

  Bryony, laughing helplessly, flung her arms around his neck and kissed him, blithely paying no heed to their audience. Charlie, however, was well accustomed to these unconventional displays, as, indeed, were all the officers in the First Virginia Brigade. The unorthodox couple had caused a few raised eyebrows in the early days, but Benedict Clare had rapidly won the respect and admiration of his fellows, to whom it seemed there was nothing he could not do better than anyone else. A natural modesty and an easy manner had completed the charm. As for his lady, and she was undoubtedly a lady, for all the oddity of her present lifestyle, it had taken little more than that warm smile, the ready laughter, the friendly willingness to listen to woes and fancies, to win her an undisputed place in the brigade. She also had one skill that was much appreciated by men and officers alike. When Benedict Clare, who did not suffer fools gladly or otherwise, was put out, life could be most unpleasant, but his wife could generally be relied upon to tease him back to good humor—a skill she had just demonstrated to perfection.

  “Ben, have you heard what that infernal idiot intends to do?” The exasperated question heralded the arrival of a lanky redhead who crawled into the crowded tent without waiting for invitation. “Oh, hello, Charlie, might have guessed you’d be here. It’s suppertime, isn’t it?”

  “Go and stir the stew, lass,” Ben said. “We have guests, it would seem.”

  “Well, someone else will have to provide the ale,” Bryony declared. “We have but a half barrel left after the last party.”

  “I can supply cider,” John Davidson, the new arrival, offered. “Managed to buy it off a farmer.”

  “Buy it?” Bryony scoffed. “When did you ever pay for anything, John?”

  They all chuckled. The young cavalry officer was well-known for his foraging abilities, which more often than not crossed the fine line of legality. “This I paid for,” he lamented. “Miserly old codger couldn’t be persuaded to donate the butt in the interests of the health and spirits of the American army, and he didn’t take his eyes off me until we rode out of there, so there was no hope of slipping it out.”

  Ben sniffed the air suddenly. “Bryony! If that stew burns, I shall hold you responsible!”

  She rushed out of the tent to where an iron pot hung over the fire, aromatic steam curling in the gathering dusk. It was summer and game was plentiful, although keeping an army of three thousand adequately provisioned in the Carolina back country was no easy task. She prodded the contents of the pot with a metal spoon, glad that the long hours of slow cooking had reduced the brace of squirrel, and the other unidentifiable furry creature that Ben had tossed in, to innocuous chunks of good-smelling meat.

  It was a warm, midgy night, the air filled with the scents of crushed grass and wood smoke from other campfires. The force was camped on a hillside, and almost as far as she could see were tents and bivouacs, voices raised in altercation or laughter carrying through the gloom. It was a strange life, campaigning, but Bryony had long ceased to question or examine the circumstances of her daily life. For, as long as she had Ben, the old laughing, loving Benedict, she wanted for nothing—except, occasionally, news of those she had left behind. When the ache rose, and her mind was filled with thoughts of her parents, of Francis, of how they were faring, she forced them away, reminding herself that she had made her choice and had accepted the consequences with open eyes.

  A violent oath from the tent behind her shook her out of her reverie. “I do not believe it, John!” Ben catapulted through the tent opening, his two comrades following. “This time he has got to listen to me. It’s suicide!”

  “Ben, what on earth’s the matter? Where are you going?” Bryony reached up and grabbed the tail of his coat. “The stew is ready.”

  “Save some for me,” he said brusquely.

  Bryony hung on to his coat. “Tell me what is the matter. It can’t be so imperative that you can’t eat your supper first.”

  Ben looked down at her where she was kneeling, still clutching his coat. “I think I am the best judge of that, lass.”

  Bryony bit her bottom lip and let him go. Ben accepted her teasing, asked for her advice frequently, always listened when she offered an opinion, but he would not tolerate unwarranted interference, and when he had made up his mind about something, there was nothing she could say to alter it. He walked off and she turned her attention back to the stew.

  “I’ll go and fetch the cider,” John said. “Ben’ll be in need of it when he comes back.”

  “It’s Gates again,” Charlie informed Bryony, squatting beside the fire. “He’s going to take this shortcut to Camden through a damn swamp infested with Tories, and John says he intends doing it at night!”

  Bryony absorbed this news in silence. She needed no expansion to understand Ben’s fury. A forced night march through enemy-held territory would weaken the inexperienced force dreadfully and would hardly equip them to face Cornwallis’s disciplined, fresh troops. But Gates would not take into consideration the fact that his soldiers were green troops for the most part, unused to fire, not yet broken in to army discipline. He saw only that he had vastly superior numbers to Cornwallis, and, after all, he had won a magnificent victory against the British three years before, so his own prowess as commander was proven beyond question.

  She ladled the stew into bowls, and the three of them sat around the fire making desultory conversation while they ate, all of them imagining the scene in the general’s tent. Ben was not one to mince his words, and it was only the fact that Gates relied upon him absolutely that had saved him from charges of insubordination on countless occasions. He came back after half an hour, his eyes blazing.

  “Damned murdering lunatic!” He took the flagon of cider and drank deeply before passing it back to John. “Told me that if I did not wish to risk myself in such a venture, he would excuse me from participating!” He took the bowl Bryony handed him without acknowledgment, but she was not about to insist upon the courtesies.

  “When is this march to take place?”

  Ben sighed wearily and let the unconstructive anger run away from him. “Tomorrow night. And I don’t know what in God’s name I am to do with you.”

  Bryony stared. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I mean, lass, that I do not want you on that march, but I do not see how I can leave you behind since Gates is intending to take the entire force. You will have to travel in the rear with the baggage and supplies.”

  “The hell I will!” exclaimed Sir Edward Paget’s daughter with all a trooper’s vigor. “I’ll not travel with the pack mules.”

  A stunned silence fell over the little group, and Bryony—with a shudder—heard her voice repeating the oath in her head. The words had just popped out of her mouth. She heard them all the time—that word and many worse. It was hardly surprising that she should slip up once in a while.

  “Well, I think it’s time to turn in,” Charlie said with unconvincing carelessness. “That was an excellent supper.”

  “Aye, indeed it was,” concurred John heartily, following Charlie’s example and getting to his feet.

  “Stay and finish the cider,�
� Bryony said hastily, shaking the flagon. “It is silly to leave this small drop.” The pretext fooled no one. Although Benedict had said not a word, they were all well aware that he was simply biding his time until their guests had left. Bryony watched them go, wondering whether to allow the storm to break or to attempt to avert it. The choice, however, was not given her.

  “How dare you say such a thing!” Ben demanded almost before the others were out of earshot. “Don’t you ever let me hear such language on your tongue again!”

  “Oh, pah!” Bryony found herself returning the fire before she had time to consider whether a meek apology would have been a sounder tactic. “Don’t be such a self-righteous hypocrite. We are not in my mother’s drawing room.”

  “It’s at times like this when I bitterly regret having removed you from that place,” Ben snapped. “You seem to have forgotten every vestige of decent conduct.”

  “May I remind you, Mr. Clare, that you were not responsible for my leaving my mother’s drawing room,” she said icily. “In fact, if you’d had your way, I would still be there, and I do not grant you the right to be arbiter of my behavior or my language, even if you are my husband.”

  Ben’s eyes narrowed on a sudden wicked gleam. “My old nurse used to wash our mouths out with soap when we came into the house with stable talk,” he mused thoughtfully. “It was remarkably effective, as I recall, and the old remedies are frequently the best.” He rose to his feet in a deceptively leisured manner that did not fool Bryony for one instant.

  “Ben! Don’t you dare!” She gathered up her calico skirts and fled, skipping over guy ropes with desperate agility, hearing him pound after her, and knowing that she could not evade capture for long. The chase drew laughing comment from those around, as well as a few ribald remarks. Bryony veered into a small copse on the outskirts of the camp, where whatever should ensue when she was caught would at least take place in privacy. She tripped over a tree root and fell, sobbing for breath, onto the mossy ground.

  “It was not so very bad,” she protested in laughing defense, as Ben walked slowly toward her. “I could have said much worse. And it is a little absurd of you to object like some high stickler for decorum, under the circumstances. I am marching with an army.”

  “John and Charlie were deeply shocked, nevertheless,” he said, although his eyes sparkled merrily. “Have you hurt yourself with that tumble?”

  “Yes,” Bryony said wickedly. “I think I have broken my ankle, and it’s all your fault.”

  He dropped to the ground beside her. “Let me see.”

  “That is not my ankle,” Bryony protested faintly as his hand slipped up the inside of her leg, pushing up her skirt.

  “Is it not?” inquired Ben in wide-eyed innocence, flattening his palm against the inside of one thigh, parting her legs. “For thirty years I have thought it was!”

  A soft moan escaped her, and she fell back on the grass as his fingers whispered over the cambric of her drawers, teasing the exquisite sensitivity with a warm, knowing friction through the thin material.

  “Take them off,” he demanded, drawing back for a minute, lifting his hand from her with almost demonic knowingness the instant before she was about to slide over the edge of bliss, so that she lay, taut with arousal, suspended in joy, needing completion, yet lost in expectant glory. His eyes were hooded, an expression of determined intensity on his face as he looked down at her body, her skirt rucked up around her waist, legs sprawled in wanton abandonment. “Take them off,” he repeated, unfastening his britches. “I want you now.”

  Her tongue ran over her lips, her muscles tensed under the powerful wave of passion swamping her at the rough statement, at the revelation of the hard shaft springing from the base of his flat belly in vigorous readiness. She fumbled with the string at her waist, then raised her hips from the grass as she pushed off the offending garment. Ben did not take his eyes from her—neither did he help her, just knelt over her supine figure, waiting with every sign of impatience. It happened like this sometimes, when his desire became invincible almost without warning. Play would cease, to be replaced with a hard, urgent ardor that demanded instant satisfaction. It was as if, sure now that they both trod the same path, Ben felt able to yield to his desire in whatever form it took. And when he needed her in this way, Bryony felt a curious self-defining power fill her, becoming inextricably, fervently entangled with her own arousal.

  He came down to her, taking her mouth with a sweet savagery as in the same breath he thrust deep within her body. Bryony quivered and was instantly lost; her body, kept in suspenseful thrall, finally climaxed in shuddering release, and she cried out against his mouth. She looked up into the ebony eyes, sliding her hands around to grip his buttocks, her fingers biting into the hard muscles driving him within her, as she concentrated with every stretched nerve on Ben’s progress along his own road to joy. At the right moment, she lifted her hips slightly and tightened her inner muscles around him. His face dissolved in ecstasy and he spoke her name in lingering syllables.

  They lay for long minutes in the darkness on the hard, unyielding ground before Ben murmured, “I hope your ankle is cured now.”

  Bryony chuckled weakly. “Was that what that was, then? A novel cure for hurt ankles?”

  “Well, it wasn’t what I had intended when I followed you in here,” Ben said, getting to his knees with a reluctant groan. “Making love was far from my mind.”

  “It is never far from your mind,” Bryony retorted, reaching for her discarded undergarment. “Except perhaps when you are battling with General Gates.”

  “Did you have to remind me?” Ben tugged on his britches, a frown creasing his brow again. “You will ride at the rear tomorrow night, lass, and I don’t want to hear any more nonsense.”

  Bryony stood up and tossed her disheveled braid over one shoulder. “If you think I am going to ride through a Tory-infested swamp in the pitch dark with only mules and sutlers for protection and company, think again. I will be a great deal safer at your side, surrounded by Charlie and John and the others. Unless it is not my safety that concerns you, and you simply wish to be rid of me.” A glare accompanied the accusation.

  Ben scratched his ear thoughtfully. Bryony had a point and it was one that had not occurred to him earlier. The rear of the army might be less vulnerable to attack, but it was not immune, and in such an event she would be lamentably short of protection. He shrugged and in customary fashion yielded gracefully. “I think you have the right of it. However, I must have your promise that you will do as I bid you, instantly and without question, throughout the march and the engagement. I cannot afford to be distracted with argument or unnecessary worry.”

  “I am yours to command, Colonel Clare,” she said, grinning in the dark. “You will find me perfectly obedient.”

  “I wish I could be as lighthearted, lass,” Ben said somberly. “I have a fearful premonition about this ill-conceived business.”

  Bryony shuddered, all desire to laugh leaving her instantly. “What do you think will happen?”

  “Defeat at best, a rout at worst,” he replied succinctly. “Cornwallis has a highly trained, disciplined band of regulars with him. And there’s no knowing how our men will react under fire, particularly if they are weakened by fatigue and panicked by skirmishes during a night march.”

  Bryony swallowed. Knowing that she must not add to his burdens with her own weakness, she controlled the urge to cling to him, to beg him not to take part in this exercise in which he had no faith, to ask him what would happen to her if he should be killed.

  If Ben sensed her fear and uncertainty, he gave no indication of it. But when they reached their tent and the straw palliasse that Bryony now considered to be as comfortable as any featherbed, he wrapped her in his arms, surrounding her with the warm reassurance of his body so that she fell asleep, convinced for the moment of the safety and continuity of their little corner of a world riven by turmoil and conflict.

  The following
day, chaos became manifest as an army, three thousand strong, broke camp and prepared to meet the enemy. Small groups of men were being drilled about the hillside while others milled around, taking down tents, loading up the wagons and pack mules. General Gates had set up his headquarters under a spreading beech tree, pandemonium reigning supreme around him. With him, poring over the giant map spread out on a trestle table, were Ben and three other high-ranking officers. Bryony, needing to ask Ben a question regarding their luggage, approached the group cautiously. Gates had never treated her with anything less than courtesy, but in general she endeavored to avoid bringing herself to his notice.

  “The First Maryland should be in the front line,” Ben was stating crisply.

  “No,” Horatio Gates interrupted. “They will hold the rear behind the North Carolina militia.”

  “And you will have untried, raw recruits in the front line?” Ben brought his fist down on the table in disgust. “If they break, they’ll take the center with them.”

  “Sometimes, Colonel, I think you forget who is commanding this army,” the general said coldly.

  “General Gist? Baron de Kalb? What is your opinion?” Benedict appealed to the two veteran commanders, who were frowning over the map.

  Mordecai Gist shook his head. “It’s a matter of tactics. A strong rear guard or a strong front line? There are points to be made on both sides.”

  Bryony, deciding that now was perhaps not an opportune moment to bother Benedict with a domestic question, turned to slip away, but he caught sight of her and called her back.

  “Is there something you want, lass?”

  “It’s not important,” she said hastily. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.” She smiled in hesitant apology.

  “You’re not interrupting anything, Mrs. Clare,” boomed Gates heartily. “The matter is already decided. Perhaps you can persuade this obstinate young man that he would do well to listen to his elders.”

  Benedict flushed a deep crimson. “Excuse me, sir.” Taking Bryony by the arm, he drew her away. “I do not know how long I am going to be able to keep my hands off him,” he hissed. “What do you want?” The question was snapped, but Bryony did not take it personally.