by Jane Feather
When Nathanael Greene took his rested and reinforced army back into North Carolina to await battle at Guilford Courthouse, Bryony was left in Virginia. Nothing she could do or say would persuade Benedict to take her.
“I will come back for you, sweeting,” he promised, holding her as she wept angry tears.
“You may not be alive to do so!” she reminded him, pulling out of his embrace.
“Then you will be better off here.” He took her shoulders, looking into her eyes awash with grief and foreboding. “If I do not return, you may make your way to the British army or go on to your home. Either option will be possible for you. The horse will carry you, and you still have the silver fillet. It will buy you what you need.”
“I need you,” she said with fierce passion, rising on tiptoe to take his mouth with hers.
“And I need you.” He groaned, tasting her sweetness, feeling her body, taut and demanding, against him. As one body, they moved backward into the wagon, heedless of who should see and guess their intention. They came together with the desperate hunger of the long deprived, pushing garments out of the way, mouths locked as their bodies twisted to fit into each other with the wonder of a long-lost but ageless familiarity. And when the summit was reached, it held the sharp piquancy of a climb that perhaps would never again be made by these two together.
Ned beside her, she watched the army out of sight. It took a long time for over four thousand men to disappear, but they went eventually, and the woman and child were left with the wounded and the unfit. For a week, they waited, news reaching them sporadically, the accounts inconsistent, so that it became impossible to judge the truth. There had been a big battle. The British had won—no, the Americans had won…. Cornwallis had camped on the battlefield and issued a victory proclamation, calling on “all royal subjects to stand forth and take an active part in restoring good order and government.” But there had been no response. British casualties had been heavy—no, they had been devastating; the army was destroyed … but still the earl claimed victory…. American casualties were negligible … but the Virginia militia had run from the field in disorder….
Bryony eventually ceased running when each new messenger arrived; battered by conflicting reports, she let the tales wash over her. Whichever side could really claim victory, the possibility of loss was as great for her. Her husband and her father would have met on that battlefield, and through the long days of waiting, she had come to see clearly that one could not submerge a fundamental part of one’s self because another part demanded it. She was still Bryony Paget even while she was Bryony Clare, and her father’s death in battle would strike as deep into her core as that of her husband.
Benedict Clare came back, unscathed and bearing the truth. Technically, it had been a British victory, but another such Pyrrhic victory would ruin the British army. Cornwallis had lost a quarter of his force, whereas General Greene had counted only 78 dead and 183 wounded.
Bryony searched Ben’s face and knew that he did not have the answer to her question. If he had news of her father, he would not have been able to hide it from her—good or bad. “So, where do we run to now?” she asked, looking around the disorderly camp that had become home. “Ned has settled well here.” She laughed. “He has become a great favorite with the men who were left. I rarely see him from sunup to sundown.”
“Are you wearied of running, lass?” One eyebrow lifted quizzically, but the deep seriousness of the question could not be hidden.
“Not I,” she said firmly, meeting his gaze. “For as long as you run, Benedict Clare, I run with you. Have I not always said so?”
“Always,” he said, drawing her into his arms.
“Ben! Ben! I can ride a mule, Ben!” Ned raced over to them, plunging between them, wrapping his arms around Ben’s knees, bouncing on his toes, eyes shining. “Come and see!”
“I think you’ll have to settle for me, Ned.” Charlie, with an amused chuckle, yanked the bouncing child out from under. “Ben will come later. Won’t you, Ben?” Laughter and conspiratorial understanding glimmered in his eyes, and they laughed back at him.
“Word of honor,” Ben said, tickling the child beneath his dirty chin. “And if you really can ride, then you shall do so, all the way.”
“All the way where?” Bryony returned to the original question as she returned to his embrace.
“To Tidewater, Virginia,” he said against her ear. “The endgame will be played there.”
For pity’s sake, Ned, stop whining!” Bryony snapped in exasperation as the child’s insistent voice finally penetrated her preoccupation.
“He wasn’t,” Ben said without looking up from the pistol he was cleaning on the plank table.
“Wasn’t what?” Frowning, she turned to observe him, noticing absently how the bent copper head caught a finger of evening sun coming through the small window.
Ben sighed and put down the pistol. “He was not whining, Bryony. He has been asking you the same question for the last five minutes, but you have taken not a blind bit of notice.” His eyes probed her face, and she felt her cheeks warm under the scrutiny that, while it was far from unfriendly, was uncomfortably minute.
She resumed her scouring of a skillet, asking casually, “What is it you want, Ned?”
“My ball,” the boy said. “It’s after supper.”
Bryony’s expression was blank, and Charlie reminded her, “You took it away from him because he was throwing it through the window.”
“And you said I could have it back after supper,” Ned put in, an unusually aggrieved note entering his voice.
“Oh, I forgot. I am sorry.” Bryony dried her hands and reached up to the top of the dresser. “Here.” She handed the prize to Ned, who ran out into the August evening with it. “Could you not have given it back to him?” Bryony asked Ben, trying not to sound irritable.
“You took it away from him, lass, not I,” Ben replied, reasonably enough.
“And I suppose I should not have done so?” This time she could not prevent the irritation.
Benedict rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “On the contrary. Indeed, if it had been I, he would have lost it a great deal sooner and for much longer.”
Bryony chewed her lip. “I didn’t mean to snap. I beg your pardon.”
“What is troubling you, sweeting?” Ben stood up, coming over to put his hands on her shoulders.
“I think I’ll go and play ball with Ned.” Charlie, with his customary delicacy, left the little waterside cottage on the outskirts of Williamsburg.
“What is it?” Ben tipped her chin, peering into her eyes, which slipped away from his inspection.
“It’s nothing.” She fixed her gaze on a crack in the clapboard wall of the cottage. “Just the heat. It is damnable, is it not?”
“Yes,” he agreed quietly. “But it has been so for the last three months, when we have trailed across Virginia under the broiling sun, and you have not once complained—even on a twenty-four-hour forced march.”
“I expect it’s just an excitation of the nerves.” She attempted a smile, a little shrug. “The time of the month.”
“No, not that,” he contradicted. “I know your cycle as well as you do yourself, lass.”
“Better, it would seem,” she muttered, moving to twist away from him. Ben’s grip on her shoulders tightened.
“I wish to know what’s troubling you, Bryony.”
“Do you not have to post pickets at the line?”
Ben sucked in his breath sharply and ignored the question. “Ever since we have been quartered here, you have been like a bear with a sore head. Now, what is it?”
“I have told you, there is nothing the matter. But if you keep worrying at me like this, there soon will be!” She pulled back, and this time he let her go with a gesture of exasperated frustration.
“You are as stubborn as a mule! But I am warning you that if you do not snap out of this mood before I return in the morning, you will tell me what is the
matter if I have to wring it out of you.” With that, he picked up his pistol and banged out of the cottage on his way to post pickets for night duty at the line of men that stretched across the peninsula just outside Williamsburg, where the bulk of the Marquis de Lafayette’s Continental Army was quartered.
Bryony sat down at the table, dropping her head wearily into her hands. How could she tell him what had happened to her almost the moment they had reached this part of the world that was so achingly, hauntingly familiar? They had marched down the Williamsburg road, right past the entrance to her father’s house, but Ben had not been beside her. He had ridden ahead with the marquis, and she doubted whether he had even made the connection, so involved was he with matters of warfare. She could understand his engrossment. For the last five months they had dodged around Virginia, meeting up with the Frenchman and his force at Richmond at the end of April, and from then on they had skirmished, sometimes fleeing the British, sometimes pursuing them. They had fought last-ditch battles and marched day and night, but now Cornwallis had taken up defensive positions at Yorktown and across the river at Gloucester. From Williamsburg, Lafayette was trying to hold him fast in the trap until General Washington arrived with reinforcements from the north.
It was an exciting time for this army that had gone through so much hardship and had battled near insuperable odds. Lafayette was full of youthful enthusiasm, bubbling with energy, and his spirit infected all those who worked with him. The French fleet was approaching the Chesapeake Bay, and so long as Lafayette could hold Cornwallis in Yorktown, the allied concentration would bring victory.
But for Bryony, it was a wrenching time. Her father was seven miles away, facing the humiliation of defeat, and she was joined with those who would defeat him. She could express none of this turmoil to Ben, who saw the matter with such clarity, with no emotional tangles, no division of loyalties, none of this exquisite anguish. She had pledged herself to his cause, had renounced the other loyalties, or so she had believed. It was something he believed, at least, and bitter experience had taught her that if they were to live in peace together, he must continue to believe that she had disavowed the tainted blood of the Pagets.
So, she could not tell him what she had done this morning, could not tell him how she had agonized over the decision but in the end was unable to keep herself from making the six-mile walk to her childhood home. She had found it closed up, only old Mary in residence as caretaker. Mary, weeping tears of joy and sorrow, had told her that her father had sent a message, instructing Eliza to go to friends in the North once the raiding had begun in Tidewater, Virginia. She had exclaimed in horror at Bryony’s thinness, her sun-browned complexion, her threadbare attire. She had wept bitterly over the heartbreak that Bryony’s disappearance had caused in the household. And, as Francis had done, she had demanded to know whether the girl was happy.
Bryony had been hard-pressed for a truthful answer because she no longer knew whether she was or not. To be with Benedict was happiness, but to be torn in this way was misery. She had tried to write to her mother, but it had been impossible to say what was in her heart, and anything less would add insult to the injury she had already done her parents. So, she had simply asked Mary to say, when the next messenger came, that she was well and that she loved her.
Then she had walked the six miles back to this little cottage, which Benedict had found for them with such smug satisfaction. Its owners had fled during the raiding and burning of the Tidewater country by the traitorous Benedict Arnold and his men, and Ben, riding in the van into the town, had staked his claim to this snug little dwelling. There was no shortage of food, either, these summer days. Now that they were settled, Ben was able to hunt and fish when not on duty, and the game augmented their army rations, which were more generous here than in Charlotte. After the privations, the fears, the endless journeying, Bryony thought that she should find her present circumstances idyllic. Benedict was still in danger, but it was not as acute as it had been so often in the past, and the one-room cottage had a loft where they were assured of some privacy. It was the presence of these luxuries that made her miserable preoccupation and snappish impatience inexplicable to Ben—and to Charlie and Ned, although they were less importunate in demanding to know the reason.
It was time to pull herself together. All this weary glumping was achieving nothing! And if she could not rid herself of the depression, then Benedict would become very difficult. He was not in the habit of making idle threats. Bryony stood up, straightened her shoulders in a gesture of resolution, and went outside. It was dusk and Ned’s squeals of laughter, interspersed with Charlie’s more moderate tones, rang in the late-summer air. The ball came flying toward her and she leaped, catching it deftly.
“Bravo!” Charlie applauded and she laughed, tossing the ball to Ned, who missed it and went scampering along the riverbank in pursuit, shrieking gleefully.
“Do you think he ought to be in bed?” Bryony asked Charlie, curling her bare toes into the grass, feeling it dry and scratchy, still warm after the day’s sun.
“He’ll go when he’s tired.” Charlie wiped his brow with his handkerchief. “He always does.”
“Yes,” Bryony agreed. “Campaigning doesn’t exactly lend itself to a nursery routine, does it?” She walked to the edge of the little stream. “I cannot imagine what is to become of him when all this is over.”
“He’ll stay with you and Ben, will he not?” Frowning, Charlie joined her on the bank, where she sat, idly dabbling her toes in the cool water.
“But where will we be, Charlie? Doing what?”
“Is that what has been troubling you these last days?”
She sighed. “A little, but don’t tell Ben. He has enough to concern him.”
“I think he would be less concerned if he understood.” Charlie stood up. “Baron von Steuben has demanded my presence at a drill to be conducted at nightfall. I do not quite understand the significance of such an exercise, but one does not argue with the inspector general.”
“No, indeed not.” Bryony laughed, getting to her feet. “The Prussian has proved himself too good a soldier for his tactics to be questioned.”
“He’s an irascible bastard, though,” Charlie stated with absolute truth. “Therefore, I do not care to be late.” Calling good-bye to Ned, he strolled off into the town.
Bryony was asleep in their loft bedchamber when Ben came back in the early hours of the morning. The raven’s hair lay tumbled across the pillow, one bare arm curled above her head. Her face, even in repose, showed the determination and the humor that had carried her through the hardships of the last sixteen months. He had once said that her father had a lot to answer for, Ben remembered with a tiny smile as he shrugged out of his shirt. Sir Edward Paget had certainly fashioned a most extraordinary daughter—undeniably unique. He came down onto the bedstead beside her, and she rolled instantly into his arms in her warm soft nakedness. He was content to lie in the moonlit loft, holding her, feeling the suppleness of her frame, her breath rustling across his chest, her hair tickling his chin. Ben smiled to himself, inhaling the fresh, clean fragrance of her skin and hair. Cleanliness was a luxury they had gone without for the better part of the last sixteen months….
He woke slowly, wonderfully, to the awareness of his body coming alive beneath whispering caresses. He heard her soft murmur of satisfaction as he rose beneath her ministering hands, and he reached down dreamily to stroke her head, resting on his belly as she concentrated on her task. She made love to him with languid pleasure, taking the time to taste every inch of him, to revisit the planes and hollows of his body before moving above him, drawing him within her, moving at her own pace as he yielded to her orchestration, allowing her to play upon them both in the soft, lyrical morning. Afterward, they lay, still unspeaking, savoring this moment when they were alone in their own universe, until the peace was abruptly shattered.
Running feet sounded on the lane outside and then there was a hammering on the door.
Ben was on his feet, pulling on his britches almost before the echo had died. They heard Charlie’s voice, struggling with sleep, and then Ben, barefoot, had plunged down the stairs, which were really no more than a ladder. Bryony, too anxious to take the time to get dressed, bundled herself into her cloak, it being the nearest to a wrapper that she possessed, and followed.
“What has happened?” She pushed her hair out of her eyes and blinked at the young trooper standing in the doorway. The sound of drums and the shrill call of the bugle came from the town.
“A big fleet has been sighted in the Chesapeake,” the messenger told them. “The marquis has issued a general alert.”
“French or English ships?” Benedict snapped, turning back to the ladder.
“We don’t know yet, sir. They are too far away.”
Bryony went over to the hearth, filling the kettle with water from the stone jar that stood beside it. She set the kettle over the fire and poked at the embers, performing the domestic actions automatically as she absorbed the implications of the news. If it was a British fleet, then Cornwallis was out of the trap. If it was the French, then he was cut off by sea and entrapped on land. She did not know which she hoped for. “Do you wish for coffee before you go?”
“No time, lass.” Ben, now dressed and booted, clattered back down the ladder. “God knows when I’ll be back.” He lifted her hair and kissed the nape of her neck. “If it’s the French, sweeting, this business will be over in no time.” He did not wait for a response and left with Charlie, hastening toward headquarters, where they would receive their orders.
It was an anxious day as they waited to discover the identity of the fleet. Late that night Benedict returned to the cottage, weary but triumphant. The French Admiral de Grasse was in the bay with twenty-eight line-of-battle ships, several frigates, and three regiments of French soldiers.
