Chase the Dawn

by Jane Feather

  She took the pots and dishes to the creek to wash them, and when she returned, Ben was standing outside the cabin, his sea chest at his feet, cleaning a flintlock pistol. His musket stood ready against the cabin wall, and his clasp knife hung in a sheath at his belt. Bryony noted this overt display of instruments of death. She would have to become accustomed to much more than displays as she embraced her chosen destiny. Maybe Benedict would not survive the war he had to fight; if he did not, Bryony could not begin to imagine what would happen to her. She somehow did not think she would wish to continue living in such a circumstance. She had cast her past aside; abandoned the duties and allegiances she owed those who loved her; and, stripped of all outside supports, dependent only on her own untried strengths, she was embarking on an uncharted future.

  Benedict ignored her. He thrust the pistol into his belt, checked the latch on the cabin door, slung the musket over one shoulder, and hoisted the chest onto his other. One last quick glance around the clearing to satisfy himself that there were no identifying traces of his occupancy, and he loped off into the trees at the rear of the cabin, his stride long and easy despite the weight he carried.

  Bryony picked up her bundle of clothes with the little velvet pouch of jewelry and followed in his wake.

  Throughout the day, Benedict strode ahead, whistling to himself occasionally, apparently oblivious of the figure trotting along behind him. At sundown, he shot a pheasant and made camp on the bank of a creek. Bryony watched as he plucked the bird and set it to roast over the fire on a spit he had fashioned from three sticks. She was not invited to draw close to the fire, and it dawned on her that neither was she going to be invited to join him at his supper. To her supreme irritation, this realization brought tears pricking behind her eyelids. She was famished after the long day’s march, exhausted, and much in need of a little comforting attention. But none was forthcoming from Benedict Clare, who clearly intended to starve her into submission.

  Well, she had told him that she could look after herself, that she would not be dependent upon him in any way, and he had mocked her. Now she was going to have to prove that she could. The determination stiffened her backbone, and she cast a glance about her for something edible. She found sorrel and watercress—the latter a little bitter, but beggars could hardly be choosers.

  It was a cheerless supper and did remarkably little to satisfy a hunger that grew intense as the rich aroma of roasting pheasant filled the evening air. When Benedict, with callous indifference to the salivating spectator, pulled the bird apart with his fingers and set to, Bryony discovered that the contemplation of murder produced remarkably few guilt feelings. His meal completed, Ben rinsed his fingers in the creek, tidied his belongings in customary methodical fashion, and lay down by the dying fire, his head pillowed on his cloak. Not so much as a glance had he directed toward his unwanted companion since leaving the cabin that morning, and it was a bereft and forlorn Bryony who finally fell asleep under the stars, on the outskirts of the charmed circle from which she had been so clearly ostracized.

  After a restless night, she woke with the first bird call, chilled by the dew, her muscles, accustomed only to feather softness in the last months, stiff and cramped from their unyielding mattress. There was no sign of Ben, and for a second blind terror engulfed her at the thought of finding herself abandoned in the middle of nowhere. Then she saw that his belongings were still neatly stacked and the fire had been rekindled. Was he going to cook something for breakfast? she thought longingly. He’d certainly be making coffee, and at this moment Bryony thought she would sacrifice anything for a cup of that hot, reviving liquid.

  When she returned from a necessary trip into the woods, Ben was squatting by the fire, the aroma of coffee almost visible, so tangible was it to her starved senses. Would he give her some if she asked? But even when she approached him across the dew-laden grass, he did not look up or acknowledge her presence by so much as a ripple of a muscle. Pride, Bryony found, was not easily defeated; she could not bring herself to beg. She turned away, going down to the creek, where she splashed her face and drank the cold, cheerless water. She imagined that she was parched in the desert, tormented by thirst and only water could satisfy her—certainly hot, strong coffee would not do so! Another handful of cress served as nourishment while Bryony tried to convince herself that there were many members of the animal kingdom who thrived on a vegetarian diet. The thought that perhaps nature had designed them differently to accommodate such eating habits was not helpful and was summarily dismissed. Variety was clearly the answer. On the march today, she would hunt and gather as Ben had taught her. Yesterday, she had made no provision for her food because it had not occurred to her that Benedict was capable of such heartlessness. Now that she knew the depths of which he was capable, she would be prepared.

  Benedict stamped out the fire, stowed away the simple utensils he had used, and cast a final glance around, managing a covert inspection of Bryony, who was standing by the trees, idly examining her fingernails, to all intents and purposes waiting patiently for him to make a move. He was conscious of his admiration for her, despite his anger, which showed no signs of abating. How much longer could she hold out? He had thought when she had approached him and the coffeepot that she was about to throw in the towel. But she was made of sterner stuff than he had anticipated, and Benedict Clare was obliged to admit that he was made of weaker stuff than he had anticipated. He was finding it remarkably difficult to continue with his plan.

  The day grew hot and muggy, and the dense forest permitted little movement of air. Sweat stung Bryony’s eyes and itched beneath her tunic as she plodded doggedly in Ben’s footsteps. Her handkerchief, knotted at four corners, made a makeshift basket for her plunder of nuts and berries collected along the walk. Bryony was not entirely sure how many of them were edible, but Ben’s pace was too fast to allow her time to examine before she picked, so she could only hope that when they stopped for the night she would find some in her little store that were at least palatable.

  This solitary marching through the backwoods could not continue indefinitely, she told herself whenever her determination showed signs of weakening. At some point, they would come to a place where civilized things happened and where food and drink of an ordinary kind would be readily available to one who would be as prepared to steal as to buy, if that were the only means available. At some point, Benedict was going to have to accept the need to talk…. So her thoughts ran on wishfully throughout an interminable, wretchedly uncomfortable day.

  The most extraordinary cacophony broke into her miserable trance toward late afternoon, and her head shot up from her intense concentration on her feet’s progress along the weed-infested path through the thick undergrowth. Benedict had stopped dead on the path, and she almost ran into him, pulling herself up just in time. Facing him was a phalanx of angrily gobbling wild turkeys, their tails fanned, their wattles shaking. To Bryony’s inexperienced eye, they looked most ferocious and certainly sounded it. She stepped back involuntarily. Then Ben, incredibly, put his burdens on the ground and swooped on the foremost bird, tucked it beneath one arm, and wrung its neck.

  It was over in an instant, the bird hanging suddenly limp, its neck at an odd angle. Its companions, in sudden panic, scattered, gobbling wildly, and Benedict thrust the dead turkey into his game bag, slung that and his musket over his shoulder, hefted his sea chest, and strode through the bewildered birds, shooing them out of his path. Bryony, still stunned, remained immobile on the path before realizing that the turkeys were reforming between herself and Ben. With a choked gasp, she plunged into the midst of the crowd, felt them, feathery and warm against her bare legs, felt the sharp peck of a beak, and cursed Benedict Clare with all her might.

  Her resentment became overpowering when she realized that Ben was going to cook and eat alone a catch big enough to feed six. He had chosen for his campsite a small glade where a pretty little stream ran limpid and musical over rock and sand. Bryony settled he
rself some distance from his fire, dabbling her hot, tired feet in the cool, crystal-clear water, and tried not to watch as the bird was prepared. He quartered it and set legs and wings to broil on hot, flat stones over the fire. Presumably, it was quicker that way, she thought glumly, and Benedict must be sharp set after such a long and strenuous day. She, herself, was beginning to feel a little light-headed, but dwelling on the sensation did not help matters in the slightest, so she turned her attention resolutely to the spoils in her handkerchief.

  An idea glimmered wickedly as she picked through the assortment of nuts and berries, identifying those she was certain were edible, her nostrils all the while assailed by the luscious aromas of roasting fowl. There was one way to get Ben’s attention.

  “Is it these berries that look like blueberries that are actually nightshade?” she mused in carrying tones, raising one of the small bright berries to her lips. In no more than the beat of a bird’s wing, she was nursing her red, smarting hand, gazing indignantly at her hoard of nuts and berries scattered to the four winds under the force of Benedict’s forestalling slap. “That was my dinner!” she reproached, glaring up into his black eyes. “It took me all day to collect those.”

  “Your father has a great deal to answer for!” Ben pronounced savagely, seizing a thick swatch of hair at the nape of her neck and yanking her to her feet. “Unfortunately, I fear that it is too late to rectify his errors!” Maintaining his grip on her hair, he propelled her across to the fire. “You are the most ill-conditioned, obstinate girl it has ever been my misfortune to meet!” A hard hand on her shoulder pushed her to the ground, and Bryony, well satisfied with this turn of events, sat down.

  Ben went over to her original spot and picked through the scattered berries. Gathering some in the palm of his hand, he came back and sat on his haunches on the far side of the fire, glowering at her. “You did not eat any of these?”

  “You didn’t give me a chance,” Bryony said, managing to sound aggrieved. “I am so hungry, I couldn’t care whether they are damsons, blueberries, or nightshade.”

  Benedict sighed, accepting defeat. He tossed the dusky purple berries away. “They are nightshade, as you knew.”

  Bryony drew her knees up and hugged them, her chin resting atop them as she regarded Benedict quizzically. “You will not be rid of me, Ben. I shall always be beside you, closer than your shadow.” She spoke in the same quietly confident tones of yesterday morning, and Ben, reflecting on her performance since then, began to believe it.

  “Do you not understand that I do not want you?” he demanded, searching for the most cruelly blunt words of rejection he could find. “I do not want you.” He stood up, towering over her as if to reinforce his statement.

  “You do not love me?” she asked, seemingly unmoved.

  “Love you!” cried Benedict. “What has love to do with it? I am a man who must walk alone, do you understand that?”

  “Why?” Her eyes held his unwaveringly. “Because of your past? Because you are ashamed of having been a bondsman? That does not matter to me.”

  Ben paled beneath his suntan. “It does not matter to you— an idealistic, fanciful, privileged girl with her head in the clouds.” He laughed, a bitter sound in the quiet forest. “You know nothing of the world, Miss Paget. You have known nothing but indulgence, sheltered by wealth and love from the distasteful realities of the world. You do not know what you are talking about, but I tell you now—it may not matter to you, but do you dare imagine that it does not matter to me?”

  The angry, bitter words punched her, each one with the power of a body blow, propelled by the depth of an emotion that she had been appallingly guilty of failing first to predict and then to perceive. She didn’t know how to apologize for such insensitivity as the full horror became manifest. The Benedict Clare that she knew was a proud man, assured and confident in everything he did. He moved with all the hauteur of one born to an ancient lineage—and he had belonged, in servitude, to a swinish drunkard.

  God alone knew what hell he had endured, above and beyond the torture that she knew of, and slowly, on the edges of her soul, she sensed the monster of degradation. Her mind filled with the images of slavery, images that had been an intrinsic part of her life, unquestioned by her or by anyone else that she knew. Benedict had experienced that condition, and the fact that she knew it, could imagine what he had become in that dreadful time, had driven this wedge between them.

  She looked up at him with haunted eyes and saw only a twisted mockery in the flat black orbs above, watching as her thoughts played, undisguised, across her countenance.

  “Not a pretty picture, is it?” he said in a voice as dry as dust. “Now, perhaps, you understand why I walk alone.”

  The words of denial rose to her lips, but she swallowed them. Too much pain had been revealed in the last minutes to allow for repetition of her own unmitigated defiance of his determination. Later, after quiet reflection had increased her understanding, she would return to fight the battle on which their love depended. She understood so much more now, but still not everything. Why and how had a Clare become a bondsman in the first place? What heinous crime had he committed for such a sentence to be passed on an aristocrat? And even a bondsman’s past did not truly explain that puzzling, unfocused hatred that she had felt so often and that he had said had nothing specifically to do with her. He loathed everything her father stood for, but she would swear that Sir Edward was not simply tarred with Roger Martin’s brush. There was something else.

  After a minute, when it became clear that Bryony was not going to respond, Ben turned his attention to the rapidly crisping turkey. “You will find dock leaves by that patch of nettles,” he said matter-of-factly. “Bring me some that we may use to hold the meat. It’s too hot for bare hands.”

  It was an instruction of a kind that she had received often enough in the past, delivered in much the same tones. To that extent, it offered reassurance, but reassurance that Bryony suspected was false. She brought the leaves and obeyed the curt order to fill the kettle at the stream so that water for coffee could heat while they ate.

  “Eat slowly,” Ben adjured, passing her a leaf-wrapped drumstick. “I don’t wish you to be sick. The meat is rich, and you have not eaten properly since yesterday morning.”

  As if she was unaware of that fact, thought Bryony with a flash of ordinary irritation. Her mouth filled with saliva as she looked at the succulent leg, steam rising from the charred, crisp skin. Her tongue ran over her lips and she cast Ben a quick glance. He was smiling unconsciously and her heart flipped. But his expression became stern and forbidding the minute he caught her eye, and Bryony, pretending that she had not noticed that momentary softening, took a large bite of turkey.

  A full belly was a miraculous possession, she thought, half an hour later, wiping turkey grease from her chin with the dock leaf. She never would have realized how miraculous if she had not experienced the opposite condition quite so thoroughly. There was something to be said for the appreciation—it certainly enhanced one’s pleasure. The coffee that followed was the elixir of the gods but did nothing to alleviate the overpowering drowsiness that struck without warning. Her eyelids, weighted with lead, dropped, but she forced them open, staggering to her feet, hoping that action would provide sufficient stimulus to avert the threatening unconsciousness. Somehow, she managed to wash the beakers, but all the cold-water splashing in the world could not infuse her drugged limbs with life.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Benedict pulled her up as she knelt by the stream, quite unable to force her limbs to perform the motions necessary to get her to feet. Water dripped from her face and hands, dampening her tunic. “You’re dead on your feet. Go and sleep by the fire.”

  Bryony shook her head. “I am afeard to sleep.”

  “Why should you be so, lass?” It was suddenly the old Ben speaking. “I am here. Nothing is going to harm you.”

  Bryony gnawed her lip and spoke with some difficulty. “I am
so tired that I am afraid I will not be able to waken when you leave in the morning.”

  There was a moment’s silence, then Ben said roughly, “I will not leave you here, and I do not deserve that you should believe such a thing of me. Now, go to sleep!” He gave her a shove in the direction of the fire, and Bryony stumbled over, too exhausted for further argument. It seemed an eternity since she had last enjoyed a full night’s sleep. Her cheek pillowed on her hand, her body curled toward the comforting glow of the embers, she passed into dreamless slumber.

  Benedict lay down beside her, arms flung above his head as he gazed up at the wedge of night sky revealed in the opening of the trees. By noon tomorrow, they would reach Tyler’s plantation, and he would ask Paul’s help in returning Bryony to Sir Edward. It was not going to be an easy request. And it would not be an easy parting, either. Bryony, beside him, suddenly moaned softly and rolled over into the hollow of his shoulder. Quite insensible, she had traveled in her sleep like a bee returning to its hive; feeling the familiar warmth and shape and automatically cuddling in the remembered fashion. With a little self-mocking smile, Ben moved his arm to enfold her, adjusting her warm, malleable limbs against him. Her hair brushed his chin, and the scent of her filled his nostrils—a scent composed of earth and sweat and the eternal richness of her skin. He smiled again, but it was a pleasanter smile, as he thought of the different vision this Bryony presented from the elegant young lady, exuding rose-water fragrance, rustling in satin and lace. And he didn’t think he would be able to state a preference if such a choice were ever demanded of him.

  Benedict fell asleep eventually, as determined as ever to pursue the course he had laid down for them both. They would part painfully, it was true, but as friends, and Bryony now understood much that had been hidden from her. That understanding would surely ease the parting and resign her to accept the inevitable.