Night in Eden (10 page)

There was an arrested expression on his face. "Some... some women hate the mystery of those mountains, the idea of something completely unknown and mysterious lying so close to where they live. Doesn't it frighten you?"

Bryony shook her head and smiled up at him. "No. But it does make me want to see what's on the other side."

He stared down at her for a long moment, his eyes narrow, his lips pressed into a thin line.

She didn't see him again until mid-afternoon.

She was sitting beside Gideon in the cart, waiting for their turn to cross a creek, when the dray in front of them sank unexpectedly into deep, loose sand and couldn't be budged.

The bullock driver shouted to the men up ahead, and
the whole line halted. Captain St. John sent the horses from the lead dray back to add their strength to that of the bullocks pulling the mired wagon. And still the wheels refused to turn.

Bryony climbed down from the tilted cart and spread one of Simon's blankets out on the grassy bank of the creek. Settling beside the baby, she drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, enjoying the
way
the sun warmed her back and sparkled along the
dancing
surface of the creek.

There was now quite a crowd of men, all standing around the dray, arguing about how best to deal with the problem. Then St. John himself rode up and sent one of the men running toward the forward dray. Five or six of the men sat down on the bank and began to take off their shoes and shirts.

Hayden St. John was one of them.

She watched him pull off his gleaming Hessians and stockings, then toss his hat aside and unbutton and strip off his shirt. He was twisted away from her, so that all she could see was his back. But she couldn't help noticing how hard and well-defined his muscles were, how smooth and tan his skin was, how broad he was at the shoulders, how sinuously his back tapered down to narrow hips. Then he turned to shout something to one of the men, and she saw how strong his chest was, saw the dark hair that curled across it and plunged down the hard, flat slab of his stomach to disappear beneath the waist of his breeches.

She hugged her knees tighter, watching him wade into the water, telling herself she shouldn't be looking at him like this. But she was too fascinated to turn away.

The man who'd been sent running came back carrying some long boards and laid them in front of the sunken wheels of the dray. The rest of the men waded into the creek to take up positions at the wheels and behind the wagon and add their own strength to that of the beasts.

Whips cracked. Horses and bullocks leaned into their collars. Men pushed. Hayden stood beside the near rear of the dray and leaned into the wheel. Bryony could see his shoulders and arms cord and bunch with the strain. The bright sun glazed his naked, sweat-sheened back with a golden light and glinted off his dark hair as he bowed his head.

There was a sucking sound. The wagon shuddered free and bounced, rattling, up the far bank.

The men cheered and laughed. Someone bent to retrieve the boards from the creek bed, while Hayden slapped the man nearest him on the shoulder and said something she didn't hear.

She watched him turn back toward the center of the creek. His breeches were wet clear up to his thighs. She could see the dark line, just below his crotch, where the water had reached. Sweat beaded his forehead, ran down into his eyes. He swiped at it absently with the back of one arm as he waded farther out into the creek and bent down to splash the cold water over his face and shoulders.

When he straightened, he still had his eyes closed. With his head tilted back, he reached up and ran his strong fingers through his dark hair, combing it back off his forehead. He had his arms lifted high, his elbows spread wide. His wet, bare skin stretched taut over his corded muscles, glistening in the sun. Dark, wet hair curled around his nipples. Tiny rivulets of water trickled down the ridges of his stomach to darken the waistband of his breeches. She saw the hair under his arms. Saw the drops of water that gathered and ran down his hard cheeks. Then he opened his eyes and caught her watching him.

Their gazes locked while he used one hand to slowly wipe the water off his lower face. Something flared hot and bright in his eyes. Something that ignited a slow fire that licked at her insides. She felt the heat of the sun on
her skin. Felt the swell of her full breasts against the bodice of her dress, felt something squeeze the air from her lungs until she was breathless.

She knew she should look away, but she thought if she did, it would make it seem as if there was something to the way she'd been looking at him. And then she realized there
was
something to it, because of all the half-naked men who'd been in the stream, she'd seen only him, watched only him.

Bryony sat with the baby nestled in her lap and watched Gideon ram the bases of skewers topped with kangaroo meat into the earth beside the campfire.

While the rest of the men were still setting up camp, Hayden St. John had shouldered his gun and walked off into the brush. Hunting, Gideon said. She'd heard the
boom
of his gun several times in the distance.

The air was heavy with the scent of burning eucalyptus and the rich aroma of roasting meat. Bryony had never spent a night in the open before. She was acutely conscious of the newness, the strangeness of it all. Exotic birds flitted through the shadows of the trees at the edge of the clearing and filled the evening sky with their songs, some high and tuneful, others low and almost coarse, but all unfamiliar. In the fading light, the surrounding gums seemed more ghostly than ever, holding up the dark, spreading umbrellas of their foliage against the dusk-reddened sky.

It would be dark soon.

She glanced at the second campfire, some fifty or so feet away, around which the rest of the men were gathered. As soon as the Captain returned and dinner was over, Gideon would be going there, too. Leaving her here, alone, with Simon and St. John. In the solitary tent that had been pitched behind her.

"Tell me about Captain St. John's property," she said suddenly to Gideon.

"Jindabyne?" He glanced up from mixing a kind of
unleavened bread he'd told her was called damper. " 'Tes..." He paused to consider his answer. " 'Tes rare country. Most of the Cap'n's fields are down in the valley, of course, but Jindabyne itself sits on the side of a hill that rises right up from the Hawkesbury. You can see for miles."

"Is it this wild?'

"Aye."

A twig snapped behind her. Bryony whirled around to see Hayden St. John appear out of the rapidly darkening fringe of the trees, the gun slung over his shoulder, a string of wild ducks dangling beside his thigh.

His white shirt glowed in the firelight, making his skin appear darker than it was. She thought he looked savage, primitive. Conscious of a warm, earthy sensation in the pit of her stomach, she watched him walk toward them with that rolling-hipped grace of his.

Gideon stood up to take the birds. The two men exchanged a few words, then Hayden St. John turned, and his gaze met and held Bryony's across the campfire. The evening had been steadily growing colder, but she suddenly felt hot. She ducked her head and fussed with the baby until she heard him go into the tent.

He reappeared a moment later and sat down on the opposite side of the fire from her. She was careful not to look at him. Shifting Simon around so that he lay on her lap with his head against her knees, she occupied herself making nonsense noises at him. The baby chuckled in delight, his mouth breaking into his toothless grin so that she couldn't help smiling back at him. Then she unconsciously glanced up at the baby's father, and the smile faded from her lips.

He was sitting cross-legged on the ground cleaning his gun. The dancing flames of the fire cast mysterious shadows across the harsh lines of his face and bronzed his naked forearms with golden light as his lean, sure hands moved over the gun in a way that reminded her of a lover's caress.

It was a manly pose, and a manly occupation. She couldn't begin to imagine Oliver, stripped down to his shirt, breeches, and boots, sitting cross-legged beside a fire in the middle of a primeval forest.

Oliver had never liked the country, not even the tame, settled countryside of Britain. He hadn't had much use for provincial towns like Penzance, either. Oliver had always prided himself on being a Man of the Town. London Town. A man comfortable in clubs and drawing rooms... and boudoirs, she thought wryly.

His body had been slim, not broad and well muscled. White instead of bronzed.

And thinking of Oliver's body had never made her blood heat as it did now, when she thought of the way Hayden St. John's body had looked this afternoon with the creek waters lapping at his darkened loins and glistening like dew drops across his hard, naked chest.

She jerked her mind away from the memory just as Gideon swept the ashes away from the damper he'd set to bake right in the coals. "Ready," he said with satisfaction.

The bread was surprisingly good—crusty, and lighter than she'd expected it to be. She wasn't so sure about the meat, but after a year of prison food, she'd eat anything.

After dinner they drank tea out of tin mugs, the water boiled in a big tin bucket Gideon called a billy can. She sipped her tea slowly, watching Gideon pack away the ducks he'd roasted into airtight crocks for tomorrow. Then he put the dishes and mugs he'd washed back in the tucker box, wished them a jaunty good night, and left to join the men around the other campfire.

Bryony watched him walk away, and shivered. With the sun finally down, the heat had suddenly gone out of the air and the night had become surprisingly cold. She glanced down at Simon. He'd fallen asleep.

"Give him to me, and I'll lay him in his cradle in the tent."

She looked up to find a pair of black boots planted
beside her. Her eyes traveled up the long line of his thighs, then quickly jumped to his face.

But his expression was unreadable.

"Yes... sir."

He reached for the baby as she handed Simon up to him, and her hand brushed his bare arm. It was only a simple, accidental touch, but it made her breath hitch.

She stood up quickly and reached to pour herself some more tea while he disappeared into the tent. To her chagrin, her hands were shaking so badly she spilt some of the dark, bitter liquid onto the fire. It hissed at her, sending up a plume of smoke.

She heard him come out of the tent. "Here," he said, dropping her cloak around her shoulders.

"Thank you."

He went to stand on the far side of the fire. He'd put on his greatcoat, but left it open. She looked into his taut face and felt something tremble deep within her. The campfire flared up between them, and for an instant their gazes met and held. Then a burst of laughter from the men's camp jerked Bryony's head around.

Someone had produced a fiddle, and Gideon and the redheaded man called McDuff were dancing around the fire. Against the dark background of the bush, the orange glow of the flames flickered on their white shirts and faces as they twirled around and around, their arms raised high, their feet kicking, their heads thrown back, laughing.

She glanced back at St. John. He lifted a flaming branch from the fire and touched it to the end of the cigar he held between his lips. The flame on the end of the branch flared, casting a reddish, almost sinister light across his handsome face.

There might be a dozen men only fifty feet away, but Bryony realized suddenly how alone with him she really was.

He threw the piece of wood back into the fire in a shower of sparks and glanced up to find her watching
him. His eyes narrowed. He exhaled a cloud of smoke that looked white against the night sky.

She stood with the elbow of her right arm cupped with her left hand, watching the smoke from his cheroot mingle with the smoke of the fire. Cicadas hummed. Somewhere beyond the firelight a horse snorted, moving awkwardly in its hobbles. The fiddle wailed, the men laughed, but the night around them seemed so silent and empty, it ached.

She tilted back her head and looked up at the clear dark sky above. An infinity of unfamiliar stars sparkled down at her, and she felt a wave of loneliness spread over her.

All her life she had looked up at the same stars moving above her in predictable patterns across the night sky. But here, all was strange, all unknown, all alien. There was nothing that brought home to her how far she was from everything and everyone she knew and loved, more than looking up at the Southern sky.

Tears burned her eyes, and she had to swallow to keep from letting them spill over.

"It's different all right," came his harsh, almost cruel voice, cutting into her thoughts. "But you don't look excited anymore. You look..." He paused, as if searching for the right word. "Scared."

She met his eyes and found them filled with a challenge. A challenge, and something else she didn't want to think about.

She shook her head, conscious of a thickness in her throat that made it difficult to speak. "No. Not scared."

It was only partially a lie. She was scared, all right, but not of the Australian sky. She was scared of him.

He drew deeply on his cheroot, his disturbing gaze still fixed on her face. "What, then?"

She made a depreciating gesture with her hand. "I feel... disconnected. From my home. My little girl. From myself—the person I was before."

"I thought your baby was a boy."

"I have another child—a daughter. I had to leave her behind when the ship sailed." She took a sip of her tea, but it was cold, and she threw away the rest of it with a quick, violent gesture.

"Bryony."

She didn't want to look at him, but she couldn't help it. The red glow from the flames of the fire seemed to accentuate the sharp bone structure of his face. He drew on his cheroot, staring at her through the smoke that rose from it.

Her breath caught in her throat, causing her breasts to rise. His gaze lowered for a moment before flickering to her face. There was a hunger there, a hunger that frightened her even as it called to an answering need deep within her.

A wind had come up. Bryony lay in her narrow bed of heather covered with canvas, listening to the wind sigh through the leaves of the surrounding trees. The moon was high enough now to shine brightly through the tent, clearly illuminating Simon asleep in his cradle, and the empty bed beyond him.

In the distance a night bird gave a low, mournful cry. She heard what sounded like a dog howling and thought there must be a homestead nearby. She could see the distant glow of the men's campfire, hear the low drone of their voices, the occasional outbreak of laughter. But the men were quieter now. It was getting late.

She shifted slightly, glancing toward the door of the tent. The flap hadn't been secured, and it flipped back and forth in the growing breeze.

He still stood before the fire. She could see the inverted V-shape of his legs, the boots widely spread. As she watched, he dropped his cigar and ground it beneath his heel.

For a moment she thought he was coming. She could barely breathe, her heart pounded so hard. Then she heard his voice from the direction of the other campfire, and she realized he must have gone to talk to the men.

More minutes passed. She was aware of an almost incredible stillness all around, broken only occasionally by the murmur of voices from the distant fire, and the croaking of some unseen frog. Her limbs started to feel very heavy. Her eyelids fluttered.

Even after almost a week away from the ship, when she closed her eyes she could still feel the incessant pitching and rolling that she'd known for some six months.

Jindabyne.

The hill the Aborigines called Jindabyne thrust up from the fertile floor of the valley, forcing the Hawkesbury to curve around it on its way to the sea. A gentle spring breeze ruffled the mass of red gums growing thickly at the base of the hill. Slate-green leaves swayed back and forth against the vivid sky. From here, the river was only a flash of sun-sparkled silver, glimpsed through a mass of foliage.

Hayden reined in his horse and let the wagons roll past him as he sat surveying his land with the fierce joy that never failed to fill him at the sight of it. Stands of ironbark and blackbutt covered its grassy slopes, along with pungent wattles and a dozen different kinds of gums. River gums and red gums, stringy barks, and the pale-trunked, ghostly white gums.

There were mounds of banksia, glorious now in their bloom, and stretches of deep grass sprinkled with native pansies and wild geranium and candytuft. He'd had to clear parts of it, of course, to make way for his fields of wheat and corn and the pastures for his growing herds of cattle and sheep and horses. But he would never clear it all, for it was the very wildness of this land that called to
him. He might need to work it, but he never wanted to see it completely tamed.

If he had his way, fifty years from now there would still be wallabies here, hopping down to the creek in the late afternoon. Curlews would still wail at dusk, and dingoes howl in the night. His grandchildren would still be able to look up and thrill to the flight of an egret, or watch a flock of sulfur-crested cockatoos wheel like a sun-streaked cloud across the blue Australian sky.

He rested his hand on his thigh and allowed his eyes to roam proudly over his land, seeing all that it was, all that it would be. And he felt an unexpected and unaccountable ache deep within him, an emptiness, that not even the rich beauty of his land could fill.

A whip cracked beside him, startling a crowd of blue wrens from a sheltered place beside the road. They rose suddenly into flight, looking like a gossamer of jewel-toned silk lifting in the breeze. He raised his hand to push back the brim of his hat, watching them...