Night in Eden (2 page)

Around her, low, slate-green hills thinly covered with strange, gaunt trees rolled away in every direction to be swallowed up by the gray clouds that hung heavily on the horizon. It was a vast, empty land—harsh and wild and unforgiving.

A row of bedraggled wattle and daub huts, inexpertly thatched, straggled away to the right. Near it, on the other side of the road, lay a crude burial ground. It was a wretched place, undignified by any markers and surrounded by a makeshift fence of brush and scrap timber. In another twenty years, most people would probably have forgotten it had ever existed. Only convicts were buried there, after all.

And their children.

Bryony stumbled to a halt, her eyes fixed on one tiny, newly filled grave.

Ahead of her, Hayden St. John reined in his horse and followed her gaze. "Is that where they buried your baby?"

She nodded.

He took one last pull on his cigar and dropped it into the mud of the road. "We have a few minutes... if you want to say good-bye."

Her head fell back, and she looked up at him through the driving rain. His eyes were a startling, brittle blue. She saw no mercy there, no compassion, and she found it difficult to believe she'd heard him right.

His gaze still locked with hers, he nodded.

She jerked away, walking stiffly toward the mound of ugly yellow mud they had piled on top of her Philip. He was down there in the cold and the dark. They hadn't even given him a decent coffin. Just wrapped him up in a strip of bark and laid him in that unloving cradle of earth and covered him up with dirt.

He was beyond her reach now. She would never hold him again. Never rest her cheek against his silky brown hair or breathe in the milky-sweet fragrance that was all his own. She would never see his quick, toothless grin, never hear the gurgle of his delighted laughter. Never watch him grow up to run and skip and holler. Never know the man he could have been.

She sank to her knees in the long, rank wet grass. She wanted to throw herself across the cold, bitter earth and shriek and howl and wail and let out some of the savage pain that was tearing her apart from the inside. But she was too afraid. Afraid that once the screams started, they'd never stop.

So she kept her spine rigidly erect, and clenched her fists at her sides to keep from shouting up into the gray, uncaring sky above her.
How much more? How much more must I suffer for what I've done? Hasn't it been
enough? Must my children suffer, too? First Madeline, and now Philip. Why? Why did you have to kill my baby?

Tears stung her eyes and burned the back of her nose and welled up to clog her throat. She closed them off, refusing to let them fall, because she knew that once they started, she wouldn't be able to stop them. And then everyone would see that somewhere, inside, where it mattered, she'd gone mad.

Behind her on his ugly gray horse was the man to whom she had been given. When he tired of waiting for her, she was going to have to get up and turn around and follow him. Not even the searing agony of Philip's death could numb her to what that meant. She was going to be expected to cook his meals and wash his clothes and clean his house and satisfy the urgings of his hard man's body. It was, after all, why women like her were sent out to this godforsaken corner of the world.

Bryony rose shakily to her feet. If she didn't leave soon, he might come and drag her away, and she didn't think she could bear that.

Walking away from Philip's grave was one of the hardest things she'd ever had to force herself to do. She had no idea where this man was taking her, or if she would ever be back here again. In time, the rain would flatten that sad mound and grass would cover the raw earth, and it would be as if Philip had never existed.

Bryony stopped and glanced wildly about, from the mist-shrouded hills, to the muddy, swollen river, to a nearby tree drooping gray in the downpour. In a cemetery without markers, how could she remember the location of one very small grave?

Her chest rose and fell with her labored breaths. She whirled and stared helplessly at Hayden St. John. He sat at his ease on his big horse, one hand resting on his hip. His hat brim was pulled low against the rain so that she couldn't see his eyes.

He sat there, unmoving, watching her. Then he swung out of the saddle and tied the big gray to the bottlebrush that grew beside the opening in the cemetery's fence. It was a crude fence, woven of brush and branches and odd bits of wood. There were even a few palings from someone's old picket fence stuck in there, and he pulled a couple of these out and brought them with him as he walked through the weeds and the mud toward her.

He didn't say anything, just slipped his hunting knife from its sheath at his hip and used the butt of it to drive the stakes deep into the earth, one at the head of the grave, the other at the foot.

She stood silent, watching him.

"Thank you," she whispered softly as he was putting his knife away.

But he didn't even look at her. He turned toward his horse. "Come on," he said, his voice hard and cold. "I want to make it back to Sydney before nightfall."

Then he pulled a linen handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the mud of her baby's grave from his hands.

The inn at the base of the hill was a crude structure. Built of gray wood roughly hewn into long, vertical slabs, it was so low and squat it looked as if it were hunkered down in a forlorn attempt to endure the misery of the weather. Rain sloughed in steady sheets off the shingled roof of the wide veranda that completely surrounded it. The yard was a mudflat. Beyond it, at the base of a slight embankment, ran the Parramatta River. Bryony saw a wharf and a flat-bottomed boat bobbing up and down beside it in the rain-pocked, gray-brown waters.

Hayden St. John turned his horse into the muddy yard and reined in beside the veranda. "We've got about an hour before the boat heads downriver for Sydney," he said, tossing her small bundle at her the way one might flick a coin to a street urchin. "Come with me."

Bryony dragged herself up onto the stone-flagged veranda and followed him into a cold, dark hall. The floor inside was of the same rough stone as the veranda, the walls unplastered and blackened with wood smoke and grime. Warm, welcoming firelight flickered in the public room off to the left. She heard the sound of loud, male laughter and smelled the sweet, malty tang of ale wafting through the open door. But they didn't go in there.

Instead she followed St. John down a short, narrow hall, toward the private rooms at the rear. Rain dripped onto his collar from the dark wet curls at the base of his neck. She watched the tails of his greatcoat sway and slap against his thighs as he walked, and a sharp stab of fear sliced through her fatigue and twisted into her belly. The distant, muffled crying of a baby caused her to shudder. Her breath soughed in and out, and the scratchy wool ties of her cloak suddenly seemed too tight about her throat, as if they might strangle her. She tugged at them, trying to loosen them, but they were wet and knotted and her fingers were too stiff and unsteady.

He stopped before a crude plank door at the end of the hall and pushed it open. Rusty hinges creaked.

They entered a small room almost as dark as the passage, for the veranda outside the narrow, double-hung window blocked most of what little light there was on such a gloomy day. A fire had been kindled on the small stone hearth, but it burned sluggishly and hissed.

A great four-poster bed stood square in the middle of the room, virtually filling it. A straight-backed chair sat before the fire, and there was an old washstand with a plain white bowl and pitcher to one side of the bed. But what immediately drew and held Bryony's attention was the slight, sandy-haired young man she saw standing beside the window. He'd been peering out at the rain, but at their entrance he turned and gave her a friendly grin.

"Top o' the mornin' to you," he exclaimed in a lilting Irish accent so thick it took her a moment to decipher what he'd said.

He wore a blue, coarse wool waistcoat and coat with shapeless canvas trousers and a roughly woven shirt that marked him as an assigned servant. A convict. He was probably in his early twenties, although a light dusting of freckles across his upturned nose and the big ears that stuck out from his head gave him the look of an overgrown schoolboy.

But what made Bryony stare was the squirming bundle he held in his arms. A baby.
He's holding a baby,
she thought almost stupidly. Whatever she'd been expecting to happen in this room, it didn't involve a red-faced, squalling baby.

"I'm Gideon," said the young man. "Gideon Shanaghan, from County Kerry. And this here wee lad is young master Simon St. John." He held the crying baby up for her inspection.

Simon
St. John?

"I... I'm Bryony Wentworth." She tried to return the Irishman's smile, but her face felt stiff, as if she'd forgotten how. "From Cornwall," she added. It seemed to be important here where people were from. When the
Indispensable
had dropped anchor in Sydney Cove, hundreds of small boats had descended upon them, with people hanging over the sides and shouting: "Anyone from Cork?"

"Anyone from Chester?"

"Anyone from Aberdeen?" Everyone was anxious for news from home. It was often the only way they heard about things. Things like parents or wives that had died. Or babies that had been born.

Her gaze dropped back to the baby. He was small and shriveled, with the pinched look of a child that wasn't thriving. In that sense he reminded her of Philip, although Philip had been dark, whereas this little boy was strikingly fair.

Like Madeline.

As always, the thought of the daughter she'd been forced to leave behind tore at something inside of her, something that bled and hurt. Oh God, how it hurt.

Hayden St. John shrugged out of his dripping greatcoat and tossed it over the rail at the foot of the bed. His gaze lingered on the baby in Gideon Shanaghan's arms, and the hard, cruel lines of his face softened. As she watched, he smiled tenderly at his small son in a way that tugged strangely at her heart.

"How is he, Gideon?" he asked quietly.

"He's that hungry." The Irishman grinned over at Bryony. "I hope you got supplies."

"Supplies?" Bryony clawed impatiently at the choking ties of her cloak. There was a shredding sound as the worn material gave way completely, and the wet, hateful thing slipped from her shoulders and fell in a sodden heap on the floor.

St. John glanced from his baby to her, his face so hard and emotionless that she thought she must have imagined that earlier gentling. His narrowed blue eyes slowly traveled the length of her in a way that made her feel hot and uncomfortable. "God Almighty. You're a mess."

Bryony glanced down. Her dress was as wet as the cloak and caked with mud from the hem to the collar.

"The first thing you'll need to do is take that dress off," he said.

Her stomach rose and fell with a swift, sickening lurch, and her throat was so tight, her voice came out as a hoarse croak. "Wh-what?"

"You heard me. Get that dress off." He nodded toward the washstand by the bed. "There's water in the pitcher. You'll need to wash your hands and face, too, before you feed him. But be quick about it. He's hungry."

And then the meaning of the young Irishman's statement about "supplies" suddenly became clear to her. "You mean, you want me to be a
wet nurse
for your baby?"

Hayden St. John stood in the middle of the floor, his hips cocked forward, his legs braced wide in a stance she found decidedly threatening. Something flashed in his eyes. Something dangerous.

"That will be your main duty, yes."

Bryony felt her insides tightening up, tighter and tighter. She had expected to suffer rape at this man's hands; she still might, if the mother of that squalling baby didn't satisfy him enough in bed. But for some reason, the thought of having this man use her body to suckle his son seemed only marginally better than having him use her body to slacken his lust. It was still a violation, an abuse of something that for Bryony had always been private—tenderly intimate and very, very personal.

Her entire being rose in revolt. Her milk was
Philip's,
not his! This baby's mother, whether she was the man's wife or his concubine, could just keep feeding her child herself. She took a deep, hitching breath and said, "I won't do it."

She heard a kind of strangled exclamation from the Irishman, but she didn't have time to look at him. She was too busy looking at Hayden St. John.

And she thought that she indeed must have gone mad to have challenged the man in this way.

In the tense silence she heard a log on the hearth fall. A flame caught and burned brighter, throwing up a tongue of light that glazed the flaring bones of his cheeks. His eyes were slitted in a stare so cold and deadly she fancied it might pierce right through her. Without saying a word or even shifting his gaze, he jerked his head from Gideon to the door.

Gideon put the baby down in a nest of pillows on the bed and left the room, quietly shutting the door behind him. The silence stretched out between them, taut and deadly. Then he said, "I don't advise trying to challenge me. Take off your dress."

Fear clogged her throat, but she refused to back down. She knew he undoubtedly would triumph in the end. But pride—or maybe something as fundamental as her sense of self—demanded this show of resistance. She shook her head mutely.

He walked over to the washstand, picked up the pitcher, and poured some water into the bowl. He moved quietly, with a lean, lithe grace. She watched him warily.

"I'm telling you for the last time," he said calmly. "Take it off."

"I'm not going to feed that baby with my milk. I'm not a—a cow."

Without warning, he set down the pitcher and whirled around, closing the distance between them with two long strides. Before she realized what he was about, his hand closed over the collar of her dress and jerked it down.

She gasped and tried to turn away, but the dress was as old and worn as the cloak, and the bodice ripped easily, gaping open clear to her waist.

She wore only a thin shift beneath it. Her arms flew up in an instinctive movement to cover her breasts. But he wasn't through yet. His hand dropped to the waistband of her skirt. One more tug, and the dress shredded completely. He threw the ragged remnant away from him so hard, it landed with a thud against the far wall. She was left standing before him in nothing but her shift and petticoats.

His long, lean fingers gripped her bare shoulders, and he jerked her to him, so close she could see the creases in his tanned cheeks, so close she could smell his anger, feel his raw, masculine power. "When I tell you to do something, you do it. You have been assigned to me, woman. Do you understand what that means here? It means I can make you my cow, or my mistress, or even make you whore for me, if I want to. And if you think you can complain to the magistrates, just try it. They'll likely flog you for your impudence. Before they send you right back to me."

She stared up into his face. Something frightening whipped itself around her belly and squeezed tight.

"Have you ever seen a woman flogged?" he demanded harshly.

Bryony opened her lips, but no sound came out. "Have you?"

She drew in a deep, hitching breath. "Y-Yes."

The captain of the
Indispensable
had had one of the women on the ship flogged for insolence, on what he delicately called her "bared breech." He'd made all the other convicts watch. Bryony would never forget it. The woman had been sentenced to fifteen lashes, but the woman fainted after the tenth. And all the while the metal-tipped rawhide thongs of the cat-o'-nine-tails were ripping apart her naked flesh she'd screamed, cries of agony mixed with obscenities so vile the captain had ordered someone to stuff a gag in her mouth.

They said it was a matter of pride among men to take the lash without a sound, but after that experience Bryony had decided that maybe if the men screamed more, they'd be flogged less. The captain never ordered a woman whipped again. Not even when one of them said she bet he had a prick that would shame a scrawny farmyard rooster. He'd just kept walking, pretending he hadn't heard her. They said it was because the flogged woman's screams had unnerved him. Or maybe it was because the sight of the woman being stripped had made the sailors so horny that some of them had broken into the women's deck that night and had to be flogged themselves the next day.

They'd heard the cat often on the ship. Bryony had come to fear it more than she did almost anything else.

"The lash is used a lot in this colony," he was saying. He was so close, she felt the hot rush of his breath against her cheek. "I can have you flogged for impertinence if you simply use the wrong bloody tone of voice when you talk to me. And if I ever,
ever
have reason to suspect that you're neglecting my baby in any way, I will have it done, and make no mistake about it. Do you understand?"

God, how she hated him. Her breath backed up thick and hot in her throat. "Yes... sir."

Letting her go, he reached for the cloth from the washstand and held it out to her in one tanned fist. Her gaze fell to that lean, strong hand because she didn't think she could endure looking at the dark cruelty of his face any more.

She washed herself. She did it quickly, using a corner of the cloth to scrub her face and shivering when she splashed the cold water over her dirt-encrusted arms.

Hayden propped his shoulders against one of the massive bedposts and watched her as she bent over the bowl, her hips swaying back and forth with her movements.

Christ, she was thin. He could see the bones of her back and ribs sticking out through the cheap cloth of her shift. She had nice lines, though, he thought. A long back that tapered down to a tiny waist before swelling out into the angle of her hips. If she were better fed, he suspected she'd be strong and hale. She was a tall woman—much larger than Laura. Laura had been exquisitely petite and delicate, almost childlike, even when she was a woman grown. Laura had been the kind of woman that made a man ache to protect her and take care of her.

Bryony Wentworth was not that kind of woman. Her dark, mysterious eyes flashed pride and strength. She wasn't going to be an easy woman to master, but master her he was determined to do.