Night in Eden (23 page)

With an agonized, gut-wrenching sob, she subsided against his warm, broad shoulder and let him carry her back to the land of the living.

Rain dripped off the silver-green leaves of the gum trees to patter like thousands of little feet on the storm-flattened grass below.

The sky hung low and oppressive, obscuring the mountains, hiding everything but the little clearing with its white marble monument and sad row of bark-covered graves. But even though she couldn't see it, Bryony could still feel the vast, empty continent stretching out around her. For a moment she felt as if Australia were smothering her—swallowing her, the way it had swallowed Louisa and her children.

The damp earth thudded dully on the lids of the two roughly built coffins, one large, the other pitifully small. Gideon said an Our Father, but there was no priest to perform the ritual of the dead, for the Irish exiled here suffered as much from the deprivation of the comforts of their religion as from the deprivation of their freedom.

Louisa, at least, would suffer no more. For a moment Bryony almost envied her.

"Come, Bryony," said Hayden. "It's over."

Bryony put out her hand. "No, wait—please." For some reason she couldn't explain, she had to see the graves filled. She needed that sense of finality.

Only when the last shovelful of dirt was put back did she lean down to lay two roses on the fresh earth.
A
yellow one for Sarah, a white one for Louisa.

She looked up to see Will Carver staring down at the row of graves. She wondered not for the first time how
this man really felt about the Dublin thief he'd once raped in the hull of a transport ship. Together they'd lived thirteen years of their lives, carved a home out of an alien wilderness, and brought five children into the world. Had he loved her? He'd never married her.

She paused beside him, wanting to say something in comfort, but their enmity ran too deep, even in grief. All she could think of to say was: "You will make those bark covers for their graves, won't you?"

His graying head swung around to her, the old saber scar standing out white against the beard stubble on his face. At first she didn't think he was going to answer her, then he said, "No. I always thought 'twas a daft thing to do." He pursed his lips to spit a stream of golden-brown tobacco juice into the dank grass at her feet, and strode off into the wet bush.

By nightfall the rain had stopped. A warm wind swinging out of the north blew away the remnants of the clouds. The temperature rose, the wind died, and the earth steamed.

She lay in bed with both sets of French doors and shutters thrown open to the darkness, but not a breath of air stirred. A koel in a tree somewhere up the hill had been emitting its tuneless cry for hours. It sounded precisely like a child trying to whistle, and Bryony thought if it didn't shut up soon, she was going to go mad. A dingo howled in the distance and a pair of crickets set up a monotonous
creek-creek, creek-creek,
until she finally flung her pillow across the room with a smothered oath and got up.

It was a dark night. The moon was no more than a pale sliver, but the storm seemed to have swept the sky so clean it sparkled. And the stars... Ah, the stars were a
sight to behold. She ventured out onto the veranda at the side of the house and stood with her arms clasped around a post, just staring at the stars.
It's different all right.

It seemed so long ago, that night when she'd stood in the light of the campfire and gazed up at the stars arcing above her. She had felt so lost and lonely and afraid.

She was lost and lonely now, but for a different reason.

She loosened her hold on the post and walked along the veranda, watching the flashing dark shapes of the sugar-gliders hunting insects in her fledgling garden.

When had she stopped thinking of it as Laura's garden, she wondered, and started thinking of it as her own? The inspiration, the plan had been Laura's, but the reality was all hers.

A sudden ripple of heat passed over her, like a bream of restless wind. Only there was no wind. She jerked her head around and found herself confronting Laura's husband.

He stood in the shadows of his room. She knew he slept naked. Sometimes at night when she couldn't sleep, she'd lie in her own bed and think about him sprawling long, lean, and naked across his bed in the next room.

He was naked now.

A band of silvery starlight spilled through the open door and lay like a slash across his body, contouring every bulge and hollow of his work-honed muscles. He stood there, hard and blatantly virile, and the wonder of him stole her breath.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, his voice harsh, aching.

"I... I couldn't sleep." She sounded breathless. She was breathless. "I couldn't stop thinking about Louisa and Sarah and... And it's so hot."

He was hot. He took a step closer, and she saw that the dark hair that matted his chest was wet with sweat. It curled around his nipples, plunged like an arrow toward his groin. Her breath left her lungs in a
woosh.
She had
imagined what he would look like. But she had never imagined him like this. He was magnificent.

Her head snapped up and she drew in a deep, shuddering breath that caused her breasts to rise. She was drenched in sweat herself. Her damp shift clung to her, hugging her breasts, revealing every swell of hip and thigh. She felt his relentless eyes upon her. She'd never been more aware of her own body.

A slow, sweet yearning bloomed within her, and she had to bite back a moan. He braced his palms against the door frame and leaned into them. She could see the veins stand out and the sinews tighten beneath the brown skin of his arms, see the shadows of hair in their hollows. She could see his face. See the taut, almost frightening look of arousal, the dark blaze of desire that shone in his eyes. He was fierce and he was beautiful and he was frightening, and she wanted him. She wanted him so very badly.

He squeezed his eyes shut, his fingers gripping the wood, and she thought he might have shuddered. She could see the pulse that beat, hard and fast, at the base of his throat. She had to clench her hands to keep from reaching out and touching him there.

Then she felt the seductive heat of his eyes flow over her, wrap itself around her, coax her to him.

"Let it happen, Bryony," he said, his voice low and tempting. "You know you want it. Stop fighting me. Stop fighting yourself. And come to me."

"No," she said, or wanted to say, but her voice was only a sigh. And when her mind willed her legs to move, all they did was tremble.

"Come." His hands dropped to his sides, and he took a step toward her.

"I won't be your mistress," she said in an agonized whisper. "I won't be any man's mistress."

She saw the yearning in his eyes. Saw the need in his soul. "Bryony..." He took another step toward her.

A few days later Will Carver asked for leave to go to Green Hills and catch a sloop for Sydney Town. When he came back, it was with a pale, redheaded girl from the Parramatta Female Factory.

Bryony was milking her cows when they rode into the yard. She stood up, stretching her back as she watched the girl slide wearily down from Will's roan. While Carver went to unsaddle his horse, the girl stayed where she was, slumped in the shadow of the barn.

She looked so lost and afraid, standing there by herself. Bryony finished her milking as quickly as she could. She set the pails in the dairy and hurried down the yard toward the girl.

"Hello," Bryony called, waving to her.

The girl glanced up, and Bryony was shocked to realize how young she was. She was fourteen, maybe fifteen at the most. Her gray eyes were wide with fear, and she had an ugly bruise discoloring the side of her face.

Bryony slowed to a halt a few feet from her. "Hello. I'm Bryony Wentworth. From Cornwall."

The girl cast a scared glance toward the barn behind her. "Ann McBride. From Glasgow." Her voice was a whisper. "Do you... do you belong to Mr. Carver, as well?"

Bryony shook her head. "No. I'm assigned to Captain St. John." She reached out and carefully turned the girl's marked face to the light. "That's a bad bruise," she said softly, frowning. "Did he give it to you?"

The girl cast another apprehensive glance toward the barn, and nodded. "When I... when he..." She put up her hands to cover her face, as if in so doing she could hide her shame.

Bryony pressed her lips together tightly, biting back her opinion of Will Carver. When she could trust herself, she said, "He's not allowed to hit you, you know. It's against the—"

There was an angry growl, and a big fist descended on
the girl's shoulder, swinging her around. "Ye stay away from her," Will Carver told the girl, pointing one fat, dirty finger at Bryony. "Stay clean away from her. And ye remember it, girl, because if I ever see ye talkin' to her again, ye'll regret it."

His hand slid down to wrap around the girl's slim arm as he turned toward Bryony. "Ye leave my woman alone, ye hear?"

"How can you let Will Carver do this?" Bryony demanded.

Hayden knew exactly what she was talking about. He paused in the yard with one hand on the veranda post and turned slowly to face her. She stood at the corner of the house, her intent, accusing gaze fixed on him. She must have been digging in her garden because she held a bunch of carrots in one hand and a shovel in the other. There was a smudge of dirt on her strong chin.

He was hot and tired and dirty. The harvest was in, but the threshing wasn't finished, and they were still burning off the stubble in the fields, a risky thing to do in this heat.

Against his will, his eyes wandered over her. He might be tired, but he wasn't too tired to notice the way the summer sun had touched her cheeks with a rosy glow and deepened the burgundy highlights in her hair. Nor was he too tired to remember how she'd looked in the moonlight, with her hair curling wildly about her bare shoulders and her chemise clinging damply to the curve of her hip. Desire rose within him, hot and insistent and unwelcome.

He swore softly under his breath and climbed the low step to the veranda. "You heard about Will Carver's new woman, did you?" he said over his shoulder, walking into the house.

She laid the shovel and carrots on a bench and followed him into the house and down the hall. "Ann McBride is not a woman. She's a child. And he raped her—and beat her."

Hayden pressed his lips together. He didn't like it, either, but there was nothing he could do about it. He shrugged with studied casualness. "It's not my affair, Bryony. Or yours."

"Will Carver works for you."

"Precisely. He works for me; I don't own him. He's a free man, and he has as much right to a woman from the Factory as any man in the colony."

She had followed him into his room by now. "I thought it was against the law to strike an assigned servant?"

He tossed his dusty hat on his desk. "It is. In Sydney, servants have been known to go to a magistrate and lay charges against their masters. But out here in the bush, it's different. A servant needs a pass from his master to get into town to see a magistrate. And if the master refuses to give him a pass and he decides to go anyway, then he can be picked up and flogged or hanged for absconding." He stripped off his dirty shirt and flexed his tired muscles.

"But he's raping her!"

"Then, in that case, she'd be considered his de facto wife, and men are allowed to beat and rape their wives." His hands dropped to the flap of his breeches, and he looked up at her and gave her a deliberately nasty grin. "And unless you want to suffer the same fate, I suggest you get the hell out of here."

Her eyes dropped to his breeches. He had them half open by now, and the effects of his thoughts about what she looked like in her damp chemise were more than evident. Her dark brown eyes opened wide, and the sunny glow on her cheeks deepened to a richer hue. "I... I'll put a can of hot water outside your door," she said hastily, and backed out of the room.

He stood watching her go, the smile fading slowly
from his lips. He'd have a talk with Will this evening, he decided.

Bryony wasn't the only one upset by what Will Carver was doing to Ann McBride in his hut on the far side of the hill. Quincy, too, seemed to be taking a healthy interest in the young girl's plight.

Only in Quincy's case, Bryony was afraid the effects of his interest could be decidedly
unhealthy.

"She's sportin' a black eye today," he said one afternoon, when he brought Bryony some water from the spring. "Did ye see it?"

Bryony shook her head.
"I
rarely see her. Every time
I
come anywhere near her, she runs."

"Aye, he said he'd beat her if he ever caught her talkin' to ye."