Night in Eden (3 page)

She straightened up, drying her face and arms with the other end of the cloth. Then she set the cloth beside the bowl and turned around. "If I have to feed him, I'd like some privacy," she said. Her head was held high, but she kept her eyes carefully downcast, hiding the hate he knew lurked there.

This woman is a survivor,
he thought with reluctant admiration. She must have gone through the worst kind of hell in the last year or so. Yet not even all the horrors she'd suffered—and he knew they must have been considerable—had managed to break her.

In his experience there were three kinds of people in this world, and the wretched system that was the penal colony of New South Wales could be counted on to grind down and destroy two of them.

The ones who were weak, who gave up and let themselves be crushed, usually died quickly. And then there were their opposites, the rebels, the ones who felt compelled to butt their heads against authority. They were doomed, too. Penal colonies seemed to attract more than their fair share of sadists to positions of authority; they could always be counted on to flog and starve the rebels of this world until they either broke them, or killed them.

It was the ones in the middle, the ones like this woman here, the ones who could hold onto their pride and self-respect but had the sense to know when to hug it quietly to themselves; they were the ones who survived.

"Will you leave us, please?" she asked again.

Hayden shook his head. "No. I have no intention of leaving you alone with Simon yet."

He watched as a tide of hot color rushed up her neck to her cheeks. He couldn't tell if it was caused by anger or embarrassment, but he suspected it was a bit of both. Her chest heaved on a quickly indrawn breath, drawing his eyes to her breasts.

She might be skinny, but she had fine, ripe breasts. They were so full of milk they were leaking. He could see the dampness spreading across her shift. The thin, wet material clung to her, clearly revealing the dark shapes of her nipples.

Her gaze followed his downward. She brought her palms up to press them, flat, against her breasts, trying to stop the flow. The color in her cheeks deepened.

Standing tall and painfully self-possessed, she walked past him to lift the baby from the bed and take him to the chair before the fire. Hayden watched her carefully as she cradled Simon in the crook of her arm and untied the frayed ribbon that held her shift at the neck. She lifted her head, and her gaze captured his, never wavering as she peeled back the thin material of her shift to expose her breast.

The breast she revealed was so engorged with milk that he thought it must hurt. And he wondered at the kind of pride that would lead her to refuse to wet-nurse his son when her own body must have been aching for the kind of relief only a baby could bring it.

Simon smelled the milk on her and turned his head, rooting. But the breast was so full and hard he kept losing the nipple. He screwed up his little face and turned red, squalling more furiously than Hayden had ever heard him. It took several tries before she was able to guide the nipple with its streaming milk back into the baby's mouth and keep it there.

The crying ceased abruptly. In the sudden quiet Hayden could hear the plop-plop of rainwater dripping off the veranda roof outside the window, the slurping sound of his son nursing, and the crackling of the fire on the hearth. The woman was no longer looking at either him or Simon. She was staring into the fire, as if she wanted no part of either him or the baby she'd been forced to put to her breast.

Hayden stood there for a long time, watching his son guzzle greedily at the rich flow of life-giving milk. The skin of her breasts was fine, he noticed, almost translucent; he could clearly see the blue tracery of the veins that ran beneath where one of Simon's tiny hands rested against the pearly fullness beside his cheek.

Then he realized the convict woman was no longer looking into the fire. She was watching him eyeing her breast. His gaze rose to meet hers. He expected her to look away again, embarrassed by her nakedness, but she didn't.

"He seems very hungry," she said unexpectedly. "How long has it been since he's had anything to eat?"

Hayden straightened up. "Three days. Maybe four— since he had a woman's milk, that is. We tried giving him cow's milk and goat's milk, but he couldn't seem to keep it down."

She paused in the act of shifting the baby to her left breast, an inexplicable expression shadowing her pale face. "His mother's milk dried up?"

"His mother died in childbirth." Uncrossing his arms, he walked over to stand and gaze unseeingly out the window.

"Childbirth?" said the woman in a queer voice. "He's small, but he doesn't look newborn."

"He's not." Even to his own ears, Hayden's voice sounded dead, wooden. "He was born four months ago." He rested his hands on the windowsill and leaned into them, pressing down until the flesh showed white. "I had hired a woman from Green Hills. A settler's wife who had a young girl. But she's increasing again. It dried up her milk."

"Green Hills?" she repeated, questioning.

There was apprehension in her voice that Hayden put down to fear of the bush. Most women were afraid of the bush. "Green Hills is a settlement two or three days' drive north of here, on the Hawkesbury River." He turned around to rest his hips on the windowsill. "It's downriver from Jindabyne, my property. We'll be going back there as soon as I'm finished buying supplies in Sydney."

She didn't say anything, but swiveled her head to stare at the fire again. Then, with her face still turned away from him, she said quietly, "You should have told me his mother is dead. I never would have refused to feed him if I had known."

"Would it have made such a difference?" he demanded harshly.

"Of course." Her head swung back around, and he saw that her face was pale and tight with some emotion he couldn't name. "What do you think I am?"

Hayden rested his hands on the windowsill behind him, his legs stretched out in front, and studied her thoughtfully.

He wasn't sure what she was. She puzzled him. Her voice might hold a soft Cornish burr, but it was a refined voice and undeniably educated. There was a pride and quiet dignity there, too, beneath her stubborn, headstrong nature, that spoke of birth and breeding.

He wondered what she'd been transported for. She obviously hadn't started out in the gutter, even if she had ended up there. He felt an unexpected stirring within him, a stirring that was part interest, part admiration, and part something else.

And it occurred to him that it would probably have been better for both of them if she
had
been the simple two-penny trollop he'd first assumed her to be.

The trip down the river to Sydney Town seemed as unending as the rain.

Slumped on a bench beneath the makeshift shelter at the rear of the boat, Bryony held Hayden St. John's baby in her cramped arms.

The rain fell in a continuous curtain, virtually obscuring the gray-green hills that rose up from either bank. Even the occasional stands of trees seemed but ghostly things. They appeared for a moment out of the mist to trail their silvery leaves over the water's edge, then vanish again into the gloom. The country around her seemed so wild, so alien. And as vast and empty as the soul within her.

She swallowed the knot in her throat and looked down at the sleeping infant. He was making sucking motions in his sleep, the way Philip used to do. It was a memory that brought with it an anguish so piercing she almost gasped.

This baby might fill her arms, but he could never fill her empty heart. And holding him was a constant, almost unbearable reminder of the other two babies she'd held. And had lost.

Her gaze lifted from the baby to his father, and the ache within her twisted itself into something sharper, something more frightening. He seemed unconcerned with the driving rain that beat down on his wide-brimmed hat and broad shoulders. He stood at the bow of the boat, his spurred boots spread wide, his arms folded across his chest in that aggressively masculine stance of his. As she watched, the sailor beside him said something, and a quick, wicked smile flashed across St. John's face. Then he tipped back his dark head and laughed. The deep, throaty sound of it reached her across the length of the boat.

She glanced quickly away, conscious of a tumult of feelings, deep down in her belly. God help her, she knew nothing about this man except that he was hard and mean and dangerous, and that he frightened her terribly. Yet she
belonged
to him.

I can make you my mistress....

Bryony remembered the weight of his hands on her bare shoulders, and she felt her insides quiver. As if drawn by some kind of awful fascination, her gaze returned to settle on Hayden St. John.

He had the clothes and speech of a gentleman, but for all that, she decided, he was an adventurer. A man who acknowledged no laws but his own, who took what he wanted. A man as wild and untamed as this rugged land he had chosen to make his home.

"'Tes hot, if'n you'd like some."

Bryony turned to find Gideon Shanaghan holding a steaming tin mug of tea out to her. "Oh, yes, thank you." She gratefully relinquished the sleeping baby's weight into his arms as he handed her the cup.

Gideon settled himself beside her. He held Simon with such easy confidence that she smiled and said, "Either you had a lot of younger brothers and sisters, or you've had babies of your own."

He grinned at her. "Sure, 'tes both. I was the oldest of seven, and Mary and me, we had ourselves two lusty boys..." His smile slipped slightly. "Before I went and got myself transported."

Bryony stared down into the murky depths of the tea. It looked like a vile brew, but at least it was hot. "I left a three-year-old girl in Cornwall."

She glanced up to meet his gentle gray eyes, and for a moment they shared the dark, unspeakable torment of each other's loss. Then he said quietly, "To be sure, her father'll be takin' good care of her."

Bryony shook her head. "My uncle has her. Her—her father's dead."

A familiar, aching weight of guilt pressed down upon her. Bryony had carried her guilt over Oliver's death with her, like a burden, for so long now. It had grown no lighter; she had simply learned to live with it. Yet, in a way, it seemed strange to be mentioning Oliver, here now. It was as if he'd been a part of someone else's life, someone who had died with him.

She looked over to where Hayden St. John still stood at the prow of the boat, the wind whipping his greatcoat about his thighs. He had one hand resting on his hip, his fingers curling around the hilt of that frightful knife. "Gideon?" she said, leaning forward. "Does he always wear that knife?"

Gideon turned toward his master. "Aye, most times. Unless he's wearing a pistol. Although I've known him to carry both."

"But... why?"

Gideon laughed. "And why do you think, then, livin' in a colony that's been mostly populated with nothin' but thieves and murderers? Just last week three bushrangers jumped him when he was riding 'tween Green Hills and Jindabyne. He killed two of them straight out, and the third didn't live long enough to hang."

"He shot them?"

"Lord, no. There weren't time for that."

She turned her face away from the sight of that hideous knife and the hard, unforgiving man who wore it. The thought of being touched by a man like that, of being forced to lie beneath him and take his body into hers, sent a chill through her that had nothing to do with the weather, and went far deeper than the marrow of her bones.

Her gaze dropped to the baby sleeping peacefully in

Gideon's arms, and she wondered how the other woman, the one who'd died giving his child life, had borne it. "Was Simon's mother his servant, too?" she asked in a queer voice. "An assigned convict?"

"Mrs. St. John? Lord, no. 'Tes a real lady, she was. A viscount's daughter." An odd, rapt expression crept into Gideon's face. "Sure, she was like an angel, she was that beautiful. The daintiest, sweetest thing a man ever did see. The Cap'n, he fair worshiped her—cherished her like, if you know what I mean?"

Bryony shook her head. She could imagine Hayden St. John ravishing a woman, but worshiping her? Cherishing her?

"He ain't been the same since she died," Gideon was saying. "Took it real hard, he did. Blames himself, I reckon, for bringing her out here. Heard him say once, he never shoulda done it. 'Tes no place for a lady, that's sure."

No place for a lady, Bryony thought. No, this wild, hard land was no place for a mere woman, either.

She didn't want to look at St. John again, but she couldn't seem to help it. He stood gazing out over the cloud-shrouded hills, his feet braced against the movement of the boat, his long, dark hair tousled by the wind. He looked as frightening and hard as the land he surveyed.

Yet he had taken to wife a lady, a viscount's daughter with a face like an angel and a temperament to match. She wondered what he would think of a woman like her—a felon. How would he treat her?

But she already knew the answer to that. In the space of a few hours, he'd stripped her half naked and threatened to have her flogged. Twice. Bryony drained the bitter dregs of her tea, and sighed.

"You look that tired, you do," said Gideon, stretching to his feet. "Why don't you try and get some sleep? I'll keep Simon here for a while."

She would have argued about it, but Gideon just laughed and told her not to be daft, and walked away, the baby still in his arms.

Bryony leaned back against a crate and gratefully let her eyes slide shut. She was so tired. She'd spent—how many days and nights? two? three?—fighting for Philip's life after the sickness took hold of him, clutching his wracked little body to her, too afraid to sleep even when he slept, lest she wake and find him dead.

Bryony eased herself into the warm, sweetly scented bathwater, and sighed with rare contentment.

She had expected to be put in the servants' attics. Or to be forced to share her master's bedchamber, as well as his bed. Instead St. John had ordered a pallet put up for her in the private parlor of the Sydney inn, where he was staying.

In contrast to the crude, rustic inn where they'd rested beside the river in Parramatta, the Three Jolly Fishermen was a fine, two-story building of cut sandstone set high on the western rim of the cove. The private parlor was large and finely furnished, with a wide casement window overlooking the winding, rutted streets of the town and the choppy, mist-shrouded bay below.

Bryony's eyes drifted closed as the warm water enfolded her, soothing her soul as well as her body. It was the first bath she'd had in a year. She didn't count the time at Gravesend when they'd made them all strip and then dunked them before giving them the government-issued clothing, which was to last them on their voyage and beyond. That had been an exercise in humiliation rather than cleanliness. She tried to forget it... although she doubted she ever would.

When she opened her eyes, her gaze fell on Simon St. John, playing with his feet on the blanket she'd spread out on the floor beside her. He was already looking better, she decided, even after just a couple of feedings. That pinched, wizened look he'd worn when she'd first seen him was fading, and she realized he was actually quite a pretty baby, with big green eyes, pale blond hair, and delicate features. He looked nothing like Hayden St. John. She could only assume he took after his dead mother.

She must have been a beautiful woman, indeed.

As Bryony worked the landlady's gentle, rose-scented soap all over her, she remembered the rigid set of Hayden St. John's shoulders and the way his hands had gripped the windowsill when he told her of his wife's death. Had he loved his wife so much? Worshiped her, as Gideon said?

Bryony slipped farther beneath the water. What would it be like, she wondered wistfully, to be loved like that by a man? She thought of Oliver, and experienced a moment of such intense envy for Simon St. John's beautiful, well-cherished mother that it took her by surprise and she had to remind herself guiltily that the woman was dead. Sitting up, she dunked her head under the water and began to soap her hair, rinsing it over and over until it was squeaky clean.

The bath felt so wonderful, she had to force herself to get out. She dried off with one of the landlady's soft towels, then slipped on a worn but clean shift and petticoat. But she couldn't quite bring herself to put on her only remaining dress again. It was wet and stained from the ride down the river, and she felt too gloriously clean.

She settled on the rug beside the baby and pulled a broken comb through her tangled wet hair, letting the fire dry it. Simon abandoned his toes to stare in wide-eyed wonder at the slow, rhythmic motion of her hands, running the comb up and down.

"Getting sleepy, young man?" she said softly, smiling down at him.

Simon kicked his feet, chortled, and gave her a big, toothless grin.

The smile faded from her lips as she gazed down into his happy little face.

No,
she told herself.
You are not going to care for this baby.
They'd torn out half of her heart when they'd taken Madeline from her, and she'd just buried what was left of it in a muddy grave in Botany Bay. She wasn't sure she could even go on living, let alone allow herself to love again. Especially not a baby. Especially not a baby that belonged to a man like Hayden St. John.

But she couldn't quite stop herself from reaching out and ruffling the golden curls that tumbled over his forehead.

Just once.