"Uncle Edward look after her?"
wailed Bryony. "Oh, God. When I think of her growing up in that dark, miserable house, with all that disapproval, and no love or kindness or—"
Felix Fraser's hands slipped down to grip her arms. He held her away from him and gently shook her. "At least she'll have a chance to grow up, Bryony. At least Sir Edward finally agreed to take her, however reluctantly. I've seen children her age—younger—torn from their
mother's arms and left on the docks with no one to care for them. No one."
Then he hugged her to him again, this lawyer who wasn't related to her and who hadn't seen her more than a few times in his life; this funny little man who was willing to hold her and comfort her despite the filth and the stench and the fear of jail fever that had kept her uncle from even approaching her. "Oh, don't listen to this foolish old man. Go ahead and cry, my dear. It's an obscene, brutal system, and it's the innocent who suffer the most."
"It's just that I..." Her voice quavered, and she swallowed hard. "I don't think I can go on without her. Missing her, wondering always how she is. If she's happy. If she's well."
"You must, my dear. You have another child, remember? And this one they cannot take from you. Not if the ship does sail next week, as scheduled."
Bryony put her hands on her swollen belly and felt the child within her kick, as if to remind her of its existence. She shook her head. "But it's not Madeline," she sobbed, feeling more helpless and desperately alone than at any time in these last, terrible six months. "It can't replace Madeline."
"No, but it needs you, too, my dear," said the old lawyer, taking her hands in his and squeezing them. "You'll still have someone you love with you—a child who will give you its love. For its sake, Bryony, you must not give up. You still have a reason to live. Whatever happens, you mustn't forget that."
A howling wind swooped around the inn and threw rain against the panes of the casement window overlooking Sydney Cove.
From her pallet before the fire in the private parlor, Bryony watched the dancing golden flames flicker up the chimney. For the first time in twelve months she was warm, well-fed, and clean. It felt strange, as if physical
comfort belonged to the past and should have no part in the life of fear and despair she now knew.
She had lain awake for hours, listening tensely for Captain St. John's return, steeling herself to endure the rape she knew she must suffer. But as the minutes slipped past and he did not come, that expectant, watchful fear temporarily receded. In its place came a surge of desolation and loss so intense she almost cried out with the pain.
She had waited all day to be alone with her grief for Philip. It had been barely dawn when she had stood painfully dry-eyed in the gray light and listened to the scrape of shovels, the sodden thud of mud hitting bark as they'd buried him. She hadn't cried. She'd forced herself to hold it all back, waiting, waiting to be alone.
Only, now that she finally had the uninterrupted solitude she had craved, she found she couldn't cry after all. It was as if she sensed, somehow, that she wasn't capable of dealing with Philip's loss yet. Whenever she tried to let herself mourn, her thoughts just slid away. It was like peering into a great, fathomless abyss. She knew that if she fell in, she would never have the strength to pull herself out again. So she was careful to stay away from the edge.
She let her mind drift away to Madeline, then regretted it. In the past, whenever the agony of her longing for her golden-haired daughter threatened to overwhelm her, Bryony would pick up Philip and hug him to her for comfort. Except now she'd lost Philip, as well. She was utterly, frighteningly alone in this vast, wild, unknown land.
A part of her wanted to give up. Cease struggling, cease fighting to survive. But she knew that, for Madeline's sake if nothing else, she had to go on. She would live with loneliness and hunger. She would bear rape and the lash. She would endure whatever torment Hayden St. John subjected her to. And at the end of six and a half years, she would find some way to get herself back to Cornwall. Back to Madeline.
She tried to focus on the future, but Hayden St. John's dark, harsh face kept intruding. Hayden St. John. Her master.
It was an idea so hard to accept that she actually forced herself to say the word aloud to the empty room. Her
master.
It tasted odd on her lips. The loss of freedom and control over her life that she'd experienced in prison had been difficult enough to deal with. But at least it had been impersonal—she had been part of a system, one of many, controlled by many. Nothing she had experienced in the past twelve months had prepared her for this final degradation, for being so totally subservient to one man. For being
owned
by him.
She rolled over and hugged her pillow to her chest. She found she couldn't even enjoy her solitude tonight, because she was convinced it was only temporary.
Her mind kept resurrecting the image of the way he'd looked earlier that night, leaning back against the table, one long, well-muscled leg swinging idly, his face taut. He'd been watching her then, she knew, the way a man watches a woman he wants. She'd seen it in the way he was looking at her. Felt it. Even after she'd lost her temper and told him why she'd been transported, even when he'd had his hands around her throat, she'd felt it still.
How long would it take him to act on it? she wondered. How long?
She was still awake, several hours later, when Simon began to stir. Sighing, she picked him up and put him to her breast. And, somehow, in the warmth of his sweet-smelling body and in the gentle tug of his eager mouth, she found the peace she needed to get to sleep.
She awoke with a start.
She sat up and glanced over at Simon's cradle, but he slept soundly, his position unaltered from when she'd put him down. Puzzled, she was about to lie down and go
back to sleep herself when she heard the stamping of horses' hooves and the rattle and jingle of harnesses.
Not quite knowing why she did so, Bryony slipped from her pallet and crossed the room to the casement window that faced the front of the inn. The fire on the hearth had died down, and the room was cold. She slid quickly onto the window seat and drew her bare legs up under her thin shift. Wrapping her arms about her knees for warmth, she peered down at the street below.
It had stopped raining, although low-hanging clouds still obscured the stars and moon. But in the pool of lantern light in front of the inn she could see quite clearly the elegant town carriage drawn by a team of four blood bays that was just pulling up to a stop.
As she watched, a liveried servant jumped forward to open the near door and let down the steps. She heard a murmur of voices. A man's tall figure, enveloped in an elegant evening cape and wearing a
chapeau bras
set at a rakish angle, appeared in the open door of the carriage.
Ignoring the steps, he jumped down lightly. Behind him, a pretty young woman in evening dress and pearls leaned out the open door to say something to him. He turned back to her and laughed. The light from the lantern fell full on his face, but Bryony had already recognized Hayden St. John.
The young woman laughed, too, and laid a hand on St. John's arm. She was a fair young woman, probably no more than eighteen. She looked flushed and excited, flown on masculine compliments and the headiness of what had probably been one of her first grown-up dinner parties. Bryony tried to remember what it felt like to be so young and innocent and carefree...
And failed utterly.
Looking down at the other woman's shining smile, she suddenly felt old. Old and worn-out and utterly desolate and alone. So very, very alone.
The woman laughed again. Perched above them on her cold window seat, Bryony unconsciously reached out
to press her fingertips against the wavy glass of the windowpane, as if by so doing she could reach out and touch the scene below. It was like glimpsing a tableau from another world. A world she'd once moved through and taken for granted, but from which she'd now been banned. Forever.
Then the scene below shifted. Hayden St. John stepped back to allow the footman to put up the steps and close the door. The driver started his horses, and the carriage moved slowly off into the darkness. But long after the last rattle of wheels had been lost among the other night sounds, Bryony sat where she was, on the window seat, her feet drawn up beside her, her arms wrapped around her legs, and her cheek pressed against her knees.
Bryony stepped out the front door of the Three Jolly Fishermen to find that last night's wind had swept away the clouds. Above her arced a clear sky, a vast blue dome that reflected off the sparkling waters of the most beautiful bay she had ever seen. It was as if they intensified each other, sky and bay, blue on blue, deeper and deeper, until the color was so vivid it almost hurt.
A fresh, golden light drenched everything around her— not just the sky and the far-flung inlets and coves of the bay, but the whitewashed houses and the grass-covered slopes and the seemingly endless forest that stretched to the west. The very air vibrated with a bright, clear light more intense than anything she'd ever experienced.
It was a sight that couldn't help but lift even the most oppressed of spirits. She stopped and gasped in delight. "It's beautiful."
Gideon glanced back at her and laughed. "Aye, that 'tes. You act like you've never seen it before."
Bryony shifted Simon to her hip and followed Gideon down the still-muddy street. "I haven't—at least, not really. It's been raining ever since we sailed through the Heads."
Not that she would have noticed even if it hadn't been raining, she thought. Not with Philip sickening.
They crossed the long street that ran along the top of the ridge. It was wide and lined with fairly impressive stone and brick buildings, but the street itself was rutted and piled with garbage. There were even tree stumps in
the middle of the street, Bryony noticed—three feet high. The traffic just went around them.
Then they turned off the Row into a narrow side street that sloped downhill toward the waterfront. The buildings here were crude, more like huts really. Built of wood and mud and thatch, they clung precariously to the side of a hill so steep the lane eventually degenerated into a series of steps, cut right into the rock. Goats and pigs ranged freely among the scattered garbage and scraggly gardens. Bryony saw one goat eating a petticoat off a line of tattered washing. There was a sudden, loud curse, and a slatternly woman with a short pipe hanging out of her mouth stood up and threw an empty rum bottle at it. The goat jumped and bucked away, bleating. The woman sat down again, but her stare followed Bryony on down the hill.
There was a time when the people Bryony saw here would have made her nervous. But after a year spent in the company of thieves, whores, and murderers, she barely noticed them. Rather, it was the birds that fascinated her. Almost every shack had a cage beside its door, with one or more large, vivid-colored birds that screeched at them as they passed. One, a particularly large, snowy-white bird with a yellow crest, opened its curved beak and cawed, "Five hundred lashes! Five hundred lashes! Lay them on! Lay them on!" The cry followed them all the way down the hill.
Eventually they turned onto a lane that curved along the waterfront until it reached a muddy little rivulet, spanned by a stone bridge. Readjusting the weight of the sleeping baby, Bryony leaned against the bridge's stone wall to rest for a minute and look up at the hill in front of them.
Here there were only a few, neat brick houses. They stood in an official-looking row near a white, two-story Georgian mansion set in splendid isolation in the midst of extensive, well-tended gardens stretching all the way down to the water's edge.
"What's that?" she asked Gideon, nodding toward the big white house.
Gideon followed the direction of her gaze. "That's Government House," he said, an odd expression on his freckled face. "Where the acting governor, Foveaux, lives."
Bryony had heard of Lieutenant Colonel Foveaux. They said that when he was commandant of Norfolk Island, he used to have the new women prisoners stripped naked and paraded around in a circle while he auctioned them off, for rum.
"Over there—" Gideon pointed to a row of massive warehouses built of carefully dressed stone that stood at the base of the slope. "That's the Government store, where we're headed."
Inside the store's thick stone walls, it was cool. The exotic scents of sandalwood and cinnamon and spices from India and the Islands overlaid the more familiar odors of new hemp, coffee beans, turpentine, and rum. Everything from tea to saucepans to sails could be had here, although there wasn't much in the way of baby clothes. Bryony ended up with bolts of material, spools of thread, and a selection of ribbons and trims. She was going to have to make almost everything that Simon needed.
She did manage to find a wool cloak and plain gray dress for herself. The dress was hopelessly old-fashioned, with a fitted bodice and an almost natural waistline. But it had been so long since she'd worn anything new— even if it was shoddily made and ugly—that she couldn't help but be pleased with it. She also found a couple of caps, and obediently tucked her hair up under one of them.
While Gideon arranged to have their purchases delivered to the Three Jolly Fishermen, Bryony went to stare out the open doorway. A new ship had come in during the night: a merchantman, lying low in the water. Balancing Simon on her hip, Bryony ventured out onto the flag way to see it better.
A white cloud of seagulls rose, screeching, from the nearby shingle and filled the air with their heartbreakingly familiar cry. The sun sparkled brightly on the bay, and for a moment, she might almost have imagined herself back on the waterfront of the village of Cadgwith Cove.
Then she heard the rattling chink of chains, and turned to see a chain gang stumble toward the wharf. The men were half-naked and filthy, their bare backs crisscrossed with the scars of repeated floggings, their eyes sunken and despairing. The illusion of comfortable familiarity was shattered.
Gideon came up beside her. She glanced at him, and saw a frown line appear between his brows as he watched the chain gang shuffle past.
Abruptly she said, "What is Captain St. John doing here, Gideon? He's not with the New South Wales Corps, is he?"
Gideon's nostrils flared with contempt. "The New South Wales Corps? No, he was never a part of that riffraff. He fought the French, in Europe. And then he was in India, with Wellesley's regiment. But he was wounded at Assaye. It was when he was recuperating in England that he married Mrs. St. John."
"So what's he doing here?" asked Bryony, turning to walk slowly along the waterfront.
"Sold out," said Gideon, falling into step beside her. "He tried going back to India with the army for a while, but the climate didn't agree with his wife's health."
"No?" Bryony tipped her head back. From here she could see two windmills on the top of the ridge behind the Governor's house. She watched their sails whirling around and around, flashing white against the crisp blue sky. And she thought, idly, that the sky was the same color blue as Hayden St. John's eyes. "I would have thought he'd take her back to England, if she wasn't strong."
Gideon laughed. "Do you, now? And what would a man like the Cap'n do in England?"
Bryony tried to picture Hayden St. John in the role of a sedate English gentleman, riding about his carefully tended green fields, going to church every Sunday with his dutiful wife and children, and dispensing alms to the poor at Christmas like her Uncle Edward. Only she couldn't do it.
In her arms, Simon yawned and rested his head on her shoulder. Bryony looked down at his flaxen head and felt a curious sadness well up within her. "Perhaps," she said softly. "But New South Wales must not have agreed with the Captain's wife any more than India."
"No," Gideon admitted, following her gaze. "No, it didn't."
Bryony pushed open the door of the parlor, then stopped short on the threshold.
She'd expected the room to be empty. Instead Captain St. John and another man were sitting at the oak table near the window, drinking wine. St. John had his head tipped back, draining his glass. When he lowered it, she noticed the wine had wet his lips.
"I'm sorry," she said hastily. "I didn't mean to intrude. I'll just go down to the kitchen and—"
She would have backed out of the room, but St. John had already risen. He stepped over and pulled the door open wider. "No, come in, Bryony. This is Dr. William Redfern. I've asked him to take a look at you and Simon before we leave Sydney."
Bryony looked from St. John to the pleasant-faced man of about thirty, then back at St. John again.
In the warm light of the afternoon sun, his face looked surprisingly relaxed. He was actually smiling at her, but Bryony recognized that smile. It was the same smile she used herself when she was trying to coax a child or a particularly slow-witted servant to do something they didn't
want to do. To have that look bent on her was both humiliating and infuriating.
"I'll wait for you in the coffee room downstairs." He nodded to the doctor, and before she had a chance to say anything, he closed the door behind him.
Bryony glanced back at the doctor, who by now had risen also and was standing beside the table.
"Well," he said. "Let's start with Simon, shall we?"
Simon was awake. He suffered the exchange of arms quietly enough, but when the doctor unwrapped him and laid him on the hard table, he began to whimper.
"Hush, now, little one," said the doctor with a soft Irish lilt. "You remember me, don't you?" He kept talking in that same low, soothing voice as he loosened the baby's clothes, his exploring hands gentle, until Simon quieted and lay staring up at the doctor with wide, guileless green eyes.
Bryony stood back from the table, her arms crossed at her chest, watching the doctor in silence. But as her respect for him grew, she stepped closer. "Is he all right?" she asked. "He seems so small for four months."
"He was born early." Dr. Redfern glanced up at her. "That accounts for part of it. But then his mother was an unusually tiny woman. Simon here may well take after Laura."
Laura.
For the first time, Hayden St. John's golden-haired wife had a name.
"Were you there when... when Simon was born?" She'd almost said,
when Laura St. John died.
"No." He rolled the baby gently over onto his stomach. "The Captain had intended to bring her into Sydney, but there wasn't time." He paused a moment as if considering something, then said, "Laura St. John was an unusually beautiful, gentle woman. A true lady, in every sense of the word. I think her death affected all of us who knew her. But the Captain, he... well, it changed him somehow." He looked up and met her eyes. "I'm telling
you this for a reason, you see. Hayden St. John has always been a hard man, but since Laura died... Let's just say it wouldn't do to cross him. Especially not where Simon is concerned."
Bryony remembered the feel of Hayden St. John's hands around her neck, threatening to throttle her.
Dr. Redfern straightened up and smiled. "Sure Simon's looking much better. When I saw him a few days ago, I wouldn't have given much for his chances of surviving another forty-eight hours. You've obviously taken good care of him."
"He was just hungry."
"Yes. But I can tell you also keep him clean. It makes a difference." He began to refasten the baby's wrappings.
"It's easy to keep a baby clean when you have fresh clothes for him. And water to wash him with," she added bitterly.
The doctor's hands stilled for a moment. He glanced up at her, his gray eyes gentle and caring. "I'm sorry about your own babe," he said softly. She knew he meant it, and it touched her so much that sudden tears stung her eyes and she had to blink them away.
Picking Simon up, Dr. Redfern carried him over to the cradle and laid him down. Then he turned. "Now, let's have a look at you, shall we?"
He peered in her eyes and her ears, and then had her open her mouth so that he could look at her teeth.
"No sign of scurvy," he said approvingly. "You must have had an honest ship's captain. When I was sent out, half the men on my ship were shark bait before we'd even rounded the Cape. But sure the captain made a good profit when he got to Sydney and was able to sell all those leftover supplies we were never allowed to eat."
Bryony stared at him. "You were transported?"
He gave her an odd smile. "When you're a doctor, and you're Irish, you need to be very selective about whose broken bodies you try to mend."
"But... you're not still a convict, are you?"
"Oh, no. I'm a free man now." He turned away to reach for something in his bag.
"Then, why... why are you still here?" For Bryony, obsessed as she was with the idea of making it back to Cornwall and Madeline, the thought of someone willingly choosing to stay here was incomprehensible. "Is your pardon conditional?"
"No, I could go back if I wanted to. But I like it here. It's..." He searched for the word, then grinned. "Freer. Besides, I'm needed here. And now," he said, his voice becoming professional again, "I'll have to ask you to take off your dress. You can keep on your shift."
He turned his back politely so she wouldn't have to disrobe with him watching her, although she didn't know what difference it made since he was going to see her when he turned around anyway.
She suffered his examination of her breasts. But when he asked her to lie down, she balked.
"I'm not a prostitute!"