By mid-afternoon, Bryony was tired.
She barely noticed the pungent wattles, the bluebells and belly buttons, or the brightly colored cockatoos that flickered through the drooping branches of the overhead gums. She walked with her head bowed, all her concentration trained on the simple effort of putting one foot in front of the other.
She had lifted her head to brush the hair out of her sweaty face when she saw Captain St. John trotting his horse down the line toward her. He had taken off his coat and waistcoat, and had the sleeves of his white shirt rolled back, revealing tanned, muscular forearms. The slight breeze raised by the motion of his horse molded the fine cambric of the shirt to his powerful chest and shoulders, making him look more than ever like an untamed adventurer.
He drew abreast of her and wheeled the bay about to bring the horse to a walk beside her. He watched her for a moment, his face closed and unreadable. Then he reined in and said abruptly: "You're too tired to walk any farther, and the road hasn't dried out enough yet to risk your weight on the cart again. You'd better climb up behind me."
She whirled around to stare up at him in dismay. "I— I'm all right."
His eyes flashed danger. "Goddamn it, woman, when are you going to learn to say
yes, sir,
and just do what you're told?"
Her chin jutted forward and she took a deep breath, but then reason overruled instinct and she swallowed the angry retort that had sprung to her lips.
"Very wise," he said, moving the bay forward a few steps until he was once more beside her. He slid his boot from the stirrup and reached down his left hand for her. "Get up."
It was a big horse. She lifted her skirt and petticoats and had to reach up high with her foot before she was able to thrust it into his stirrup. She didn't even want to think about what kind of a view she was giving him of her legs, or the fact that the government budget for prisoners' clothing didn't stretch to include any undergarments beyond the traditional petticoats and old-fashioned shift. Without looking at him, she put her pale, thin hand into his strong, brown one. He grasped her wrist and hauled her up.
She settled behind him, acutely conscious of the way her thighs wrapped around his hips, the way her stomach pressed against the small of his back. She tried to hold herself erect and distant from him, but once he touched his heels to the horse's side and they moved forward, it was impossible to keep her breasts from occasionally brushing his broad back. She was determined not to hold on to him. But then the bay did a little standing hop over a log in its path, and she found herself clutching at his waist.
She let go of him almost immediately, but he said, "You'd better hold on." So she did…
And tried not to think about his lean hips, his hard, flat stomach, and his broad, well-muscled back beneath the fine cloth of his shirt. With every breath she was aware of his scent, a scent of leather and horse and warm, hardworking man that was not at all unpleasant.
The afternoon wore on, and the sun grew progressively hotter. Her heavy petticoats stuck to her skin. Drops of sweat rolled down between her shoulder blades and
soaked the rough, scratchy material of her dress. It didn't help to realize that beneath her hands, the man in front of her seemed cool and completely unaffected by either the heat or the long hours in the saddle.
"Don't you ever get hot?" she finally demanded.
He chuckled softly. "This isn't hot. Wait until it's January, when we haven't had any rain for a month and the wind swings around until it's coming from the north. Now, that's hot."
"This is hot," she said stubbornly.
He laughed again. "You'll get used to it."
"How long did it take... you to get used to it?" She had wanted to say
your wife,
but found she couldn't quite bring herself to do it.
"I didn't need to. I grew up in the West Indies. My father's regiment was transferred there before I was born, so until I was sent back to England for school, it was all I knew. And if you can't take the heat, you don't survive long in that part of the world."
The West Indies. It was one of the wondrous, faraway places she'd dreamed of when she was a little girl.
When I grow up, I'm going to sail across the oceans, like Papa,
she'd announced at the age of five.
Be careful what you wish for, infant,
her mother had told her with a gentle smile.
You might get it.
They were crossing a marshy stretch, where the mud sucked at the bullocks' hooves and sprayed up behind the wagons' wheels. A small scrabbling noise made Bryony turn her head to see a green frog leap flying into the air and hit the water of a nearby pond with a splash.
"Did you ever go back?" she asked suddenly.
She thought he wasn't going to answer her. Then he said, "My parents and two younger sisters all died in a typhoid epidemic that swept the islands the year after I left."
"I... I'm sorry."
He shrugged. "I barely remember them."
She studied his closed, averted profile, and thought,
he may not remember them, but he remembers what it felt like to lose them.
He brought his horse to a stand. "Look." He pointed to two large coal-black birds floating serenely in the open water. "See them? They're swans."
"Swans?" Bryony watched the two elegant birds take fright at the sound of the approaching wagons and lift awkwardly into flight. "But they're black."
He turned his head slightly, and she saw that his lips were smiling. "In New South Wales, the swans are black. And the trees lose their bark instead of their leaves and Christmas is one of the hottest days of the year."
Unconsciously she returned his smile. "Everything's so different here. It's..." She searched for the right word. "Exciting."
A peculiar expression shaded his eyes. "You think it's exciting?"
"Yes. Don't you?"
"Yes." He urged the big bay forward. "But in my experience, most people don't like things that are different."
After that, he withdrew from her in some way, although she couldn't quite figure out why.
It was late afternoon. Hayden urged the bay into an easy trot that soon outdistanced the wagons toiling behind them up a long, steep slope. When they crested the top of the hill, he reined the horse in.
Ahead of them stretched a broad valley through which a river wound its way slowly to the sea. It was a fertile valley, with well-tended fields and acre after acre of open pasture. There were a number of homesteads scattered here and there, up and down the river, and one particularly large estate on the near side of the river at the base of the hill.
A long, private drive lined with Norfolk pines wound through extensive pastures and fields and gardens, to
sweep up before a stately, two-story brick mansion with a cluster of outbuildings grouped around its rear courtyard.
It had been nothing short of agony for Hayden to have her so close to him all afternoon. Her full, ripe breasts pressed against his back, her thighs lay intimately nestled around him, her breath tickled the nape of his neck. He'd been cursing the damn mud and Gideon's inferior driving skills and his own seemingly uncontrollable lust for miles now.
"Goodness." Bryony said suddenly, her hand moving against his side. "Is that your property?" That unexpected brush of her hand against his hip was almost more than he could bear.
"No," he said tersely. "Jindabyne is still a good day and a half away from here. And I'm afraid it's nothing near as grand as this. This is Priscilla Pines. It belongs to a man named Sir D'Arcy Baxter, who asked me to stop and stay with him on my way back up to the Hawkesbury. He and I share an interest in sheep breeding."
She gazed beyond the house to the river that flowed slowly past it. He noticed she was being careful not to let any more of her body touch his than was absolutely necessary. "That's not the Hawkesbury?"
"No, that's the Parramatta. See that town up there?" He pointed to the large settlement, just visible on the far side of the river. "That's where the Female Factory is," he added.
He heard her draw her breath in a quick, indignant gasp. "You mean it took us all day, just to get back to Parramatta!"
Hayden turned his horse with a low chuckle. "I told you the roads here are bad."
The dining table at Priscilla Pines was a massive thing, ordered especially from England and made of the finest mahogany available. Idly estimating chairs and distances, Hayden decided it would probably seat more people than there were free men in the colony. And only
those untarnished by convict status would ever be welcome at Priscilla Pines.
"Why, Captain St. John," exclaimed Miss Amanda Baxter, smiling up at him provocatively. "I do believe you haven't heard a word I said."
Hayden glanced down at the vision in white muslin seated beside him. At just eighteen his host's daughter was a decidedly attractive young woman. She had captured his attention at Government House two nights ago, largely because her dainty, fair-haired good looks reminded him of his beautiful, dead wife. A fact her mother had, unfortunately, picked up on very quickly.
Miss Amanda Baxter only recently had returned to the colony from school in England. She was now ready for a husband, and Hayden had a growing suspicion that he had been selected as a suitable candidate. His estates might still be fledgling, but his lineage was impeccable. Not only had his grandfather distinguished himself as a general in the French wars of the last century, but his dead wife had been the daughter of a viscount.
The fact that his wife was only some four months dead didn't seem to deter the ambitious Lady Priscilla Baxter. Eligible husbands were scarce in the colony. She was probably anxious to secure him for her daughter before he took up with some convict mistress, the way most of the men here did. It was a thought that, unfortunately, brought the flashing brown eyes and strong chin of Bryony Wentworth to mind, making it oddly difficult for him to smile down at his dinner-table companion and say, "You wrong me, Miss Baxter. Mrs. Marsden here was giving us her opinion of Elizabeth Fry's recommendations for prison reform, and you said you'd actually attended one of her lectures in London. Are you interested in reform work?"
"Good gracious, no," exclaimed Miss Baxter with a tinkling little laugh. "I went there with my mother's sister, who
would
take me.
She
thinks the woman's ideas
are all nonsense, of course, but she says it's important to keep abreast of current trends."
Hayden eyed her over the rim of his glass. "And do you think her suggestions are nonsense? That women prisoners should be separated from the men, and supervised by female jailers?"
"Well, as to that, I don't know. But she went on ad nauseam as to how the wretches' crimes are a result of their poverty—as if everyone were not already aware of that."
Hayden slowly swallowed a mouthful of wine. "Is everyone aware of it?"
"But of course." She laughed again. "What I fail to see, however, is why I should feel sorry for the degraded creatures, simply because their indolence has made them poor."
"Ah. But then I believe Mrs. Fry argues that their poverty is the result, not of indolence, but of lack of opportunity."
"Preposterous." This came from the Reverend Samuel
Marsden, on the opposite side of the table. Reverend Marsden was a stout, bald-headed man with beady eyes and a sour mouth, who managed to be both a man of God and a magistrate without any apparent sense of incongruity. "Everyone knows that the criminal classes are a race apart. Irreclaimably and genetically predisposed toward indolence and violence."
Hayden leaned back in his chair and smiled. "Is that why you do your best to rid the world of them, Reverend?"
From the head of the table, their host grunted his approval. Sir D'Arcy Baxter was a powerfully built, handsome man with silvered black hair and a dark, sharp-featured face. "How many was it you hanged last week in your magistrate's court, Samuel?" Sir D'Arcy asked. "Seven?"
"Five." The reverend helped himself to another serving
of roast beef. "The other two I let off with five hundred lashes each."
"They've started calling dear Samuel the Hanging Parson now, you know, rather than the Hogging Parson," said the reverend's short, homely faced wife. She smiled at her husband with obvious pride.
"Should have hanged all seven of them," said Marsden, motioning to a servant to bring him a platter displaying a glazed goose. "They were all obviously incorrigibles. The authorities should have hanged them in England and saved the taxpayers the expense of transporting them out here."
"But, then, where would you get the laborers to clear your farm for you, Reverend?" interposed Hayden.
"True," agreed Sir D'Arcy Baxter, draining his wineglass. "It's a sad quandary. Where I believe the authorities make their mistake is in transporting so many of the scoundrels for only seven years—or even fourteen. It ought to be for life. There's getting to be a sight too many emancipists around these days."
"And the pretensions they give themselves," agreed Lady Priscilla Baxter, from her end of the table. She was a fair-haired woman, in her early forties but still slim and handsome. She frowned, drawing down the corners of her mouth in a way that accentuated the length of her face and made her look considerably less attractive. "Why, the last time I saw Dr. William Redfern, I swear he behaved as if he had never been transported, and were in some way my equal. I felt compelled to remind him that my father was a Devonshire squire."