Night in Eden (12 page)

Bryony sat before Laura's dressing table, watching her own reflection in the mahogany-surrounded mirror as she drew her broken comb through her hair.

On the marble-topped surface before her, Laura's silver-handled brush and comb still lay, but Bryony wouldn't have dreamed of using them.

She laid down her own old comb, and cautiously reached out to touch the tarnished back of the silver brush. She could see one or two long, blond hairs still caught in the bristles, hair so pale it was almost white.

She must have had beautiful hair,
Bryony thought, letting her hand fall.

She would be glad when Gideon brought up a trunk from the store tomorrow so she could pack all of Laura's
things away. Perhaps then she would feel less an intruder, and more as if she belonged here.

She turned away from the mirror and cursed herself for a fool. She would never
belong
here. This wasn't even her room now, it was Simon's, and she would be sleeping here only until he was old enough to be left on his own. Then she would probably be moved into the slab lean-to beside the kitchen, where she'd been told the two female servants St. John had brought from the Factory to wait on his wife used to sleep.

That is, if she wasn't sent back to the Factory herself.

The thought filled her with a horrible feeling of dread. She remembered her first night in Parramatta, when a man came into the Factory to pick out a woman. He wanted a blond woman, he said; he liked blond women. And when Matron Sarah Gooding produced Susan, a thin, golden-haired girl from Brighton, he made the girl open her dress and shift so that he could see her tits, as he called them. But Susan had been lucky; the man turned up his nose at her small, gently rounded breasts.

So Sarah Gooding gave him Polly, a buxom milkmaid who'd been caught stealing butter from her mistress's dairy. The man had been happy with Polly. So happy, in fact, he'd taken her right there in the yard, up against the brick wall. Bryony thought she'd never forget the sight of the man's filthy hand, its back covered with coarse, dark hair, pawing at Polly's full breasts as he shoved up her skirts.

No, she had no desire to be sent back to the Factory.

And then she remembered the way Hayden St. John had looked at her tonight, on the veranda. She had watched his face grow taut, his eyes hard with arousal. There'd been no mistaking that look. For one heart-stopping moment she'd thought he was going to thrust her back against the rough wall of the house and take her right there, the way that man had taken Polly.

She knew he had thought about it. And though he
might not have done it tonight, the nights stretched out ahead of her. Night after night, to be spent with him in this house, alone except for Simon lying asleep in his cradle by the hearth.

And for how long would he hold himself back? Her pulse did strange, forbidden things, just at the thought.

She picked up her candle and carried it over to gaze down at the sleeping baby. He lay on his back, his tiny fists thrown up on either side of his head. His cheeks looked rosy, almost plump now. His mouth puckered, and he made slow sucking motions, as he often did while he slept. Smiling, she smoothed the tangled blond fluff at his forehead, gently, so as not to awaken him.

And then she admitted to herself there was another reason she couldn't bear the thought of being sent back to the Factory. Simon might not be hers, but, God help her, she didn't want to lose this baby, too.

Turning away, she cupped her hand behind the candle flame and blew it out. As she climbed the steps into Laura's grand canopy bed, she heard someone outside her room, on the veranda.

She threw back the covers and slid out of bed. There were two sets of French doors in the room; the ones that looked out over the yard, and another set, on the adjoining wall, that opened onto the hill at the side of the house. It was to this window that she crept, drawing back one edge of the heavy silk curtains and lace panel, just enough so that she could peer out through a chink in the shutters.

A man paced up and down the veranda. She knew it was St. John by his long-legged stride, by the way his spurs jangled and his boots clicked on the stone flagging. She could see the red glow of his cheroot, held clenched between this teeth as he walked back and forth, back and forth.

He stopped, his back to her, his gaze seemingly fixed on something far up the hill. She saw his hand go up, saw
the muscles of his shoulders bunch as he flung the cigar onto the stones at his feet and ground it beneath the sole of his boot. In the still of the night, the slow, almost agonized release of his breath as he exhaled a stream of smoke looked white against the night sky before it was blown away by the restless wind.

The batiste of Laura's night rail was so fine, Bryony was afraid her own rough, chapped hands would snag the delicate material.

She lifted it carefully from the drawer and laid it beside the dainty chemises, petticoats, tuckers, and handkerchiefs that already filled the bottom of the trunk.

It was only mid-morning, but she was already tired. She'd been startled from a deep sleep at five o'clock by the loud clanging of a bell being rung right outside her bedroom window. They rang the bell like that every morning, Gideon had told her with a grin as he helped her fix breakfast.

The early spring sun streamed in from beneath the veranda roof and threw bands of golden warmth across the polished floor. She had the shutters and curtains thrown back and the French doors overlooking both the yard and the hill at the side of the house open, letting in fresh air scented with the smell of sun-warmed grass. With most of the men out in the fields, a peaceful quiet had settled over the homestead. She could hear the distant sound of a hammer striking iron in the smithy near the barn. A new lamb bawled in one of the pens, and a kookaburra laughed from the stand of gums up the hill, but she was alone. Simon napped contentedly in his cradle beside the empty hearth.

She reached for the second night rail in the neat stack in Laura's drawer. This time she was unable to resist the
temptation to unfurl the fine folds and raise it up against her own cheap, rough work dress.

Never, not even in her old life at Cadgwith Cove, had Bryony owned anything so exquisite. Holding it against her for a moment, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply of the faint sent of rose water as she smoothed the expensive material down over her breasts and stomach.

But although Bryony might admire Laura's beautiful clothes, she could not covet them—the gown barely reached her knees. Sighing, she laid Laura's night rail on the bed and refolded it.

She must have been an incredibly tiny woman, Bryony thought. An unbelievably small, delicate woman, barely larger than a child. Folding the exquisite little clothes made Bryony feel like a rough, uncouth giant.

She put the night rail in the trunk and emptied the rest of the drawer quickly, lifting the entire stack of night rails together. She pulled open the next drawer, then paused in surprise. A variety of shawls, cashmires and other fine wools in rich reds and blues and elegant creams, filled half the drawer. But the other half was taken up by sketchbooks.

She lifted the top one and saw Laura St. John's name, written in a neat, controlled script in the upper-right-hand corner. There was nothing bold or aggressive about Laura's signature; it was quiet, genteel. Like the woman herself, Bryony thought.

Beneath the signature was the date January 1808. She looked at the other books; they were all dated, with the first one beginning in August 1804, the year Bryony knew Laura had married.

Bryony picked up the entire stack and carried them over to the chair. Setting the rest aside, she opened the first book and found herself staring at an English harbor. Laura's neat copperplate had labeled the picture: Portsmouth. Laura had obviously decided to begin her new life with a new sketchbook.

Bryony turned the pages. There were views of the
coast, views of the ship. Masts cutting dark against a pale, cloudy sky. A seaman rolling a barrel across a plank deck. A handsome young man in a hussar uniform leaning against the rail, laughing. Hayden.

Laura drew her young husband often. On deck, in their small cabin, in ports of call. It seemed he was always laughing, his eyes so full of love for his beautiful, dainty, talented bride that it made Bryony's chest ache to look at him.

She set aside the first sketchbook and reached for the second. Here was their life together in India. She stared at pictures of lush, exotic gardens. Neat little bungalows tucked beneath tall, waving palm trees. Picnics beside a quiet lagoon, the ladies gay and serene beneath their lace-covered parasols, the gentlemen dashing and handsome in their uniforms. Bryony knew she was intruding on something she wasn't meant to see, but she couldn't help it. It was like finding herself outside, alone and friendless on a cold winter's night, and peeking through an unshuttered window to see a room bathed in the warm, golden glow of a fire. A room where people laughed and smiled and loved.

And loved. Ah, how they must have loved.

She thumbed through more books of India. Then there was another ship, another voyage, this time carrying Laura to New South Wales.

Bryony flipped through the book. There were the famous Heads. More views of Port Jackson and Sydney Cove. Sydney Town, with its muddy, stump-filled streets, its grand stone buildings, and its tumbledown shacks. But this was the last notebook save one, and she had almost reached its end. Laura had filled book after book with her life in India; in New South Wales, she must have gone months without picking up her pencils or brushes. Why?

Bryony turned to the last page and found herself staring at a watercolor of the Australian bush. The grass was yellow, dry, dead-looking. The gray-green leaves of
the gums hung listless and still in a heat that was almost palpable. In the background loomed the Blue Mountains, mysterious, menacing. It was a disturbing picture, and Bryony laid it quickly aside.

She reached for the last sketchbook, the one Laura had begun in January of 1808, and never finished.

She opened it to find herself staring at an English garden. A riot of sedate, gentle pinks and greens and blues spilled across the page. Stately hollyhocks and Canterbury bells pushed up against a soft English sky beside rambling roses scrambling over a drywall. Frowning, Bryony checked the date on the front cover again to make sure she'd read it right, then turned the page.

It was a picture of Hayden, mounted upon his big bay gelding. The Blue Mountains brooded in the distance behind him. He wasn't smiling.

But the next picture was another sketch of England. It was as if, unable to bring herself to draw the Australian countryside, Laura had taken to painting her memories of home.

Had she disliked Australia so much? Bryony wondered.

Then she turned the next page, and her hand stilled, for she was gazing at what could only be a picture of Laura herself.

It was a self-portrait, exquisitely done. Bryony's breath caught in her throat, and she felt a squeezing inside her, somewhere in the region of her heart. She'd been told that Laura was beautiful, but she could never have imagined her as being this lovely.

Hair the color of sunshine. Large, almond-shaped eyes of a clear, sparkling emerald green, the same green Bryony saw every day in Simon's wide, guileless gaze. Skin of the smoothest alabaster. A fine, delicately shaped nose. High cheekbones, a high, noble forehead, gently flaring brows. And an exquisitely shaped mouth that seemed almost to tremble with innocence.

It wasn't simply a beautiful face. It was a kind face, a gentle face, a—

Bryony heard the faint tinkling of bells, followed by a heavy tread on the stone flagging of the veranda. She sat up with a start, the sketchbook clutched to her, looking about wildly, as if she could find someplace to hide it. But the front door to the hall had already been thrown open with a bang, and she heard a woman's voice—loud and husky, but still undeniably a
woman's
voice— shouting.

"Helloooo. You there? We've come acallin'."

Bryony dropped the sketchbook on top of the others and stood up, just as the large figure of a woman filled the doorway from the hall to Laura's room.

"Well, will you look at that," said the woman, pausing on the threshold, a gap-toothed grin splitting her homely face. "William told me the master'd brung a woman back with him, but I was afeard to believe it till I seed it with me own eyes."

She was big and she was broad, with a wart on her dimpled chin and gray hair that stuck out in every direction from beneath her cap. But in that moment Bryony thought she was the most beautiful sight she'd ever seen.
Another woman!

Bryony wiped her hands on her apron and extended the right one to the woman. "How do you do? I'm Bryony Wentworth. From Cornwall."

The woman's fat hand engulfed hers. "Lord bless me, it's good to see you. I'm Louisa Carver, from Dublin, and this here little tyke is me Sarah. Make your curtsy, Sarey."

It was only then that Bryony noticed the little slip of a girl hiding behind her mother's skirts. She was a tiny thing, probably no more than three or four, with a riot of fair curls and pale blue eyes. It seemed hard to believe such a mammoth woman could have produced this elf-like child.

Bryony's heart felt as if someone had reached out and twisted it, for the little girl wasn't much older than Madeline had been the last time she'd seen her. She forced her-
self to smile and squatted to bring herself down to the child's level. "Well, how do you do, Sarah? I didn't even see you there at first."

The girl stared at her with wide blue eyes, a slow smile curling up the corners of her mouth. She was wearing a dress that looked as if it might have started life as a flour sack, although Louisa had done her best to shape it to the little girl's tiny body. Around her waist was a wide sash to which were sewn half a dozen small bells. It was these Bryony had heard tinkling when they arrived.

"I like your bells," Bryony said. "Do you always wear them?"

The little girl nodded her head up and down, but she still didn't say anything.

"Aye, I put bells on all me children, ever since Nathan, me firstborn, wandered off when I was doing the washin' and tumbled into the river and drowned himself afore I could find him."

Bryony straightened up. "I'm sorry. How—how many children do you have?"

"I birthed five, but Sarah here is the only one I got left."

Four children. This woman had buried four children. Bryony wondered how she could possibly have survived it.

They ended up in the kitchen, where Louisa planted her large bulk on the bench while Bryony made tea and Sarah used an old spoon to trace patterns in the packed earth floor.

"From something Captain St. John said, I had the impression there weren't any other women at Jindabyne," said Bryony, filling the kettle from the supply of water Gideon had left her with that morning.

"There ain't, 'cept me. And I don't work for the Cap'n meself, 'cept for the occasional odd bits. It's me man, Will Carver, what's the Cap'n's overseer. We had us a small farm here on the side of the hill once, ourselves, you see. But when the Cap'n took up his big land grant,
he bought us out. Wanted this hill to build a fine house for his lady, he did. He said this were the best spot in the valley."

Will Carver, Bryony soon realized, was the big man with the scarred face she'd seen talking to St. John while the wagons were being unloaded. He'd been a sergeant in the New South Wales Corps, Louisa said, before he'd decided to try his hand at farming. But Bryony got the impression he wasn't much of a farmer, and Louisa had been relieved when Captain St. John had bought them out and given him a job handling men again.

Louisa herself had been transported in '95, for stealing a tankard from an inn. "I guess I must 'ave taken two or three dozen of 'em in my time," she said without any apparent sign of contrition. "We used to sell 'em to this Israelite who'd melt 'em down for the pewter." As she said it, her Irish accent grew even thicker than Gideon's. "Sure then, 'tes a risky dive. I was bound to get caught."

Bryony swallowed a mouthful of tea too quickly, and choked.

"What was you sent out for?" Louisa asked, thumping Bryony helpfully on the back.

"M-manslaughter," she managed to gasp.

After Louisa left, Bryony closed Laura's last sketchbook without looking at the rest of it. She couldn't bring herself to pack it away, though, or the others, either. Once she finished emptying the chest of drawers, she put the stack of sketchbooks back in the bottom drawer, along with the materials and other things for making Simon's clothes.

She cleaned the remainder of the room quickly, smiling every once and a while when she remembered something Louisa Carver had said. The woman was a wonder. A nimble-fingered Dublin thief grown into a fat, middle-aged colonial farmer's wife. In its own way, her life had been as strange and full of twists as Bryony's.

After lunch, Bryony fed Simon, then put him down for a nap while she threw open all the doors and curtains in the dining room and set to work in there.

She scrubbed the walls and floor and waxed the furniture, and took all of Laura's things out of the cabinet and washed them, too. This house was not hers, would never be hers, yet somehow by cleaning every surface she felt as if she were bringing it under her control.

But she couldn't keep her hands from shaking as she replaced Laura's delicate, beautifully made silver and crystal and china on the shelves.

She closed the glass-fronted door of the cabinet and went to throw open the French doors of the parlor and let the warm sunlight flood into the room.

That's when she saw the harp.

It sat in a corner, covered, which was probably why she hadn't noticed it the day before when she first walked through the darkened room. Excited, Bryony pulled off the cover and gasped with delight.