Night in Eden (14 page)

A ghost of a smile warmed St. John's eyes and tugged at the edges of his lips as he watched the boy dash away. He took off his broad-brimmed hat, brushed the dark hair from his forehead, and turned back into the house. His gaze fell on Bryony, and the smile faded.

"Thank you for assigning him to help me," she said, uncomfortably aware of the light in his eyes as he stared at her. "And for having the bell moved."

A beguiling smile tugged at his lips. A kind of smile she hadn't seen before. "Don't thank me. It's my breakfast that's at stake here, remember?"

A gust of cool wind rattled the open door behind him, bringing the fresh night air laden with the lemony smell of gums into the house. He shut the door and moved past her, on down the hall toward his room.

Bryony's voice stopped him. "How old is that boy?"

As soon as she said it, she regretted the question, regretted what could only be seen as invitation to him to linger beside her. He paused and slowly swung around to
face her with a look in his eyes that managed to be both sleepy and heated at the same time. She became aware of her pulse, beating against the collar of her ugly work dress; of her breasts, rising and falling rapidly beneath her bodice.

"He's fourteen. But he's been on the streets picking pockets since he ran away from a foundling home at the age of six and hooked up with some mountebank who knew a good thing when he found it. He's quick and he's clever and he has the morals and instincts of an alley cat. He's no boy, and don't ever make the mistake of forgetting it."

Bryony swallowed hard and saw his gaze drop to her bare throat. She could feel it there, feel the heat of it, as surely as if he'd reached out and touched her. "He's a boy."

He walked back to her with a slow, rolling gait that seemed to emphasize his slim-hipped leanness, his broad-shouldered strength. The light from the lantern on the hall table flared over the sharp bones of his cheeks, and cast dark shadows over his eyes. "Six months ago I found him between the legs of one of my servant women. In every way that counts, he's a man."

A tense, tight feeling curled low in her belly, then spread outward, filling her chest and carrying with it a heat that coursed through her limbs. Hayden St. John was definitely a man. And there were only the two of them here, in this house, filled with the long shadows of night and the gentle breathing of a sleeping baby.

Was it fear that clenched at her belly? That made her heart pound so hard it seemed to be taking up all the space in her chest that should have been used by her lungs?

And what about you?
she wanted to ask.
Did you crawl between the legs of your servant women?

But he hadn't, of course, because Laura had been alive. And a man like this... ah, a man like this would
be faithful to the woman he loved, even when she was great with his child.

No, he wouldn't have lain with those other servant women. Not when Laura was alive. But now...

Now Laura was dead.

Bryony felt a flush of heat stain her cheeks. He took another step that brought him right up to her. She saw the desire leap in his eyes, hot and desperate. Saw the muscle jump in his temple. Saw the determined slant of his mouth.

He's going to take me,
she thought, her lips parting as the breath left her body in a long keening sigh.
He's going to thrust me back into my room and take me now, the way a man takes a woman he wants.

She swallowed hard, and his fierce, hungry gaze dropped to her mouth. He leaned forward. She knew he was going to kiss her. She couldn't move.

He made a harsh, tearing sound, deep in his chest and straightened
up.
He pushed past her and headed toward the front door. The wind of his passing caused the lantern flame to flicker and almost go out. His hand twisted the door handle and yanked it toward him.

As if released from a trance, Bryony whisked herself into her room and slammed the door shut behind her. Panting, she pressed against it, her hands splayed at her sides.

She remembered the tumult of fear and want that had swept over her as he leaned into her. Long after she heard his footsteps disappear into the night, she stood there with her head tipped back against the door panel, her heart thudding wildly in her chest. But she could not decide which was the stronger. The fear.

Or the want.

He would make her his mistress.

Hayden leaned against a veranda post and watched the moon-silvered river slide past through the darkened trees. He had spent too many nights out here, he decided. Too many nights smoking cigars and willing the frigid air to cool the heat in his blood and help ease the pressure in his loins.

He'd had a lot of reasons for holding himself back, but none of them seemed good enough anymore. Yes, she was his servant. Yes, he felt guilty about desiring another woman so soon after his wife's death. But his need for this dark-eyed convict woman with her full, ripe breasts and mysterious past was turning his life into an aching, howling hell. If it hadn't been for the fear he'd seen in her eyes tonight, he'd have taken her, right there on the floor of the hall. He'd have thrown up her skirts and spread her-silken white thighs wide, and sank his hard man's body into her soft woman's flesh. Right there.

The problem was, she did fear him. It was obvious in the way she stiffened whenever he touched her, even when he touched her tenderly, in comfort. And it was obvious in the hunted look that sharpened her fine features every time he looked at her with desire blatant and hot in his eyes.

He swore crudely and reached in his pocket for a cigar. It wasn't going to be easy, convincing Bryony to become his mistress. But he was determined he was going to
convince her. He wanted her willing. He wanted her to want him. He wanted her to enjoy him.

He bit the tip off his cigar and fumbled for his tinderbox. He struck the flint, his hands shaking as he remembered the smoldering fire he'd glimpsed in the dusky depths of her dark brown eyes tonight as he leaned into her.

She might be afraid of him, he thought—afraid of his sexuality, afraid of the power that his position as her master gave him over her. But there was more to her awareness of him as a man than fear, he was sure of it. He'd seen it in the telltale flush that stole across her high cheekbones whenever she let her gaze rove over his body. In the way her lips parted and her breathing grew rapid and shallow whenever he was near her.

Her woman's body wanted him. Even if she didn't know it yet. Even if her woman's caution made her fear where that wanting might lead her. She was skittish. Like a filly that had been badly handled by rough, clumsy men in the past and now needed to be gentled.

He would gentle her. He would give her time to get used to having him around. Time to get over her fear of him.

Bryony looked up from the table at which she sat, cleaning the glass chimneys of a half-dozen oil lamps, and watched as St. John tilted his chair back against the house wall. Simon lay along the length of his father's thighs, his head on Hayden's knees, and played with his father's watch. The soft, husky sound of the baby's laughter mingled with the rustling of the wind in the gum trees and the shouts of the men herding his bloodstock back toward the barn at the far end of the yard. At the base of the hill, the river rushed by deep and fast, swollen with rain from the dark clouds that hung over the Blue Mountains to the west.

It had been several days since the incident in the hall.

They had never spoken of it. But, then, what was there to speak of? He hadn't kissed her, hadn't even touched her. She had taken extra care to avoid him once the sun set and the yard quieted for the night, but she was beginning to feel foolish for her caution. His attitude toward her had been gentle, almost caring. Perhaps he really did not intend to force her to share his bed. After all, wouldn't he have taken her by now? Perhaps she could begin to let go of some of her earlier fear. To relax.

Sunlight flashed on the gold back of the watch as it slipped from Simon's fingers. His father just managed to catch it before it hit the stone flagging. The smile faded from the baby's toothless little mouth, and a lip quivered as the watch disappeared into a vest pocket.

"Now he's going to cry," said Bryony.

"No, he's not going to cry, are you me lad?" Hayden said, imitating Gideon's Irish lilt. Bryony watched him lift the baby up to his shoulder and hold him close, fair head to dark, and her chest tightened with a warm, elusive sweetness that held more than a touch of sadness in it.

There was something about the sight of an innocent, tiny baby being held so gently and lovingly by such a big, hard man that couldn't help but make her wish for one suspended moment that the baby and the man were both hers.

Annoyed with herself, she jerked her gaze away and reached for another lamp. She had worked so hard tonight trying to fix a decent dinner for that ungrateful bully, and he hadn't said one word, not one word.

"Your damper wasn't bad tonight," he said.

Bryony looked up into eyes that were narrowed with what might have been amusement. Her fist tightened around the lamp base. "What was wrong with it?"

He looked surprised. "Nothing. I said it wasn't bad."

"Exactly. You didn't say it was good."

His lips curled up into a slow, lazy smile that did
something funny to her insides. "All right, it was good. But the meat—"

She thrust the lamp away from her. "The meat wasn't that overdone."

"No," he agreed.

She waited for him to say more. He didn't. Finally she said, "What about the salad? Did you like it?"

He stood up from the chair and went to lean against the veranda post, cradling Simon in the crook of his arm and looking at her sideways. "I might have liked it more if I could have been sure of what was in it. Last time I checked, we didn't have a vegetable garden."

She laughed. "It was wild sorrel and dandelion and chickweed. I can't believe you've been eating nothing but meat and damper."

He shrugged and lifted Simon to his shoulder. "Most men in the bush do. It's only women who worry about things like vegetables and salads."

"Then, it's too bad there aren't more women in the bush."

"Most women don't like the bush."

That cold, forbidding look that she hated was back in his face... as if all the sharp planes and angles of cheek and jaw had been chipped from stone. She'd seen that look before, whenever something happened or she said something that reminded him of his dead wife. And Laura definitely had been a woman who didn't like the bush.

It wasn't very encouraging, but she pushed ahead anyway. "I—I would like to start a garden, if I could. Not much, just a few vegetables, and some herbs. I was thinking if you'd let me keep Quincy a couple of mornings a week, and let us have some shovels and maybe some seeds and cuttings—"

She realized he wasn't paying attention to her. He had turned away and was watching someone walk toward the house from the yard.

Bryony wiped her palms on her apron and looked around to see Will Carver wrap one of his big hands around a veranda post and climb up onto the nagging.

"Evenin', Cap'n," he said, touching the brim of his hat. He didn't say anything to Bryony, but she felt his gaze slide over her, like a snake through water.

"Will." St. John lifted the baby from his shoulder and held him out as Bryony walked forward to take him. "What's the matter?"

"This," said the foreman, unfurling something he held, rolled up, in one of his beefy fists.

It looked like a hide of some kind. It was fresh, with the hair still on it.

Hayden didn't move. "Where'd you get it?"

"McDuff brought it in just now. He was out with the dogs huntin' a roo when he come across one of yer calves layin' on its side, bawlin', with it's mama standin' over it, not knowin' what to do. When he went to take a look at it, he found out the calf 'ad stepped in a hole and broke one of its legs, so he slit its throat. Only then he realized that while the cow was wearin' yer SJ brand, someone had slapped a Q8J over the SJ on the calf."

St. John's eyes narrowed in a look that was cold and dangerous. "Take Simon and go inside," he told Bryony over his shoulder.

"Why? What does it mean?" She leaned forward to take a better look at the raw hide.

"Never mind," he said grimly. "Just go inside."

Bryony flushed. It was none of her business, of course, whatever it was. If she'd been Laura, he would have talked to her about it.

Bryony lit the candle beside her bed and crawled between the covers. The house was still around her. Hayden St. John had ridden out with his overseer, and although darkness had fallen, he hadn't come back.

She opened the sketchbook and propped it up against her blanket-covered knees. This was Laura's last sketchbook, and Bryony had never finished looking at it. She turned the pages until she came to the portrait of the woman herself, then stopped for a moment, staring at it intently.

She decided that Laura had not been particularly kind to herself in this self-portrait. The face was undeniably, heart-stoppingly lovely. But the artist had hinted at something behind all that beauty, which was obviously something that Laura herself did not admire. There was an introspective, almost melancholy look to those limpid green eyes, and more than a hint of weakness to the bow-shaped lips and delicate chin. Feeling oddly disturbed, Bryony turned the page.

She was looking at a garden. Not a sketch of a garden, but a
plan
for a garden. Bryony turned the book sideways, studying the plan more closely. There were the red gums, and there, at the base of the hill, was the river. The house with its verandas sat in the middle. There was the circular rose garden that was now nothing but black, dead stalks, and there, down by the creek, was where she'd found the carrots, gone to seed.

Bryony leaned back against the pillows and sighed. So Laura had tried to plant a garden, too. She had probably sat here, in this very bed, drawing out her plan, seeing it all in her artist's mind: the arches covered with roses and honeysuckle, the neat parterres of lavenders and thymes, the carefully laid out rows of melons and squashes, of feverfew and monkswort and valerian. She'd seen it, and designed it with a grace and skill Bryony could never hope to match.

But she hadn't had the knowledge or experience she needed to make it a reality. Not without the assistance of her father the viscount's army of well-trained gardeners.

Bryony sighed again and looked at the next plan, a detail of the herb garden, each area of planting carefully
labeled. And for some reason she couldn't quite understand, she felt tears sting her eyes, for this gentle woman who had dreamed of planting a beautiful garden. And reaped only death.

Sarah's tiny bells jingled as she ran, laughing and chasing the butterflies that danced through the flowers growing in the tall grass.

"Don't you go too far, Sarey," called Louisa, straightening up from the laundry tub to frown after her daughter.

But Sarah only laughed, her fair hair tumbling in sun-streaked curls down her back, her laughter joining the tinkling of her bells to be carried away by the breeze.

They were down by the river, doing the laundry. Bryony had discovered that here in the bush, it was much easier to take the laundry to the water than to haul the water up to the homestead to do the washing. So she and Louisa had hitched a mare to an old cart, loaded the cart's bed with clothes and pots and buckets and washboards and wooden dollies, and headed for the river.

Bryony reached for another of Hayden's shirts and began scrubbing it against the washboard. "She'll be all right. We're both watching her."

Louisa shook her head. "Things can happen so fast. Me Mary, she got bit by a king snake, she did, while I was only fixin' dinner. I told her to stay away from the woodpile, but she was always takin' the split logs and usin' 'em to make tiny houses—for the fairies, she used to say."

Bryony's eyes wandered over to where Simon lay, asleep in his packing crate beneath a big old river gum. How easy they were to lose. How hideously, heart-stoppingly easy.

She thought of Philip, racked with a cough that rattled the breath in his thin chest. She thought of Madeline in that cold house on the windswept moors, and a wild,
helpless fear for her only living child tore at Bryony's stomach like something live and vicious. She would not, she could not, think about it.

"Now, me Joseph," said Louisa, stirring the sheets they were boiling over the fire. "He died of the measles. And little Thomas, it was the flux that got him. I'll have to take you and show you their graves some time. All sleepin' in a row, they are, right up there on the crest of the hill above the house, where I could be sure the floods wouldn't get them. You wouldn't think it to look at that river now, but I've seen it so high it reached halfway to the house."

Bryony looked down at the river and almost smiled. There was no way that river could ever reach anywhere near that high.

"I told the Captain he better be careful where he put that beautiful young lady wife of his, on account of the floods. So he laid her up there, too, right next to me wee ones."

Bryony's hand stilled at the washboard. "He—he was very much in love with her, wasn't he?"

"Lord, wasn't he," said Louisa with a sigh. "She was such a sweet, gentle thing. A real lady."

A warm, restless wind blew across the clearing, bringing with it the smell of sun-warmed earth and ripening fields. Bryony felt a shiver dance along her spine, and even before she looked up, she knew he was there.