Night in Eden (9 page)

Hayden raised his hand and coughed. Lady Priscilla Baxter always found some way to remind people that she was the daughter of a Devonshire squire.

The ladies soon withdrew, leaving the men to their port. They talked for a while about the price of wheat and the conditions of their herds, then Sir D'Arcy Baxter said, "Before we rejoin the ladies, Samuel, I'd like to bring in one of my servants and have you sentence him.

It'll save me the trouble of sending him into Parramatta tomorrow."

"Of course," said the Reverend Marsden. "Always happy to oblige a friend. Bring him in."

Sir D'Arcy beckoned to a servant, who was sent running.

"Bit irregular, isn't it?" said Hayden, raising one eyebrow.

The reverend puckered his mouth until it looked like a squeezed-up old lemon. "How so? I'm the magistrate. If I should choose to hold a session here rather than in Parramatta tomorrow, what difference can it make? Frankly I think this business of not allowing masters to order their own servants flogged is nonsense. That's not the way we did it in the old days, I can tell you."

Privately Hayden thought things hadn't changed so much since the old days after all, but he kept it to himself.

At that moment a bullheaded man with a mean expression came into the dining room, dragging behind him a frightened-looking lad of about eighteen.

Marsden looked the convict over and puckered his sour lips. "What man is that?" he demanded in a booming, legalistic voice.

The bullheaded man, whom Hayden took to be Baxter's overseer, replied: "A man of Sir D'Arcy Baxter's, your worship."

"His name and offense?"

"Paddy O'Neal, your worship. Charged with neglect of duty."

The Reverend Magistrate Samuel Marsden paused to pour himself another glass of port. "Will you have the goodness to give your deposition?"

The overseer cleared his throat and clutched the tattered black book handed to him. "I, John Flood, now of Priscilla Pines, in the county of—"

The reverend waved one plump white hand. "Never mind all that. Just state why the prisoner is brought here before me."

"Yes, your worship. Paddy O'Neal here, he's
a
swineherd for Sir D'Arcy Baxter, you see. And he lost one of his master's pigs last week, and another pig this week. We looked for them, your worship, but we never did find them."

Reverend Marsden stared at the hapless Irishman in
a
way that made his beady eyes practically disappear into the folds of his fat face. "And what have you to say in your defense?"

The young man gulped. "I'm sorry, sir—your worship. I—I ain't never kept pigs before, sir—your worship. They sent me out in the bush with a herd of them, and they just ran in all directions. I—I—" His voice cracked and broke.

"Then, you do not deny the charges? Through your own negligence, you lost two of the pigs Sir D'Arcy Baxter entrusted to your care?"

"I didn't mean to! I tried. I really did try—" The lad broke off as the reverend's awful frown was bent on him again.

"Then, perhaps," said the reverend slowly,
"a
taste of the cat-o'-nine-tails will help you try harder next time." He sighed. "Two hundred lashes."

The drawing room was a large, elegant room decorated in fashionable Chinese blues and greens. Like most of the other apartments on the ground floor, it had a double set of French doors that opened onto the veranda. A cool breeze blowing up from the river brought with it the sweet scent of flowering fruit trees from the garden.

The gentlemen entered the room to find the three ladies seated in a semicircle, sewing. At the sight of Hayden, Miss Baxter cast aside her frame and smiled charmingly up at him. "Whatever kept you gentlemen for so long?"

"Just a slight problem with one of the new servants," said her father. "The reverend took care of it for me."

Mrs. Marsden nodded approvingly. "Samuel allows that no new assigned servant is worth anything until he has been flogged three times, isn't that right, Samuel?"

"In my experience," said the reverend, puffing out his fat chest. "And if that doesn't work, you might as well hang them, because they're obviously incorrigible."

Hayden glanced toward the open doors to the veranda. The breeze from the river now carried with it a growing murmur of voices. Someone called out an order, and then he heard a sound no one who'd spent eight years in the army—or any time at all in New South Wales—could fail to recognize. It was the snap of a cat-o'-nine-tails whipping through the air to slash a man's back.

It was followed by the collective sigh of all those who had been assembled to watch.

Lady Priscilla Baxter obviously heard it, too. "Amanda, dear; do play us something on the pianoforte," she said. "And Captain St. John, if you would be so good as to close the doors?"

Miss Baxter obediently moved to seat herself at the instrument that was the symbol of every young lady's claim to gentility, and launched into a minuet without any hesitation. She played competently—and loudly. But not loudly enough to prevent Hayden, walking over to close first one door, then the other, from hearing the distressed cry of a baby.

His baby.

He excused himself and stepped out onto the veranda, closing the French doors behind him. The moon was only just up, spilling a silver path across the dark waters of the slow-moving river. From a stand of gums near the bank came the lonely, haunting cry of a curlew that formed a bizarre counterpoint to the sickening crack of the whip.

He heard a groan, but there were no screams yet. Paddy O'Neal was obviously taking the lash like a man.

Hayden followed the veranda through a covered archway that led to the large courtyard at the rear of the house. The courtyard was paved with sandstone slabs and surrounded by stables and carriage houses and various workrooms and servants' quarters. Near the center a triangle had been set up on a raised platform of stone blocks so that the unfortunate victim could be seen clearly by all who had assembled to watch his punishment.

Young Paddy O'Neal, stripped to the waist, was tied with his arms pulled around the triangle and his chest pressed so tightly against the post that it was impossible for him to move in any way to resist the lash. The blows rained down unceasingly on the poor lad's thin back, one after the other, tearing at skin and muscle until the bones themselves showed through the pulverized bloody mess.

Hayden scanned the courtyard full of people. It looked as if Baxter had ordered all of his servants assembled to watch the flogging, for it was intended to serve not only as a punishment for Paddy O'Neal, but as a warning to the other convicts as well. Hayden's servants, because they were here, had been ordered to be present as well.

He finally located Gideon, standing on the far edge of the crowd, his face pale, his normally placid eyes narrowed in outrage. It looked as if he were trying to shield someone from the worst of the spectacle. Someone who held a baby.

If Gideon was pale, Bryony was white. Though Gideon was doing his best to spare her, she stared at the mangled, writhing mess on the platform with wide, horrified eyes. Held tightly in her arms, Simon howled with all his newfound strength, but whether it was because she was communicating her anxiety to him, or because she was clutching him so tightly, Hayden wasn't sure.

He wove his way through the gaping crowd, his gaze on his baby and the woman who held him.

"Bryony," he said quietly.

She was beyond hearing him.

"Bryony!" He closed his fingers around her upper arms and pulled her around until she looked at him rather than at the calculated horror in the center of the courtyard.

He was shocked by the sight of her. The fine bones of her face were sharp, gaunt, her beautiful brown eyes two dark smudges against pale, pale skin. She stared at him for a moment as if she didn't even recognize him. The pain and fear in her eyes was so raw he could have winced at it. Then she gave a small, hoarse cry and collapsed against him.

Somehow he managed to disentangle the kicking, screaming baby from her arms. "Here," he said, handing the baby to Gideon. "Get Simon out of this."

Then he drew her through the covered archway and out into the darkness of the garden beyond.

Great, gasping, gut-wrenching sobs tore through Bryony's body. She was out of control, clinging helplessly to a hard, massive chest, barely conscious of the fact those solid shoulders and the warm, comforting arms that held her belonged to Hayden St. John. She cried for Paddy O'Neal, she cried for Philip, she cried for Madeline, she cried for herself. She cried for a world in which so much agony and despair had to be endured.

And she cried because she wasn't sure she could bear any of it any longer.

She had no idea how long she stood in Hayden St. John's arms, crying. Then Paddy O'Neal's control broke, and he started to scream.

It was a terrible sound, a high-pitched, animal-like scream of indescribable agony that cut through the sweetly scented evening air and brought her sobs to a shuddering halt.

Against her cheek, she could feel the steady beat of Hayden St. John's heart. His evening jacket was smooth and cool. But the arms that held her to him were hard and capable of violence. She sucked in a deep breath, and her senses swam with the scent of him. The scent of starched linen and fine tobacco and restless, deadly maleness.

He was a part of this system, a part of the establishment that perpetuated the barbaric ritual she'd just witnessed. He'd even threatened to have the same thing done to her.

Bryony backed away from him, revulsion, horror, and fear welling up within her anew. Then she tipped back her head and saw his face.

There was a tense, heated look about him that sharpened the angles of his cheeks, flared his nostrils, narrowed his eyes. She knew that look, knew what it meant.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, horrified by the realization of what she'd done. "I don't know what came over me."

"I've seen something similar happen before," he said simply, his voice unexpectedly gentle. That frighteningly intense look faded. "In India."

He took her arm and led her farther away from the house, toward the base of the garden where a vine-twisted arbor stood overlooking the silver slash of the distant river, barely visible through the dark mass of gums along its bank. A light breeze stirred the night air, bringing with it the sweet, heady scent of roses and clematis. In the distance an unseen fountain could be heard, bubbling and splashing away beneath the louder, whistling snap of the cat.

"There was this one young officer who came out while I was there," Captain St. John said. "He went through two particularly bloody, brutal battles shortly after he arrived, but it didn't seem to have bothered him at all. Then one day we saw a dead dog on the road, and he completely fell apart."

Bryony glanced sideways at the man beside her, conscious of seeing him in an entirely new light. "That boy back there isn't a dog."

"No." He paused in the arched entrance to the arbor. "Although he's being treated worse than one."

She sank down on a bench and gazed out at the moon-glazed river framed by lacy lattice, unaware of the silent tears still streaming down her cheeks. To her surprise, he propped his foot up on the bench beside her and leaned forward, resting the palms of his hands against the sides of her face to wipe away her tears with his thumbs.

"You'll survive, Bryony," he said softly. "And so will he."

The awful sound of the cat stopped. Paddy O'Neal gave one final, pitiful scream. In the ensuing silence the hum of the cicadas seemed unnaturally loud.

"Will he?" She suddenly realized how close Hayden St. John was. And that one of his hands still rested, hard and warm, against her cheek. It sent a surprisingly pleasant tremor rippling through her. She tried to resurrect some vestige of her earlier anger, but found she couldn't.

"He'll survive this time at least," Hayden said, dropping his hand and turning away from her. "It could have been worse. The boy's lucky Marsden had some wine in him. He usually orders at least three hundred."

"His back was a mess."

"Aye." Bryony watched him go to stand with his arms braced against the sides of the arbor. He was gazing down at the river sliding past at the base of the slope, but Bryony had a feeling he was looking inward. "I saw a man given eight hundred lashes once."

"Good Lord," breathed Bryony. "What had he done?"

St. John shook his head, something that was not a smile twisting his lips. "He was just a soldier. It was at the end of a long, forced march, and he fell asleep on sentry duty. I guess Wellesley wanted to make an example of him. When his back couldn't take any more, they laid the whip on his backside, and when that was reduced to jelly, they started on his legs. It crippled him for life."

She stared up at the dark profile of the man gazing out over the river and remembered something Gideon had told her earlier, while they were watching Paddy O'Neal being tied to the triangle.

"Gideon told me tonight you don't usually flog your men," she said.

He turned at mat and looked down at her. In the shadow of the arbor, his face was dark and unreadable. "No. I think there are more effective ways of controlling men."

"Such as?"

He shrugged and leaned back against a corner post of the arbor, his hips cocked forward, arms crossed at his chest. "In my experience a man's stomach is far more sensitive than his back."

Something twisted inside her. Something bitter and disappointed. "You
starve
them?"

"Hardly," he said dryly. He tipped his head back against the post and gazed down at her with hooded eyes. "I always make it a practice to give my men more than the basic ration. I find I get better work out of them that way. And the harder and better they work for me, the more sugar and tea and flour I give them." He took a cheroot from his waistcoat pocket and pulled it idly between his fingers. "Which means I have something to take away if they give me problems."

"Yet you threatened to flog me," she said quietly.

His tinderbox flared, throwing tongues of golden light and harsh shadows across his face. He sucked on his cigar, his eyes lowered. "I'll do whatever it takes to keep my son alive and well."

She made an inarticulate noise in her throat.

"Listen, Bryony," he said, looking down at her. "When I was a child in the West Indies, we were all basically raised by black servants. Slaves. I know only too well that most slaves are only as good at what they're set to do as they have to be, and the women who get shipped out here aren't any different. I've heard of toddlers falling down wells because the women who were supposed to be watching them had slipped off to the sly-grog shops instead." He jerked his head in the direction of the big house. "The Reverend Marsden's wife in there has lost two of her children to
accidents
—two of them! Half the babies in this colony are regularly dosed with rum to keep them from fussing and making too much trouble for their nurses."

"I would never do anything like that!" She dug her fists into the bench on either side of her and leaned forward. The motion caused her dress to pull taut over her
milk-swollen breasts. She saw his attention lower, and quickly folded her arms across her chest.

"No," he said. He lifted one foot and braced it against the wall behind him, still studying her. "You're nothing like what I thought you were at first."

"You mean, a thieving whore." Her chin jutted up defiantly. To her surprise, she thought she saw him smile.

"Yes."

She caught his gaze and held it. "I've come to know a lot of thieving whores in the last twelve months. They're not all as bad as you might think."

He exhaled a thin stream of smoke. "Is that when you were arrested? A year ago?" His gaze grew intent, probing.

She looked away. "Yes. It—it was in September."

She was afraid he was going to ask her more. But just then, the distant sound of a door being thrown open drifted down the hill.

Bryony glanced up at the big house. Lady Priscilla Baxter stood silhouetted against one of the French doors opening from the drawing room onto the veranda. She peered out into the night, as if searching for her missing guest.

He pushed away from the post and dropped his cigar. "It's late."

Bryony stood up and moved to the arched entrance of the arbor. With the moon behind him, she couldn't read his expression. But the tension that had hummed between them all night was still there, quickening her breath, tightening the muscles way down low in her belly. She was suddenly, acutely aware that they were not just a master and his servant, but a man and a woman, standing beneath a rose-covered arbor.

The next day dawned clear but balmy. The sun quickly dried the worst of the mud, but a blustery breeze kept away the unseasonable heat of the previous day.

This was more Bryony's idea of spring. After feeding Simon, she laid him in his bed in the back of the tilted cart and hopped down for a walk.

On a day like this she could almost—almost—forget about the constant ache in her heart. For a while, at least, she closed her ears to her inner scream of pain and grief. She forced herself not to think about what had happened to Oliver, or about Philip, lying in his muddy grave. Or about Madeline, alone and bewildered in that miserable dark house in the middle of the moors.

She walked along and listened instead to the high grass swish about her skirts. She found joy in the glory of the fresh air filling her lungs, the warmth of the sun on her face, the rustle of the breeze moving the leaves in the trees overhead... simple pleasures all now doubly precious for having been lost to her for a year. She threw back her head and experienced anew the exhilaration that comes from watching fluffy white clouds scuttle across a deep blue sky.

And wished she could be as free and lighthearted as those clouds.

She saw Hayden St. John only intermittently throughout the morning, and then only from a distance. He seemed to be avoiding her. She told herself she was glad of it. She found his presence and his dark, intense looks disturbing. But she couldn't seem to keep herself from remembering the way his arms had felt around her the night before, so warm and strong and comforting. Or the tense, restless way his eyes had moved over her when they'd sat in the arbor by the river. And she couldn't seem to keep her gaze from scanning the line for a stolen glimpse of his lean, hard body.

They crossed the river and left Parramatta behind. The road swung away to the northwest, drawing slowly closer
to the hazy blue mass of mountains before them. At the top of a hill, Bryony stopped to shade her eyes with her hand and study the distant range.

She'd never seen mountains like this before, so high and rugged. Their jagged outline was like a tear in the sky. They seemed to loom over the plains and low hills at their feet, wild and restless, exciting and threatening at the same time. Even in the bright light of midday, they looked blue. Blue, mysterious, and otherworldly.

She was still gazing at the mountains when Hayden St. John rode up and reined his big bay in before her. He'd discarded his coat and waistcoat again not long after leaving Priscilla Pines. His cravat was gone, too, she noticed; she could see the triangle of bronzed throat and chest where he'd opened several buttons of his shirt at the top.

"Here." He leaned down to hand her a wide-brimmed straw hat similar to the one Gideon and most of the other men wore. "You'd better put this on. Your nose is turning red."

She took the hat from his outstretched hand, surprisingly touched that he'd thought of her. When she settled it on her head, she discovered it was a bit big, but at least it kept the sun off her face.

She tilted back her head and looked up at him from beneath the broad brim. He smiled, a slow smile that brought a crease to his cheek and warmed his eyes in a way she found disconcerting. "It'll do until we can get something more appropriate," he said.

There was something about his smile that made Bryony feel suddenly breathless. She glanced quickly away, toward the distant mountains and, feeling in need of something to say, asked, "What are they called? Those mountains, I mean?"

He turned his head to follow her gaze. "Someone gave them an official name once, but I've forgotten now what it was. Most people just call them the Blue Mountains."

"They look very near."

"They are. About twenty miles from here." He brought his horse to walk along beside her. "What's on the other side?"

"The Aborigines say that on the far side of the highest ridges lie great valleys filled with sweet, lush grass... enough to feed the biggest sheep herds the world has ever seen. But then again, there are others who claim it's nothing but desert."

She glanced up at him in surprise. "You mean, no one really
knows!"

He shrugged. "No. No one's found a way to get through them yet. Every time someone follows a river up a likely looking valley, he finds himself staring at a waterfall tumbling over a cliff four or five hundred feet high. The Aborigines know how to get over them, I suppose. But so far they haven't shown anyone."

She gazed at the jagged peaks of the mountains in awe. "You mean, thousands of people live in a narrow stretch of coast along the edge of this great continent, and they don't even know what's on the other side of those mountains? Why, it could be anything!"