Chase the Dawn by Jane Feather Page A

the daughter of an Englishman of Sir Edward Paget’s standing and conviction doing hiding in the grass, wearing an Indian tunic, on the lookout for a troop of British soldiers in order to betray them to a man who treated dead bodies as nonchalantly as if they were all in a night’s work? Which, of course, they were. Death and war were bedfellows, she remembered with bleak chill. Somehow, in the loving idyll of a log cabin in a clearing, the world’s reality held at bay across the abyss of unremembering, the connection had escaped her. And what would Benedict say when she revealed her identity?
    “How many did you say there were?”
    Bryony jumped. He had come up behind her like the proverbial thief in the night … like the soldier that he was, well versed in stealth and trickery. “About twelve,” she whispered. “Merry and somewhat befuddled.”
    “Should be easy to take, then,” he said with a twist of his lips that sent a shiver down her back. “Locked inswinish merriment, betrayed by that damned English arrogance, as usual, they’ll never know what hit them. The pleasure will be all mine.”
    “But why must you take them?” she asked with all the naivete of a noncombatant.
    “In order that the wagons can get away. We cannot risk them hearing us, now, can we?” That same smile disfigured his face.
    There was nothing about this Benedict that remotely resembled the one she knew. He was glorying in the prospect of ambushing the unwary troop, with a pleasure that seemed to have little to do with the need to secure the safety of the laden carts. Black-faced men were slipping out of the shadows, forming a circle around their leader. They had knives in their hands, the blades dull gleams in the dimness, and pistols in their belts. Was Benedict going to order and supervise the deaths of those men who were laughing and singing in the unwariness of drink? Bryony knew that it was not a question she could bring herself to ask, yet her eyes asked it.
    His own became flat, expressionless, opaque as they read the question and denied the answer she wanted so desperately to hear. “Little girls should not wade in waters too hot and too deep for them,” he said, his voice tinged with mockery. “You will go now to the wagons. Joshua is responsible for you. It’s a responsibility that he would as lief not have, so I suggest you avoid making your presence felt.”
    “I would prefer to remain with you.”
    Anger, dark and fearsome, engulfed his expression, and she took an involuntary step backward. “Your preferences are of
no
importance,” he said with soft finality.“Your safety is all that concerns me at present. It is a safety that you have wantonly jeopardized, but I will not do so. Neither will I risk that of my men for some foolhardy whim of yours.” Without waiting to see if she obeyed, he turned from her. His hand moved in a brief signal to those around him, and they seemed to melt into the shadows as they stole toward the unwitting redcoats.
    Bryony went back to the wagons. Joshua and the two boys were in position, ready to drive the carts out. Tarpaulins covered their mounded contents. She hesitated at the lead wagon, waiting for some sign of acknowledgment from Joshua. She received nothing, so she clambered aboard to sit beside him.
    “Ye’ve no business here,” he growled.
    “If I hadn’t been here, you’d have had a nest of redcoats on your backs,” Bryony retorted.
    Joshua’s eyes flicked sideways, a glimmer of surprise in their depths. Then he snorted, a curious sound, half laugh, half exclamation. The silence in the clearing became almost palpable, and Bryony could not get out of her head the image of the dead body lying by the plundered armory. How soon before it would be discovered? Were there more? And what in the name of all that was good was happening down the road? She waited in dread for the sound of shots, the clash of steel, shouts, but there were only the cicadas, shrill and