Chase the Dawn Read Online Free

found herself outside, the door closed softly behind her. She stood still for a minute, breathing deeply of the freshness laden with the scents of pine needles, honeysuckle, damp moss, and river mud. They were all familiar smells, she realized as she identified each one. The ground beneath her bare feet was soft and springy, and she curled her toes luxuriously into the mossy turf, relishing the overpowering sense of being alive—a sense that seemed to carry a curious overlay, as if it were a possession only just now truly valued. Had she nearly died, then, when whatever had brought her to this place had happened? Her mind stretched again, but again there was only an abyss where there should have been memory. At least that was one memory that the man could fill in for her.
    The sky was lightening as the first pale streaks of dawn, rose-tipped, showed in the east above the trees. Bryony made her way slowly to the edge of the clearing, sensing her returning strength with each step. Among the trees, her feet sank into the carpet of pine needles, which pricked the soles of her feet, and she jumped back with a little cry. The sensation had brought more than the simple ordinary sting. It felt like something else,something that now hovered as a dark, amorphous shape in the wings of her mind.
    Resolutely, she stepped forward into the trees, standing quite still on the prickly needles. All that happened was that her feet became used to the sensation. An owl hooted its farewell to night. A squirrel skittered across the ground in front of her and leaped at a tree trunk. A thrush twittered, and then the forest came alive as the dawn chorus ushered in the new day. The blanket-wrapped figure made her way through the trees in the direction of the water that she seemed to know instinctively was to be found within a few yards.
    Benedict awoke as always at the first note of the dawn chorus. He came awake with no intervening drowsiness, and his first action was to look toward the bedstead attached to the far wall. What he saw brought him to his feet in one fluid motion, a soft, explicit curse on his lips. Pulling on his shirt, he went outside. The tracks of her feet were visible indentations in the springy turf leading to the trees. He sighed with relief—at least there was only one set of footprints. At the trees, the tracks stopped. The pine needles were too thick and resilient to bear any mark of her progress. He swore again, tucking his shirt into the waistband of his britches. Wherever she had gone, she had gone alone. But he had no idea what condition she was in, whether her mind was functioning sufficiently to enable her to find her way back, whether she had enough sense to recognize her body’s limitations.
    “Bryony?” he called, softly at first, then with increasing power, although it went against all his instincts and experience to announce his presence in full voice. One could never be certain that there were no observers, noears to hear. And Benedict Clare could afford neither. There was no answer, and he stood for a minute, listening intently for any sound that he would identify immediately as not indigenous to the woodland. Nothing. Collecting an iron kettle from the cabin, he made his way down to the creek in search of her, reflecting with customary pragmatism that he might as well kill two birds with one stone.
    He saw her at the water’s edge as he broke through the trees. The huddled, blanketed figure was sitting on the bank, chin resting on drawn-up knees, her raven’s hair falling forward to conceal her profile. She was rapt in contemplation of something, whether of the internal or external world he could not guess. Making no attempt to disturb her immediately, he simply went to the creek’s edge and bent to fill the kettle.
    “Good morrow, sir.” Bryony came out of her daydream as his figure filled her vision.
    He straightened, swinging the now heavy kettle easily from one hand, a little frown drawing the fine