Chase the Dawn Read Online Free Page A

eyebrows together over glowing black eyes. “Good morrow, Bryony.” He trod across the grass toward her, each step seemingly invested with purpose. “You are somewhat restored, I gather?”
    “I find myself so,” she agreed. There was something a little forbidding suddenly about his expression, and she offered a tentative smile. “You do not object to my taking a walk, I trust?”
    He dropped to his heels beside her. “In future, you will do me the courtesy of letting me know before you decide to go awandering.”
    “But I am not a prisoner,” Bryony objected, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. If his statement had been amere request, she would have felt no need to protest it, but there was a tension in the atmosphere, and the statement had been made in an authoritative tone that admitted no dissension.
    “That is perhaps a matter for definition at some later point,” he said evenly. “There is much that you do not understand.” He stood up and reached down for her hand. “Come, the damp bank of a creek in the dawn chill is not the ideal place for the ill-clad and but newly recovered.”
    Bryony allowed him to pull her up. “I do not understand what you have said.”
    “No, there is much that you do not understand,” he repeated. “And it is possible that you must remain in ignorance. For the moment, you must do as you are bid, I fear, and control your curiosity.”
    It was not a declaration to be accepted by anyone with a flicker of spirit, and Bryony possessed rather more than a flicker. “I do not think I can agree to that,” she announced. “Apart from anything else, I do not know your name.”
    “That is easily remedied,” he returned, sounding amused rather than annoyed by the stiffness of her voice. “My name is Benedict, and you may call me Ben, if you wish.”
    Ben … Benedict … She turned the name over in her head and found it pleasing. It suited him, somehow. Plain, yet elegant; strong, yet sensitive. Sweet heaven, she was becoming fanciful! Or perhaps she always had been? She had no idea what she was like, and no clues, either.
    “How did I come to be here?” The question followed the previous thought naturally.
    “When you have had some breakfast and I’ve had another look at your back, I will satisfy your curiosity as far as I am able. And we will see what we can do to jog your errant memory.”
    The anointing took place under a veneer of dignity maintained by an apparently indifferent silence that neither of them chose to break. Once Benedict was finished, remarking with quiet satisfaction that she was almost as good as new, she was rewrapped in the blanket, and they returned outside to the sun-drenched clearing. Bryony broached a subject at the forefront of her mind. “Do I have any clothes, Ben?”
    He shook his head. “Rags and tatters, lass. Not that they weren’t costly scraps,” he added. “Rose damask with a hooped petticoat, lawn and lace, and satin pumps.” He watched her for some reaction. “You were dressed for dancing.” When she looked at him blankly, he said, “What I would like to know is why, dressed like that, you were in the barn—presumably the hayloft, since we didn’t see you earlier—at three o’clock in the morning. The dancing at Trueman’s had been over long since.”
    Bryony shook her head helplessly. “I do not know. Are you sure my name is Bryony?”
    “Unless you were wearing someone else’s drawers, it is.” He chuckled. “I suppose it is possible that you dressed up in this Bryony’s clothes for the same reason that took you to the barn at that hour.”
    “What were you doing there?” There was challenge in both her voice and her pansy-blue eyes. “Did you set the fire?”
    Benedict chewed on a stalk of grass for a minute, then shrugged. “As it happens. But I was not to know the barn had an occupant other than the rats.”
    “Why would you do such a thing?”
    “My reasons are my own,” he told her in that soft, definite tone.