Chase the Dawn by Jane Feather Read Free Book Online

it!” He tossed his shirt onto the bank and strode toward her. “In!” Spinning her round so she could no longer look at him with those hungrily speculative eyes, he pushed her ahead through the rushes. “Get right under the water and wet your hair. I’ll wash out the blood by that cut.”
    His voice was brisk, his hands as impersonal as he could make them, pressing on her shoulders to encourage her submersion. Bryony obeyed because she appeared to have little choice, but as she ducked below the water, her hand brushed against his flat belly. The muscles tautened involuntarily, and Benedict drew in a sharp breath. Deliberately, he made no further move, telling himself that the touch had been accidental. They were standing very close to each other, after all. But then her fingers whispered across his thighs in a knowing, arousing caress that only an insensate fool could pretend had been accidental. With an oath, he yanked her up.
    “Just stop that!”
    “You seemed to like it,” she observed with a mischievously sensual smile, her hand reaching for the powerful evidence of his liking.
    Dear God! Where had she acquired this wanton assurance? “Bryony, listen to me.” He grabbed her wrist, holding it tightly. “What happened this morning was an aberration, and it is not going to happen again.”
    She looked at him, bewildered. “Why ever not? Why was it an aberration?”
    “I do not make a habit of deflowering maids,” he said bluntly. “If you had not convinced me you were no maid, it would never have happened.”
    “But I wanted it to,” she said simply. “You made me whole again. I still have no history, but I do not feel annihilated anymore. I have a present, and a future, which you helped me create.”
    “That is well and good, then; I am glad to have been of help,” he said briskly, turning her back to him so that her hands were out of the way. “But it is not going to occur again.” He lathered soap into her wet hair, carefullycircumventing the lump behind her ear as he rubbed at the blood-clotted strands. “Once we discover who you are, you will be able to put it behind you, see it as a dream. So long as there are no repercussions,” he added, pushing her under the water again to rinse the soap from her hair.
    “What repercussions?” Bryony came up choking, in such a hurry to ask the question that she took in a mouthful of creek water.
    Benedict sighed. “Think.”
    Bryony thought. “A child, you mean?”
    “Just so.”
    “Then we would marry, would we not?” It seemed simple enough to Bryony. “I don’t think I am already, and I could learn to live in a log cabin very easily.”
    Benedict wondered if she were being deliberately simpleminded, but, of course, she knew nothing about him at all. He told her so, succinctly.
    “Well, I know that you are not a backwoodsman, really, for all that you are living like one at present,” Bryony informed him, serenely soaping herself.
    Benedict stiffened. “How do you know that?”
    “Your hands, for a start,” she replied, turning back to him, raising her arms to wash beneath them, the movement lifting her breasts clear of the water. “They are too fine, too elegant. And the way you speak. There is something about your voice, a lilt that I do not think I have heard before, but I do know that you don’t have the speech of a peasant farmer or woodsman.”
    Benedict averted his gaze from the creamy swell where the tight bud of her nipple had hardened in response to the cool water and the fresh air. “Knowingwhat a man is not, my dear girl, is a long way from knowing what he is.”
    “Then tell me what you are.” She looked at him in frank curiosity, her square chin tilted in unconscious challenge.
    That combination of deep blue eyes, raven-dark hair, and skin like clotted cream was common to the beauties of his homeland, Benedict reflected absently. Perhaps she had Irish ancestry. “Come, you will catch cold if you stay in the water any