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.Simon was stillasleep in his cradle in the back of the cart.She cast him one quick, nervous glance, thenlooked pointedly away, her back ramrod straight on the hard plank seat."We need to lighten the load on the cart," he said.Her head snapped back around."You'llhave to get off and walk." He expected her to complain, perhaps even try to argue with him about it.What he hadn'texpected was for her to smile.It was a slow smile, one that lifted the corners of her lips, chased the shadows from herpretty brown eyes, and lit up her whole face.It was the first time he'd seen her smile, andhe didn't like the effect it had on him.He felt as if the blood in his veins had been heated,and there was a definite stirring in his loins.He waited only long enough to see her climbdown out of the cart, then he wheeled his horse around and cantered back up the line.But he couldn't seem to banish the image of her from his mind, no matter how hard heworked to keep the wagons moving.It wasn't long before the sun was out again, strong enough to raise a sweat.Steam rosefrom the wet roadway and the animals' soaked hides.Then the flies came out.If therewas one thing Hayden hated about Australia, it was the flies.They landed on the men'smouths and hovered about their eyes and drove the animals crazy.One of the horsespulling the front dray was so maddened by the swarming black things that it did a littlehalf buck and managed to get itself tangled in its harness.The whole line had to stopwhile the horse was unharnessed, then reharnessed again.Hayden was just swinging back into the saddle after getting the wagons moving again,when he saw her.She walked along the verge of the road, staying out of the mud as bestshe could, although the grass and shrubs were still wet from the rain and the skirt of hernew gray dress was already soaked to the knees.She had left Simon in his cradle in thecart and was striding along with the leggy, easy gait of a woman born and bred in thecountry.It was obvious she was glad to be off the jolting cart.She seemed fascinated byeverything she saw, whether it was the glorious sight of a banksia in bloom or somethingas simple as a lizard, scuttling off a sunbaked rock at her approach.As he watched her, aflock of galahs swept overhead, billowing up and wheeling like a great pink and graycloud scuttling before the wind.She stopped, her hand coming up to shade her eyes fromthe sun as she followed their flight.For a moment a slow smile of pleasure once morelifted the sadness from her face, and it touched him again, in a way he hadn't expected.He started to ride toward her, then wheeled and spurred the bay away instead, up andover the hill.He intended to check on the creek crossing at the base of the slope.But ashe stopped his horse beneath an ironbark and sat for a moment watching the sunlightfilter through its leaves and dapple over the surface of the clear water of the stream, hefound himself thinking about the convict woman instead.He liked the way the woman's chin jutted up and her eyes flashed when she had to sayyes, sir.He liked the way her flame-licked, dusky hair curled around her face, making herlook as if she'd just gotten out of bed.And when he saw his son at her breast, he foundhimself wondering what that breast would feel like under his hand.He wanted to put hishands on her.He wanted his new servant woman. He dismounted and loosened his saddle girth, letting the horse have a drink while hestepped a few yards upstream and hunkered down to splash the cold, fresh water over hisface, as if it might somehow cool the heat in his loins, too.Laura's death had left a painful ache, deep within him.But he was a healthy young man,with all of a man's physical needs.He supposed it was inevitable that those needs wouldbecome increasingly insistent as time went on.He just hadn't expected it to happen thissoon.Or to find that he could be so aroused by the resilient spirit and ripe body of a convictwoman whose wary, hate-filled eyes seemed to follow him wherever he went.CHAPTER EIGHTBy mid-afternoon, Bryony was tired.She barely noticed the pungent wattles, the bluebells and belly buttons, or the brightlycolored cockatoos that flickered through the drooping branches of the overhead gums.She walked with her head bowed, all her concentration trained on the simple effort ofputting one foot in front of the other.She had lifted her head to brush the hair out of her sweaty face when she saw Captain St
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