“Then dare I take this to mean that you offer me some small affection at last?”
She cast him a quick glance and she thought that he teased her, his eyes seemed so aflame with mischief. She flushed furiously. “You know that I …”
“Mmm,” he murmured, and it sounded hard. “I know that you are probably glad to be with me—the rebel—rather than within your father’s care. I can hardly take that as a compliment, madame.”
“Eric, my God, don’t be so cruel at a time such as this—”
“I am sorry, love. Truly, I am sorry,” he muttered. She seemed so earnest. Her hair spilled in a rich river of dark flame all about her. The white sheet was pulled high upon her breast and the eyes that beheld his were dazzling with emotion, perhaps even the promise of tears.
He pulled the sheet from her and crawled over her. “One more time, my love. Pour yourself upon me, let your sweetness seep into me, one more time. For the cold northern nights ahead, breathe fire into my soul. Wife, give yourself to me.”
Her arms wrapped around him. She gave herself to him as she never had before, and indeed, he felt as if he left something of himself within her, and took from her a flame, a light, that might rise in memory to still the tremors of many a night ahead.
And yet that, too, came to an end, and he was forced to realize that he must rise.
She remained abed, cocooned within the covers, as he called for a bath. When he was done, she bathed herself, and then she helped him to dress. She helped to buckle his scabbard, and when that was done she closed his heavy cloak warmly about him. He caught her to him, and as the seconds ticked by he pressed his lips to her forehead.
Then he broke away and left the room. She followed him slowly down the stairs and out to the porch where he was mounting his horse, a party of five of his volunteers ready to accompany him. She offered him the stirrup cup.
“Will you pray for me?” he asked her curiously.
“Yes, with every fiber of my being!” she whispered.
He smiled. “I will find Damien for you. And I will correspond as regularly as I can. Take care, my love,” he told her. He bent and kissed her. She closed her eyes and felt his lips upon her own, and then she felt the coldness when his touch was gone.
At last he rode away, and she stood on the porch and waved until she could see him no more. Then she turned and fled up the stairs and back to her room.
But the room, too, had grown cold. She started to cry, and then she found that she was besieged by sobs. They seemed to go on and on forever. But then her tears dried, and she told herself with annoyance that she must pull herself together. Her fears were irrational. Eric would come home, and nothing would go wrong. They would ride out the storm; they would survive.
He would come home …
And when he did, she would find a way to earn his trust again. She would find a way to tell him that she loved him.
Eric had been gone two weeks when Cassidy came to her in the parlor to tell her that she had a visitor. Cassidy’s manner made her frown and demand, “Who is it?”
He bowed to her deeply. “Your father, my lady.”
“My father!” Stunned, she stood, knocking over the inkwell she had been using as she worked on household accounts. Neither she nor Cassidy really noted the spill of ink.
“Has he come—alone?” she asked. The coast was dangerous for Nigel Sterling now. He had been out on the river, the last she heard, with Lord Dunmore—and Robert Tarryton.
“His ship rests at the Cameron docks. A warship.”
She understood why Sterling hadn’t been molested upon his arrival. Biting nervously into her lower lip, she shrugged and sank slowly back to her chair. She had no choice but to see her father. She wondered if Cassidy realized it.
“Show him in,” she told Cassidy.
He cast her a quick, condemning glance. He didn’t understand.
Anger rose quickly within her. Couldn’t Cassidy, and the others, understand that she simply wanted to save the house?
They hadn’t managed to fight Sterling and his warship!
She wasn’t going to beg Cassidy to believe in her or understand her. She stared at him and waited. He turned sharply on his heel and left the room. A few moments later her father entered. He came into the room alone, but even as he stepped in, she heard a commotion beyond the windows. Amanda hurried to one of the windows and looked out. A troop of royal navy men were assembling on the yard.
She turned around to stare at her father.
“What are you doing here?”
“Ever the princess, eh, daughter? The supreme lady. Not “Welcome, Father,” or ‘How are you, Father?’ but ‘What are you doing here!’ Well, your highness, first I shall have some of your husband’s fine brandy.” He walked to a cherrywood table to help himself from the decanter. Then he sat comfortably across the desk from her. “I want more information.”
“You must be mad—”
“I could burn this place to the ground.”
“Burn it!”
“Your husband’s precious Cameron Hall?” Sterling taunted.
“He’d rather that it burned than that I give anything to you.”
“Why, daughter! You’ve fallen in love with the rogue.” Sterling set his glass sharply upon the desk, eyeing her more closely. “Then let’s up the stakes here, Highness. I have Damien. I’ll torture him slowly before I slit his throat if you don’t cooperate.”
She felt the blood rush from her face. The pounding of her heart became so loud that it seemed to engulf her. “You’re lying,” she accused him. But it had to be true. It had been so long since she had heard from her cousin.
Sterling sat back confidently. “The fool boy was in Massachusetts, harrying the soldiers straight back into the city of Boston. He was captured—he was recognized as kin of mine. Out of consideration for my service to the Crown, the officer in charge thought that the dear boy—my kin, you realize—should be given over to me. I greeted him like a long-lost brother—before tossing him into the brig.” Sterling stared at her, smiling, for a long while.
“How—how do I know that you really have him?” Amanda managed to ask at last.
Sterling tossed her a small signet ring across the desk. She picked it up and pretended to study it, but she knew the ring. And she knew her father.
“What do you want out of me?” she demanded harshly.
“Information. About troop movements. About arms.”
“But I don’t know—”
“You could find out. Go into Williamsburg. Sit about the taverns. Listen. Write to your dear husband, and bring me his letters.”
“You’re a fool, Father. Even if I wanted to spy for you, I could not. The servants suspect me to begin with. They follow me everywhere.”
“Then you had best become very clever. And you needn’t worry. I will find you. Or Robert will find you.”
“Robert!”
“Yes, he’s with me, of course. He’s very anxious to see you. The duchess has returned to England with her child, and he is a lonely man. Anxious for a tender mistress.”
“You are disgusting. You thrust me to my husband against my will, and now you would cast me—despising him!—back to Robert. What manner of monster are you, Father?”
He rose, his smile never faltering. “Highness, I would hand you over to all the troops from England and beyond, and gladly.”
She stood, wishing she dared to spit in his face. “When do I get Damien?”
“You don’t get him! You merely keep him alive.”
“No! That is no bargain. I will not be blackmailed forever.”
“Why, daughter! I thought that you were loyal to the Crown!”
“I am! I was! I can no longer betray my husband—”
“Your husband!” Sterling laughed, then shook his head. “Why, daughter, you are a whore. Just like your dear mother. Lord Cameron keeps you pleased ’twixt the thighs, and so you would suddenly be loyal to a new cause!”
; She slapped him as hard as she could. He sobered quickly, catching her wrist, squeezing it hard. “Pray that if your fine, rebel-stud Cameron catches you at this, daughter, I will take you away. Despise Tarryton if you would now, Amanda, but you’d be better off in his hands than in Cameron’s once he discovers you!”
She jerked her hand free. “If I ever leave Virginia, I will go to Dunmore—”
He knew that she would do anything to save Damien. “Daughter—Highness!—I shall see you again soon. Very soon.”
He smiled, and turned around and left her. She heard new orders shouted outside, and the sounds of the men and their armament as they marched back down to the docks. Amanda sank back into her chair and she closed her eyes. She didn’t hear the door open, but she sensed that she wasn’t alone. She opened her eyes and discovered that Cassidy was standing before her. Pierre, Richard, Margaret, and Remy all stood silently behind him.
“What?” Amanda cried, startled and alarmed. They stared at her so accusingly!
“They left,” Cassidy said. “They didn’t burn us or threaten us.”
“Of—of course,” Amanda said. She let her face fall into her hands. “It was my father. He—he just wanted to see if I wanted to leave with him, that is all.”
Five pairs of eyes stared at her. She didn’t like the defiance in young Margaret’s. Or was she imagining the look? The blue-eyed, dark-haired Irish maid looked as if she were about to pick up a musket and go to war herself. And Remy, older, dark as the satin night, with Cameron Hall as long as anyone could remember, staring at her with such naked suspicion!
She wanted to scream at them all. She was mistress here in Eric’s absence. They were the servants!
But they were right. She was about to betray them all.
“Have you all nothing to do!” she charged them wearily. “If you are at leisure, I am not. I have accounts!”
Slowly their lashes flickered downward. One by one they turned to leave her. When the door closed, she rested her face on her arms and damned her cousin Damien a thousand times over. She damned him for being a patriot, then she damned him for being brave, for being a fool—and then she damned him for being the one person who had always loved her unquestioningly and who had made her love him so fiercely in return.
Then her heart began to thunder anew, and she wondered what she could discover that she could give to her father that would cause the least peril among all men, the patriots and the redcoats.
And to her husband.
Perched atop Joshua on the heights overlooking the city of Boston, Eric was cold, bitterly cold. It was winter, and there was a very sharp bite to the wind, a dampness that seemed to sink into the bones and settle there.
Sieges were long and tedious, but Eric had come to admire the men of New England who ringed the city. They had already met the gunfire and the bloodshed of the war, but they held strong, despite the hardships, the cold, the monotony. It had been feared by some that the northern men might not take to the idea of their commander being a Virginian, a southerner, but not many people had questioned his military experience, and it seemed now that the colonies had really banded together at last to stand against a common tyranny.
“Major Lord Cameron!”
Eric turned, lifting a hand in a salute and smiling as he saw Frederick Bartholomew hurrying toward him. The young printer had come a long way since the day he had run through the streets, wounded and desperate. He had been commissioned a lieutenant. Just as Washington had found certain men indispensable to him, Eric had discovered quickly that Frederick was a man he could not do without. Though the siege itself was tedious, military life was often hectic for him. There were the endless meetings with Washington and Hamilton and the others, the continuous necessity of communications, the need to gather information about his ships, and his desperate need to know at all times what was happening in his native Virginia.
Frederick waved an envelope in his hand. “A letter from your wife, my lord!”
Eric leapt off Joshua’s back, grinning good-naturedly as a chant went up from the men ringed about him. “Thank you, Frederick,” he told the young printer, taking the letter. He didn’t mind the camaraderie of the men, but he did want to be alone with the correspondence.
His nights were miserable. He lay awake and worried, and he slept and dreamed. He dreamed of Amanda with her fiery hair wrapped about his flesh, her eyes liquid as they met his, her kiss a fountain of warmth that aroused and enwrapped him. But then his dreams would fade and he would hold her no more, she would be dancing away in the arms of another man, and her eyes would catch his again, and the laughter within them would tell him clearly that she had played him for a fool all along.
Eric led Joshua away from the siege line, back to an empty supply tent. He sat at the planked table there with his back against the canvas and ripped open the letter. His heart quickened as she wrote that her father had come to Cameron Hall with a warship, but that he had simply left and gone back to join Dunmore when she had told him that she was going to stay.
Her letter went on, but she wrote no more of her father. Instead she wrote about the military state of Virginia, the fish being brought in and the smoking going on, about the repairs done to the mansion, about the cold. It could have been a warm letter. Yet it was stilted somehow, as if there were something she wasn’t saying.
As if she were lying to him …
Eric cursed softly. If only he could trust her!
“Trouble, my friend?”
He started, looking to the entrance to the tent. George Washington had come upon him. As he entered the tent, he swept off his plumed and cockaded hat and dusted the snow from his cloak. Then he sat across from Eric. Alone together, neither man bothered with military protocol.
“You’ve a letter, I understand.”
“A personal letter.”
George hesitated. “There’s a rumor, Eric, that someone in Virginia is supplying the British with helpful information. Areas to raid for salt and produce. Information that has helped Dunmore create such fear all along the coast.”
Eric shrugged. “We all know of his burning Norfolk. That could not possibly have been caused by a spy!”
Washington was quiet for a long time. Then he leaned across the desk. “I trust your judgment, my friend. I trust your judgment.”
He left without saying any more. Eric sat back, then rose and called for Frederick. He asked for writing supplies to form his reply to his wife. When the printer returned, Eric sat to his task.
He closed his eyes for a moment, shivering. He had wanted her to come to Boston for Christmas. Washington, however, had specifically requested that he not do so, promising that he could return home in the spring.
Eric exhaled, then he began to write. Very carefully. False information that might look like it could be invaluable to the British.
He finished the letter and sealed it with his signet. Then he called to Frederick again to see that his correspondence moved south as quickly as possible.
When the letter was gone he stared out at the snows of winter, feeling as if they swirled about his heart and soul. “Damn you, Amanda!” he said softly.
As soon as winter turned to spring, Amanda decided on another trip into Williamsburg. She announced her intentions to travel with just Pierre and Danielle, but when she came downstairs on the morning when she was to leave, she wasn’t surprised to discover that Jacques Bisset was dressed and mounted and ready to ride behind her coach.
“Jacques! I did not ask you to accompany me,” she told him.
He looked at her strangely, and replied as he had every time Amanda had left Cameron Hall after Eric had departed in the fall. “Pardonnez-moi, but Lord Cameron has charged me to guard you, and that I will.”
To guard her. It was a lie. He was to watch her and discover if she betrayed her husband or his cause, Amanda knew. It didn’t matter. There was really no way for him to discover anything of what she was doing, and she liked Jacques, liked him very much.
She nodded slowly. “Fine,” she said softly. “I will feel ever so much safer if you are along.”
Danielle stepped into the coach and sat across from her. Amanda smiled wearily. The coach jolted, and they were on their way. The road was slushy with spring rains, and the day was still chill. Amanda shivered again as she looked out the window, back to the house.
She loved Cameron Hall even more fiercely than Eric, she thought, for she spent so much time there. Her portrait and his had now joined the others in the gallery. It was her home.
“You’re thinking that you should take care, eh?” Danielle questioned her.
Amanda cast her a quick glance. “Danielle, I do not know what you’re talking about.”
Danielle exhaled impatiently. Amanda ignored her. She swallowed tightly, closing her eyes. It seemed that so very much distance lay between her and Eric now. Miles … and time. She had missed him so much when he had first gone. In the days that followed, she had tossed and turned through the cold lonely nights. But then her father had come, over six months ago now, it was then that the distance had settled in, then that she had grown cold, then that she had begun to feel that things were so very horrible they might never be righted.
Amanda opened her eyes and saw that Danielle was still staring at her reproachfully. The Acadian woman started to speak.
“I’m very tired,” Amanda said quietly, and the other woman remained silent. Leaning back against the coach, Amanda realized that she was very afraid of Eric now. She would never be able to make him understand. She wasn’t always sure she understood herself. In her desire to give information that would keep Damien alive and avoid bloodshed at the same time, she had resorted to using information from Eric’s letters to her. Small things. Casual paragraphs on supplies of salt, herbs, fruits that the navy needed to avoid the plaguing diseases on the ships. She had only discovered major troop movements once, and then, it seemed, her information coincided with something the governor had learned himself. She tried not to think about battles, but she knew that it was war. Men were going to die.
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