Yet that was not to be the case. She had barely adjusted her long hair and lain back, the steam delightfully easing the pain from her, when the locked connecting door shattered and banged open upon its sagging hinges. His eyes dark and furious, his features those of a stranger’s, Eric stood there. She gaped, then hastily closed her mouth in a fury of her own. “The lock meant that I did not wish you to enter!” she warned him heatedly.
“You married me, milady. I will enter where I wish.”
His strides brought him quickly to her. In panic she rose, wet and streaming, ready to fight him with all of the fire of the worry and fear within her. “Stop it, Eric, don’t you dare come near me, I am telling you—”
Her breath was swept from her as his arms came about her. He lifted her from the water, giving no thought to his fine brocade waistcoat and silk shirt. She struggled against him, wanting to hurt him, then suddenly wanting to escape him as she saw the light that her fight had brought to his eyes. “No!” she breathed, slamming hard upon his chest, yet he bore her down anyway, lying over her as he brought her atop the bed where she had thought to find her privacy. “I shall claw you to ribbons!” she warned him desperately.
“If you do so, Amanda, make sure it is with wifely passion, with cries of ecstasy upon your lips.”
“Oh!” she cried, and tried to slam her knee against him, but he shifted his weight, and the gaze he gave her then shot daggers into her heart. “You fool, you will get Damien hanged and yourself hanged and I will not let you do this to me!”
He held her head between his hands and looked angrily into her eyes. “Politics will not enter into the bedroom,” he told her firmly.
“I am a loyalist and you knew it when you married me, and you said that you’d not deny me my beliefs!”
“I do not deny you your beliefs, but I swear, lady, by all that is holy, you will not bring them to bed, and you will not slam doors or think to make a stricken, gelded fool of me because of them. Do you understand me?”
She thought for a moment, straining against him, her teeth gritted. Then she shouted out a vehement “No!”
His eyes darkened. She thought that he meant to strike her, his teeth were so tightly clenched. “Let me up!” she demanded in fear and fury.
“Madame, I will not!”
He dragged her hands up high over her head and held them easily despite her struggles and curses. His lips covered hers, trailed the valley between her breasts, then fondled the rouge crests, watching her eyes as he did so. She found that gaze upon her and knew that he read more within their depths than she wanted him to know. Suddenly, savagely, she twisted free from his hold, slamming her fists against his chest. She sought to roll free from him, but he threaded his fingers through her hair, dragging her back beneath him. His eyes sought hers again with war within them. He held her still, and his mouth captured hers. She thumped her fists against his shoulders, but he ignored the pain, demanding more and more with his lips and tongue. His hands stroked her sides and buttocks, and thighs, and his knee wedged them apart. He kissed her, and touched her, his kiss consuming, his touch ever more evocative. His lips parted from hers and she spoke his name, desperately trying to remember her argument. His kiss moved over her throat, to her collarbone, to her breast, and the passion of her fight became a flame of desire deep within her. Perhaps the need was even heightened by the torment of emotion. He did not disrobe, but adjusted his breeches and had her there with a startling fever and vengeance, and as he spent himself within her, she thought that she had passed over some strange line between what she had been before … and what she would be as his wife. Something indelible poured into her along with his seed that evening. She did not understand it. She whispered that she hated him even as her arms wound around him, she cried against him even as her body was wracked with the sweet shudders of ecstasy. The battle had receded between them, she thought. But it was far from over.
She felt his fingers upon her cheeks and only then did she realize that tears had escaped her. He was quickly up, guarded and hard, but anxious too. “Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head, trying not to meet his eyes.
“Amanda!”
“No! No, you did not hurt me.”
He rolled from her, his back to her, then stood, adjusting his clothing. “Come down to the meal. There will be no talk of arms, and I swear that I will keep my eye upon your cousin.”
“And smuggle arms yourself!” she whispered.
“What?”
“Nothing! Please, leave it be, nothing!”
“Come down then, and we shall close the subject.”
“I—I cannot!” she whispered. “My God, all of the house will have heard that door shatter.”
He reached for her hands, pulling her tight against him. His smile was suddenly wicked and taunting and challenging. “I did not suggest that you should slink down in shame, milady. Rather, my love, you should do so with laughter on your lips, your chin as high as ever, your glance one of the greatest disdain.”
She pulled away from him. “The meal will be quite cold, I am certain.”
“Dress, or I shall dress you myself.”
She swore, she called him every name that would come to her tongue, but when he moved toward her, she determined that she would choose her gown, and do as he suggested. He helped her with corset and with her hooks despite the stiffness of her back, and when she was duly clad, he insisted that she sit so that he could comb out her hair. His fingers lingered on her shoulders as her hair fell down upon them. In the mirror she saw his hands upon her flesh, bare for the gown lay low upon her bosom, and she saw how very dark and masculine and large they were, and yet felt how very tender their brush upon her could be. She shivered, meeting his eyes in the mirror, and he smiled, with what emotion she did not know. “Lady, none could deny your beauty, nor the boldness of your spirit. Come, take my hand. You do grace this ancient hall and will, I expect, continue to do so. Even if they do decide to hang me.”
She stood, shivers upon her heart, for even in the very depth of this battle, she knew then that she could not bear to see him hanged.
They started down the stairway together. Thom and Cassidy met them at the doors of the dining room. As they neared the pair, Eric suddenly laughed, as if he and Amanda shared some great joke, and he whispered against her ear. She turned to him, and a smile formed upon her lips, and she knew that the act had been very well executed. No one would wonder at the goings-on of the master and mistress, they were newlyweds, and prone to take their time.
She did not forgive Damien though. Not until the hour grew late, and she rose, begging that they continue to talk, but forgive her, for she was exhausted. Then she hugged her cousin fiercely, because she was afraid for him.
“Forgive me!” he whispered to her sorrowfully. “We have chosen different paths.” He had never seemed older to her, or more serious or grave.
She said nothing, but turned away, not offering her cheek to her husband. There were no servants about to witness the act.
But when she went upstairs, she did not seek out a separate bed. She lay within the one they shared, and for a long while she remained awake, tormented by all that lay between them. Her eyes closed, and the hour grew very late. The fire dimmed, and she slept.
She awoke slowly, with the feel of his lips against her spine. She did not think at first but rather felt the delicious slow motion of his hands over her hip, stroking down upon her buttocks. His lips and tongue moved with rich and languorous ease over the silky flesh of her shoulders and back. Then she felt his body, bare and heated and rigid, thrust against her own. She started to twist, but he whispered against her ear, “Amanda. I leave with the morning light.”
He drew her against him, kissing her nape, her throat, her shoulders. His hands fondled her breasts while he thrust into her from behind. The urgency touched her. Love was bittersweet, but something she would not deny. She did not want to think of the nights ahead.
“I do
not retreat—”
“Nor surrender!” he agreed, but the words were meaningless, for she had given in to him that night, though his fervent words and his fierce cries of pleasure gave her some sense that perhaps she had not lost at all, that indeed perhaps he held the strength, but she held her own curious power.
* * *
The next morning when Amanda awoke she saw Eric standing before the window while the draperies rustled in the wind. Her muscles constricted tightly for she saw that he was dressed in a buckskin jacket with fringe and rugged leather leggings and high boots. She looked at him with confusion. It was so very early. But then she remembered that it had to be early, he was riding out this morning. He knew that she had awakened; he turned to her and walked back to the bed where she lay, sitting beside her. His gaze fell over her where she lay, and he reached out to touch her cheek. Cascades of her hair fell wildly over his fingers, and he smiled with a touch of bitter irony. “How very hard it is to leave you so. I sit here about to cast all honor and right to the wind and tell Dunmore that I cannot risk my neck for my soul is in chains.”
She flushed, listening to his words. His thumb moved over her cheek and she was tempted to grab hold of his hand and beg him not to leave her, not when he had just taught her so very much about life and … was it love? she wondered. She had hated him so fiercely, feared him, needed him, and now she did not dare judge the seed of emotion that stirred so desperately in her heart. They had lived the days since their marriage in a fantasy, and now the world was intruding upon them. But in those days she had come to find an ever greater fascination in the strong planes and angles of his face, in the curve of his lip, in the light of his eyes. She had lain upon the bed with her lashes low, her eyes half closed, and she had watched the effortless grace of his body as he had dressed or undressed. She had touched the scars upon his shoulders and she had learned which he had sustained in the closing days of the French and Indian Wars, and which he had obtained as a child playing recklessly upon the docks. He did not love her, he had told her once, and she had labeled the emotion as lust. Were that what it was, then the same spellbound fever held her. She wanted to touch him, and so she reached out and laid her palm against his freshly shaven cheek. Then she dropped her covers, rising to kiss him, to breathe into that kiss the truth that she would miss him with all of her heart, that she would pray until the day that he returned that God keep him safe.
His lips parted from hers and he caught her palm, kissing it softly. His brow arched with humor but with tenderness too. “Dare I take this to mean that you will not be too disappointed if the Shawnee leave my scalp intact, despite all that occurred last night?”
She nodded, suddenly afraid to speak. She had loved once and had discovered then that love brought betrayal. Her own father had turned from her.
“Take care, my love. Take the greatest care,” he told her.
“God watch you, Eric,” she whispered.
“Tell me, what are your feelings of this marriage into which you so desperately plunged? Is it better to endure my temper than Lord Hastings’s chins?” he asked, his lips still moving just above her own, the warmth of his words entering into her.
“I am not … displeased,” she said, unable to meet his eyes. “Except upon occasion. What of you?” she demanded, looking at him at last.
“I knew what I wanted, madame, from the very moment that I saw your face,” he told her.
His lips brushed hers. “Betray not my heart, Amanda, that is all that I ask.” He rose and then was gone.
For long moments she lay in the bed, feeling the tingle of his kiss upon her lips. Then she cried out and leapt to her feet, throwing open her armoire to find a heavy white velvet dressing gown. She quickly hooked the garment about her and tore down the stairs. Thom stood in the hallway with a silver tray and a very traditional stirrup cup upon it. “May I?” she begged him, awaiting no answer but running out to the porch steps in her bare feet.
Eric was mounted upon his huge black stallion at the front of a disciplined line of troops. Amanda, her hair like a stream of wildfire against the white velvet, ran down the steps to her husband’s side. The officers who had been shouting out orders fell silent, and Eric turned from his study of the men behind him to see her before him.
That was how he would remember her in the long nights to come. Proud and wild with tousled flaming hair, a soaring spirit with her emerald eyes, pagan with her bare toes showing upon the earth, exquisite as the white velvet outlined her body. She handed him the cup, and a cheer went up that warmed his soul and tore upon his heart.
He drank the whiskey and set the cup upon the tray. “Godspeed to all of you!” she cried, and again a chant rose, a cheer for the lady of Cameron Hall.
And he thought that he just possibly detected tears within the emerald beauty of her eyes.
Eric leaned down and kissed his wife’s lips. Then he rode forward, toward the west.
X
October 1774
Two divisions came against the Shawnee that fall, marching toward the Ohio River. Lord Dunmore led his men from the northern part of the valley. Eric was not with him. It had been decided that he would take a number of his old Indian fighters and accompany General Andrew Lewis, a man Eric highly respected, one of Washington’s stalwart colleagues from the campaign against the Frenchman Duquesne. Lewis led his men by way of Fort Pitt while the governor’s men came through the Great Kanawha Valley.
The Western militia were an interesting breed of men. The majority of the men were clad in doeskin, and many of them had taken or displayed an Indian scalp upon occasion. In the Virginia Valley, life was still raw, and men eked out their livings. The Indians had a name for Lewis’s men; they called them the Long Knives, an acknowledgment of their prowess with the weapons.
But they weren’t after just any Indians. As Eric rode with Lewis, the general explained much of a situation that had not changed. “We encroach upon the land. Hostiles kill white settlers, then the settlers turn around and they don’t seem to know if they’re after a Delaware, or Cherokee, a Shawnee, or another. Inevitably they kill an Indian from a friendly tribe and then that tribe isn’t so friendly anymore. A lot of trouble started with the establishment of trading posts out here—greedy men selling so much liquor that they create a savage out of any man. But now we’re going after Cornstalk, and there ain’t any man alive could call that man anything but a savage when he fights. You mark my words. The Delaware and Cherokees themselves, they tremble at the name Cornstalk.”
“So I have heard,” Eric agreed. Cornstalk was a powerful voice among the Indians. He was trying to form a confederacy of all the Ohio tribes.
Lewis looked up at the sky. “Dunmore could be in some difficulty for this one,” he advised Eric. “The territory might well be Canada—according to the Quebec Act. If not, it’s still disputed between Virginia and Pennsylvania.”
“He is determined to fight the Shawnee, and that is that.”
“Didn’t you get enough of Indian fighting back when the wars were going on?”
“I was asked to raise men.”
“There ain’t been a war whoop heard in the Tidewater region, not in a long, long time. Well, if we meet up with Cornstalk, we’ll hear plenty.”
Eric learned the truth of that statement at Point Pleasant where they found the Shawnee under Cornstalk. Tension raced high throughout the forces as the commanders conferred, but the Shawnee were the first to attack.
And Eric heard the war whoops, blood-curdling, savage, just as Lewis had said. The Indians appeared like painted devils, glistening in the sunlight, attacking with their cries. Yet above the roar of those cries and above the roar of his own orders, Eric heard Cornstalk. The Shawnee warrior, painted generously himself, cast his voice out over his people like that of God—or Satan. His men spurred forward, unafraid of steel or bullets, unafraid of death itself.
The militia fought well. Men stood their ground, and did not falter or fall back against the ons
laught of the savage fighters. War whoops rose from the white men, and hand-to-hand combat came quickly. Eric was unhorsed when a Shawnee warrior fell atop him from a tree. As he rolled in the mud, he saw the brave raise his knife against him. Eric latched his wrist about the warrior’s, aware that his life lay at stake. He strained against the Indian’s slick muscles, and just as the blade neared his throat, Eric found the burst of energy to send the Indian flying. He did not waste time, but leapt upon the Indian, bringing his own blade swiftly home within his enemy’s chest. A gurgle of blood rose on the brave’s mouth, then his dark eyes glazed over and Eric was quickly up on his feet again, wary for his next opponent. One of his men, a distant Cameron cousin, hurried his horse to him. “Down the lines, sir, we have to hold here!”
They did hold, but Eric fought even as he shouted new orders, and the hours passed by slowly and painfully. Still he heard the haunting shouts of Cornstalk, and he realized that the Shawnee were still coming.
Then darkness came at last, and the Shawnee slipped away across the Ohio, shadowy silhouettes in the night. The militia had taken the day. But even as he realized that there were no more opponents to fight, Eric looked about the darkened field before him. Men lay everywhere.
“All right! We’ve got to tend to our wounded,” he called sharply. Then it all came home to him, the horrible cries of the dying, the screams of pain that had not ceased. He began to hurry, hearing from one sergeant that two hundred of their own number lay dead, entwined with the glistening bodies of their enemies.
It took well into the night to sort the living from the dead, to bring what aid they could to the wounded and the dying. He was anxious to find Damien, whom he hadn’t seen since very early in the day. He did not want to return home without his wife’s cousin. Amanda had, he thought, very specifically entrusted his life to Eric, and she would expect the young man to survive.