He halted, turning her over to Lord Hastings. Amanda, wretchedly miserable from her father’s words, tried to smile and bear the man. She was certain that he drooled upon her breast, and by the time the music came to a halt at last she was ready to scream and go racing out into the snow. She excused herself and raced outside to the back porch, desperate for fresh air, be it frigidly cold.
The river breeze rushed in upon her. She touched the snow on the railing and rubbed it against her cheeks and the rise of her breasts, and then she shivered, staring out at the day. It was gray now, and bleak. And it had been such a beautiful, shimmering Christmas.
“Amanda.”
She turned around, startled. Eric had come outside. His arms were covered in naught but the silk of his shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice the cold. The wind lifted a dark lock of his hair and sent it lashing back against his forehead. He walked toward her, pulling her into his arms. “What is going on here?”
“What?” she cried.
“Why has he come?”
“Father? Because it is Christmas.”
He kept staring into her eyes, and as he did so, the biting cold seemed to seep into her, wrapping around her very heart. Now was the time. She should throw her arms around him; she should admit to everything.
She could not. For one, there was England. Above everything, she could not turn upon her own beliefs.
And there was Damien. She could not risk his life.
She moistened her lips and wondered desperately what would happen if it did come to war. She was Eric Cameron’s wife; and she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he would cast aside everything for his own beliefs. Would he so easily cast her aside? And what of her? Perhaps she dared not utter the words, for they were painful ones, but she did love him. Deeply. More desperately than she had ever imagined.
It was terrifying.
“He has come,” she whispered, “to make me wretched.”
Eric’s arms tightened upon her. “And Tarryton?”
“Robert?” she said, startled.
“I saw the heat and the passion in your eyes when you spoke with him. Tell me, was it anger, or something else?”
“Anger only. I swear it.”
“Would God that I could believe you.”
She pulled away from him, hating him at that moment.
“You never pretended to love me,” he reminded her. He kept walking toward her, and he was a stranger to her then. He caught her arm and pulled her back to him.
“He is a married man expecting a child!” Amanda lashed out.
“And you are a married woman.”
“That you could think—” she began, then she exploded with a violent oath and escaped him, running past him and back into the house. The party was dying down. The servants were no longer guests, but they hurried about to pick up glasses and platters and silver mugs that had been filled with Christmas cheer. Amanda had assumed that her father and the others were staying; they were not. They took their leave soon after, telling her they meant to make Williamsburg before nightfall. Eric had come in quietly behind Amanda. He bid them all farewell cordially, ever the lord of his castle.
Amanda escaped him, rushing up to bed. She dressed in a warm flannel gown and sat angrily before her dressing table, brushing her hair.
A few minutes later the door burst open. Eric, who obviously had imbibed more than was customary, stood there for a moment, then came in and dropped down upon their bed. He tore off his boots, his surcoat, and his shirt, letting them fall where they would. Amanda felt his eyes upon her. He watched her every movement even as she tried to ignore him.
“Why is it, Amanda, that we are not expecting a child?” he asked at last.
Her brush went still as the tense and brooding question startled her motionless. Then she began to sweep the brush through the dark red tresses again. “God must know, for I do not.”
He leapt up, coming behind her. He took the brush from her fingers and began to work it through her hair. The tendrils waved softly against his naked chest as he worked. She sat very still, waiting.
“You do not do anything to keep us from having a child, do you?” he asked.
“Of course not!” She gasped, trembling. Then she rose and spun around on him. “How can you suggest such a thing! ’Tis you—you marry me, and then leave me!”
His eyes softened instantly and he drew her against him. “Then you do not covet him, do not lie awake dreaming that the duchess should die, that perhaps …”
“My God! How could you think such a heinous thing of me!” she cried, outraged. She tried to jump to her feet and leap by him. He caught her and shoved her back to the chair, and suddenly she discovered that she was not just furious, but hungry for the man. She teased her hair against his bare midriff, soft sounds forming in her throat. She touched him with just the tip of her tongue, lathing his hard-muscled flesh until she felt the muscles ripple and tremble. She loosened his breeches and made love to him there until he shouted out hoarsely, wrenching her up and into his arms. He entered into her like fire, and the passion blazed steep and heady and wild. Crying, throbbing, sobbing, she reached a shattering climax. She felt the volatile shuddering of his body atop her own, and she shoved him from her, curling away, ashamed. He tried to draw her back. She stared into the night, amazed that she could be so angry, hate him so fiercely, and be so desperate for his touch.
“Amanda—”
“No!”
“Yes,” he said simply. He drew her back and kissed her forehead. His soft husky laughter touched her cheek. “Perhaps you will better understand me after this night,” he murmured. “Anger, passion, love, and pain. Sometimes they are so very close that it is torment. I have wanted you in fury, in deepest despair, when wondering if I am a fool, when despising myself for the very weakness of it. That is the nature of man.”
She curled against him, glad that he did not laugh at her. He sighed softly, his breath rustling her hair. “If the world could just stay as it is.…”
His words faded away. For the first time since he had come home she guiltily remembered the map she held in the bottom of one of her jewelry cases. A shudder ripped through her. His arms tightened about her. “Are you cold?” he asked.
“No,” she lied. She was suddenly colder than she had ever been, even with his arms about her.
She determined to change the subject of their changing world. “What was that with Jacques today? You never told me; what a very curious incident.”
“Oh. Well, he wanted to kill your father. I stopped him.”
Amanda wrenched around, certain that he was fooling her. She glanced at his handsome features in the darkness, and she saw that though he smiled, he was very serious. The firelight played upon his bronze and muscled chest as he lay with his fingers laced behind his head. “Why does he want to kill my father?”
“Heaven knows. Or, perhaps, everyone knows,” he said quietly. He reached out and touched her chin very gently. “I have wanted to kill him upon occasion. He is not a very nice man.”
Amanda flushed and her lashes fluttered above her cheeks. Eric reached out for her, pulling her back into the snug warmth of his arms. “You are not responsible for your father,” he said briefly, dismissing the entire situation.
“You did not punish Jacques?”
“Punish Jacques? Of course not. He is a very proud man. He is not a slave or an indentured servant of any type—he could up and leave at a second’s notice. And I need him.”
She smiled in the darkness, thinking that he did tease her then. “How did you calm Jacques, then?”
He was quiet for a long time. “I told him that I wanted to kill Nigel myself,” he said at last. His arm held heavily around her when she tried to rise. “Go to sleep, Amanda. It has been a long day.”
She lay still beside him, but she did not sleep.
They traveled into Williamsburg to welcome in the New Year of 1775. The governor hosted a party, and despite the political climate,
it was attended by all important men, be they leaning toward the loyalist side or the patriot. Watching the illustrious crowd that had come for the festivities, Amanda felt a tightening in her breast. It was, she thought, the last time that she should see all these people so, Damien laughing and sweeping Geneva about the floor, then bowing very low to the governor and his lady. The music was good, the company was sweet, but the mood was such that she clung to her husband’s arm and remained exceptionally silent. Damien brought her to the floor and she chastised him for not appearing for Christmas. But the young man was very grave, almost cold. She wanted to box his ears, for she wouldn’t be in her present predicament at all if it weren’t for him. I should have let them hang you! she nearly shouted, but then her father appeared, asking for the dance, and Damien demurely handed her over to her father.
“I need something more,” Sterling told her.
“What?”
“British troops are moving with greater frequency into Boston, and I suspect help here. There isn’t going to be any help for Virginia if I can’t get more information.”
“I haven’t any more! Eric has just come home; it has been winter.”
“Find something.”
“I won’t do it.”
“We shall see,” he told her softly, and left her standing alone on the dance floor. She quickly fled over to the punch bowl, but the sweet-flavored drink was not spiked. Robert Tarryton found her there.
“Looking for something stronger, love?”
“I’m not your love.”
He sipped the punch himself, assessing her over the rim of his glass. Her hair was piled into curls on top of her head, her shoulders were just barely covered with the fringe of the mink that trimmed her gown. “The time is coming. There’s to be a Virginia Convention in March. In Richmond. The delegates are hiding from the governor.”
“They can hardly be hiding when Mr. Randolph approached the governor himself about the elections.”
He smiled. “Your husband has been asked to be there.”
“What? But it will be closed sessions, surely—”
“Nevertheless, madame, I have it from the most reputable sources that he has agreed to be there.” He bowed, smiling deeply. “The time is coming, Amanda …” he whispered. Then he, too, slipped away into the crowd.
Glancing across the room, Amanda saw that Eric was heavily involved in conversation with a man she knew to be a member of the House of Burgesses. Feeling doubly betrayed, Amanda retrieved her coat and headed for the gardens. A tall handsome black man in impeccable livery opened the door for her, and she fled out into the night. She wandered aimlessly, for the flowers were dead, and the garden was barren and as wintry as her heart. She had never deceived herself, she tried to reason. Eric was a traitor, she had known it. She had despised him for it. She had never thought that she could learn to love a traitor so dearly.
But what would she do while the world crumbled?
As she came around to the stables, she suddenly heard a strange commotion among the horses and grooms. For a moment she was still, and then she hurried over to see what was happening. An older man with naturally whitened hair was instructing a few boys on how to make a fallen, saddled mount stand. The horse was down, sprawled upon the ground in a grotesque parody of sleep.
“What has happened?” Amanda cried.
The older man, wiping a sheen of sweat from his face despite the winter’s cold, looked her way quickly, offering her a courteous bow. “Milady, we’re losing the bay, I’m afraid. And I canna tell ye why! ’Tis a fine young gelding belonging to Mr. Damien Roswell, and of a sudden, the horse is taken sick as death!”
The boys had just about gotten the mount to its feet. Beautiful dark brown eyes rolled suddenly. They seemed to stare right at Amanda with agony and reproach. Then the horse’s legs started to give again. The eyes glazed over, and despite the best efforts of the grooms, the beautiful animal crashed down dead upon the hard, cold ground.
Amanda started to back away. A scream rose in her throat. It was Damien’s horse. Dead upon the ground. It was a warning of what might soon befall Damien if she did not obey her father.
“Milady—” someone called.
She heard no more. Just as the horse had done, she crashed to the ground, oblivious to the world around her.
When she came to, she was being lifted in her husband’s arms. His silver blue eyes were dark as cobalt then, upon her hard with suspicious anxiety. She closed her eyes against him, but held tight to him. “I’ll take you inside—”
“No, please, take me home.”
There was a crowd around them, Damien among them. She did not want to see her cousin’s concerned face, and so she kept her eyes closed. Eric announced that she just wanted to go home, and then he was carrying her to their carriage. Inside he was quiet, and he did not whisper a word. When they reached the town house he carried her upstairs, asking that his housekeeper make tea, the real tea that had come from China aboard his own ship. Danielle came to help Amanda from her gown and into a warm nightdress, clucking with concern over her. Amanda kept saying dully that she was all right. But when she was dressed and in bed Eric himself came with the tea. She did not like the very suspicious and brooding cast to his eyes, so she kept her own closed. But he made her sit up, made her sip the tea, and then demanded to know what had happened.
“The horse. It—it died.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
Amanda flashed him an angry glare. “If Geneva or Anne or the governor’s lady had passed out so, you and every man there would have assumed it was no sight for a lady to see!”
“But you are a lady created of stronger stuff. You are not so sweet—or so insipid—a woman, and hardly such a delicate … lady.”
She lunged at him in a flash of temper, very nearly upsetting the whole tea tray. He rescued it just in time, his eyes narrowing upon her dangerously.
After setting the tray upon the dresser, he turned to her. “Amanda—”
She came up upon her knees, challenging him. “What of you, milord?” she demanded heatedly. “I was fascinated to hear that you were traveling to Richmond!”
She had taken him by surprise; he seemed very displeased by it, and wary. “I see. You managed to slip away with your old lover long enough to discern that information. You are a wonderful spy.”
“I am not a spy at all!” she insisted, beating upon his chest. “While you, milord, are a—”
He caught her wrists and his eyes sizzled as he stared down at her. “Yes, yes, I know. I am a traitor. What happened with Damien’s horse, Amanda?”
She lowered her eyes quickly, tugging to free her wrists. She did not want to tell him that Damien, and he himself, stood in line to die in the same agonizing manner as the horse.
“I’m tired, Eric.”
“Amanda—”
A lie came to her lips, one she would live to regret, one she abhorred even as she whispered it. “I’m not feeling well. I think that I might—that I might be with child.”
His fingers instantly eased their hold upon her. He lay her back upon the bed, his eyes glowing, his features suddenly young and more striking than ever. His whispers were tender, his touch so gentle she could barely stand it.
“You think—”
“I don’t know as yet. Just please … please, I am so very tired tonight!”
“I shall sleep across the hall,” he said instantly. He touched her forehead with his kiss, then her lips, and the touch was barely a breath of the sweetest tenderness. He rose, and her heart suddenly ached with a greater potency than it thundered as she watched him walk across the hall.
She lay there for long hours in wretched misery, then she rose, and quickly dressed. With trembling fingers she reached for her jewelry case and found the map that had been in the botany book. She needn’t tell anyone where she had found it. On the floor of some tavern, perhaps.
Silently she crept from the room and down the stairs, and then out into
the night.
She brought her hand to her lips, nearly screaming aloud, when a shadow stepped from behind a tree, not a half block from the house. Nigel Sterling his arms crossed over his chest, blocked her way.
“You have something for me, daughter? I was quite sure that you would.”
She thrust the map toward him. “There will be no more, do you hear me? No more!”
“What is it?”
“I believe that it points out stashes of weapons about the Tidewater area. Did you hear me? I have done this. I will do no more.”
“What if it comes to war?”
“Leave me alone!”
She turned to flee.
Sterling started to laugh. Even as she ran back toward the town house, she heard him wheezing with the force of his laughter.
She didn’t care right then. She had appeased him for the next few months at least. And God alone knew what would happen then.
She hurried back up the steps of the town house, opened the door, and closed it behind her. Her lashes fell wearily over her eyes with relief, then she pushed away from the door, ready to start up the stairs.
She paused, her throat closing, her limbs freezing, the very night seeming to spin before her. But blackness did not descend upon her now. She could see too clearly, she was too acutely aware of the man who stood on the stairs, awaiting her. He wore a robe that hung loosely open to his waist, his sleekly muscled chest with its flurry of dark hair naked to her view and strikingly virile. His fingers curled about the bannister as if they would like to wind so about her throat. His eyes were like the night, black with fury, and his words, when he spoke, were furiously clipped.
“Where were you?”
“I—I needed air.”
“You needed rest before.”
“I needed air now.”
“Where were you?”
“A gentleman, even a husband, has no right to question his lady that way!”
“It has been established that I am no gentleman, you are no lady. Where were you?”
“Out!”
His steps were menacing as he came toward hers. She backed into the hallway, trying to escape his wrath. “You can’t force me to tell you!” she cried out. “You cannot force me …” Her words trailed away as he neared her. Blindly she struck out, afraid to trust his rage. He ignored her flailing hands and ducked low, sweeping her over his shoulder.