She had betrayed him, and he knew it, and he would not trust her, or love her, again.
He nodded, looking at her, looking past her. “Let your heart lie where it will. But follow my commands, my love!” he warned softly.
She did not answer, but fled up the stairs.
Several nights later, just as dawn came on April 20, Amanda lay beside him, naked, content, secure within his arms. She had not known until he had returned just how bitterly she had missed him. She loved just being held, just sleeping with the fall of his bronze arm upon her. She liked to awaken and see the angle of his jaw; she thrilled to the striking planes of his face, to the crisp mat of dark hair upon his chest, to the rugged texture of his hard-muscled and masculine thighs entangled with her own.
Shouts in the street suddenly startled her. She started to rise, half asleep, confused. Beside her, Eric bolted up and strode quickly to the window.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. A crowd. A huge crowd.” He found his breeches and stumbled into them. He threw open the window and shouted down to the street. “My good man! What goes on down there.”
“The powder! The arms. The bloody redcoats marines came in off the Fowey in the James and stole our supplies from the magazine! We’re not a-goin’ to take it, Lord Cameron! We can’t!”
“Son of a bitch!” Eric muttered. He grabbed his shirt and boots. Clutching the sheet, Amanda stared at him.
“They’ll march on the palace!” she said.
He cast her a quick glance. “Bloodshed here and now must be avoided!” he said, but she didn’t think that he was really talking to her, but rather thinking aloud. He reached for his frock coat and she leapt from the bed at last.
“Eric—”
“Amanda, go back to sleep.”
“Go back to sleep!” she wailed, but he was already leaving her, closing the door behind him.
She watched him go, then quickly dressed and followed him out.
When she left the house, she knew that she was followed. Jacques Bisset had followed her every move since Eric had left her in January. She didn’t mind. She was fascinated by the man, and she always felt safe with him behind her.
And she’d had no more demands from her father since she had given him the map.
It was not difficult to follow Eric. The roar and pulse of the crowd could be heard and felt from afar. Amanda hurried toward the Capitol. It seemed that the whole population of Williamsburg had turned out in a fury.
Someone shouted, “To the palace!”
Stepping back against a building, Amanda inhaled sharply. The cry was going up on the air. The mob seemed to seethe, the people within it angry, impassioned, ugly in their reckless force.
“Stop, stop!” a voice called out.
Amanda climbed upon shop steps to see. It was Peyton Randolph. Carter Nicholas was at his side, Eric was behind him.
The noise from the crowd dimmed. Randolph began to speak, advising the people that they might defeat their own purpose. They needed to issue a protest drafted in the Common Hall.
Carter Nicholas echoed the warnings, and then Eric spoke, urging everyone to caution.
Slowly the crowd dispersed.
Jostled in the sudden stream of humanity, Amanda was startled when she was suddenly clutched from behind and turned around to meet her husband’s angry eyes. “I told you to go back to sleep!”
“But, Eric—”
“Damn you, Amanda, I am trying to avoid the shedding of your dear Tory Dunmore’s blood. Jacques is taking you back to Cameron Hall. Today. I want you out of this!”
She tried to protest, he wasn’t about to allow it.
And by noon she was on her way home.
News trickled to her slowly at Cameron Hall. She listened avidly to the servants, and she eagerly awaited the news in the Virginia Gazette.
The people drafted a demand to know why the governor had taken their weapons. Dunmore replied that he had been concerned about a slave insurrection and had removed the powder for safety’s sake.
Eric arrived exhausted one evening to tell her that meetings had been taking place elsewhere. Randolph and Nicholas had managed to keep the people of Williamsburg under control, but the people of Caroline County had authorized the release of gunpowder to the volunteers gathered at Bowling Green. Edmund Pendleton, however, chairman of that committee, would not allow action until he heard from Peyton Randolph.
Fourteen companies of light horse had gathered in Fredericksburg, and they were ready to ride on the capital. On April 28 the reply from Randolph reached those ready to fight—he requested caution. While there was any hope of reconcilation, it was necessary to avoid violence.
The people had ridden home. The message had been tactfully written, and men such as the Long Knives were quieted.
“Thank God!” Sitting in the elegant parlor at Cameron Hall, Amanda turned anguished eyes on her husband and fervently whispered the sentiment.
Eric, worn and dusty from riding, stared at her with a curious look in his eyes.
“There is more,” he told her.
She rose, her hands clenched in her lap. “What? You—you’ve been in Fredericksburg. You would have ridden on the capital!”
He did not answer the question. “Amanda, shots were fired in Massachusetts. At Lexington and at Concord. The British went after the arms stored there, and the colonists—the ‘minutemen’—fought them every step of the way back to Boston.”
“Oh, no!” So blood had been shed after all, not in Virginia, but in Massachusetts.
“Patrick Henry marched with forces toward Williamsburg, but Dunmore added sailors and marines to the palace, and dragged cannon out upon the lawn. An emissary came out on May second to pay for the powder that had been taken.”
“You were with Patrick Henry!” she gasped.
“I was a messenger, Amanda—”
“How could you—”
“I can caution reason on both sides, my lady!” he snapped, and she fell silent.
“That is not all.”
She stared at him, extremely worried by his tone of voice.
“Amanda, Patrick Henry has been branded a rebel.” He hesitated briefly. “And so have I,” he continued very quietly. “I suspect that within a number of days there might well be an arrest warrant out for me.”
“Oh, no!” Amanda gasped. She stared at him, her husband, tall, dark, striking and ever commanding, and in that moment she didn’t care about the world. England could rot, and Virginia could melt into the sea, she did not care. “Oh, Eric!” she cried his name, and flew across the room, hurtling herself against him. He caught her in his arms and held her tight.
There were no more words between them. He carried her upstairs, and he made love to her gently and with tenderness. With that same tenderness he held her against the night, brushing a kiss against her forehead as the dawn broke.
His eyes were dark and serious as they searched hers. He lay half atop her, smoothing her hair from her forehead.
“Men are already beginning to return to England. Loyalists who believe that this breech cannot possibly be closed again. I ask you, Amanda, do you stay with me of your own accord?”
“Yes! Yes!” she told him, burying her face against his throat. “Yes, I will stay with you.”
He held her in silence. “Do you stay for me, or for England?”
“What?”
He shook his head. “Never mind. I am a man labeled rebel for a moment, not that I think that Dunmore has the power to do anything about it. There are very long days ahead of us.” He was silent again. “Long years,” he whispered. “Come, love. A rebel dare not lie about too long. I’ve much I would get done about here in case—”
“In case?” she demanded anxiously.
His eyes found hers again. “In case I should have to leave quickly.”
XIII
By the end of the week, Eric and Amanda stood on the dock and waved good-bye as some of their friends
and neighbors—some of them bearing the Cameron name—set sail for England. Amanda cried softly, but though Eric said nothing, he felt the sense of loss keenly himself.
He did not have to worry about Governor Dunmore’s branding of him as a rebel. Dunmore had fled the governor’s palace and was trying to administer the government of Virginia from the decks of the naval ship Fowey, out in the James River.
Lord Tarryton, Anne, and their newborn daughter went with him. Amanda heard nothing from her father, and so she assumed that he, too, had fled.
Amanda worried endlessly, because Eric discovered that Damien was in Massachusetts, and he had been there at Concord and at Lexington. The Massachusetts men had played a cunning game with the British. In Boston, they had arranged a signal to warn the people when the British tried to come inland to seize their arms. Lanterns were hung in the Old North Church:—“one if by land, two if by sea.” The printer Paul Revere had ridden hard into the night to give the warning. Midway through the journey, he had been stopped by soldiers, but the cry was taken up by a friend and the men were forewarned. Shots were fired on April 19, 1775, and many felt the revolution was thus engaged.
In the days that followed, Eric was seldom with Amanda. He had been asked to raise militia troops, and he was doing so. News trickled back to the colonials from Philadelphia where the Continental Congress sat. George Washington had been appointed general of the Continental forces, and he had been sent to Massachusetts to take charge of the American troops surrounding the city of Boston. It was rumored that British troops were about to march on New York City. Most members of Congress had been escorted by large parties of armed men—to protect them from the possibility of arrest. Ethan Allen, commissioned by Connecticut, and Benedict Arnold, authorized by Massachusetts, had marched on Fort Ticonderoga. The British garrison, caught by surprise, had capitulated immediately. Congress had been elated to hear tales that the Brits had been so surprised that they had not had time to don their breeches.
The fort was very important, Eric explained to Amanda, because it commanded the gateway from Canada. It was vital to the control of Lake Champlain and Lake George, principal routes to the thirteen colonies.
In June a battle was fought at Bunker Hill. The people were vastly cheered, it was rumored, because the colonial forces had met the British—and they had held their own. Defeated only because they had run out of ammunition, they had fought bravely and gallantly, even if they were rough and ragtag.
On July 3, on Cambridge Common, George Washington took command of the forces, and the Continental Army was born.
By the end of August Virginia’s leaders had returned from Philadelphia. Patrick Henry appeared at Cameron Hall, and when Amanda saw him, she knew that things had really come to a head. Henry had been commissioned the colonel of the of the first Virginia regiment, and as such, he was commander-in-chief of the colony’s forces.
He met with Eric alone in the parlor. When Amanda saw him leave the house, she tore down the stairs. She found Eric standing before the fire, his hands folded behind his back, his expression grave as he watched the flames.
He did not turn around, but he knew that she was there. “George has asked that I come to Boston. Congress has offered me a commission, and I am afraid that I must go.”
No …
The word formed in her heart but did not come to Amanda’s lips. He was going to accept the commission and go, and she knew it.
She turned around and fled up the stairway, then threw herself on the bed. She didn’t want him to go. She was afraid as she had never been afraid before.
She had not realized that he had followed her until she felt his hands upon her shoulders, turning her to him. He touched the dampness that lay upon her cheek, and he rubbed his finger and thumb together, as if awed by the feel of her tears.
“Can this be for me?” he asked her.
“Oh, stop it, Eric! Please, for the love of God!” she begged him.
He smiled, handsomely, ruefully, and he lay beside her, wrapping her within his arms.
“Perhaps I shall not be gone so very long,” he told her.
She inhaled and exhaled in a shudder against his chest, breathing in his scent, feeling the rough texture of his shirt against her cheeks. She hated it when he was gone. She had yet to learn to tell him of her feelings, she could only show them, letting the fires rise and the passion ignite between them. But not even the intensity of that heat had dissolved the barriers that had lain between them since he had caught her returning to the town house that night in Williamsburg. She did not have his trust. She felt him watch her often, and she knew that he wondered just how seriously she had betrayed him in the past and just how far she might go in the future. She could not let down the wall of her pride and beg him to forgive—it would do no good, she knew. He would still look at her the same way. And yet, when they were together at Cameron Hall, life was good, despite the tempest of the world. There was planting to be done, meat to be smoked, a household and estate to run. There were intimate dinners together, evenings when she sat quietly with a book or embroidery while he pored over maps and his correspondence. There were times when he talked to her, when his eyes glowed so fiercely and his words came so eloquently that she was nearly swept into the storm of revolution herself.
And yet she had not lied to him, ever. Her loyalty had always lain with the Crown. She had never wanted to betray him, and she did not want to turn from him now. She was afraid for him. Dunmore might be attempting to rule from a ship now, but the British fighting force was considered the finest in the world. More troops would arrive. They would cut down the men outside Boston, they would take New York.
“They will hang you if they get their hands upon you!” she told him, swallowing back a sob.
He shrugged. “They must get their hands upon me first, you know.” He stroked her cheek and her throat. “There are some, you know, my love, who think that—were you a man—you might be a prime prospect for a hanging yourself.”
She said nothing, aware that she was safe among any of the rebels because of their respect for Eric. Suddenly she felt a rise of chills, wondering what might become of her if he ever withdrew his protection.
“Aren’t you ever afraid?” she whispered.
“I am more afraid of leaving you than I am of arriving at a battlefront,” he told her. But he was smiling, and his smile seemed tender. She thought that in that moment, he believed in her. Perhaps he even loved her.
She searched out his eyes anxiously. “You mustn’t worry about me at all. You must give all of your attention to staying alive!”
He laughed softly, ruffling her hair, catching a long strand between his fingers. “One might almost think that you care,” he said.
She could not answer him. She wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him, teasing his lips with her tongue, taking his into her mouth, touching him again provocatively with her own. A soft low groan escaped him, and he rose, meeting her eyes, his own afire. “This is what it should be, always then. There’s so little time. So let’s be decadent with it, my love. Let’s stay here, locked within our tower, and die la petite mort again and again in one another’s arms.”
She smiled, arrested and aroused by his charm. Then they both started at some sound by the door. Eric frowned and rose, and strode quickly to the door, throwing it open.
There was no one there. He closed the door and slid the bolt. Then he turned to her. He pulled his shirt from his breeches, slowly unbuttoned the buttons, and cast the white-laced garment to the floor. Propped on an elbow, Amanda watched him. Eric pulled off a boot, then another, then faced her, his hands on his hips. “Well, wife, you could be accommodating me, you know.”
She laughed, so pained that he was leaving, so determined to hold tight to the moments they had left. Her lashes fell in a sultry crescent over her cheeks and she stared at him with lazy sensuality. “My dear lord Cameron, but I am too thoroughly enjoying this curious show! Why, ’tis scarce midday, and you s
eem to think—” She broke off, gasping, for he had taken a smooth running leap onto the bed, pinning her down with a mock growl.
“Conniving wench!” he accused her. His fingers curled into hers, his lips locked upon them. When the kiss was ended she no longer felt like laughing, but met his eyes with the hunger and the wonder fierce within her own. He rolled to shed his breeches, her gown was quickly cast aside, and they were then upon their knees together, eyes still meeting, a leisure seizing them again. They stroked one another softly, their knuckles upon naked flesh, running the gamut from shoulders to thighs. It was she who cried out first, and he who swept her down. But the day was long, and there was not to be a minute of it in which they were not touching in some manner. Hunger seized them, slow, sweet need. They each teased and taunted with lazy abandon, and each was caught in the tempest when the taunt and fever swept from one form to the other.
Morning did come. Amanda awoke to find her husband’s eyes upon her. For a moment she thought that she saw an anguish in their depths, but then the look was gone, and he was nothing but very grave as he stared at her. He touched her cheek and warned her, “Amanda, take care in my absence. Do not betray me again. Betray not the heart, my love. For I could not forgive you again.”
She pulled the covers closely about her. “How would I betray you!” she cried. “Patriots hold Virginia now!”
“But Governor Dunmore is in a ship out upon the James, not so very far at all, my love. Not so very far.” He sighed, curling a lock of her hair with his finger. “Amanda, I have claimed that I am your husband, that you will go where I beckon. But I am telling you now, if you would leave me, do so. Do so now with my blessing. I can set you on a ship out to meet the governor today, before I ride myself.”
“No!” she cried quickly.
“Can this mean that you have taken on the patriots’ cause?” he asked her.
She colored and shook her head. “No, Eric. I cannot lie to you. But … neither would I leave you.”