She tried to steady herself to walk before them, and yet it did not seem that they condemned her too harshly. Someone began to whistle an old Scottish ballad. Then one by one they all began to bow to her. Confused, she nodded her head in turn as Frederick led her from the ship. She walked the plank to the dock.
The small coach awaited them. Pierre was driving. He did not look her way. Amanda walked to the coach and hoisted herself up, Frederick close behind her. She looked back to the ship. The old captain in a green rifleman’s outfit saluted her.
She glanced quickly to Frederick. “I don’t understand,” she murmured.
Seating himself beside her, Frederick smiled. “All men salute a brave enemy in defeat.”
“But they must hate me.”
“Yes, some of them. But most men respect a fallen enemy who fights true to his or her heart. And those who do know the secret of ‘Highness’ might well wish that you had chosen your husband’s side.”
“I cannot help where my heart lies!”
“Neither can any man, milady,” Frederick said. He was silent then. Pierre cracked the whip over the horse’s head, and the wheels jolted over the rough path.
Amanda pulled back the curtain and stared up the expanse of verdant sloping ground to the mansion.
From the large paned windows to the broad porches, the house exuded the charm of the Tidewater. Amanda loved it; she had loved it from the moment she had first seen it. From the sweeping, polished mahogany stairway to the gallery with its fascinating portraits of the Camerons, she loved every brick and stone within the place.
The coach came to an abrupt halt. Pierre opened the door, still refusing to look at her. She wanted to strike him. She wanted to scream that none of it had been her fault.
He would not understand. She had left with Robert.
Amanda leapt from the carriage and started for the house, ignoring the servant. Frederick was quickly beside her, walking with her up the steps. He wasn’t merely delivering her to the front door, she realized.
Frederick cleared his throat. “Lord Cameron will come to his chambers, milady.”
Amanda looked at him and nodded. She thought about attempting to fly past him, to race into the woods that fringed the fields. She would never make it, she knew. Some of these people might still believe in her, and some of them loved her. But they loved her husband more.
And their cause was the cause of liberty, and not her own.
“Thank you, Frederick,” she said, sweeping up her skirts and heading for the stairway. As she walked she heard his footsteps behind her.
She looked down and saw that the silk was stained with the Highland lieutenant’s blood. She smelled of cannon fire and black powder.
She passed by the portraits in the gallery and felt as if they all, the Camerons who had come before her, stared down at her with damning reproach. I did not do this thing! she longed to cry out. But it was senseless. She was damned. She saw her own portrait and wondered if Eric would not quickly strike it from the wall. What other Cameron bride had ever betrayed her own house?
Finally Amanda stepped into the master chamber. Frederick closed the doors, and she was alone.
A rise of panic swelled within her breast. It hadn’t been long ago that she had lain in the bed, dreaming. Spinning fantasies of the time when her husband would return.
Now she knew that he would return very soon, and she hadn’t a fantasy left to believe in.
A soft cry of misery escaped her. She couldn’t bear waiting for him, not here. Too many memories rested here. Memories of storms and fire and passionate upheaval, memories of laughter.
She had come here, determined to despise him. But from the first, her eyes had fallen upon his every movement. In the deepest anger she had watched him rise, watched him dress, or stand bare-chested before the windows, and even then, in the very beginning, some sweet secret thrill had touched her heart when she looked upon him, for he had been so fiercely fine, and he had wanted her with such blind, near-ruthless determination. He had wanted her so …
Once upon a time.
But now …
Her gaze fell upon the handsome bed that sat atop a dais. Beautifully carved of dark wood, draped in silk and brocade, it had always seemed a place of the greatest intimacy and privacy. She drew her eyes from the bed and looked up at the Queen Anne clock upon her dressing table. Nearly six. Night was coming at last.
But not Eric.
Amanda began to pace the room, too nervous to dwell on the future, too frightened to recall the past.
Darkness came.
Cassidy, Eric’s ebony-black valet, came to the room, knocking before entering. He looked at her sadly.
“What? Have you come to hang me too, Cassidy?”
He shook his head. “No, Lady Cameron. Perhaps there was more than the eyes could see.” He was her friend—but Eric’s first.
Still, she smiled. “Thank you.”
“I’ve brought wine and roasted wild turkey,” he told her. He moved back into the hallway and returned, bearing with him a heavy silver tray. “And Cato and Jack are bringing up water for the hip bath.”
“Thank you, Cassidy,” she told him. She smiled awkwardly at him. His accent was wonderful, with traces of Eric’s own enunciation, as acquired at Oxford. He was in white and black, very much a lord’s gentleman. He was born a slave and had become a free man here.
She was no longer free, she realized.
She was a prisoner in her own room in her own house. More than any slave the Camerons had ever owned, she was a prisoner here. The slaves were allowed to earn their freedom if they chose. She would not have that luxury.
Cassidy said no more to her, but set the tray down upon the table. Jack and Cato, in the red, white, and green Cameron livery, came with water, and the bath was dragged out. She waited until the hip bath was halfway filled with the steaming water and then thanked the men. Her fight was not with them. Margaret might well call her a Tory bitch, but perhaps the others understood that life was far more complex than any neat little label.
“Where is Lord Cameron?” she asked Cassidy.
“Involved with affairs, milady. They plan to follow on the heels of Lord Dunmore and see that he is pushed from our coast once and for all.”
Affairs … so he might not come back to her at all. She might spend day after day in this room, awaiting her sentence. She cleared her throat. “Is he … is he coming back, do you know? Or am I perhaps to be turned over to some Continental official?”
“Oh, no. Lord Cameron will come.”
His words were not reassuring.
She wished that she had been dragged before some Continental court. Any man would deal with her more gently than her husband, she thought.
“May I see Danielle?”
“I am sorry, milady.”
“Is she all right?”
“Yes, she is well.”
Cassidy bowed to her and left with the others. The door closed. She heard a key twist, locking her in, and she sank down at the table and tried to eat. The food was delicious but she had no appetite so she sipped wine and stared at the darkness beyond the windows.
At length she realized that the bath water was growing cold and that the charred smell of her clothing and hair was distasteful. Glancing at the door, she felt her numbness leaving her as she wondered if her husband would return.
He could be gone for days, she reminded herself.
She finished the wine for courage, then shed her rich gown, hose, corset, and petticoats and stepped into the water. The warmth was delicious. She sank beneath the water to soak her hair, and scrubbed it thoroughly, as she scrubbed her flesh.
She could not wash away her fear or her thoughts. What would Eric think if he knew that she had bargained with Robert Tarryton to save the house? He would not believe it, or worse. He would think that she had sought to leave with Tarryton.
The evening was cool. Rising from the tub, Amanda folded a huge linen towel about herself
and shivered, wishing that she had asked Cassidy for a fire. She walked to the window and pulled back the drapes. Down the slope by the docks she could see tremendous activity. Half the militia was camped out on their property, so it seemed.
God, give me courage! she prayed. And if you cannot, please let me disappear into the floorboards.
God did not answer her prayer.
She started, hearing a sound, and whirled around. Eric was there. He had come, opening the door in silence, standing there now in silence, watching her. Their eyes met. He turned and closed and locked the door, then leaned against it, his eyes fixed on hers once again. His tone was soft, its menace unmistakable.
“Well, Highness, it has come. Our time of reckoning.”
Amanda’s heart slammed against her breast. She wanted to speak but words failed her.
He awaited her reply, and when there was none, a crooked mocking smile curled his lip, and he walked toward her, dark, towering, and determined.
“Aye, milady, our time of reckoning at last.”
A time of reckoning.
It had been coming a long while. A long, long while. Ever since he had first set eyes upon her that long-ago night in the city of Boston.
It had all begun then. The tempest of war.
And the tempest that lay between them.…
Part I
Tempest in a Teapot
I
Boston, Massachusetts
December 16, 1773
“Whiskey, Eric?” Sir Thomas suggested.
Eric Cameron stood by the den window in Sir Thomas Mabry’s handsome town house. Something had drawn him there as soon as the contracts had been signed. He stared out at the night. An occasional coach clattered by on the cobbled streets, but for the most part, the night was very quiet. The steeples of the old churches shone beneath the moonlight, and from his vantage point, high atop a hill, Eric could see down to the common. The expanse of green was dark with night, cast in the shadow of the street lamps, and as peaceful as all else seemed.
Yet there seemed to be a tension about the city. Some restlessness. Eric couldn’t quite describe it, not even to himself, but he felt it.
“Eric?”
“Oh, sorry.” He turned to his host, accepting the glass that was offered to him. “Thank you, Thomas.”
Thomas Mabry clicked his glass to Eric’s. “Milord Cameron! A toast to you, sir. And to our joint venture with your Bonnie Sue. May she sail to distant shores—and make us both rich.”
“To the Bonnie Sue!” Eric agreed, and swallowed the whiskey. He and Sir Thomas had just invested in a new ship to sail to far-distant ports. Eric’s stores of tobacco and cotton went straight to England, but with some of the recent trouble and his own feelings regarding a number of the taxes, he had wanted to experiment and send his own ships to southern Europe and even to the Pacific to acquire tea and some of the luxuries he had once imported from London.
“Interesting night,” Thomas said, looking to the window as Eric had done. “They say that there’s to be a mass meeting of citizens. Seven thousand, or so they say.”
“But why?”
“This tea thing,” Thomas said irritably. “And I tell you, Parliament couldn’t be behaving more stupidly over this than if foolishness had been a requisite for representatives!”
Amused and interested, Eric swallowed most of his drink. “You’re on the side of the rebels?”
“Me? Well, that hints of treason, eh?” He made a snorting sound, then laughed. “I tell you this. No good will come of it all. The British government gave the British East India Company a substantial rebate on tea shipped here. It’s consigned to certain individuals—which will shove any good number of local merchants right out of business. Something will happen. In this city! With agitators like the Adamses and that John Hancock … well, trouble is due, that it is!”
“This makes our private venture all the more interesting,” Eric pointed out.
“That it does!” Thomas agreed, laughing. “Well, we shall get rich or hang together then, my friend, and that is a fact.”
“Perhaps.” Eric grinned.
“Well, now that we’ve discussed business and the state of the colony,” Sir Thomas said, “perhaps we should rejoin the party in the ballroom. Anne Marie will be quite heartbroken if you do not share a dance.”
“Ah, Sir Thomas, I would not think to break the lady’s heart,” Eric said. He had promised his old friend’s daughter that they would not tarry on business all night, that he would come back to the ballroom and join her. “Of course, her dance card is always filled so quickly.”
Sir Thomas laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “But she has eyes only for you, my friend.”
Eric smiled politely, disagreeing. Anne Marie had eyes that danced along with her feet. She was ambitious, and a flirt, but a sweet and honest one. Eric was wryly aware of his worth on the marriage mart. His vast wealth would have made him highly eligible even if he had been eighty, his family pedigree would have stood him well had he rickets, black teeth, and a balding pate. He was not yet thirty, he had all his teeth, and his legs were strong and very straight.
Perhaps Anne Marie would catch him one day. He simply was not of a mind to be caught at the moment.
A tapping on the door was quickly followed by an appearance by the lady herself. Anne Marie was a soft blonde with huge blue eyes and a coquette’s way with a fan. She smiled her delight at him and slipped her hand through his arm. “Eric! You are coming now, aren’t you?”
“Let him finish his whiskey, daughter!” Sir Thomas commanded.
“I shall do so quickly,” he promised Anne Marie. He swallowed down the amber liquid, smiling as she pouted.
Suddenly his smile faded as his gaze was caught by a flash of color beyond the open door. A strange sense of the French déjà-vu seemed to seize him as he caught first an impression, nothing more. Then the dancers in the hall swept by again. As a gentleman shifted to the left, he saw the girl who had so thoroughly caught his attention. Her gown was blue, deep, striking blue, with a full sweeping skirt and a daring décolletage trimmed with red ribbons and creamy lace. Against that blue, tendrils of her hair streamed down in a rich and elegant display of sable ringlets. They curved about her naked shoulders and over the rise of her breasts, enhancing her every breath and movement. Her hair was so very dark … and then, with a shift of light, it wasn’t dark at all, but red as only the deepest sunset could be red.
His gaze traveled at last from her breast to her face, and his breath caught and held. Her eyes were the most startling, purest emerald he had ever seen, fringed by dark lashes. Her features were stunning, perfectly molded, lean and delicate, with a long aquiline and entirely patrician nose, high-set cheekbones, slim, arched brows. All that hinted of something less than absolute perfection was the wideness of her mouth, not that her lips were not rose, were not formed and defined beautifully, but they held something that cold marble perfection could not, for the lower lip was very full, the top curved, and the whole of it so sensual that even within the innocent smile she offered her partner, there could be found a wealth of sensuality. She wore a tiny black velvet beauty patch at the side of her cheek, very near her ear, and that, too, seemed to enhance her perfection, for her ears were small and prettily shaped.
There was something familiar about her. Had he seen her before? He would have remembered a meeting with her. From this moment onward he would never forget her. He had not moved since he had seen her, had not spoken, yet he had never felt more startlingly alive. He had lived a reckless life, mindful of his inheritance, but fiercely aware of his independence, and women—virtuous and not so virtuous—had always played a part within it.
He had never known anyone to affect him so. To render him so mesmerized, and so very hot and tense and … hungry, all at once.
“Eric? Are you with us?” Anne Marie said, annoyed.
Thomas Mabry laughed. “I believe he’s just seen a friend, my dear.”
 
; “A friend?” Eric managed to query Thomas politely.
“Lady Amanda Sterling. A Virginian, such as yourself, Eric. Ah, but she has spent most of the past years at a school for young ladies in London. And perhaps you have been at sea on those ships of yours when the young lady has been in residence.”
“Ah, yes, perhaps,” Eric replied to his host. So the woman was Lady Amanda Sterling. They had met, but it had been years before. Still, it was an occasion that neither of them should have forgotten. There had been a hunt. She had been a mere child of eight upon a pony and he had been longing for the very mature and beautiful upstairs maid at their host’s manor. Young Lady Amanda had jostled her pony ahead of his and the result had been disaster with both of them being thrown from their mounts. And when he had chastised her, she had bitten him. He hadn’t given a fig about Lord Sterling and had paddled her there and then. She had raged like a little demon, the child had.
The child had grown.
“Eric, may we dance?” Anne Marie prodded sweetly. “I promise an introduction. Father, do remind me from now on not to have parties when Mandy is our guest, will you?”
Thomas laughed. Eric joined in, and Anne Marie grinned prettily. Eric gathered his wits about him and reached politely for her arm. “Anne Marie, I am honored.”
He led her out to the floor, and they began to dance. Anne Marie gave him a lazy smile as he swept her expertly about the floor, seeking out the woman who had seized his attention. He saw her again. Saw her laugh for her partner, saw the devil’s own sizzle in her eyes. He thought that he recognized something of himself within that look. She would not be governed by convention, she would demand her own way, and fight for it fiercely.
The sound of her laughter came to him again and he felt a reckless fever stir within him. Come hell itself, and time be damned, he would have to have that woman.