“Oh!” Amanda interrupted him. The sharp, blinding pain had seized her again. It was not worry, she realized then. She had gone into labor.
She rose, gasping. “Mr. Franklin—”
“It’s all right!” he assured her, on her feet. “A first labor takes hours and hours, Amanda. Hours and hours—”
“Oh! But the pains are coming so quickly.”
“Well, then maybe this labor will not be hours and hours! Oh, dear, this is not my forte—”
“Lady Cameron!”
She swung around. Both Cassidy and Jacques were hurrying up to her. She smiled. “See,” she told Franklin. “I never am alone.”
But she was glad that she was not alone, for the next pain doubled her over. She thought that she would fall, but, she was scooped up into strong arms. She looked up and she saw Jacques’s dear face, and she smiled and touched his cheek. “Thank you,” she murmured.
He did not smile, but searched out her eyes. She was glad of his strength, for the palace was so very big, and her chambers were at the far end of it. They left the gardens and traveled long hallways. Finally Jacques burst open a set of molded double doors; they had reached the apartments of the Comte de la Rochelle. The elderly French statesman was sitting before the fire, warming his toes, when they entered.
“My dear—” he began, but he saw Jacques’s face and moved quickly instead. “Danielle! The lady’s time has come! Be quick, I shall send for the physician!”
Jacques carried her into the beautiful room that had been assigned her. Danielle was already running in before him, sweeping back the fine damask bedcurtains and the spread. Jacques set Amanda down. Suddenly she did not want him to go. She squeezed his hand. He touched her forehead and smiled to her, and in softly spoken French he promised her a beautiful son. Then he left. Danielle urged her to sit up and started tugging on her silk and velvet gown.
“I can help—” Amanda assured her, but the pain attacked her savagely again, and this time, it was so sudden that she could not help but cry out.
“Hold to the bed frame!” Danielle advised her. “Ah, ma petite! It will be much worse before it will be better!”
Danielle was so very right. For hours the pain came at short intervals. At first Amanda felt that she could bear it—the result would be her child, the babe she so desperately craved. Someone to hold and to love and to need her.
Then the pain became intense, and so frequent that she began to long for death. She swore, and she cried, and some point she didn’t know what she was saying. Exhausted, she drifted to a semisleep in the few minutes between the pains. She dreamed of Eric Cameron, coming toward her in his boots and breeches and open shirt. He had loved her once, she thought. His eyes had danced upon her with silver and blue desire, and his mouth had turned into a sensual curl when he had touched her. He had held her against so much danger, but she hadn’t trusted in the strength of his arms. He was speaking to her, accusing her of things.
“You have done something. You have done something to deny me a child.” She protested. She promised that she had not. But he accused her anew, the silver lights of laughter and desire gone from his gaze. “Betraying bitch!” But there is a child now! she tried to tell him. He already had the baby; he held it high and away from her. “My son returns with me, my son returns with me—”
A savage pain, just like the thrust of a knife, cut across her lower back and wound around to her front.
“Easy, ma petite, easy!” It was Danielle who spoke, Amanda realized dimly.
Amanda screamed, trying to rise to consciousness. Her eyes were wild, her hair was soaked and lay plastered about her head. A cool cloth fell upon her forehead, smoothing back her hair. “No!” she screamed the word. “He cannot have my baby, the lying, treacherous bastard shall not take the baby away—”
“Amanda, if you mean me, my love, I’ve no intention of taking the babe away. If you’ll only be so good as to deliver him to us.”
Her eyes flew wide. She had to be dreaming still. He was there, standing above her. It was Eric with the damp sponge, cooling her brow, smoothing back her hair. She stared at him in distress and amazement. He could not be there. He despised her so, and now he was seeing her thus! Wretched and in anguish and so much pain. And though he spoke softly, she thought that there was bitterness in his voice. And coldness, like an arctic frost.
“No,” she whispered, staring at him.
“Aye, my love,” he retorted, his devil’s grin in place, silver and indigo glittering in his gaze. He was nearly dressed as in her dream, wearing ivory hose and navy breeches, his frock coat and surcoat both shed, the laced sleeves of his shirt shoved high upon his muscled arms, his hair neatly queued back from his face.
“Please, don’t be!” she hissed, and she did not know if she wanted him gone because she was angry still, or because she was so afraid that she could never attract him again.
His glance moved toward the foot of the bed, and she realized that, of course, they were not alone. She followed his gaze and saw Danielle and the French physician. She swallowed tightly. Again a pain seized, swift and sure and barely a minute from the one before it. She cried out pitifully, unable to hold back. Danielle whispered feverishly to Eric.
“It’s over twenty-four hours. I do not see how she bears it.”
“It is time now,” the French physician said. “She must find the strength to bear down.”
Eric’s arms came around her. “Go away!” she begged him.
“He has said that you must push, Amanda. I’ll help you.”
“I do not want your help—”
“But you shall have it! Now do as you are told.”
It was not so hard, for an overwhelming desire to do so came to her. Nor would Eric let her quit. When she would have fallen back he pressed her forward, his voice full of command. “Push, madame!”
“I am not among your troops, Major General!” she retorted, and then she was gasping and unable to say more, and they let her fall back at last.
“Come, come! A little Cameron head has nearly entered into the world!”
“Again, Amanda—”
“Eric, please—”
“Push!”
She did so, and that time she was rewarded with the sweetest sense of relief. The child emerged from her body and the physician exclaimed with delight, slapping the tiny form. A lusty cry was heard, and Danielle called out, “A girl! Une petite jeune fille, une belle petite jeune fille—”
“Oh!” Amanda gasped. She had been so very happy, so thrilled and excited. But then pain had seized her again, and she was suddenly terrified that she was going to die.
“What is it?” Eric demanded harshly.
“The pain—”
The Frenchman severed the birth cord, Danielle took the squalling baby girl. Eric gripped her hand, staring at her. “You are not going to die, my love. I have not finished with you,” he promised her.
She wanted to answer him, but she could not. The urge to push had come upon her again.
“Alors! There are two!” The doctor laughed.
“Push!” Eric commanded her again. She could not. She was so exhausted she might well have been dead. He lifted her up, forced her to press forward.
“Bon! Bon!” the doctor exclaimed, nodding to Eric. Eric let her fall back, cradling her shoulders. She closed her eyes. She could remember the security of those arms. Once he had held her against the world. And now they were very much strangers. They were enemies to a greater extent than they had ever been. But he was there, holding her. Because he wanted their child.…
But she had a daughter, and she was so grateful! The baby was alive and well and—
“A boy, Lord Cameron!” The doctor laughed. “A boy, small, a twin, but all his fingers and toes are there! He will grow! His color is good. He is fine.”
A son. She had a daughter and a son. Her eyes closed. They had said that they were healthy. Twins. Two … and both alive and well and with good color. She wante
d to see them so badly. She couldn’t begin to open her eyes.
“Amanda?”
She heard Eric’s voice. She felt his arms, but she could not open her eyes.
“My lord Cameron, you have gotten her through, but she has lost much blood, and the time, you see. I still have work to do with her, and then she must sleep. My lord, Danielle has the girl. If you insist upon helping, take your son.”
“My son. Aye, gladly, sir! I will take my son!”
She heard Eric say the words, and then she heard no more.
She must have slept a very long time, and very deeply, for when she awoke she was bathed and clean and wearing a soft white nightgown and her hair was dried and tied back from her face with a long blue ribbon. She awoke hearing a fretful crying. She opened her eyes, a smile on her face as she reached out for her infants.
Danielle was with her, she saw, smiling grandly as she walked over to the huge draped bed with the two bundles. “Your daughter, milady, or your son?” Danielle teased affectionately.
“I don’t know!” Amanda laughed, delighted. They were both screaming away. She decided to let them scream for a moment, removing their bundling, checking out the tiny bodies. “Oh, how extraordinary!” She laughed, for her baby daughter had a thatch of bright red hair and the little boy was very dark. Both had bright blue eyes at the moment. She checked them both swiftly, counting fingers and toes. “Oh, they are perfect!”
“A little small, so we must take care. Lord Cameron was anxious to leave, but the size of these two has slowed even him down.”
“Leave!” Amanda gasped.
“We’re going home,” Danielle said.
“We—all of us?”
“Mais oui! What else?”
Amanda exhaled slowly, afraid to speak her fears. No husband would have taken his infants—and not his wife. Not even Eric.
Yet that did not heal the distance between them.
“You must try to feed both. Jeannette Lisbeth—the queen’s woman—says that you can hold both.…” Danielle came to her and adjusted the babies in her arms and her gowns. Amanda cried out with a little squeal of delight as her twins latched upon her breasts, tugging, creating a glowing sensation within her.
“They are so very small, however shall I manage?” She rested her chin atop one downy head, and touched a little cheek with her finger. “Oh, Danielle! Now I am so afraid. There are so many awful diseases—”
“Shush, and enjoy your children, ma petite. God will look after us all!”
Amanda smiled at Danielle’s statement. She took delight in the infants, touching them, smiling. But then she stiffened, startled and wary, when the door suddenly opened without a knock. She would have quickly drawn her gown together except that she could not.
Eric had come. He was really there. Tall, elegant this morning in dark brocade and snow-white hose and silver-buckled shoes. She wanted to tell him that she was glad he was alive; glad he had come. But she could not. The breach between them was too great. She had told him that she loved him once, and he had called her a liar. She would not make the mistake again.
And yet his eyes fell instantly to her breasts where the babies feasted noisily. He seemed to drag them back to hers.
“You might have knocked,” she told him coolly.
“I might have,” he agreed smoothly, “except that a man should not be required to knock upon his wife’s door.” He glanced at Danielle. “Mam’selle, if you would …?”
“Danielle!” Amanda wailed.
But Danielle was gone. Eric approached the bed. The little girl’s mouth had gone slack. Her eyes were closed. Eric reached for her, swathing her in the blanket, setting her with care and skill upon his shoulder. His large bronzed hand looked mammoth against the child.
He glanced her way. “I do believe that they are supposed to burp this way.”
Amanda nervously closed her gown, setting her infant son upon her own shoulder, patting the little back. She kept watching Eric, but he paid her little heed, giving his attention to their daughter. He did not look at her when he spoke at last. “I should like to call her Lenore.”
“That was—”
“Your mother’s name, yes. Does that suit you?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “And—our son?”
“Jamie,” he said huskily. “A Jamie Cameron began life in a new land. This Jamie Cameron will begin life in a new country.”
“The war has not been won,” Amanda observed.
His eyes fell upon her coldly. She lifted her chin, not wanting to fight, not knowing how not to do so. “And with what you said to me when we last met, I had doubts you would claim them as your own,” she murmured.
She held her breath, awaiting his answer. She so desperately wanted him to disclaim his words, to vow some small word of love to her.
His eyes stayed upon her. “As this is March eleventh, I daresay the timing is quite right since our last—encounter.”
Tears stung her eyes. She refused to shed them. “I wish that they were not yours!” she lied softly.
He stiffened, his back to her. “Ah, my dear wife! And you claimed to love me so the last time that we met!” She was silent. He turned to her. He set the baby down carefully in one of the cradles that had been brought and came to stand beside her. She nearly flinched when he reached down to touch her hair. He did not miss her reaction. He picked up his son even though a sound of protest escaped her. “The lad sleeps,” he said. With Jamie Cameron set in his cradle, Eric came back to her again.
He reached into his frock coat and produced a small velvet box. He withdrew a ring from it and took her hand. She tugged upon her fingers but he held fast. A second later a stunning emerald surrounded by diamond chips was set upon her third finger. “Thank you,” he said very softly, and it was the tone of voice that could set her heart to shivering, her very soul to trembling. She wanted so badly to reach out and stroke his face. No matter how tender his words, she dared not. “I did not mean to be so crude. I do, however, live sometimes for the day when I might meet Lord Tarryton once again. You forget, I discovered you once within his arms.”
A smile escaped her. “And rescued me from them, if I recall.”
“Yes, but I admit, I cannot forget that you loved him, and fears have often tormented my dreams. But I thank you for my children—healthy twins were far more than I dared dream. I would that they had been born at home—”
“You sent me here.”
“Aye, and I would bring you home now. But, Amanda, you must swear to me that you will no longer betray my cause.”
“I did not betray your cause—”
“I ask you for the future.”
She lowered her head, feeling the urge to burst into” tears. He still did not believe her. He had always been there for her, even in the midst of childbirth! But he did not believe her, and she knew of no way to heal their breach.
“I will not betray you, I swear it,” she said softly.
His knuckles rested upon her cheek. He opened his mouth as if to speak. She turned her head aside. “This is a travesty of a marriage, is it not? When you loved me, I did not love you. Then I loved you—and you did not love me. There is nothing now, is there?”
His hand fell and he walked away from the bed. She heard the door open, and yet he hesitated. “Aye, there is something,” he said. Her eyes rose to his. Cobalt fire, they fell upon her, and touched her flesh and blood and entered deeply inside of her. “For you are mistaken. I have loved you since I first laid eyes upon you, milady, and I have never ceased to love you.”
The door closed. She was alone.
XVII
It was several days before Amanda saw Eric again. Although she pondered his words endlessly when she was awake, it seemed that she was often exhausted in those first days. Danielle assured her that producing live, healthy twins was no easy task and that she deserved her rest. And in those days, countless gifts came to her, from the Comte de la Rochelle, from Benjamin Franklin, and even
from the young king and queen. Marie Antoinette sent her Flemish lace christening gowns, as beautiful and opulent as the Palace of Versailles. While she was still abed, the twins were taken to be baptized, in an Episcopal ceremony, although the French royal court was devoutly Catholic. Though no one dared say it to Amanda, infant mortality was high, and so the ceremony was quickly arranged. Danielle stood as godmother to both infants, while Amanda was delighted to have Ben Franklin stand as their godfather.
By the end of a week she was feeling much stronger, and though she had been offered a young wet nurse by the court, she was determined to care for both of her babies herself. It was trying but greatly rewarding, and she could not forget for a moment how deeply she had feared that she would never have children.
Now she had two, precious beings who still brought her to awe. She never tired of searching over their little bodies, of counting fingers and toes, of studying their eyes and their hair and their noses and chins, trying to decide just whom they resembled. “I shall show you some of your ancestors!” she promised. “There’s a huge gallery with rows and rows of Camerons! You shall see, and then we shall decide!”
They were way too young to smile, but still, she thought that Jamie, especially, watched her with very grave eyes. His father’s eyes. They already had a tendency to look cobalt at times, silver at others.
She had her infants … and she had Eric. And he had even said that he loved her, that he had always loved her. But could it be enough? He had come for her—but she was certain that he still did not trust her.
And he stayed away from her. He came to see his new son and daughter, she knew, for Danielle always informed her. But he did not wait to see her when she wakened. She didn’t know where he slept at night, but there Danielle assured her too. He was across in the comte’s room, and the comte was in his eldest son’s quarters. And Eric was not often around, Danielle continued, because he had been entrusted by Congress and General Washington to take messages to the French ministers. He also spent hours with Mr. Franklin.
They would leave for home on the first of April. Eric would arrive in time to fight during summer and fall—if the fledgling country survived so long. Sometimes it terrified her that she would be bringing her children home to a land of bloodshed.