Love Not a Rebel (4 page)

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

“W
hiskey, 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?”