Love Not a Rebel (35 page)

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.

“No! You cannot make me—stop this instantly! One of the servants will hear us … will come … stop!”

His hand landed forcefully upon her derrière. “I don’t give a pig’s arse if the servants do come, and perhaps I cannot force you to tell me why you prowl the streets. But while you do so, madame, I shall be doubly damned if I shall be cast from my own bedroom!”

She pounded against his shoulder to no avail. A quick and vicious fight followed when they reached their chamber, but then his lips touched hers, and she remembered his words. Anger … it was so close to passion, so close to need. She wanted to keep fighting. She could not. The fire was lit, in moments it blazed. She never did betray her mission, nor did it matter. Despite all that soared between them, she lost something that night.

By morning Eric was gone. He left a letter telling her that he was headed for the convention and that she was to go home. She would do so with little fuss, he suggested, because certain of the servants would see that she did so by her own power or theirs.

The note was not signed “Your loving husband,” “Love, Eric,” or even “Eric.” Warning words were all that were given to her. “Behave, Madame, or else!”

With a wretched cry she threw her pillow across the room and then she lay back, sobbing. All that she had discovered, she realized, was lost. Love had been born, it had flourished … and then it had foundered upon the rocky shores of revolution.

Part III
Liberty or Death

XII