Love Not a Rebel (55 page)

Hurt … hurt. He had been wounded. Men died when they were wounded. Men died when they were wounded because infection and disease spread so rapidly. No! No, God, please, no, after all of their years together they had finally come to really love one another, to trust one another, to need one another. She could not lose him now. He had fought in endless battles, and always with courage, and always so selflessly. He could not die.

“Geneva, how bad is he?” she asked anxiously, reaching for her cloak.

“I don’t know yet. I just know that he wants you. Come on now, hurry!”

They ran out to the snow. Two horses were waiting. “Where’s Damien?” Amanda asked anxiously.

“Getting a wagon. Amanda, let’s go. Before it’s too—”

“Oh!” Amanda cried out. She wondered if Washington knew, or Frederick, or any other of his close friends or fellow officers. They wouldn’t let him die if they knew. They would not let him die, she was certain!

“Geneva, perhaps I should get someone else!”

“Damien is doing that! Amanda, there is no one else about now. We have to hurry!”

“Oh, God, yes!”

She leapt upon the scrawny horse Geneva had brought for her even as Geneva gracefully catapulted upon her own mount. In seconds they were racing through the camp.

“Hey!” someone called. “Wait! Where—”

“We haven’t time!” Geneva responded.

She whipped her horse into a mad gallop. Amanda followed suit, and they were quickly beyond the gates and frantically plowing through the snow. Geneva managed to find something of a trail that had been trampled down, and the floundering horses found their footing again. Amanda was glad, for it seemed that they raced forever. The wind whipped her cheeks and the cold was so bitter that she could no longer feel her fingers about the reins, or her toes in the stirrups. Her heart thundered with fear.

Away from the camp, they slowed for a while. “We need to hurry!” Amanda cried then.

“It’s far. The horses won’t make it. We’ll let them rest a bit, then race them again.”

And so they plodded along. Anxiety grew and swelled within Amanda’s heart. She did not move a foot that she did not pray again, pray for her husband’s life.

They began to race again. There seemed to be nothing, nothing before them, just the endless white of the snowdrifts, just the skeletal leaves of the barren trees. The
camp even seemed far behind them. Very far. So far that it seemed like a miniature village, a child’s toy, and not a place where grown-up men suffered and died.

“Geneva, how far? Where is he? Have we missed him.”

“No, no!” Geneva shouted back.

They kept racing. Suddenly, ahead, Amanda saw an embankment of fir trees. Rich and green, they covered the landscape.

“Just ahead!” Geneva called.

“Thank God!” Amanda shouted in reply. She forced her tired horse to draw close beside Geneva’s. “There? In the woods?”

Geneva nodded, her lashes falling over her beautiful eyes to form crescents on her cheeks. “Yes, Amanda, in the woods.”

The woods …

The thicket of green pines suddenly came alive. Horsemen came bounding out from both directions, horsemen wearing the bright red colors of a British cavalry unit.

Amanda drew her horse quickly to a halt, determined to turn back and flee as quickly as possible. “Geneva, the British! We’ve got to escape! It’s the damned redcoats—”

“There is no escape! Look around. We’re surrounded.”

They were surrounded. There was no direction in which she could escape.

“The British—”

“I know,” Geneva said quietly.

Stunned, Amanda stared at her friend. Then she understood. “It’s you. You’re Highness—I never really was! You called Robert and Father to Cameron Hall, you’ve been sleeping with my cousin for whatever information you could gain. You—you whore!”

“Tsk, tsk, Lady Cameron!”

Amanda swung her nag of a horse around as a rider approached her. Well clad, well fed, sitting his horse very well, it was Robert Tarryton. “What a horrid thing to say to an old friend!” he taunted Amanda.

“Traitor!” Amanda snapped to Geneva, spitting toward the ground.

“Traitor! Ah, no, milady. Geneva is not the traitor—you
are. You should be frightened. We hang traitors, you know. Ah, but a lovely lady? Maybe not. You’re much too useful. You see, my love, with you my prisoner, I just might get your husband at last. And maybe a few more of your illustrious patriots. Eh, love? I might even manage to pick off the entire Continental Army.”

“Never. You’ll never beat them, Robert. Never.”

“They are dying. They are beating themselves.”

“No. You don’t understand, do you? It isn’t guns—it isn’t even in battles. The revolution is in the heart of the people, and you can never take the heart, Robert. Not you, not Howe, not Cornwallis, not King George.”

“Brave words, Amanda. Let’s go. I’m willing to bet that I can nab a victim or two for the hangman. Hurry back, Geneva. It’s time now to bring Lord Cameron for his lady.”

They had led her here with lies. They would bring Eric out in the same manner.

She couldn’t let it happen.

She dug hard into the flanks of her horse, wrenching the reins around. The animal shrieked out and reared up. Amanda slashed the reins about, catching Robert across the face with length of them as he tried to lunge for her. He faltered as leather stips whipped his face and Amanda’s horse bolted, then lunged forward.

“Get her!” Tarryton commanded.

She tried. The valiant little horse tried. But ten horsemen were bearing down on her. A red-coated rider suddenly jumped forward. Caught in his arms, she was brought down, down into the snow with the soldier firmly upon her. Flakes were in her mouth and nose and eyes. Coughing, she fought for breath.

Then rough hands were upon her as Robert Tarryton dragged her to her feet. When she stood he slapped her hard. “Bitch!” he accused her with a quiet smile. Then he wrenched her forward to where his own mount waited. He set her swiftly upon it and mounted in a leap behind her.

His whisper was chilling against her. “I’m just wondering, Amanda, whether to settle my score first with your
husband—or with you. We do have a score to settle, milady, and I’ve imagined endless ways of just how it will be settled!”

“He’ll kill you!” Amanda promised on a whisper.

Tarryton broke into dry laughter. He lashed his horse’s haunches pitilessly. “No, he’ll kill you. You’ve always been a traitor to him. And here’s just another occasion of your treachery. Before I hang him, Amanda, love, I will be sure to let him know that you have been very cleverly planning his demise for the longest time!”

XIX
  

E
ric had just returned to the hut after extensive drilling of the troops with Von Steuben when he heard his name called hysterically from outside. That the place seemed very empty and cold without Amanda about added to his feeling of icy anxiety as he hurried to open the door.

Geneva was practically falling from one of the broken-down old nags that had toughly survived the winter. Damien was rushing over from the blacksmith’s to catch her as she fell.

“Damien, oh, thank God! And Eric!”

“What’s happened?” Damien demanded.

“Bring her in,” Eric urged. “Out of the cold.”

In seconds Geneva was inside, sipping brandy, a blanket wrapped about her shoulders. “She insisted that we search for food. Amanda. She thought that we could contribute to the men by scouring the country ourselves. Then she fell
… Eric, she’s alive but I think that her leg is broken. She needs you desperately.”

Cold … she was lying out in the cold, shivering, hurt, probably in horrid pain. There was a storm coming too. If the snows came on too densely, they might never find her, she might perish in her attempts to prove herself a loyal patriot …

“Dear God!” he whispered aloud, and then he was in motion. “Damien, tell Frederick to arrange for a wagon. Geneva, can you tell me where she is? How to reach her? Frederick will need you to guide him, and I must get to her with blankets and brandy. The cold is so very bitter!”

“Of course, of course—” Geneva said, rising.

But then the door swung open. Jacques Bisset stood in the doorway, towering and dark, a mask of fury upon his face as he stared at Geneva.

“The woman is lying,” he said flatly.

“What?” Eric demanded sharply.

“The woman is lying.”

“How dare you!” Geneva gasped. “Eric! Damien! You are not going to listen this—this—frog servant! And take his word over mine?”

There was something in her tone of voice that Eric didn’t like at all. He smiled slowly, leaning back against the wall. “I have known Jacques most of my life, Geneva. He has never lied to me. Jacques, tell me quickly, what is the truth of this?”

“I followed them. Lady Geneva came here and urged Amanda with her. I followed them when they rode out into the snow. I kept my eye upon it all when they were ambushed by a troop of redcoats. It was planned, Lord Cameron. It was a planned kidnapping.”

Eric felt as if his heart were catapulting to his gut and there lay bleeding. His mouth dry, he demanded, “Who, Jacques? Who has taken her?”

“Tarryton. Lord Robert Tarryton. She was lured to your side, and now you are being lured to hers. I didn’t know what to do! I could not bear to leave her with them, alone in the snow, yet I could not help her unless I came back to warn you. She is the bait, Lord Cameron. The bait to lure
you to your death.” He hesitated, staring at Geneva. If eyes could kill, Eric thought, Geneva would have been lying in blood, slain with daggers through the core of her heart.

Damien backed away from the woman. The fire burned low in the little hut, smoke and soot seemed heavy on the air. Then he took a step toward her. She backed away from him, toward the wall.

“It’s a lie!” she cried out. “He’s lying and I don’t know why! I can’t begin to understand—”

“I can!” Eric interrupted harshly. He strode past Damien, wrenching Geneva around by the shoulders. “It was you. You were the one to see to it that Nigel Sterling and Robert Tarryton knew about the arms kept at Cameron Hall. It was you.”

“No!”

“Yes,” Damien said softly. “I told her. I told her while we lay in bed. The bloody whore!” he exclaimed.

Geneva spat at Damien. He cracked her furiously across the cheek with his open palm. Screaming, she cowered on the floor. “Eric, make him stop—”

“What do we do with her, Eric?” Damien asked, his jaw still twisted savagely, his fingers knotting into fists. “God forgive me, and Eric, would that you could forgive me too! The grief that this woman has caused us all with her treachery, and the fool that I was to believe in her!”

Eric caught hold of Geneva’s wrists and dragged her back to her feet. “How many men has Tarryton got with him?”

“Twenty thousand,” she said defiantly.

He smiled. “Lie like that again, Geneva, and I will give you far greater injury than Damien has managed thus far. In fact …”

He paused, smiling at Damien. “Did you ever realize just how vain our dear Lady Geneva is? Her face is her life. Jacques—I know that this will give you great pleasure. Bring the fire poker. We wouldn’t be so heathen as to threaten the lady’s life—just her beauty.”

Geneva’s eyes grew wide with disbelief. Damien grabbed her shoulders, turning her toward Jacques. The tall Acadian approached her smiling, the poker in his
hand, the end of it burning red from its recent thrust into the fire. He drew it closer and closer to her cheek, just below her eyes. She fought Damien’s hold furiously. “Eric, you’re bluffing! I know that you are bluffing! You will not—” She broke off, screaming, as the heat nearly singed her lashes. “You would not do this!” she cried.

“Well, not usually, no,” Eric agreed. “But I love my wife, Geneva, and by heaven and hell, I will have the truth from you now to get her back!”

The poker moved closer. “All right! All right!” Geneva cried out. “They’ve barely a hundred. General Howe is enjoying his winter in Philadelphia, there are countless balls and teas and he is living quite well. This was Sterling’s idea. He wants you—and Robert wants Amanda. They’ve taken Robert’s company and no more. They knew that you would run recklessly to her aid, and they would take whoever accompanied you, a minor coup. Yet a major blow to the Americans and a warning to would-be patriots when the noble Lord Cameron was hanged!”