Love Not a Rebel (38 page)

Then she kept her eyes closed as she tried to breathe slowly once again. She felt Eric shift from her, and she felt his eyes upon her. Then she felt his lips touching hers. Softly. So softly. She opened her eyes and met his. There was a certain sorrow within them.

He rose, lifting her up into his arms, and setting her down at the dressing table. She met his eyes in the mirror. He found her brush on the floor and stroked it through the sable strands of her hair.

“Why do we fight so?” he asked her.

She shook her head, unable to answer.

“Let me be tender,” he whispered softly.

He was going to make love to her again, she realized.

And she wanted him to do so. She still hungered for him. Hungered for him greatly.

He stroked his knuckles over her cheeks, then over her shoulders where they were bared. So gently now. His fingers stroked softly lower to the ribbons of her bodice, and those he finished untying. He slipped the straps of her shift from her shoulders, and pressed down upon the mounds of cotton and muslin until the gown and garment fell to her waist, baring her breasts to him in the mirror. She did not move, but continued to meet his gaze. His fingers closed over her breasts, molding them, cupping them. Then he flicked his thumbs upon her nipples, stroked around the aureoles, and delicately, softly, caressed the pebbled crests again. She moaned low and softly and with just a touch of desperation. Her eyes closed at last and her head fell back against his torso. And still, he saw, in the shimmering image of the mirror, the beauty of her. The fullness, the lushness of her breasts beneath his hands, the ivory gleam and perfection of her flesh, the startling fall of her hair against the slender column of her throat. He bent down, finding her lips, and kissed her. She tasted of everything sweet and intoxicating in life. Her lips trembled beneath his and parted.

He straightened and came around before her upon one knee. Her eyes wide and dilated, she looked down upon him.

“I’ll never ask you again where you went from the town house, Amanda,” he told her. “But I’ll never let you leave again. Do you understand me?” She nodded very slowly. Something about the way she looked at him swept the last of the anger from his being. He cried out in sudden frustration, rose, and pulled her to her feet against him. “You needn’t fear him, Amanda, do you understand me? You needn’t fear Nigel Sterling!”

Dismay filled her eyes. Her head fell back. Eric rushed on. “Dammit, don’t you understand me? You can never go
to him again, never go near Tarryton again, or I shall be forced to kill one of them, can’t you understand that? Amanda! I am your husband, I will protect you. You needn’t fear Sterling or Tarryton!”

A soft sob escaped her and she tried to bury her face against him, but he could not allow her to do so. He caught her shoulders and shook her slightly. “Do you understand me, Amanda?”

“Yes! Yes!” she cried out, and tried to jerk free. He held her tight and his lips descended upon hers. They were bruising and forceful and even cruel to hold on to hers … but then she went still in his arms, soft and warm and giving, and his tongue bathed her mouth where he had offered force, and his lips became gentle and coercive, and then so soft that she was hungrily pressing against him for more.

And her fingers were upon his frock coat, shoving it from his shoulders. And soft and subtle, they were upon the buttons of his shirt, and then the stroke of her nails was delicate and exquisite upon his naked flesh.

He brought his hands against her flesh, shoving her gown and garments to the floor. He plucked her up and lay her upon the bed in her stockings and garters. She watched him in the soft candle glow as he divested himself of his clothing. When he came down beside her, she wrapped him in her arms.

They made love slowly that second time. So slowly. Exchanging sultry kisses and soft caresses, and then urgent whispers. She made love to him sweetly, and more savagely, and Eric reveled in her every touch. Desire, volatile and explosive, rose high within him. He thrust into her with his very being, so it seemed.

It was exquisite, it was a tempest. It drew everything from him and returned everything to him. But when it was over and he held her naked form close to him while the candle upon the dressing table faded out, he again decried himself for loving her so deeply. No matter how sweetly, how wantonly she made love to him, she held something back. He had yet to touch her soul.

Yet to touch the truth.

She moved slightly against him. He held her closer. “Are you cold?”

“No.”

“Hungry?”

“No,” she replied again.

He rose slightly upon an elbow, enjoying the beautiful slope and angle and shadow of her back and derriere in the near-total darkness.

He watched her in the darkness, then came back beside her. Her eyes were more than half closed as exhaustion claimed her. He softly stroked the flesh of her arm, then lay down beside her again and very gently took her into his arms. He wanted to apologize again; he could not. He held her for a long while, then whispered to her softly, “Amanda, trust in me. Dear God, trust in me, please.”

She did not reply. He didn’t know if she truly slept, or if she simply didn’t have an answer for him.

In the days that followed Eric gave Amanda news about the convention, warning her that the time was coming close when they might be facing armed conflict. A summons came from the governor, which Eric quickly answered. Lord Dunmore was fuming. He had been furious that he had been ignored when he had issued a proclamation that all magistrates—and others—should use their utmost endeavors to prevent the election of delegates to the Second Continental Congress.

Amanda was sure that Dunmore would be furious with Eric, but he did not balk from the summons. What went on in the interview, she did not know, but she was certain that the total rift between them was begun that day.

When he returned to the town house, she ran down the stairs to the parlor to meet him. “What happened?” she asked anxiously.

He set his gloves and plumed tricorn upon the table, and looked her way. “It will come to war, Amanda. I wonder, will you be with me, or against me?”

“I—I can’t deny my loyalties!” she told him, begging him with her eyes to understand. She was grasping at straws, she thought. He had caught her slipping from the house.
He knew that she had lied about thinking she might be with child.

She had betrayed him, and he knew it, and he would not trust her, or love her, again.

He nodded, looking at her, looking past her. “Let your heart lie where it will. But follow my commands, my love!” he warned softly.

She did not answer, but fled up the stairs.

Several nights later, just as dawn came on April 20, Amanda lay beside him, naked, content, secure within his arms. She had not known until he had returned just how bitterly she had missed him. She loved just being held, just sleeping with the fall of his bronze arm upon her. She liked to awaken and see the angle of his jaw; she thrilled to the striking planes of his face, to the crisp mat of dark hair upon his chest, to the rugged texture of his hard-muscled and masculine thighs entangled with her own.

Shouts in the street suddenly startled her. She started to rise, half asleep, confused. Beside her, Eric bolted up and strode quickly to the window.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. A crowd. A huge crowd.” He found his breeches and stumbled into them. He threw open the window and shouted down to the street. “My good man! What goes on down there.”

“The powder! The arms. The bloody redcoats marines came in off the
Fowey
in the James and stole our supplies from the magazine! We’re not a-goin’ to take it, Lord Cameron! We can’t!”

“Son of a bitch!” Eric muttered. He grabbed his shirt and boots. Clutching the sheet, Amanda stared at him.

“They’ll march on the palace!” she said.

He cast her a quick glance. “Bloodshed here and now must be avoided!” he said, but she didn’t think that he was really talking to her, but rather thinking aloud. He reached for his frock coat and she leapt from the bed at last.

“Eric—”

“Amanda, go back to sleep.”

“Go back to sleep!” she wailed, but he was already leaving her, closing the door behind him.

She watched him go, then quickly dressed and followed him out.

When she left the house, she knew that she was followed. Jacques Bisset had followed her every move since Eric had left her in January. She didn’t mind. She was fascinated by the man, and she always felt safe with him behind her.

And she’d had no more demands from her father since she had given him the map.

It was not difficult to follow Eric. The roar and pulse of the crowd could be heard and felt from afar. Amanda hurried toward the Capitol. It seemed that the whole population of Williamsburg had turned out in a fury.

Someone shouted, “To the palace!”

Stepping back against a building, Amanda inhaled sharply. The cry was going up on the air. The mob seemed to seethe, the people within it angry, impassioned, ugly in their reckless force.

“Stop, stop!” a voice called out.

Amanda climbed upon shop steps to see. It was Peyton Randolph. Carter Nicholas was at his side, Eric was behind him.

The noise from the crowd dimmed. Randolph began to speak, advising the people that they might defeat their own purpose. They needed to issue a protest drafted in the Common Hall.

Carter Nicholas echoed the warnings, and then Eric spoke, urging everyone to caution.

Slowly the crowd dispersed.

Jostled in the sudden stream of humanity, Amanda was startled when she was suddenly clutched from behind and turned around to meet her husband’s angry eyes. “I told you to go back to sleep!”

“But, Eric—”

“Damn you, Amanda, I am trying to avoid the shedding of your dear Tory Dunmore’s blood. Jacques is taking you back to Cameron Hall. Today. I want you out of this!”

She tried to protest, he wasn’t about to allow it.

And by noon she was on her way home.

News trickled to her slowly at Cameron Hall. She listened avidly to the servants, and she eagerly awaited the news in the
Virginia Gazette
.

The people drafted a demand to know why the governor had taken their weapons. Dunmore replied that he had been concerned about a slave insurrection and had removed the powder for safety’s sake.

Eric arrived exhausted one evening to tell her that meetings had been taking place elsewhere. Randolph and Nicholas had managed to keep the people of Williamsburg under control, but the people of Caroline County had authorized the release of gunpowder to the volunteers gathered at Bowling Green. Edmund Pendleton, however, chairman of that committee, would not allow action until he heard from Peyton Randolph.

Fourteen companies of light horse had gathered in Fredericksburg, and they were ready to ride on the capital. On April 28 the reply from Randolph reached those ready to fight—he requested caution. While there was any hope of reconcilation, it was necessary to avoid violence.

The people had ridden home. The message had been tactfully written, and men such as the Long Knives were quieted.

“Thank God!” Sitting in the elegant parlor at Cameron Hall, Amanda turned anguished eyes on her husband and fervently whispered the sentiment.

Eric, worn and dusty from riding, stared at her with a curious look in his eyes.

“There is more,” he told her.

She rose, her hands clenched in her lap. “What? You—you’ve been in Fredericksburg. You would have ridden on the capital!”

He did not answer the question. “Amanda, shots were fired in Massachusetts. At Lexington and at Concord. The British went after the arms stored there, and the colonists—the ‘minutemen’—fought them every step of the way back to Boston.”

“Oh, no!” So blood had been shed after all, not in Virginia, but in Massachusetts.

“Patrick Henry marched with forces toward Williamsburg, but Dunmore added sailors and marines to the palace, and dragged cannon out upon the lawn. An emissary came out on May second to pay for the powder that had been taken.”

“You were with Patrick Henry!” she gasped.

“I was a messenger, Amanda—”

“How could you—”

“I can caution reason on both sides, my lady!” he snapped, and she fell silent.

“That is not all.”

She stared at him, extremely worried by his tone of voice.

“Amanda, Patrick Henry has been branded a rebel.” He hesitated briefly. “And so have I,” he continued very quietly. “I suspect that within a number of days there might well be an arrest warrant out for me.”

“Oh, no!” Amanda gasped. She stared at him, her husband, tall, dark, striking and ever commanding, and in that moment she didn’t care about the world. England could rot, and Virginia could melt into the sea, she did not care. “Oh, Eric!” she cried his name, and flew across the room, hurtling herself against him. He caught her in his arms and held her tight.

There were no more words between them. He carried her upstairs, and he made love to her gently and with tenderness. With that same tenderness he held her against the night, brushing a kiss against her forehead as the dawn broke.

His eyes were dark and serious as they searched hers. He lay half atop her, smoothing her hair from her forehead.

“Men are already beginning to return to England. Loyalists who believe that this breech cannot possibly be closed again. I ask you, Amanda, do you stay with me of your own accord?”

“Yes! Yes!” she told him, burying her face against his throat. “Yes, I will stay with you.”

He held her in silence. “Do you stay for me, or for England?”

“What?”

He shook his head. “Never mind. I am a man labeled rebel for a moment, not that I think that Dunmore has the power to do anything about it. There are very long days ahead of us.” He was silent again. “Long years,” he whispered. “Come, love. A rebel dare not lie about too long. I’ve much I would get done about here in case—”

“In case?” she demanded anxiously.

His eyes found hers again. “In case I should have to leave quickly.”