Love Not a Rebel (57 page)

She turned about, thanking Frederick for his coat as he slipped it around her shoulder and then taking his arm.

“I didn’t think that she’d ever leave!” Damien said. “Feisty little wench, eh?”

Amanda was about to swirl around to tell her cousin what she thought of him, but her husband was answering him already.

“Patriots are like that,” Eric said casually.

“Aye, you’re right, my lord! Aye, you are right!” Damien agreed. They laughed together. Amanda did not look back. When Frederick set her up atop a horse, he was smiling, and she smiled in return.

The men returned to Valley Forge within a few hours. Amanda sat at the table in the hut and stared at the three of them, Eric, Damien, and Jacques, as they stood before her, something like errant schoolboys.

Eric cleared his voice to speak, but then Jacques stepped forward. “I killed your father, Amanda.”

“He meant to kill me, Jacques,” she said quietly. “He—he meant it. He always despised me.”

Then Jacques went silent. Eric cleared his throat again. “Amanda, Nigel wasn’t your father.”

“What?” Astonished, she leapt to her feet.

“But—”

Damien slipped an arm about her, coming down upon his haunches by her side as he led her to sit again. “Didn’t you ever wonder that a man could be so cold to his own flesh and blood? I had heard the rumors, of course, but—I remember your mother, Amanda. Just vaguely. She was always so kind and so sweet, and so—”

“Giving,” Jacques interrupted him. He looked at Amanda, but he seemed to see beyond her, to another time and another place. “She was beautiful and gentle and sweet, and her voice was like a nightingales, and she cared for everyone about her, be they slave or freedman, worker or gentry. She—she bought my indentured time when I arrived from Nova Scotia.”

He paused, hesitating a long moment. His dark eyes fluttered over Amanda. “I fell in love with her,” he said, his voice cracking. “And she fell in love with me. We meant to slip away to Louisiana, but he caught us. He left me for dead. I was taken in by Lord Cameron’s grandfather, and over the years my body healed, but it wasn’t until Danielle arrived that I remembered all that my life had been.”

Amanda discovered that she couldn’t breathe. She tried to form words. “What—what do you mean?”

“Amanda,” Eric said, speaking quietly at last. “Jacques is your father.”

There was silence. Dead silence, then Jacques started to speak, his French mingling with his English in his eagerness. “I could not tell you, I did not even tell Lord Cameron, I was so afraid that you would be horrified to know that you were not the daughter of a great lord but the child of a common laborer, a man who worked the land. But I saw,
mon Dieu
! I saw what he did to you, and I had vowed that I would kill them.
Mais, ma petite
, not even then did I mean to tell you, but your husband insisted—I am so sorry. I have loved you greatly from afar, and my life has been made rich just to see you, just to be privileged to touch my grandchildren, to live in the shadow cast by the bounty of the hall.…”

Amanda felt numb. So very numb! He was watching her with such anguish, and Eric was staring at her, and Damien …

She leapt to her feet, throwing her arms around Jacques. With a glad cry, she showered his cheeks with kisses. “My father!
Mon père!
Oh, thank God, thank God! Eric, how could you have known, how could have guessed and not told me!”

“Well, I—”

“You are not so horrified then?” Jacques asked her, his hands trembling as he held her.

“Horrified? Horrified! Oh, no, I am so thrilled and so very proud! My father was not some monster who lived to take revenge upon me because my mother could not bear his touch! He is tall and handsome and brave and wonderful, and he loves me. He loves me! Oh, Eric, isn’t that what matters the most?”

Eric, relieved and greatly pleased, leaned back against the mantel, grinning. “Oh, of course, Amanda.” It was both wonderful and poignant to watch the tears hovering in her eyes, to see the wonder upon her face. And Jacques. The Acadian who had always been there for her, loving her, never thinking to speak the truth, when the truth might have caused her pain. “Love—and the man,” Eric agreed. “We’re fighting for a new world here. For rights,
where it is the measure of a man that matters, and nothing more. And I would say, Monsieur Bisset—as a man who has known you since he wore knee breeches—that there is no man of finer measure, or greater measure. No man whom I would rather call father-in-law.”

Eric reached out for Jacques’s hand. Jacques looked from his daughter’s red head to the hand outstretched to him. Their hands met. Then Eric cleared his throat and smiled at Damien, who was staring on delightedly. “Maybe we should give them a few minutes.”

“Maybe we should.”

Neither Jacques nor Amanda noticed as they left. Amanda was crying, tears of joy. “Danielle! Danielle is my aunt! Oh, how delightful. I cannot wait to see her again.”

Eric left her alone until very late, and then returned to the hut. The main room was empty, and so Eric hurried on into the bedroom.

Amanda was there, and for a moment he thought that she slept, she was so very still. He walked over to the narrow bed and discovered that her beautiful emerald eyes were open, that they had a dreamlike quality to them. Her lips were slightly parted in a beautiful rose smile and her hair was splayed about her in ripples of sable and fire, sweeping over the bare and naked beauty of her ivory shoulders. He knelt down by her. As her eyes focused on him, her smile broadened.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” she returned.

“So …”

“Oh, Eric!” She wrapped her arms around him and held him close. “Thank you! Thank you for so much! You’ve not only given me love, but you’ve given me our beautiful children, and our home, and now you’ve even given me a father!”

He chuckled softly. “Well, I can’t really take credit for all of that—”

“And you’ve given me a country, Eric. Today I knew it. I knew it so thoroughly! I knew that I would die for you, and then I discovered that I would die for this cause too. I
understand everything that meant so much to you, what it was worth fighting for, worth dying for.… It’s meant to be, Eric! Not a land for titled hogs such as Nigel Sterling, but for men like my real father. Quiet, dignified, determined to wrest the very best from the land. To give to it. Oh, Eric! I cannot tell you how happy I am! You cannot imagine what it was like to wonder how a parent could hate you so fervently! And he’s wonderful, isn’t he? Jacques is wonderful!”

“Yes, love, he is wonderful.”

Her smile faded. “What of Geneva?”

“They’ll hold her in Baltimore until they can see to it that she’s shipped off to England.”

“It was her all along!”

“Well—almost all along,” Eric said.

Amanda flushed. “All right, I was guilty, somewhat. But you sent me to France because of her! You—”

“I most humbly beg your forgiveness, my love.”

“Really? You?” She smiled. “I cannot imagine you humble at all. Nor begging.”

“Well, maybe not.”

She wrapped her arms around him. “But the words sounded sweet anyway.”

“Would you like to hear more words that sound sweet?”

“Mmm …”

He stood up, cast aside his cloak, and quickly stripped down. He ripped away the blanket and she was cold, but then his body settled over hers, and she thought that she had never know such sweet and beautiful warmth. He caught her face between his hands and began kissing her.

“It’s over,” she whispered between trysts with his lips.

He paused, looking down at her very seriously. “Amanda, it is far from over.”

“The war. It seems so very grim, doesn’t it? Dark and grim and frightening. But for us, my love, it is over. Our war is over.”

Eric smiled. “Aye, love, our war is over. No matter what time and distance should take from us again, we can never really be parted because we have found our peace. Love—and trust.”

She smiled. “Love—and trust.”

He started to kiss her again. She caught hold of his shoulders and forced his eyes to hers. “Did you really love me from the very beginning?”

“Mmm.”

“Liar!”

“Well, I coveted you with all of my being. How is that?”

“You said—”

He twined his fingers with hers, bracing her hands tightly at the sides of her head. “Amanda!” he wailed.

“All right!” She closed her eyes. She felt the pulse of his body naked against hers, the heat, the wonder of muscle and sinew and hard masculinity. She wondered if it was all right to pray, to thank God, in the midst of such sweet splendor.

She opened her eyes. “I do surrender!” she promised him.

“You do?” Silver mischief rode his eyes like clouds dancing in the night. “Then, my love, I gladly conquer all.”

“Eric!”

His laugh warmed and roused her, his breath taunted her ear wickedly. “Love, I surrender all that I am, my heart and my soul, this night! Life has been tempest, and will be again, but through any of my rages and storms, my love, you will know: I have surrendered.”

She sighed, and she felt his kiss.

Thank you, dear God, for all of it! For giving me Jacques as my father …

She felt his hands upon her breast, his fingers stroking her thigh.

Thank you for the twins …

His kiss stroked her shoulder, her abdomen. His flesh against hers was so erotic she could scarcely think, scarcely breathe.

Thank you, God, for this man …

She gave up. His touch upon her was flagrantly bold and intimate, daring, defying. A Cameron touch.

“Amanda …” he whispered her name.

She gave himself entirely over to his touch. “My love, let
the tempest swirl, the rages fly, I care not! Just so long as you love me, that is all I could ever crave.”

“And that is all that I shall ever do,” he vowed.

And with himself, his warmth, his need, his love, he set forth to prove his words in every way.

Epilogue
  

CHRISTMAS 1783

T
here was a soft fall of snow upon the ground, but Amanda had seen the lone rider coming slowly down the path and she had instantly recognized the huge black horse. Knowing the animal, she was certain that the bundled rider had to be her husband.

“He’s home!” she called joyously to Danielle. She left the window and went racing past the pictures in the gallery, and then down the long curving staircase, and to the front doors. Richard and Cassidy both went to the hallway to watch her; Jacques, whittling by the fire in the parlor, just smiled.

Amanda ignored the fall of the soft light flakes that fell upon her face and gown, and she ran on. Eric saw her. He reined in on Joshua and slipped down from his mount. He patted the animal on the haunches, and Joshua trotted off on his own. He knew the way home to the stables. Just as Eric could reach home by himself now. Home. God, it had been a long war.

“Eric!”

He started running too. The distance between them shortened, and then he could see her face clearly. So chiseled
and exquisite, the years had never seemed to cost her anything. Maybe her beauty had always really been in the emotion in her eyes. He could see them. Emerald, dancing, moist with tears, moist with love.

“Amanda!”

They came together. He caught her up high in his arms and twirled her around. Mist rose between as they breathed in the cold. Her hands were icy; she wore no gloves.

“It’s done, then?”

He nodded. It had really been done for some time. The fighting had gone on after that awful winter at Valley Forge, but Von Steuben’s drilling had changed the army. They had become an awesome force. And though the British had managed to take Charleston, the south had hung on through the efforts of men like Francis Marion, the renowned “Swamp Fox,” and through the talents of men like Nathanael Greene and Daniel Morgan. Finally, in ‘81, the war had returned to Virginian soil.

Benedict Arnold, Washington’s once-trusted general, had been heavily involved. Arnold had married a Tory girl named Margaret Shippen when he took command of Philadelphia. Perhaps she had been the one to turn his heart. Maybe he had been disgruntled over his military progress—several times Congress had neglected him when promoting brigadier generals to major generals. No one really knew. But in the end it was discovered that he had communicated with the British for sixteen months. In 1780 he was in command of West Point, and he planned to surrender the fort to the British general Sir Henry Clinton. His treachery was discovered when British major John Andrew was captured carrying a mesage from Arnold about the surrender.