Love Not a Rebel (42 page)

He nodded, his eyes heavy-lidded and half shielded beneath his lashes. His hands rested on her shoulders and he pulled her against him.

“The real cargo was arms, wasn’t it?” she whispered.

“And powder,” he agreed.

She spun around to face him, her head tilted back. “If you so mistrust me, why on earth tell me the truth?”

“You are hardly a fool. I could not convince you that I unloaded leather goods and wine by night, could I?”

He turned away, sitting at the foot of the bed, stripping off his boots, shirt, and breeches. He glanced around to see her still standing by the window, hurt by his tone of voice.

Even if she was still a spy, she would never betray Cameron Hall. He had to know that.

“Come to bed, Amanda. There is something left of the night,” he told her.

She walked slowly back to the bed. She sat upon her own side, still swathed in sheets, and she watched how the
moonlight played upon his shoulders and chest. He was more bronzed than ever, more tightly muscled. He stretched out beside her, and despite her anger with him, she wanted to touch him. But she didn’t want to make a first move.

She didn’t have to.

He emitted some impatient sound and reached for her. She cried out softly, allowing the sunset and fire of her hair to sweep over the naked length of him, and then she nipped delicately upon the flesh of his chest, at his nipples, his throat. He caught her tightly to him, sweeping her beneath him, and they made love as if in a tempest, as if a storm guided them, and perhaps it was true. Time was their enemy; they had so little of it. They were strangers in the long months between his visits, and in this maelstrom they thought, perhaps, to find one another again.

And still, when they lay spent and quiet, she knew that he watched her. His fingers moved slowly off the slope of her shoulder to her hip, and he watched her, pensive, distant.

“Lord Dunmore is dangerous,” he said at last. “Some men are afraid that he intends to sail to Mount Vernon and kidnap Martha Washington.”

“Surely he wouldn’t dare!” she murmured.

She felt him shrug. “I am afraid, too, that he might come here.”

“Because of the arms?”

Eric was silent for just the beat of a second. “But the governor knows of no arms, my love.”

She swung around, facing him. “I would never betray this hall, Eric, never!”

“But who, then, is ‘Highness’?” he asked her.

She shook her head, lowering it against his chest. “I would never betray my very home!” she promised him.

“Pray, lady, that you do not,” he whispered, and he held her close. She said nothing, and she luxuriated in his warmth. But it wasn’t enough. She was shivering, and she was afraid.

When he left, he was gone so very long. Days passed and the weeks passed and then months.

“You tremble,” he told her.

“With the cold.”

“But I am holding you.”

“But you will leave,” she told him desolately.

She couldn’t see his eyes in the darkness. He stared down at her, and the depths of his feelings for her were on the tip of his tongue. He loved her so deeply. Her beauty, her fire. He loved the way that she came to him now, so naturally, so givingly. She made love with passion and with laughter, and in the midst of it, her eyes were ever more beautiful. And yet …

They could be ever treacherous.

She held so much in her hands now. She knew about the arms and weaponry stored at the docks. If she betrayed them now …

She would not! he thought with anguish. She would not!

XIV
  

New York
May 1776

S
he would not betray him! Bah!

That was his thought two months later when he sat in Washington’s large white canvas tent in New York and stared at his old friend. The general had just written him orders, commanding him to take a ship south. His old friend and partner, Sir Thomas—now Colonel Sir Thomas—had managed to have their ship, the
Good Earth
, brought down from Boston.

“For one,” Washington told him, “Congress has now sanctioned privateering. Whatever damage you may do upon the sea will be appreciated.”

It was late May, and they had spent the last weeks preparing earthworks and trenches for the attack they knew was to come upon New York. Brooklyn Heights and Manhattan had been fortified and manned, and Congress had ordered Washington to hold New York. The colonials were aware that the British general Howe was due to sail south
for New York from Halifax, Nova Scotia. His brother, Admiral Richard Howe, was to sail from England with reinforcements. The ragtag colonial army—in trouble now as many enlistments came to an end and the men yearned to return home—would be hard put to meet the British menace. They all knew it. Despite the victories in Virginia and the Carolinas, they desperately needed to hold the north. Benedict Arnold was losing his tenacious hold of the area outside of Quebec, and General Burgoyne had arrived with reinforcements. It was a tense time for the colonials.

And in the midst of this, Eric was sitting before Washington, hearing a confiscated message that warned Lord Dunmore of the arms and powder stored in the warehouses at Cameron Hall. There was also an urgent appeal from General Lewis of the Virginia militia that Eric come with all haste to seek to oppose an expected attack from the sea.

His hands felt cold. In the heat of coming summer, he felt as if icy fingers stroked him up and down the back in cruel mockery. He had given Amanda the benefit of every doubt. He had known that she had once practiced treachery, but he had believed her when she had sworn herself to him. He was ever the fool. The greater her passion, it seemed, the greater the betrayal. While he dreamed of the nights they had lain together, tortured himself with images of her hair curled about his naked flesh, her eyes as bright as emerald seas, her breasts full and rich within his hands and the scent of her so sweetly intoxicating it invaded even a dream …

He was alone with Washington. The general watched him sadly, reaching into his private stock of whiskey to offer Eric a drink.

“You were last home at the end of March?”

Eric nodded. He pulled the confiscated correspondence—signed “Highness”—toward him, then he swore violently.

“Perhaps you judge too quickly,” Washington warned him.

Eric shook his head. His next words were harsh, and as cold and ruthless as he felt. “On the contrary, General, I
have dragged my feet, and I may cost us much because of it!”

He stood, swallowing down the last of his whiskey, then saluted sharply. “With your leave, then, I will sail south.”

“What will you do?”

“Thrash Dunmore, Sterling, and Tarryton!”

Washington stood, offering his outstretched hand. “Take care, Eric. I’m afraid that you must look for the worst. The attack isn’t expected for a few days, but Dunmore is in Virginia waters. Eric, I’m trying to tell you that you may reach your home to find it burned to the ground.”

“I may.”

“And your wife—”

“I swear, I shall see to her.”

“Eric—”

“I know that she is dangerous. I will see to her. I intend to send her to France under heavy guard.”

Washington shook his head. “Perhaps she is not guilty.”

“You are the one always warning me about her! The evidence points cleanly to her!”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. Perhaps she deserves a fair trial.”

Eric stood, ready to exit, ready to sail. “Sir, she has already received her fair trial!” he said angrily.

He took his orders and left Washington, promising to return at the earliest possible moment. After returning to the headquarters house he had chosen in lower Manhattan, he summoned Frederick and asked for a sound crew for the ship. “Virginians, West County men, if you can. I don’t care if they’ve ever sailed before. No one on earth is more accurate with a long rifle than a West County Virginian.”

“You’ll need swordsmen for hand-to-hand combat,” Frederick warned him.

“Give me some men from the Carolina regiment. They’re seamen, and they’ve all learned their swordplay well.”

When Frederick left him Eric nearly bent over double, ready to scream. With all his will he tried to cast a dark shield of control over his temper, and yet he could not get her out of his mind for a moment. “I would never betray
this hall, Eric. Never!” The passion of her words returned to haunt him again and again. Sweet, sweet mockery that he could not bear. How had he believed her? He knew her!

He wanted to curl his fingers around her throat and throttle her. He wanted to tear her limb from limb. He wanted to rip that glorious hair from her head.…

And he wanted to take her into his arms, brutally, perhaps, but he wanted her, beneath him, to shake her, to have her, until she realized at long last that her battle was over, that she could never defy him again.

As he gathered the last of his personal belongings for the trip, there was a soft rapping upon his door. He strode across the room with its rough wood table and simple cot and threw open the door, his features surely displaying the tension of his mood. To his surprise it was Anne Marie Mabry, Sir Thomas’s daughter, who stood there.

Anne Marie had come a long way from that night in Boston. She had organized many of the women’s protests, the boycotting of British goods, and she had been engaged to marry a young man who had lost his life in Boston. She was no longer the coquette but a beautiful, mature young woman with a soft smile and a winning way. She had followed her father to war and was considered quite an angel by the men.

And I could not have chosen her for a wife! Eric charged himself bitterly. A woman sworn to the same cause as I, and one who is gentle, with guileless blue eyes and a tender smile.

Yet even with the thought, he knew that he could not have turned back and he knew, too, in that moment, that whatever came, he loved Amanda still. If he caught her, he would deal with her as was necessary, but he would not cease to love her. He had been ignited by the magic in emerald eyes and flame-dark hair, and no one else could ever touch him so deeply again.

“Anne Marie, come in,” he said stiffly. “There’s little here to offer you, though there is coffee in the pot. A fire can heat it quick enough. Or there is brandy—”

“Eric, please, I haven’t come for coffee or brandy.” She
hesitated. “I’ve come to ask you to think slowly and carefully before you do irreparable harm!”

He paused, staring at her with surprise and a certain amount of amusement. “Anne Marie, they are planning on burning down my home, a house with a cornerstone set in the late 1620s! They will seize weapons and arms meant for the use of the Virginia militia and this very army. And, Anne Marie, they know that the weapons are there because my wife—the very mistress of that hall!—has told them!” His temper rose as he spoke. Too late he realized that his long strides were bearing him harshly down upon her and that he nearly had her cornered.

“By God!” he roared, casting his hands into the air. “I’m sorry, Anne Marie. But leave this be.”

He walked to the side table and poured himself a brandy. Undaunted, Anne Marie hurried to his side. “Eric, I have heard rumors about all this too! Servants’ gossip, but often the truest source. Amanda has not been away from Cameron Hall since you left her.”

“Then someone else there is her accomplice.”

“Eric, she is my friend. I know her well—”

“Anne Marie, I caught her red-handed one night. And I let it go. That was my mistake. I should have beaten her with a horse crop that night and sent her to France!”

“Eric!” Anne Marie cried. “I know you too. You could have done no such thing—”

“It might have been the right thing,” he said coolly. “Anne Marie, I have to leave. I want to catch the tide.”

“Oh, Eric,” she said miserably, “I’ve done nothing useful here at all. Listen to me, please. Perhaps she was a spy. But she wouldn’t have turned against her own home! Someone else is using her past against her, can’t you see that?”

“I can see, Anne Marie, that Amanda has always had every opportunity to talk to me. If she was threatened, I would have defended her. I would have protected her and fought for her against any man, or any menace. She chose another course. Now, if you’ll be so good as to excuse me—”