“What?” Amanda said, amazed.
“Lord Cameron has informed me that he is not interested in a marriage that is not desirable to you. I will make the arrangements for your life—you will not.”
“No!” she cried. This night, which she had hoped would be a night of magic, had turned into a nightmare. “You cannot make me marry, Father! I do not believe this. I—”
“Don’t worry. Lord Cameron no longer wants you.”
“You cannot make me marry anyone!”
“When I so choose, you will marry. You will not disobey me, or else you will learn the persuasion of the lash. Now go to your room. Get out of my sight.”
She stood, facing him, feeling her cheek swell while tears rushed to her eyes. “I—I hate you!” she whispered to him.
And to her amazement, he smiled. With pleasure. “Hate me to your heart’s content. But you bear my name, and you will obey me. Now go to your room.”
She turned and fled up the stairway. More than anything in the world, she wanted to escape the sight of him.
When she reached her room, she slammed and locked the door and leaned against it, gasping for breath.
Then she burst into tears and fell on her bed. What sin could she have committed that was so grave that she should deserve the agony of all that had happened this night?
Magic had died.
And even in her misery she was dimly aware that the nightmare was just beginning.
The world was changing, her whole world was changing. Winds of change were sweeping over the land, and no one, no one at all, would be able to stand against them.
V
For several weeks Amanda managed to stay clear of her father, just as he stayed far away from her. It helped that he was gone on business for a time, but even when he returned, she had no difficulty avoiding him. He dined in his room; she dined in her own.
It was a miserable time for her as she accepted the fact that not only had she been betrayed by the man she had so foolishly loved, but her own father did not care for her at all. All of her life she had thought he was being stern for her own good, but now she realized he hated the very sight of her.
Then she was plagued by thoughts of Eric Cameron. Despite her rude refusal of his proposal, he had willingly allowed her to use him to taunt Robert when she’d had an opportunity to salvage some of her pride. She had not heard a word from him since the party, and as the days passed, she realized that she would not. His promise that he would come by to discuss the wedding had been for Robert’s sake.
Yet she had expected him. He was not a man to give up what he wanted, and he had said that he wanted her. Maybe he hadn’t wanted her badly enough. She told herself that it was definitely well and good, but when she lay awake at night, flushed and tossing, it was Eric Cameron she was remembering, the audacity of his touch and laughter, the bold command of his eyes. He knew too much, she thought, and she tried to tell herself that she referred to Boston—and to Damien. But it wasn’t true. He knew too much about her. He knew her far too well.
Her days passed easily enough despite her expectation and dread that Eric would come—and her startling disappointment that he did not. Her pride was doubly wounded, nothing more. She just wished that she did not feel such peculiar flashes of heat and unease when she thought of his eyes upon her, when she remembered the force of his hold, the caress of his lips.
Still, her father’s cruelty ravaged her soul. If home had not been such a pleasant place to be, she would have thought about running away. She did start wondering where she could go if she ever felt desperate enough to leave. She could go back to Boston and stay with Anne Marie, but if her father wished to wed her to some distasteful stranger, he would come for her, and Sir Thomas would dutifully hand her over. She had just returned from her father’s sister’s plantation in South Carolina. And while she loved her aunt and her cousins, she knew that if her Aunt Clarissa were pressed to side with either her or her father, she would choose her father.
Then there was Philadelphia, where Damien’s brother Michael lived, but both Philadelphia and Boston seemed to be such hotbeds of rebellion right now that they did not seem to be safe places to visit. Thinking over her own position, she realized that she was very strongly a loyalist herself and that she did not want to live among rebels.
Then, too, she loved her home. She loved Virginia, she loved the soft flowing river. She loved the summer warmth and the flowers and the beauty of the land, and she loved the accents of the people. She loved Sterling Hall, the singsong of the slaves in the field, the melodic murmurs of the Acadians on the household staff and in the laundry.
Walking out beyond the oaks that lined the walkway before the house, Amanda suddenly panicked, remembering that her father had mentioned sending her to England when she had first returned from South Carolina. She hadn’t protested emphatically then, for she had thought that he meant to protect her because he loved her. Now she knew that he merely wanted her out of the way, set upon a shelf until he was able to use her as pawn to his advantage. Her heart quickened. She would not go to England. She would weather the storms of discontent until reason prevailed.
She stared down the slope of ground in the back of the house, leading toward the river. Sterling Hall was self-sufficient. There was a huge smokehouse, the laundry, the stables, the barn, the carriage house, the cooper’s, the blacksmith’s, and the shoemaker. Beyond those buildings lay the slave quarters, and the larger houses for the free servants, and far beyond those lay the lands and the homes of the tenant farmers. Her father did very well here. The land was rich, and the fields were filled with the very best tobacco. Her father gave it no thought himself; he never dirtied his hands, nor did he keep his own books. He hunted, danced, and indulged in politics, drank hard, and played hard. Amanda knew that he had a mistress in Williamsburg, and she had also heard that he slept with one of their young mulatto slaves.
On her fifteenth birthday she had struck Damien in a fury when he had told her about it. But then, when she had asked Danielle if it was true, she had been appalled, for Danielle had not been able to deny the accusations.
She had known that her father was not a terribly nice man. She had just never realized how he really felt about her. Maybe she had always sensed it, though. And maybe that was why she had fallen so desperately in love with Robert.
Robert. At the thought of him, she felt the same gnawing pain in her middle. She had been so desperately in love. She had imagined a life with Robert, waking beside him, laughing in his arms, taking great pride in the fact that their home was known far and wide in all the colonies for its grace and beauty. She had never dreamed of a different house—it had always been Sterling Hall. She had never imagined her father’s death—he had just been gone, and Robert had been lord of Sterling. They had laughed and played by the river, and she had even indulged in fantasies about making love. The water would ripple by them and the moon would be full up above, or else the sun would beat down upon their daringly naked flesh, but it would be all right, because they would love one another so deeply. She had never really thought too terribly much about the act of making love, not until…
Her thought trailed away, and then she flushed furiously, grateful that she was alone with her awful realization.
She had never, never thought about the act itself until she had been with Eric Cameron in the maze. Never, never before that night had she felt anything like that physical excitement, like a hot river sweeping through her, awakening her flesh.
