“You must be taken from him.”
Amanda felt the heat and fury of his words, though they were spoken softly. She shook her head, protesting. “You don’t understand! I do find you a traitor! Whatever I did—”
“You are a fool. It is best for me, milady, to have my eyes upon you. I will speak with him, and warn him that I don’t want my bride bruised, battered—or touched in any way.”
“I’ll never marry you.”
“Little idiot. No one can make you marry. I am offering you an escape, and God alone knows why. No woman is that beautiful,” he murmured. “Yet you are,” he said softly. “Beautiful, and cold. And yet I have seen the passion in you. “I’ve even felt it. Why do you pretend so fiercely that it isn’t so?”
“Because I hate you, Lord Cameron!” she cried. She hated that he could make her tremble so easily, to grow hot and flushed, and breathless as if she were what her father accused her of being…
A whore.
“Never mind! If you would just—”
“But I will not ‘just’ anything,” he assured her huskily. Then he came around to her again, and it did not seem that he felt her resistance when she tried to free herself from his hold.
“You will come tomorrow. You cannot wait any longer, do you understand me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“I will leave the invitation with Lord Dunmore. If they are eager to hang me, I must give them the rope. Whatever his mind, he is a decent man. I will speak with your father. A betrothal will give you freedom. You will come out to Cameron Hall tomorrow—”
“You are mad!” she cried. “I stole your letter, and you know that I hate you, but you would have me anyway! And what makes you think that I would come?”
“The fact that I will be quickly gone and that you will have the place to yourself.”
She fell silent. She knew that she would go. She longed so desperately to escape her father.
Cameron doffed his hat to her. “You should marry me, and quickly, you know. I could well be skewered through by a Shawnee arrow.”
“I don’t believe that I should have such wonderful good luck,” she retorted.
His teeth flashed in a dangerous smile and he reached out suddenly, pulling her gown back in place. The silk had slipped from her fingers, and she had been standing before him, proud and bare. She swore softly, brushing his hand aside, but not before she felt the stroke of his fingers, warm and taunting. “You may have to marry me soon. For the sake of your good name.”
“I haven’t a good name left at all, Lord Cameron. And I don’t give a fig,” she said regally.
His laughter was soft and husky, but then it faded, and the silver-blue eyes that fell upon her held pity and tension. “You don’t need to fear me.”
“Don’t I?” she inquired sweetly, now holding the remnants of her bodice together very firmly. She smiled, her teeth grating, as she awaited his answer.
“You should fear those around you, lady. Come on your own accord, milady, else I shall find a way to rescue you from yourself.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“And I pray that you need not discover the truth of my words,” he warned her. Then he bowed deeply. “Adieu, milady.”
He twirled around and was gone. The breeze rustled through the open window, and she wondered briefly how he did not break his neck, or a leg at the very least. Then she wondered, too, about the British guard assigned to the governor’s palace. She should hear shouts any second. Eric would be arrested, strung up.
She raced to the window, her heart hammering in her breast. She looked down into the yard below but saw nothing but the shadows of the night and, beyond, the foliage of the governor’s gardens and mazes. Cameron was uncanny. For his great height and the breadth of his shoulders, he could move swiftly, and silently.
Damien once told her that many men who had fought in the French and Indian Wars had come home like that. Still soldiers.
Still savages.
He was no savage, she assured herself. But he was swift to anger, and she had already aroused him.
The letter was gone, in his hands.
