“Nowhere but to your own home, milady.”
Amanda nodded to Frederick and swept through the cabin’s narrow doorway. She climbed the ladder to the deck. As she came topside to the early-evening air, the chatter of the men died down, and one and all, they stared at her. They paused in their motions of cleaning theLady Jane’sguns or in tying her sails. They were not navy but a ragtag outfit of militia men. She knew the men from the western counties by their buckskin fringed jackets, and she knew some of the old soldiers by the blue coats they wore, leftovers of the French and Indian Wars. Still others were clad differently, and she knew that they were the uniforms of the counties they had come from. Some were friends, and others were strangers.
She tried to steady herself to walk before them, and yet it did not seem that they condemned her too harshly. Someone began to whistle an old Scottish ballad. Then one by one they all began to bow to her. Confused, she nodded her head in turn as Frederick led her from the ship. She walked the plank to the dock.
The small coach awaited them. Pierre was driving. He did not look her way. Amanda walked to the coach and hoisted herself up, Frederick close behind her. She looked back to the ship. The old captain in a green rifleman’s outfit saluted her.
She glanced quickly to Frederick. “I don’t understand,” she murmured.
Seating himself beside her, Frederick smiled. “All men salute a brave enemy in defeat.”
“But they must hate me.”
“Yes, some of them. But most men respect a fallen enemy who fights true to his or her heart. And those who do know the secret of ‘Highness’ might well wish that you had chosen your husband’s side.”
“I cannot help where my heart lies!”
“Neither can any man, milady,” Frederick said. He was silent then. Pierre cracked the whip over the horse’s head, and the wheels jolted over the rough path.
Amanda pulled back the curtain and stared up the expanse of verdant sloping ground to the mansion.
From the large paned windows to the broad porches, the house exuded the charm of the Tidewater. Amanda loved it; she had loved it from the moment she had first seen it. From the sweeping, polished mahogany stairway to the gallery with its fascinating portraits of the Camerons, she loved every brick and stone within the place.
The coach came to an abrupt halt. Pierre opened the door, still refusing to look at her. She wanted to strike him. She wanted to scream that none of it had been her fault.
He would not understand. She had left with Robert.
Amanda leapt from the carriage and started for the house, ignoring the servant. Frederick was quickly beside her, walking with her up the steps. He wasn’t merely delivering her to the front door, she realized.
Frederick cleared his throat. “Lord Cameron will come to his chambers, milady.”
Amanda looked at him and nodded. She thought about attempting to fly past him, to race into the woods that fringed the fields. She would never make it, she knew. Some of these people might still believe in her, and some of them loved her. But they loved her husband more.
And their cause was the cause of liberty, and not her own.
“Thank you, Frederick,” she said, sweeping up her skirts and heading for the stairway. As she walked she heard his footsteps behind her.
She looked down and saw that the silk was stained with the Highland lieutenant’s blood. She smelled of cannon fire and black powder.
She passed by the portraits in the gallery and felt as if they all, the Camerons who had come before her, stared down at her with damning reproach. I did not do this thing! she longed to cry out. But it was senseless. She was damned. She saw her own portrait and wondered if Eric would not quickly strike it from the wall. What other Cameron bride had ever betrayed her own house?
Finally Amanda stepped into the master chamber. Frederick closed the doors, and she was alone.
A rise of panic swelled within her breast. It hadn’t been long ago that she had lain in the bed, dreaming. Spinning fantasies of the time when her husband would return.
Now she knew that he would return very soon, and she hadn’t a fantasy left to believe in.
A soft cry of misery escaped her. She couldn’t bear waiting for him, not here. Too many memories rested here. Memories of storms and fire and passionate upheaval, memories of laughter.
She had come here, determined to despise him. But from the first, her eyes had fallen upon his every movement. In the deepest anger she had watched him rise, watched him dress, or stand bare-chested before the windows, and even then, in the very beginning, some sweet secret thrill had touched her heart when she looked upon him, for he had been so fiercely fine, and he had wanted her with such blind, near-ruthless determination. He had wanted her so…
Once upon a time.
But now…
Her gaze fell upon the handsome bed that sat atop a dais. Beautifully carved of dark wood, draped in silk and brocade, it had always seemed a place of the greatest intimacy and privacy. She drew her eyes from the bed and looked up at the Queen Anne clock upon her dressing table. Nearly six. Night was coming at last.
But not Eric.
