“Ye’ll find no peace in this town, Mrs. Barclay, you’ll not, not with English goods in your store!” someone called out.
The shopkeeper backed away. Pushing against the crowd, Amanda shouted in fury. “That is destruction of private property! Would you be a people ruled by the force of a mob!”
A few people turned to her, shamefaced. More and more of them looked at her defiantly.
“Dear girl, committees keep an eye upon the articles of the association, but then this type of thing will happen. I find it entirely exciting myself!”
Amanda, hearing the voice, swung around with pleasure despite the words. “Damien!” she cried. She almost hugged him, then backed away laughing as she looked him up and down. He was clad in the buckskins of the West County men, and he looked very provincial and entirely fierce. She had never imagined it of her cousin who did so love his finery. “Damien! You are home, alive and well!”
“I am. A slight gash to the temple, but I’m quite fine now.”
“Oh, Damien! Poor dear! Is—is Eric with you?”
“Oh. No, I’m sorry. I, er, traveled ahead of him. He has been held up on General Lewis’s request. He will come soon enough, though.” Smiling, Damien bowed to his cousin’s companion. “Lady Geneva. This is indeed a pleasure.”
Amanda expected Geneva to lift her delicate chin with scorn at Damien’s appearance, but the woman did just the opposite. She came up on her toes, caught his hands, and kissed his cheek. “Damien. You’re with us again. Thank God. We were on our way to the coffeehouse. Will you join us?”
“I wouldn’t dream of leaving a Tory like Amanda on her own, Lady Geneva. I fear that trouble might find her.”
“Trouble! These people are acting like rabble! And they pride themselves so fiercely on being Virginians, the descendants of free enterprise rather than the cast-off dregs of society or poor religious dissenters!” Amanda cried.
Damien laughed. “That’s true, love, we Virginians do keep our noses in the air. But we’re sniffing rebellion these days, and that’s the way that it is. Come, let’s have that coffee, shall we?”
He slipped an arm within each of theirs and they hurried on down to the side street and then to the coffeehouse. The place was filled, but the harried owner still came forward quickly and politely, eager to serve. Even as he brought them steaming cups of coffee and morning pastries, conversation rose around them. Then one young man was up—a student at William and Mary, Amanda was certain—and began to weave an eloquent tale of the trouble in the colonies. “We are, by the grace of God, free Englishmen! And we shall have the rights of free Englishmen, we will not grant Parliament the right to take men from our colony to England to stand trial for the crime of treason, or for any crime!”
“Here, here!” Boisterous shouts rang out. Amanda felt a chill settle upon her.
“You would think that we were at war!” she whispered.
She did not like the look that Damien gave her. Then he excused himself to speak with some men behind them. A tall, bulky fellow from the cabinet maker’s shop approached Amanda, rubbing the rim of his hat nervously.
“You’re Lady Cameron, eh, mum?”
“I am, yes.”
“I just wanted to tell you that I served under your husband at Point Pleasant. I never served beneath a finer commander nor a braver man. I’m pleased to be his servant, should he ever require.”
“Thank you,” Amanda murmured, moving forward anxiously. “Can you tell me more?”
The room had fallen strangely silent, and it seemed that the men and the women in the coffeehouse had all turned to look at her. A cup was raised and the young man who had spoken insurrection shouted out. “’Tis Lady Cameron! A toast to our hero’s wife. Madame, you should have been there, and yet you should not, for the blood did run deep.”
Suddenly everyone wanted to talk to her. Many of the men there had served in Dunmore’s Indian campaign. One young fellow came before her to give a description of her husband in battle. “Why, one of those Shawnees a-come straight at him, leaping down from his horse. I was certain that our Lord Cameron had seen his last blessed light of day, but suddenly he throws off the savage, and God bless me, but if he didn’t slice the fellow faster than a cow could sneeze!
“And he was upon his feet again in an instant, never used a musket at all, did he, but fought hand to hand with savages, and shouting orders all the time, even when we came up knee deep in our own dead. He wouldn’t allow no scalpin’ though, and when we moved north, he wouldn’t allow no killing of squaws or chillun, even if we did try to tell him that little savages grew up to big ’uns.”
Amanda smiled. “My husband has many relatives with Pamunkee blood. Maybe that ruled his thinking.”
“Maybe it did! How is his lordship?”
She tightened her smile but managed to maintain it. “I believe him well.”
“Ah, well, no message, but I expect as you’ll hear from him any day now.”
Another toast was raised to her. Geneva seemed to love all of it. Her eyes sparkled and she clapped with delight. Amanda had been so eager for news, but knowing that despite the bloody battles he had fought, Eric was alive, and heedless of her feelings, a simmering fury brewed within her. She ceased to listen to the men as Geneva flirted and laughed and chatted. Then she realized that she could hear the muted voices of the men behind her—and Damien.
“I have managed…a cache of a hundred…fine French rifles, I managed to trade soon after Point Pleasant with some Delaware.”
Someone said something and Damien’s voice lowered. There was an argument over price. Amanda felt her face burn as she listened. “Fine. We shall secrete them in the Johnsboro warehouse after dark. The place is abandoned. If there is trouble, no man shall have property confiscated or face the threat of removal to England.”
