“Find something.”
“I won’t do it.”
“We shall see,” he told her softly, and left her standing alone on the dance floor. She quickly fled over to the punch bowl, but the sweet-flavored drink was not spiked. Robert Tarryton found her there.
“Looking for something stronger, love?”
“I’m not your love.”
He sipped the punch himself, assessing her over the rim of his glass. Her hair was piled into curls on top of her head, her shoulders were just barely covered with the fringe of the mink that trimmed her gown. “The time is coming. There’s to be a Virginia Convention in March. In Richmond. The delegates are hiding from the governor.”
“They can hardly be hiding when Mr. Randolph approached the governor himself about the elections.”
He smiled. “Your husband has been asked to be there.”
“What? But it will be closed sessions, surely—”
“Nevertheless, madame, I have it from the most reputable sources that he has agreed to be there.” He bowed, smiling deeply. “The time is coming, Amanda…” he whispered. Then he, too, slipped away into the crowd.
Glancing across the room, Amanda saw that Eric was heavily involved in conversation with a man she knew to be a member of the House of Burgesses. Feeling doubly betrayed, Amanda retrieved her coat and headed for the gardens. A tall handsome black man in impeccable livery opened the door for her, and she fled out into the night. She wandered aimlessly, for the flowers were dead, and the garden was barren and as wintry as her heart. She had never deceived herself, she tried to reason. Eric was a traitor, she had known it. She had despised him for it. She had never thought that she could learn to love a traitor so dearly.
But what would she do while the world crumbled?
As she came around to the stables, she suddenly heard a strange commotion among the horses and grooms. For a moment she was still, and then she hurried over to see what was happening. An older man with naturally whitened hair was instructing a few boys on how to make a fallen, saddled mount stand. The horse was down, sprawled upon the ground in a grotesque parody of sleep.
“What has happened?” Amanda cried.
The older man, wiping a sheen of sweat from his face despite the winter’s cold, looked her way quickly, offering her a courteous bow. “Milady, we’re losing the bay, I’m afraid. And I canna tell ye why! ’Tis a fine young gelding belonging to Mr. Damien Roswell, and of a sudden, the horse is taken sick as death!”
The boys had just about gotten the mount to its feet. Beautiful dark brown eyes rolled suddenly. They seemed to stare right at Amanda with agony and reproach. Then the horse’s legs started to give again. The eyes glazed over, and despite the best efforts of the grooms, the beautiful animal crashed down dead upon the hard, cold ground.
Amanda started to back away. A scream rose in her throat. It was Damien’s horse. Dead upon the ground. It was a warning of what might soon befall Damien if she did not obey her father.
“Milady—” someone called.
She heard no more. Just as the horse had done, she crashed to the ground, oblivious to the world around her.
When she came to, she was being lifted in her husband’s arms. His silver blue eyes were dark as cobalt then, upon her hard with suspicious anxiety. She closed her eyes against him, but held tight to him. “I’ll take you inside—”
“No, please, take me home.”
There was a crowd around them, Damien among them. She did not want to see her cousin’s concerned face, and so she kept her eyes closed. Eric announced that she just wanted to go home, and then he was carrying her to their carriage. Inside he was quiet, and he did not whisper a word. When they reached the town house he carried her upstairs, asking that his housekeeper make tea, the real tea that had come from China aboard his own ship. Danielle came to help Amanda from her gown and into a warm nightdress, clucking with concern over her. Amanda kept saying dully that she was all right. But when she was dressed and in bed Eric himself came with the tea. She did not like the very suspicious and brooding cast to his eyes, so she kept her own closed. But he made her sit up, made her sip the tea, and then demanded to know what had happened.
“The horse. It—it died.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
Amanda flashed him an angry glare. “If Geneva or Anne or the governor’s lady had passed out so, you and every man there would have assumed it was no sight for a lady to see!”
“But you are a lady created of stronger stuff. You are not so sweet—or so insipid—a woman, and hardly such a delicate…lady.”
She lunged at him in a flash of temper, very nearly upsetting the whole tea tray. He rescued it just in time, his eyes narrowing upon her dangerously.
After setting the tray upon the dresser, he turned to her. “Amanda—”
She came up upon her knees, challenging him. “What of you, milord?” she demanded heatedly. “I was fascinated to hear that you were traveling to Richmond!”
She had taken him by surprise; he seemed very displeased by it, and wary. “I see. You managed to slip away with your old lover long enough to discern that information. You are a wonderful spy.”
