Love Not a Rebel

Boston, Massachusetts
December 16, 1773
 
“Whiskey, Eric?” Sir Thomas suggested.
 
Eric Cameron stood by the den window in Sir Thomas Mabry’s handsome town house. Something had drawn him there as soon as the contracts had been signed. He stared out at the night. An occasional coach clattered by on the cobbled streets, but for the most part, the night was very quiet. The steeples of the old churches shone beneath the moonlight, and from his vantage point, high atop a hill, Eric could see down to the common. The expanse of green was dark with night, cast in the shadow of the street lamps, and as peaceful as all else seemed.
 
Yet there seemed to be a tension about the city. Some restlessness. Eric couldn’t quite describe it, not even to himself, but he felt it.
 
“Eric?”
 
“Oh, sorry.” He turned to his host, accepting the glass that was offered to him. “Thank you, Thomas.”
 
Thomas Mabry clicked his glass to Eric’s. “Milord Cameron! A toast to you, sir. And to our joint venture with your Bonnie Sue. May she sail to distant shores—and make us both rich.”
 
“To the Bonnie Sue!” Eric agreed, and swallowed the whiskey. He and Sir Thomas had just invested in a new ship to sail to far-distant ports. Eric’s stores of tobacco and cotton went straight to England, but with some of the recent trouble and his own feelings regarding a number of the taxes, he had wanted to experiment and send his own ships to southern Europe and even to the Pacific to acquire tea and some of the luxuries he had once imported from London.
 
“Interesting night,” Thomas said, looking to the window as Eric had done. “They say that there’s to be a mass meeting of citizens. Seven thousand, or so they say.”
 
“But why?”
 
“This tea thing,” Thomas said irritably. “And I tell you, Parliament couldn’t be behaving more stupidly over this than if foolishness had been a requisite for representatives!”
 
Amused and interested, Eric swallowed most of his drink. “You’re on the side of the rebels?”
 
“Me? Well, that hints of treason, eh?” He made a snorting sound, then laughed. “I tell you this. No good will come of it all. The British government gave the British East India Company a substantial rebate on tea shipped here. It’s consigned to certain individuals—which will shove any good number of local merchants right out of business. Something will happen. In this city! With agitators like the Adamses and that John Hancock … well, trouble is due, that it is!”
 
“This makes our private venture all the more interesting,” Eric pointed out.
 
“That it does!” Thomas agreed, laughing. “Well, we shall get rich or hang together then, my friend, and that is a fact.”
 
“Perhaps.” Eric grinned.
 
“Well, now that we’ve discussed business and the state of the colony,” Sir Thomas said, “perhaps we should rejoin the party in the ballroom. Anne Marie will be quite heartbroken if you do not share a dance.”
 
“Ah, Sir Thomas, I would not think to break the lady’s heart,” Eric said. He had promised his old friend’s daughter that they would not tarry on business all night, that he would come back to the ballroom and join her. “Of course, her dance card is always filled so quickly.”
 
Sir Thomas laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “But she has eyes only for you, my friend.”
 
Eric smiled politely, disagreeing. Anne Marie had eyes that danced along with her feet. She was ambitious, and a flirt, but a sweet and honest one. Eric was wryly aware of his worth on the marriage mart. His vast wealth would have made him highly eligible even if he had been eighty, his family pedigree would have stood him well had he rickets, black teeth, and a balding pate. He was not yet thirty, he had all his teeth, and his legs were strong and very straight.
 
Perhaps Anne Marie would catch him one day. He simply was not of a mind to be caught at the moment.
 
A tapping on the door was quickly followed by an appearance by the lady herself. Anne Marie was a soft blonde with huge blue eyes and a coquette’s way with a fan. She smiled her delight at him and slipped her hand through his arm. “Eric! You are coming now, aren’t you?”
 
“Let him finish his whiskey, daughter!” Sir Thomas commanded.
 
“I shall do so quickly,” he promised Anne Marie. He swallowed down the amber liquid, smiling as she pouted.
 
Suddenly his smile faded as his gaze was caught by a flash of color beyond the open door. A strange sense of the French déjà-vu seemed to seize him as he caught first an impression, nothing more. Then the dancers in the hall swept by again. As a gentleman shifted to the left, he saw the girl who had so thoroughly caught his attention. Her gown was blue, deep, striking blue, with a full sweeping skirt and a daring décolletage trimmed with red ribbons and creamy lace. Against that blue, tendrils of her hair streamed down in a rich and elegant display of sable ringlets. They curved about her naked shoulders and over the rise of her breasts, enhancing her every breath and movement. Her hair was so very dark … and then, with a shift of light, it wasn’t dark at all, but red as only the deepest sunset could be red.
 
His gaze traveled at last from her breast to her face, and his breath caught and held. Her eyes were the most startling, purest emerald he had ever seen, fringed by dark lashes. Her features were stunning, perfectly molded, lean and delicate, with a long aquiline and entirely patrician nose, high-set cheekbones, slim, arched brows. All that hinted of something less than absolute perfection was the wideness of her mouth, not that her lips were not rose, were not formed and defined beautifully, but they held something that cold marble perfection could not, for the lower lip was very full, the top curved, and the whole of it so sensual that even within the innocent smile she offered her partner, there could be found a wealth of sensuality. She wore a tiny black velvet beauty patch at the side of her cheek, very near her ear, and that, too, seemed to enhance her perfection, for her ears were small and prettily shaped.
 
There was something familiar about her. Had he seen her before? He would have remembered a meeting with her. From this moment onward he would never forget her. He had not moved since he had seen her, had not spoken, yet he had never felt more startlingly alive. He had lived a reckless life, mindful of his inheritance, but fiercely aware of his independence, and women—virtuous and not so virtuous—had always played a part within it.
 
He had never known anyone to affect him so. To render him so mesmerized, and so very hot and tense and … hungry, all at once.
 
“Eric? Are you with us?” Anne Marie said, annoyed.
 
Thomas Mabry laughed. “I believe he’s just seen a friend, my dear.”
 
“A friend?” Eric managed to query Thomas politely.
 
“Lady Amanda Sterling. A Virginian, such as yourself, Eric. Ah, but she has spent most of the past years at a school for young ladies in London. And perhaps you have been at sea on those ships of yours when the young lady has been in residence.”
 
“Ah, yes, perhaps,” Eric replied to his host. So the woman was Lady Amanda Sterling. They had met, but it had been years before. Still, it was an occasion that neither of them should have forgotten. There had been a hunt. She had been a mere child of eight upon a pony and he had been longing for the very mature and beautiful upstairs maid at their host’s manor. Young Lady Amanda had jostled her pony ahead of his and the result had been disaster with both of them being thrown from their mounts. And when he had chastised her, she had bitten him. He hadn’t given a fig about Lord Sterling and had paddled her there and then. She had raged like a little demon, the child had.
 
The child had grown.
 
“Eric, may we dance?” Anne Marie prodded sweetly. “I promise an introduction. Father, do remind me from now on not to have parties when Mandy is our guest, will you?”
 
Thomas laughed. Eric joined in, and Anne Marie grinned prettily. Eric gathered his wits about him and reached politely for her arm. “Anne Marie, I am honored.”
 
He led her out to the floor, and they began to dance. Anne Marie gave him a lazy smile as he swept her expertly about the floor, seeking out the woman who had seized his attention. He saw her again. Saw her laugh for her partner, saw the devil’s own sizzle in her eyes. He thought that he recognized something of himself within that look. She would not be governed by convention, she would demand her own way, and fight for it fiercely.
 
The sound of her laughter came to him again and he felt a reckless fever stir within him. Come hell itself, and time be damned, he would have to have that woman.
 
Who was the man who caused her laughter, he wondered.
 
Anne Marie, watching him indulgently, answered the question that he did not ask. “That’s Damien Roswell—her cousin,” she said sweetly.
 
“Cousin?” He smiled. His hand tightened upon hers.
 
Anne Marie nodded sagely. “But—and this is a grave ‘but,’ I must warn you!—the lady is in love.”
 
“Oh?”
 
Love so often meant nothing. Girls of Amanda Sterling’s tender young age were in and out of love daily. Their fathers seldom let the affairs go past fluttering hearts and dreams.
 
Yet her eyes were wild, deep with laughter and secrets and passion. He smiled, thinking she was one lass who should probably be wed and quickly—to an appropriate person, of course.