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CHRISTMAS 1783

T here was a soft fall of snow upon the ground, but Amanda had seen the lone rider coming slowly down the path and she had instantly recognized the huge black horse. Knowing the animal, she was certain that the bundled rider had to be her husband.

“He’s home!” she called joyously to Danielle. She left the window and went racing past the pictures in the gallery, and then down the long curving staircase, and to the front doors. Richard and Cassidy both went to the hallway to watch her; Jacques, whittling by the fire in the parlor, just smiled.

Amanda ignored the fall of the soft light flakes that fell upon her face and gown, and she ran on. Eric saw her. He reined in on Joshua and slipped down from his mount. He patted the animal on the haunches, and Joshua trotted off on his own. He knew the way home to the stables. Just as Eric could reach home by himself now. Home. God, it had been a long war.

“Eric!”

He started running too. The distance between them shortened, and then he could see her face clearly. So chiseled and exquisite, the years had never seemed to cost her anything. Maybe her beauty had always really been in the emotion in her eyes. He could see them. Emerald, dancing, moist with tears, moist with love.

“Amanda!”

They came together. He caught her up high in his arms and twirled her around. Mist rose between as they breathed in the cold. Her hands were icy; she wore no gloves.

“It’s done, then?”

He nodded. It had really been done for some time. The fighting had gone on after that awful winter at Valley Forge, but Von Steuben’s drilling had changed the army. They had become an awesome force. And though the British had managed to take Charleston, the south had hung on through the efforts of men like Francis Marion, the renowned “Swamp Fox,” and through the talents of men like Nathanael Greene and Daniel Morgan. Finally, in ‘81, the war had returned to Virginian soil.

Benedict Arnold, Washington’s once-trusted general, had been heavily involved. Arnold had married a Tory girl named Margaret Shippen when he took command of Philadelphia. Perhaps she had been the one to turn his heart. Maybe he had been disgruntled over his military progress—several times Congress had neglected him when promoting brigadier generals to major generals. No one really knew. But in the end it was discovered that he had communicated with the British for sixteen months. In 1780 he was in command of West Point, and he planned to surrender the fort to the British general Sir Henry Clinton. His treachery was discovered when British major John Andrew was captured carrying a mesage from Arnold about the surrender.

The news had aged Washington, Eric knew. But West Point had been saved. They hadn’t caught Arnold, though. They had burst in on Peggy, and she had put on what Eric dryly considered to be one of the finest performances of the war. Clad in a frothy nightgown, she had cried and played at madness. Washington, ever the gentleman, had dealt gently with the distraught female.

Arnold had escaped to New York.

The British Major Andre, Arnold’s comrade, liked and respected by both sides, a gallant man to the very last, was hanged by the patriot forces. It was a sad occasion. And as a British officer, Arnold had entered Virginia to burn Richmond. With Phipps he went about further destruction and marched south to join forces with Cornwallis. Lafayette was sent to Richmond, and then Von Steuben was also sent to Virginia. Cornwallis arrived in Petersburg in May to take command of the British forces in Virginia. In a well-planned ambush near Jamestown Ford, Cornwallis caught General Anthony Wayne’s brigade by surprise, but the Americans rallied, fought bravely, counterattacked, and then retreated in good order. By August Cornwallis was moving to Yorktown.

It had been a frightening time for both Amanda and Eric as the British moved so close to home. But the British sidestepped Cameron Hall, coming very near, but never touching the property. Eric had ordered Amanda to leave—she had not. She had sent the twins north with Danielle, but she and Jacques had stayed, burying the silver, the plate, and, most important, the portraits in the hall. Eric had managed to arrive just in time to find her dirty-faced, tramping down the last of the soil cover over the cache they had made to the west of the house.

With Washington’s consent and approval, Eric joined his forces with the Virginia militia, Washington himself was in New York, conferring with the French general Rochambeau. They knew that the French Admiral de Grasse was in the West Indies. De Grasse offered his services, and Washington knew that if they could concentrate the sea strength with the land force, he could beat Cornwallis. By September the Americans had Yorktown under siege. Amanda had been with Eric at the end. Cornwallis, hoping to receive reinforcements from Clinton, retired to his inner fortifications, allowing the American siege equipment to bombard him.

Benjamin Franklin’s efforts had more than paid off. The French had entered the fray in 1778, and at Yorktown, Virginia, Franco-American forces stormed two of the redoubts, and new batteries were established. No one would ever forget waiting through that night! The cunning of the operations, the care, the secrecy, the darkness, the hand-to-hand combat!

On October 17 Cornwallis opened negotiations for surrender. Washington gave him two days for written proposals, but it was to be total surrender. No one had forgotten or forgiven how ignominiously the British had forced the Americans from Charleston.

Cornwallis, however, was determined not to surrender to Washington. Pretending illness, he had his second in command turn over his sword. The British and Hessians stacked their arms. Rather aptly, to the tune of the “World Turned Upside Down,” with the American flag rising in the breeze, the troops marched by in surrender. Amanda stood beside Eric as it happened, and he knew that they felt the same thing, that their hearts beat in unison.

The United States of America was, at last, a reality. It was all over but the paper signing. It had been hard and brutal and often terrifying, but now the world was theirs.

But the “paper signing” had taken some time. The Treaty of Versailles had come about by the beginning of 1783, but Congress had taken until April 15 to ratify it, and not even then had Eric been able to come home for good.

Only now…

He stood back from Amanda and smiled. “The last of the British left New York, and George said his final good-byes to his officers at Fraunces’ Tavern on December fourth. There were tears in his eyes. And in mine, Amanda, I am quite certain. In it all, my love, I would say that his courage and determination kept us going when little else did.”

Amanda held his cheeks between her hands and kissed him. “He is a hero, an American hero,” she agreed. “But then, so are you, my love, and you are home at last! For good, forever!”

He nodded and swept her hungrily into his arms again, his fingers threading through the rich length of her hair. It had been ten years, he reflected, ten years since that Christmastime in Boston when the harbor had turned into a teapot. Ten long years. His own dark head was beginning to turn gray, but Amanda’s hair was still a cascade of flame, as evocative as her smile, as beautiful as her eyes.

It had been some fight to keep her, he reflected. Just as it had been some fight to earn the independence that was now theirs. And of course, once the fight was won, there was still so much to learn. Marriage was like an odyssey in which they stumbled and learned, and this new country would be an odyssey, and they would have to stumble and learn. And yet his wife, looking at him now with her emerald eyes and her tender smile, was all the more precious to him for the tempests they had endured.

And this great country they had forged would have to endure tempests too and yet be all the greater for it.

“You’re freezing!” he said suddenly, feeling her hands. He swept his coat from about himself and set it upon her shoulders.

“Christmas dinner is almost on the table and the hall is festooned with holly and ribbons,” Amanda said. She smiled.

“Father! Father!”

He looked toward the house. The twins were on the steps with Danielle and Jacques behind them. Six years old now, they were dressed for Christmas, young Jamie handsome in a stylish frock coat, buckled shoes, and fine knee breeches, and Lenore a picture of her mother, a dazzling redhead already in a beautifully laced gown.

He glanced at Amanda. “They’ve grown too quickly, and I’ve missed so much of it.”

She smiled ever more sweetly as the twins came running down the path. He had been home briefly in September, yet they seemed to have grown since then.

“I think,” Amanda told him, “that you’re going to have a second chance at watching growth.”

Lenore and Jamie both pitched into his arms. Kissing and hugging them, he didn’t quite catch her words. As he scooped up a child in each arm, he stared at her suddenly.

“What?”

“Well, I haven’t the faintest idea of whether it will be twins again or not, but by June, my love, you should get your chance to watch a little Cameron grow.”

“Really?”

“Really!”

He managed to kiss her exuberantly with the twins between them.

“Alors!” Danielle shouted from the porch. “Come in! Il fait froid! ”

“Run, little ones,” Eric told the twins, setting them upon the ground again. He set his arm about Amanda and they walked toward the house.

Dinner was a joyous occasion. And when the twins had been tucked up in bed, it was still a warm and wonderful night, for all of the household had gathered in the parlor, family and servants, and Eric tried to speak lightly of some of what had happened. “Think of it! We’ve ‘cocktails’ now! They say the mixture of spirits and sugar and bitters was born in a tavern in 1776, when barmaid Betsy Flannagan gave a tipsy patron a glass with the brew stirred up by a cockfeather! And we’ve ghost stories galore. They say a buxom young woman named Nancy Coates fell madly in love with Mad Anthony Wayne, and cast herself into the river when she discovered him returning to Fort Ticonderoga with a society girl. They say that Nancy still haunts the fort, that she walks about bedraggled and wet and calls for Anthony by the light of the moon.”

Amanda arched a brow to him in disbelief. Then she leaned toward him, whispering softly, “There is a woman here, alive and well, who haunts your hall, calling your name! Eric! Eric! See there? That woman is going up to bed now and shall wait to haunt you, should you come soon enough.”

He laughed aloud. Amanda was up, pausing by Jacques, kissing the top of his head. “Good night, Father, good night, all!” Gracefully she swept from the parlor.

“Well, then!” Eric rose. “I’ll say my good nights too. Jacques, Danielle, Cassidy, Pierre—Richard.”

Richard stopped him, standing in the doorway. “Lord Cameron, it is good to have you home, sir. Good to have you home!”

Eric nodded. “Thank you. Thank you, all of you.”

He left the parlor and he started up the stairs, and when he came to the picture gallery, he paused. He looked at all the noble faces staring down at him, and he smiled rather wistfully. “Well, milords, I think that I am home for good. There is still the forging of a country to take place. And I’m not so sure that I’m ‘Lord’ Cameron anymore. That title came from the estates in England. But I am still Eric Cameron, gentleman of Virginia. I rather like that. I hope that you all understand.”

They would, he thought. They had forged the land, and now he was hoping to forge the new country. They didn’t seem too distressed as they stared down upon them.

“I really don’t know what the future will bring,” he continued. “There’s going to be so much to do to unite thirteen very different states. Why, Patrick Henry told me that being governor here in Virginia was a nightmare at first, for laws were so difficult to form, and because they must be made so very carefully. And so I wonder at the future. I promise you, though, this hall with survive—”

“Eric. Oh, Eric…”

He heard her voice, coming from the bedroom. Soft and sweet and most certainly—haunting. Very haunting. His grin deepened as he looked at the portraits. Particularly at the portrait of his wife. Ever challenging, ever lovely, her sweet smile as haunting as the tone of her voice.

He bowed low to the portraits. “My lords, I’m afraid that the future will have to wait. I, Eric Cameron, gentleman of Virginia, am most earnestly interested in the present!”

And with that he turned about and hurried down the hall, into the bedroom and into her arms. This was the present, and together they had earned their freedom, their peace, and their home…

And the splendor of the night together.

Indeed, the future could now wait!