Chapter One
1805
"No, I absolutely will not do it," Miranda Cameron told
her sisters, Charlotte and Constance. "I don't want to
marry." She attempted to yank her arm away from her oldest
sister's hold and hurry out the door, but Charlotte held
fast.
They stood in the entrance hallway of Beardsley's, a
popular but respectable inn located close to the New York
docks, where Charlotte had caught Miranda before she could
bolt out the door. A group of men had to squeeze by them
on their way to the taproom. Aware of the curious glances,
Charlotte pulled Miranda into a corner, so as to shield
their conversation from prying ears, and replied, "You
must go. If you don't, we shall never amount to anything.
We are the granddaughters of an earl -- "
"One who drank and gambled his fortune away," Miranda shot
back.
"As if the rest of them don't?" Charlotte said.
"How would you know?" Miranda challenged. "We've lived our
lives in the Ohio Valley, not London. This is the farthest
either of us has ever traveled."
"I listen to everything I can about the nobility," her
sister answered. "I ask questions and remember everything
Mother told usβ"
"I remember, too," Miranda said, stung by the implied
accusation that she could have forgotten their mother in
any way.
"Then you know what she wanted for us," Charlotte
said. "Constance was too young when she died, but you
know."
Miranda did know. Their mother, who had died in an Indian
raid fifteen years earlier, had never wanted them to
forget they had the blood of the Conqueror flowing through
their veins.
"She'd have wanted us to return to London, to find proper
husbands," Charlotte said.
"But I thought Mother and Papa were a love match? I
thought they were happy," Constance said. She was
nineteen, the youngest. Charlotte and Miranda were twenty-
six and twenty-five, and only ten months apart.
"They were," Miranda answered. "Although she didn't have
many choices when our grand-father died. Being an earl's
daughter with no family, no relatives, not even a farthing
to her name didn't give her many choices. Everything had
to be sold around her to meet his debts. She was lucky to
have met Father."
"Who promised to make her wealthy," Charlotte said with a
trace of bitterness.
"I don't think she was unhappy," Miranda argued. "They
loved each other. I just don't believe she realized how
hard it would be over here."
"Or how violent," Charlotte tacked on, reminding them all
why they had chosen to leave the frontier. There had been
another Indian uprising. A family no more than two miles
from the Cameron Trading Post had been massacred. Having
seen their mother and baby brother die the same way, all
three girls were ready to begin new lives. They had
nothing holding them there.
Charlotte gave Miranda's arm a squeeze. "We are the
granddaughters of an earl. We have a chance to return to
England, and I want it, Miranda. I want it for all of us."
"Then let us take the money and go," she countered,
referring to eight hundred pounds they'd found hidden in a
secret drawer under the counter where their father had
counted pelts. "That's what we had planned to do."
The money had been a complete surprise. Their father, who
had died suddenly the month before, had always pleaded
poverty. They'd not expected to inherit anything and had
thought themselves worse off than their mother had once
been. When a German had offered to buy their small stake
in the Cameron Trading Post, the girls had gladly accepted
the pittance he'd been willing to pay, especially after
the deaths of the William and Nell McBride and their
children.
Then fortune finally smiled on the Camerons. While
cleaning the one-room trading post for the new owner,
Constance had accidentally hit her head on the counter
edge when she rose from the floor. A secret drawer had
slid open, and inside was eight hundred British pounds.
Where it had come from, they didn't know. Perhaps their
mother had had a dowry, and their parents had saved it for
them. Considering the bitter man their father had become,
it wasn't likely. However, this money gave them
possibilities.
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