To Love a Rogue

by Valerie Sherwood

  When the boy made a grab for it, the parrot promptly bit his finger. He gave a yowl and the crowd laughed uproariously.

  “Quiet!” said a deep voice of authority, and the crowd fell suddenly silent. Lorraine turned to see a tall man striding purposefully toward her, moving with the swift grace of a fencer. He stripped off his black-and-silver coat as he walked, revealing a flowing white cambric shirt trimmed in expensive point lace. Black silk trousers encased his long muscular legs. Gently he brushed the anxious boy aside and approached the parrot, which was unhappily ruffling its wings.

  Suddenly the man swooped and the parrot was clasped in a strong firm grip. Gently he eased the bird, now only making softer rasping noises, back into its wicker cage and fastened the door.

  He flashed a winning smile at Lorraine. “I am good with birds.”

  “I can see that.” Lorraine was impressed. “Indeed I was afraid I had lost this one.” She extended a tentative finger toward the cage and jerked it back as the parrot’s beak darted forward.

  “The bird is frightened by all this noise,” observed the tall man. “It will settle down when you get it home.”

  Lorraine looked charming in her new butter-yellow sprigged-muslin gown which a local sempstress had hastily cut for her. A dozen more gowns were being made up for her in the town at that moment. The man’s glance lingered on the smooth curving lines of her low-cut bodice and the narrowness of her waist, which was accentuated by the panniers tucked up at the sides to reveal a lemon linen petticoat, and lemon kidskin shoes. His look returned to caress the smooth expanse of her white bosom and throat and lovely face framed in hair like sunlight.

  Lorraine flushed a little at the overlong inspection. “I am beholden to you, sir.” She would have stepped into the carriage, but instead of offering his hand to assist her, his broad-shouldered form blocked her way.

  “Might one know your name?” he murmured.

  “I am Lorraine London. And you are . . . ?”

  “Lord Rawlings. I have the honor to be the governor of this island.”

  So this was the rakehell Governor of Barbados!

  Back home at last! Lorraine maintained a suitable gravity but her voice held a note of irony.

  “One hears much of your exploits, Lord Rawlings.”

  “Nothing good, I’ll be bound!” He was laughing now.

  Her eyes twinkled. “Much that is . . . interesting,” she amended. “Somehow I had expected you to be a much older man.”

  He laughed again. “The king has promised me that this climate will age me! He and I agree that one can live three lifetimes in one—if one works diligently at it.” When she again made to enter her carriage, he offered her his hand in courtly style.

  “Might one hope for your presence at Government House at tea this afternoon?”

  “I would be honored,” said Lorraine. She was uncomfortably aware that people in the crowd were nudging each other with their elbows and shaking their heads and grinning. She wondered wildly if the governor pounced on his teatime guests and carried them away to his bedchamber—it seemed unlikely. In any event, she was eager to find out!

  With the parrot in tow, she drove back to Venture, stopping on the way to inquire if any of her new gowns were ready. None were quite finished but one was nearly so. It was of sheer white cambric with a flounced skirt and narrow black velvet ribands drawn through white embroidered eyelets at the low-cut neckline and edging the wide ruffles that spilled from the full elbow-length sleeves. On impulse—even though it was only lightly basted together—she decided to take it with her. The sempstress looked doubtful and hastened to add a few stitches to the bodice “so the seams will not burst when you breathe.”

  Thus it was that, clad in virginal white—with just a suggestion of wickedness from the black velvet ribands that not only decorated her dress but also hung from a sparkling rosette in her hair—and wearing a white straw hat with a sweeping brim, Lorraine drove up to Government House. There, she surprised the groom by leaping lightly down from her carriage unassisted to land on dainty white leather shoes with fashionable red heels.

  “I believe the governor is expecting me,” she said, looking around for the other carriages. There were none.

  Feeling slightly apprehensive, she followed a servant into a large stone-floored hall only a trifle more impressive than her own at Venture, and through several cool dim rooms until they came to a wide veranda looking out on green lawns and gardens bursting with colorful exotic bloom. The veranda chairs were of cane with high flying backs—Lorraine recognized them as island-made. And there was a low table inlaid with ivory that had the look of the Orient about it.

  Plainly the governor lived well.

  He strode in a moment later, walking vigorously as though undisturbed by the stifling heat of the afternoon. He was dramatically garbed in dull-finish black silk trimmed with silver embroidery. Lorraine was told later that he always wore black and silver. There was a burst of Mechlin from the cuffs of his flowing white cambric shirt and another burst of Mechlin at his throat, held in place by a large sapphire a shade lighter than his own dark sapphire eyes.

  “Mistress London, how nice of you to come!” He swept her a courtier’s bow.

  “I was summoned,” she said warily. “Am I to be your only guest?”

  He grinned at her and sank down into the chair opposite. “I assure you, your virtue will be quite safe. I am least dangerous at this enervating time of day. ’Tis nightfall that brings out the beast in me.”

  “Thank you for the warning,” she laughed.

  The tea tray was brought in.

  “Would you not prefer lemonade in this heat?” he asked. “Or could I urge on you something stronger?” When Lorraine admitted she would prefer lemonade, he said solicitously, “It would be far cooler inside, even though there is some shade out here.” He indicated the palm fronds that waved above them.

  “I think I prefer it out here,” Lorraine decided, gazing into the cool dimness of the governor’s lair.

  “I see that my reputation precedes me,” he sighed.

  “But you have no need to fear me. Mistress London—by the way, does your name have some significance? Is it possible you were in London while I was there and I missed you?”

  Lorraine found herself laughing. “No, I am not from London. Mine is an old Cornish family. From near Wyelock,” she added, for although he had not spoken, he was still regarding her with polite interest.

  “Ah, Wyelock,” he said. “I am somewhat acquainted with Cornwall. That will be between Penzance and Helston,” he said in so definite a tone that Lorraine murmured, “Between Penzance and Helston, yes.”

  “And overlooking St. Ives Bay,” he added on what seemed a note of pride that he should have such a good memory for places.

  Lorraine’s mother had never told her whether her home overlooked St. Ives Bay or the open ocean, but so definite in his knowledge was the masterful governor that Lorraine quickly agreed.

  He leaned back. He seemed pleased with himself and Lorraine divined that he was a man to whom it was important to shine in the eyes of the ladies.

  He asked her how long she had been living on Barbados, followed that up immediately by inquiring, “Are you spoken for?”

  “No,” said Lorraine ruefully. “But I have suitors!”

  “I thought you might,” he said, regarding her narrowly. “But none of them yet has won you?”

  Lorraine shook her head. “I think they are more struck by Venture than by me,” she told him frankly.

  “And honest as well!” he said, delighted.

  “Are women then not so honest at court?” Her clear blue-gray eyes were looking into his sapphire ones.

  He shrugged. “Some are not.” Sensing her interest, he launched into stories of life at King Charles’s court—and she asked him avidly what the ladies wore, how they spent their days.

  At last she said, puzzled, “I think they must lead utterly useless lives!”

&nb
sp; He burst out laughing. “It is the fashion to be useless!”

  “Then I shall never be fashionable,” she vowed, “for there is too much of interest to be done. Did you know that I am starting a furniture factory at Venture?”

  “Anything to bring commerce and wealth to this island,” he murmured. “But you’re busy for one so young? You cannot be more than—”

  Lorraine flushed. “I will be seventeen at the end of May.”

  “Born under Gemini, the sign of the Twins? And would you be then a mercurial person, one who wars with herself perhaps?”

  “I am more like to war with others!” Lorraine admitted, dimpling.

  “Ah, that should be left to such as I! Mine is the warrior sign—Aries the Ram!”

  Their conversation went on in this light vein, then shifted again to her new venture, the furniture factory. He listened intently while she told him about it—and about her other plans.

  Lorraine had seldom enjoyed an afternoon so much. She left, promising she would join the governor for supper the following night.

  He saw her to her carriage, kissed her hand, and said gallantly, “You have brought spice to a world of sugar, Mistress London. I am looking forward to having you flavor my days!”

  It was easy to see why women loved him, she thought, smiling as she drove away. He was obviously a rogue, but—

  That thought made her remember another rogue and what it had been like to love him.

  In Virginia that other “rogue” had not fared so well. Raile had crossed into Gloucester with Bacon, where the force commanded by Giles Brent had disintegrated before them. But Bacon was exhausted, and ill, he had pushed himself too far—and in Gloucester on the twenty-sixth of October, he died.

  Raile was one of those who placed the young rebel leader’s body in a weighted coffin and lowered it into the York River so Governor Berkeley would not be able to chop off Bacon’s head and put it on a pike as he threatened.

  The forces that had ridden with Bacon split into five bands and manned strategic points on the peninsula between the York and the James. Without their fiery leader and with the onset of winter they degenerated into mere plunderers, looting plantations as far as Westmoreland County in Virginia’s Northern Neck, where they occupied the house of Colonel John Washington, and continued stripping or looting numerous plantations nearer by.

  Raile scorned such activity and traveled up the James to bid his brother good-bye. But Rory and Laurie Ann were already gone. They had disappeared into the southern vastness and were no doubt building a cabin in some other wilderness, perhaps in North Carolina.

  Raile stood by Rory’s deserted cabin in freezing sleet and wondered if he would ever see them again. Perhaps not . . . the frontier life was harsh. But it had been their choice.

  Snow followed the freezing sleet and he made his way back downriver between snow-whitened banks along a James that was gray and silent beneath the milk-white winter sky. Everywhere along the way he was greeted with word of new disasters. Every day rebels deserted and the governor’s forces were swooping down on such of the small rebel detachments as they could catch.

  Raile crossed the peninsula to the York, where he was bottled up for a while with a group at West Point; then he slipped downriver and managed to contact Johnny Sears, still waiting hopefully at Yorktown. Before a week was out he was back aboard the Likely Lass with the war behind him.

  Raile did a bit of coastal trading after that but his heart was not in it. He had left it with a slip of a girl in the burned-out capital of Jamestown.

  As if drawn to places her slender feet had trod, eventually he touched port at Yorktown. Did he do it on the faint hope that she might have regretted her bargain with Philip and come back to look for him?

  He was drawn irresistibly to the Swan, where Johnny Sears told him she had stayed.

  His own tracks were well-covered now; he was just in from North Carolina, and he could with safety ask Higgins, the innkeeper, questions about Lorraine.

  Higgins, believing he was addressing Lorraine’s “cousin,” was not loath to talk.

  “Strange, it was,” he ruminated. “Her betrothed, who came down from Rhode Island to find her, engaged my private room upstairs so that they might make up their lovers’ quarrel—but they didn’t stay. Odd, though I’d not have thought your cousin to be the drinking kind.” He shook his head.

  “She isn’t,” said Raile, frowning.

  “Yet he carried her out of here dead drunk that same night,” sighed the innkeeper. “And neither of them ever wrote back for the gold she and that fellow Nicholls, who was on his way to Barbados, left with me!”

  Raile’s face went pale beneath its tan. Lorraine hadn’t left him—she had been carried away! And God knew what Philip Dedwinton had done to her!

  Raile thanked the surprised Higgins and hurried back to his ship.

  “Tav,” he told MacTavish when he came over the side of the Lass, “we’re for Rhode Island. My lass didn’t leave me—she was abducted!”

  In a Rhode Island tavern—for taverns were among the first buildings to spring up on the destroyed Providence waterfront—Raile learned more: how Lorraine had been jerked along at the end of a halter through the town and had since disappeared.

  “I’d like a word with Dedwinton.” He felt his hands clench. “D’ye know where he can be found?”

  “Well, he was living at Eleazer Todd’s mansion—just about the only building around here that escaped the Indians’ burning. And betrothed to Todd’s daughter. But then he went away and came back with that blonde bound girl and then she disappeared and the engagement was broke off and now he’s gone too. Some say he took ship for Barbados.”

  Raile looked thoughtful. And when he left the tavern it was with a springy step. It had all come together like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle.

  “Tav,” he told MacTavish earnestly, “Nicholls was on his way to Barbados when Dedwinton kidnapped Lorraine. She didn’t go with Nicholls because she was waiting for me to return! Nicholls had been to Rhode Island—he knew where Dedwinton would take Lorraine. He must have sent for her and helped her escape. She’s settled down to a free and happy life in Barbados and now that Dedwinton whelp has gone down there to collect her! We’ll have to get there fast, Tav, lest he do my lass some harm!”

  CHAPTER 30

  IT WAS A fine day in Barbados. The scent of flowers at Venture plantation was almost overwhelming and the late-afternoon sun blazed down out of a cloudless azure sky.

  Lorraine intended to ride out before dinner, taking the path along the heights overlooking the sea where she could enjoy the view. With this in mind she swung blithely through the carved front doors of Venture and onto the steps, where she came to an abrupt halt. She froze with shock.

  There before her, strolling up the driveway in the languid sultry air, was—incredibly—Philip Dedwinton.

  He looked as he always had, robust, alert, with the sun glinting on his brown hair and his body encased in clothes that were smart enough in Rhode Island but looked a bit wintry and out of place on this most fashionable island of the West Indies. A mixture of emotions went through Lorraine at the sight of him. Memories—some of them painful—came flooding back.

  Philip saw her come out and he leaned forward, peering quizzically at the elegant lady in the cool blue-gray linen riding habit and the wide-brimmed hat loaded with waving azure plumes.

  “Lorraine?” he asked incredulously.

  “Philip.” Lorraine regained control of herself and met his gaze coolly. “What brings you here?”

  Philip moved forward again, staring at her in open admiration. This was not the tired angry girl that he had last seen in Rhode Island. This slim, smartly dressed creature looked sophisticated and relaxed and completely in command.

  “They told me I would find you in the house at the top of the hill,” he said. “Whose place is this, Lorraine?”

  “You are at Venture plantation, Philip,” she told him calmly. “And everyt
hing you see here belongs to me.”

  He sucked in his breath at that and looked around him. His bewildered gaze encompassed the handsome stone flooring, the smooth plastered walls, the deep windows to the floor. The veranda itself was large and elegant, the carved front doors stood invitingly open to reveal a handsome interior.

  “You have married?” he ventured fearfully. That would indeed put a crimp in his plans!

  Lorraine laughed. “No, I have not married. I said this was mine." She studied him, her face inscrutable. “Would you care to come inside?”

  Philip responded to that with alacrity. He was as handsome as ever, she thought with a twinge. Somehow she felt he should have looked older, cruder. She led him into the cool dim interior of the wide entrance hall.

  “I cannot believe it,” he murmured.

  “And you have seen but the house. You have not yet seen the gardens and the mahogany forest and the canefields that go with it.”

  His head swung around to her, eyes widening. “Then you really are an heiress and you did not gamble your money away?”

  “Not a penny.”

  “I am surprised you could buy all this with a thousand pounds.” He sounded subdued.

  “Oh, I inherited vastly more than that, Philip. Benjamin Nicholls told you a thousand pounds because he wanted me to have the pleasure of telling you myself the extent of my fortune. I let you go on thinking it was but a thousand pounds—to test you.”

  “Lorraine—” he began in a strangled voice.

  “Please, no apologies now, Philip. You have come a long way and you may save all that for dinner—which will be here.” She pointed toward the long dining room. “It is hot and you must be desirous of a bath and a nap before dinner. Myself, I have just risen—I always take a nap during this laziest part of the day. I am told it is too hot for all save the bondservants and slaves in the sugarcane fields!” She gestured to him to follow a servant. “I will see you at dinner, Philip. Oh—and be sure to tell the girl if the bathwater is not hot enough. I have come to prefer rather cool water in this climate, but you might not agree.”