“You will do it for love of me . .
he told her in a rich low voice that throbbed in her ears. “Because you know my only purpose is to keep you safe.” It was a hard argument to combat—especially with van Ryker holding her so breathlessly close. Against her will, her passion flared again; seeming to light the room with its fire. His warm mouth pressed down on hers, his lips moved over hers sensuously, his tongue probed deeply, ardently, past her lips—and her resolve, so strong a moment ago, weakened. His hair spilled over her shoulder to tangle with her own and his strong hands encircled and lifted her. A soft moan caught in her throat as her body waked anew to this magical lover who could always take her with him on voyages of delight—and discovery . . .
Also by Valerie Sherwood in Futura
BOLD BREATHLESS LOVE
RASH RECKLESS LOVE
RICH RADIANT LOVE
VALERIE SHERWOOD
Wild Willful Love
Futura
WARNING
Readers are hereby specifically warned not to use any of the medications or cosmetics or exotic food or drink mentioned herein without first consulting a doctor. For example, the popular seventeenth-century cosmetic ceruse contained white lead, which is lethal; other concoctions of the day were often as bad.
A Troubadour Book
First published in Great Britain in 1985 by Futura Publications, a Division of Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd London & Sydney This edition published by arrangement with Warner Books, Inc., New York.
Copyright © 1982 by Valerie Sherwood
All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN 0 7107 3050 0
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Hazell Watson & Viney Limited,
Member of the BPCC Group,
Aylesbury, Bucks
Futura Publications A Division of Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd Maxwell House 74 Worship Street London EC2A 2EN
A BPCC pic Company
Dedication
To Fancy, my remarkable long-haired black and white tomcat and sire of Spicy’s kittens—Fancy with his unbelievable beauty, a real “puss in boots” with paws like white gauntlet gloves, broad white boots, a gigantic waving plumelike black tail carried proudly aloft, big expressive green eyes, a huge burst of white fur ruff at his throat, an ethereal white curl in each silky black ear and the widest wingspread of white whiskers I have ever beheld—dear gentle Fancy with his sweet melodious voice, always magnanimous toward the other cats, always tender with his lady—to Fancy, as chivalrous and dashing as any of my heroes, this book is dedicated.
Table of Contents
Wild Willful Love Author’s Note
Prologue Cornwall, England, 1661
BOOK I Trouble in Paradise
PART ONE Veronique
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
PART TWO The Governor’s Daughter
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
BOOK II The Runaway Lovers
PART ONE The Masquerade
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
PART TWO The Spanish Vengeance
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
BOOK III The Shipwrecked Beauty
PART ONE The Wreckers
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
PART TWO The London Rogue
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
BOOK IV The Legend
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
EPILOGUE
Author’s Note
The past with all its mystery and glory will ever haunt us, and perhaps never more so than in the dashing seventeenth century, when events outstripped men’s efforts to record them. Wild buccaneer Tortuga with its scalding intrigues and daring exploits is gone forever, of course—and let me say that it was that valiant Dutchman Piet Pieterzoon Heyne who took the Spanish treasure fleet intact and not van Ryker, and that Tortuga had indeed a French governor who sold letters of marque—but it was not Gauthier Touraille whose wife browbeat him and whose daughters scandalized him.
There are “huers” still in the Scillies; and on St. Mary’s the remnants of Ennor Castle’s crumbling stones; and history does record that rugged St. Agnes Isle, set in the cauldron of the sea, was notorious for its wreckers—but none were quite like Melisande, “Queen of the Wreckers,” and her Harry; no legend perhaps so glowing as that of the tall buccaneer van Ryker and Imogene, his golden bride. As for Veronique and her Diego—their story has a terrible reality, for in Spain an aristocratic lady was once stabbed by her husband for inadvertently showing a bit of ankle on a Madrid street, and Veronique’s punishment for shocking the queen with a dress cut a shade too low could well have happened.
In this saga of a fiery woman and her buccaneer, and those who loved and envied her, we will sail again the Spanish Main of romance and legend, and I will take you with me—in fiction of course, for this novel is entirely a product of my imagination—from blazing tropical Tortuga to those “Fortunate Isles” of the ancients, the storm-tossed, flower-strewn Scillies, a vivid journey through a fabulous and now but half-remembered world of gallantry and glory—and endless, endless love.
Across the long forgotten years
I sing of reckless men
And reckless women with their tears
Sigh with me once again....
Valerie Sherwood
An old love's fitful shadow
Flickers back into her life
And makes her now remember him
Who took her not to wife....
Prologue
Cornwall, England,
1661
The courtroom was packed. Lords and ladies in silks and plumed hats jostled chambermaids and hostlers and innkeepers for a better view. For the reckless beauty on trial for her life was not only a buccaneer’s bride—four years earlier she had been Imogene Wells, bred on these very Scilly isles at the southern tip of England, and even then scandal had swirled round her golden head.
“D’ye think she did it? Helped that no-good Linnington fellow murder young Giles Avery?” a plump dairymaid whispered to her gaunt fishwife friend. “I mean, after all, Avery was her betrothed.”
“That’s why she done it!” Triumphantly. “She wanted to get rid of him so’s she could run away with her lover—Linnington. All the world knows that!" The fishwife touched her unfashionable yellow-starched collar and sighed. “See that dress she’s wearin’? Blue as the sky—and they say sin don’t pay!”
‘‘Yes, but she didn’t know she’d been betrothed to Giles Avery,” insisted the dairymaid softly. She craned her neck to see better, for it was difficult to get a good view of the pale composed accused from the back of the courtroom. ‘‘Her guardian did it without her knowledge, they do say. So who’s to say what’s the right of it?”
“Who’s to care?” retorted yellow-st
arch impatiently. “ ’Tis the richest man in Cornwall’s son was done in, and Mortimer Avery is a man to have his vengeance. ’Twill make a fine hanging, it will, and folks will be coming from miles around to see it. I don’t plan to go back to Plymouth till it’s over, I don’t—I’m going to stay and watch Imogene Wells dance on the gibbet!”
“But the jury ain’t decided nothing yet!” cried the dairymaid, shocked.
“They’ll find her guilty, you’ll see.” Yellow-starch nodded her angular head wisely. “The cards are stacked against her, as they say. Look at her, not one bit penitent, just standing up there in the dock as proud as you please!”
“I wonder what really happened?” murmured the dairymaid. She was gazing half in sympathy at that slender aristocratic figure in blue velvet. “All those years ago...” Her voice trailed off as the periwigged judge rapped for order.
“We’ve heard all the evidence, have we not? Have ye more to say on this matter, Mr. Allgood?” he demanded in a bored voice of the barrister he had appointed to defend the intractable accused.
“Yes, Your Honor.” Allgood straightened a wig that was slightly askew, heaved his great girth out of his chair with some difficulty and moved forward ponderously. He cleared his throat and toyed with his gold snuffbox. He was trying to keep his eyes from straying toward the prisoner’s shimmering golden hair, haloed by the light pouring down from a high window in the courtroom’s thick stone walls. Lord, she looked a very madonna! He was already half in love with her and he had known her less than forty-eight hours.
“I suggest to you gentlemen,” he told the jury impressively, swinging his bewigged head toward the twelve solemn fellows who stared back at him from the jury box, “that the accused was but sixteen at the time of Giles Avery’s untimely death—she is now but twenty. I suggest to you, sirs, that Imogene Wells’s only crime was to choose one man—while being chosen by another. I suggest to you that she is on trial not for her crimes but for her beauty, which beggars all description.” Judge Hoskins cocked a cynical eye at him but Allgood rushed on. “Look at her.” Allgood’s voice rang out and as one man the entire courtroom turned to consider the blazing beauty standing so defiantly in the dock. Her delicate chin lifted and her delft blue eyes flung them back a challenge. She took a deep breath and the sky blue velvet of her tight, low-cut bodice strained with that breath, causing every man present to breathe an inward sigh, for the body encased in that modish gown was of an elegance that courtesans might well envy and the face above it was unforgettable. She was Eve, she was Temptress, she was Woman.
“Look at her,” he repeated raptly, his own hazel eyes kindling at the sight. “Could any man not desire her?”
The beauty of lustrous Imogene had scarcely escaped the notice of a man like Judge Hoskins. A slight tremor went through his back muscles as he thought what it would be like to brush his fingers over the silky skin of that snowy bosom, so impudently highlighted by the prisoner’s rapid breathing. He brought his thoughts sternly to heel. He was not here to admire this glowing wench but to see her convicted and decently executed: the jury, all local fellows, some of whom had known young Avery—though it was hardly likely they had admired him—would see to the first; he, Hoskins, would personally arrange for the second. And that execution was indeed essential to the judge’s personal well-being, for Mortimer Avery had not hesitated to remind him just before the trial of the large sums of money the judge owed him, moneys that had been due and callable these six months past. Judge Hoskins kept before him the frightening fact that everything of consequence he owned was mortgaged to Mortimer Avery; it made it easier to turn his face stonily away from the woman in the dock.
“Is that all? Have you anything else to say, Counselor?” he asked crisply.
“That is all I have. Your Honor.” Ponderously, Allgood sat down.
“I have something to say if he has not!” Aristocratic and indignant, the prisoner’s clear voice rang out.
“Prisoner at the bar, be silent,” began the judge impatiently. “Your counselor has already spoken for you.”
“Spoken for me? Ha, that he has not!”
“Be still. Your sex does not excuse these outbursts.”
“My sex?” Imogene gave an angry laugh. “I would have expected somewhat more of a notorious wencher." she said bitterly.
A ripple of indrawn breaths went through the courtroom at this temerity but Judge Hoskins, his color heightened a bit beneath his powdered periwig, now favored her with a genial smile. It was the same smile he had cast upon poor Turner and other culprits long since beneath the sod, just before he pronounced sentence on them. His clerk called it his “hanging smile” and gave the rebellious Imogene a frightened look.
“We will overlook this outburst. Mistress Wells,” said Judge Hoskins cheerfully.
“Not ‘Mistress Wells’—I am Madame van Ryker,” Imogene corrected him through clenched teeth. “And as a prisoner at the bar who is being given short shrift to the gallows, I insist on being heard!”
Judge Hoskins would have blithely disregarded the accused’s wishes in the matter, but Imogene in her fury had grasped the low railing behind which she stood and leaned forward in a way that, in her low-cut gown, all but exposed her nipples. That sudden expanse of pearly skin was breathtaking, for four years ago young Mistress Wells had been referred to in whispers as “the girl with the whisk,” meaning she was always lightheartedly tossing away the lawn whisk, or “pinner,” that women wore across their bosoms for modesty to fill in the space above their fashionably low-cut dresses, and baring her bosom to the nipples in the fashion of court ladies at Whitehall.
Now faced with this delectable view. Judge Hoskins told himself that because Imogene was talking did not mean necessarily that he must listen. He could stare at her as much as he pleased and no one would think less of him for it—after all, he was giving an impudent prisoner enough rope to hang herself. Who could ask more of a judge than that?
He leaned upon his arm in what he considered a nonchalant fashion and resisted the urge to scratch beneath his great powdered periwig where some small insect—a louse, he’d no doubt, contracted from this stenchy rabble about him—was biting. His small shrewd eyes narrowed as he considered Mistress Wells’s angry countenance.
A luscious piece this one, he was thinking. He remembered when she had been among the crowd at—whose was it. Turner’s hanging? He had viewed that pert bottom in those blowing calico skirts and edged forward through the crowd, jostling bold fellows aside to stand behind her. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen at the time, he judged, and he remembered that she had been fiercely partisan to poor Turner, who it turned out later had been innocent of stealing the money—some fellow named Warren had fled to France with it and never been heard of again. Indeed young Mistress Wells had attracted Hoskins’s attention by jumping up and down shouting “No, no!” as the crowd roared its satisfaction when the rope snapped taut and Turner, with his horrified eyes bulging, found himself dancing on air.
It had been too good an opportunity for Judge Hoskins to miss. With his gaze fixed tranquilly on the gibbet, he had eased one ringed hand forward toward those calico folds and under cover of all the excitement, with everyone’s attention fixed on Turner, he had given Imogene’s round bottom a squeeze with his big spatulate fingers.
The girl’s reaction had been immediate, he remembered with an inward chuckle. She had turned on Tom Cobb, who was standing beside her, and given him an indignant slap across the face. Tom, entirely misunderstanding the basis for this assault, had turned upon Mistress Wells with an indignation that matched her own, exclaiming that he was as entitled to shout “Good riddance!” as she was to shout “No, no, don’t kill him!” for wasn’t it his own uncle that had been bilked of the money?
Judge Hoskins had not stayed to see how Tom and Imogene resolved it; he had melted away into the crowd. But his fingers had continued to tingle appreciatively with the soft springy feel of the cheek of her youthful bottom
and after that he had observed young Mistress Wells at every opportunity.
His chance to fondle her again had come the next year at a ball given by Mortimer Avery, whose son Giles was even then enamored of the fifteen-year-old beauty. Judge Hoskins, taking a breath of air in the Averys’ Cornish garden—actually he was frowning over how to separate the Averys’ visiting London cousin from her elderly husband and try out her charms in the darkness of the box hedge—had chanced upon Mistress Wells.
It was an interesting moment.
As Judge Hoskins rounded a corner of the old boxwood hedge, Imogene was in the act of saying “No!” in a violent tone to young Giles Avery, who had just seized her fiercely around the middle. Giles ducked and lost his grip as Imogene swung at him wildly and her slight body spun away from him.
Judge Hoskins could easily have stepped aside and let the girl right herself but he chose not to. Instead he stuck out his satin-breeched leg and allowed her to trip over it, so that she lost her footing. In the scramble as she went down, one of Judge Hoskins’s practiced spatulate hands somehow managed to rove quickly over her young breasts while the other, in the guise of helping her up, explored the silky smoothness of her trim thighs.
Sputtering, Imogene gained her feet and gave her “rescuer” a sharp kick in the shins.
“Lecher!” she flung at him.
Judge Hoskins’s brows rose in feigned wonderment and he turned to look quizzically at young Giles, who had paled at this verbal attack on a magistrate. “What ails the child?” he had demanded of Giles in a puzzled voice.
“I—I don’t know, sir,” gulped Giles, who had not noticed the old debaucher’s roving fingers and believed the judge only to have broken Imogene’s fall. “I apologize for her, sir—she don’t know what she’s saying.” He hurried away after Imogene’s flying skirts while Judge Hoskins bent down to rub his stinging shin and chuckled. The kick had been well worth it, for the silkiness of the girl’s skin had been delightful; it had fired his veins and he had set off in pursuit of the Averys’ London cousin with a jauntiness that brought her to earth in record time.
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