It sounded reasonable, but Imogene had only to look into that beautiful predatory face to know that Veronique was lying. Van Ryker had undoubtedly told her the ship’s history ... something he had not deigned to tell his wife.
She roused herself with a start. Esthonie was speaking again.
“Of course I realized they must have come to know each other rather well during all that time the salvageable ships of the treasure flota were being refloated and the gold and bullion from the broken ones taken off and loaded onto the Sea Rover and the Hawk and the Heron. Ma chère, you should have been here the day they sailed Cayona Bay, laden so heavy with booty that they rode low in the water. They used gold and silver for ballast! The town went wild to see them.”
Cayona was wild enough at best, and it was still enjoying one long holiday over that event, which had happened months ago. “Busy as he was, I doubt van Ryker had much time for Veronique,” she told Esthonie airily.
“On the contrary! Veronique tells me he was very gallant with her. She slept in the great cabin. Ma chère, those colors do not become you. Your skirt seems made of lettuce leaves on an icy bed of watercress for a petticoat. All you need is to powder your hair and you would look like a salad!”
Imogene ignored the jibe—and ignored Malcolm too, who had sat down on the toe of one of her green slippers and was nuzzling her ankle in an open invitation to have his fur stroked again. She leaned forward. “You say Veronique slept—?” she demanded incredulously.
“In the Sea Rover's great cabin? Yes, she told me that. Of course, it was all very innocent, Captain van Ryker bunked in with Dr. de Rochemont the whole time!” She tittered. “If one can believe Veronique!”
Wild unbidden jealousy pounded through Imogene’s veins. The Sea Rover was very special to her. Van Ryker had pursued her across half an ocean in that ship, had carried her unconscious to the great cabin and there she had waked to hate him, to fight him—and eventually to love him. So many memories of her deep abiding love for van Ryker were inextricably intertwined with the golden-hulled Sea Rover's proud voyaging. How often had she stood beside van Ryker at the taffrail with the trade winds blowing her golden hair and a red sunset in the west crimsoning the big white sails and turning the sea to blood. That first time he had taken her—against her will although subconsciously she had always wanted him—had been in the great cabin of the Sea Rover with the mighty ship creaking about them and a wisp of song from some lonesome buccaneer floating down to them from the rigging. In that very bunk the storms of unending passion had been roused in her female breast... it was there van Ryker had tried to comfort her for the loss of her daughter when she had wanted so much to die. She had been lying in that very bunk when van Ryker had willed her to live, and made her strong and whole again against her will.
And now another woman had slept in it! And... perhaps ...with him? Certainly Esthonie was implying it, going on and on about Veronique’s classic beauty spread out on the divan and van Ryker drinking goblet on goblet of wine as she talked.
“What did they talk about?” she asked mechanically. “Ah, but I was not in the room with them!” The jet on Esthonie’s bodice shook complacently; she had Imogene’s attention at last.
“But you could see them? The door was open?”
“Of course! Ah, you are not to fear—nothing happened in my house! But I made a point of telling you that she sailed back with him on the Sea Rover because their conversation astonished me.”
You made a point of telling me that she sailed with him on the Sea Rover because you wished me to understand that van Ryker had spent weeks in Veronique's company—and had every opportunity to make love to her. It is your passion to probe and poke into other people's lives! Aloud she said, “Astonished you? How so?”
Esthonie leaned forward, jet shaking, and aimed her fan pointedly at Imogene. “I passed the door frequently to see what they were up to—in your interests, of course,” she added hastily. “And Veronique was telling him all her troubles. Is it not strange that she chose my drawing room for her revelations? When she could have had the intimacy of the ship?”
Imogene felt a little knife turning in her breast. Her unease communicated itself to Malcolm, who got up, leaving her slipper, and strolled in orange and white luxury toward a green chameleon that darted into the bushes at his approach. Malcolm followed.
“Troubles? What troubles?” Imogene asked in a strangled voice.
“Well, there is the small trouble and the larger trouble,” confided Esthonie. “The small trouble is that the Spanish seized her jewel case when they sank the Fleur-de-Lis and massacred everyone aboard.”
“I hadn’t heard that!”
“Oh, yes, Veronique tells me she was the only survivor.”
“She and her jewel case,” said Imogene ironically.
“That’s right. The jewel case disappeared. When last seen, it was in the hands of the Spanish captain, who spirited it away, probably for his private trove—and then was killed in the storm. She insists that her jewels are very valuable—which brings me to another point, Imogene. With that frosted lettuce concoction you are wearing, why are you not wearing another frosting of diamonds? Why no jewels? I remember when first you came to Tortuga you brought with you a marvelous collection of jewels—that diamond necklace and earrings you wore to the first party you attended here quite took my breath away. I have not seen you wear them lately.”
The van Rappard diamonds.... A shadow passed over Imogene’s face. She had worn those diamonds when she first arrived, to spite van Ryker, to flaunt before him that she was no penniless wench but a woman of wealth, in her own right heiress to a vast fortune in New Netherland if she cared to claim it. But after she had come to love him, after the golden Tortuga sun had melted her heart and she had realized how much he meant to her, she had put away the van Rappard diamonds. Forever. To her they symbolized, like frozen tears, the snows of far Wey Gat, and the proud young patroon she had married in haste and lived to regret. A dark, slender, prideful man who had loved her eerily, frenziedly—and far too well. An unbalanced man whom grief had driven mad....She had fled from him on a terrible moonlit night across the frozen wastes of the North River. The iceboat’s roar and chatter washed over her now in a great remembered wave, enveloping her senses as it swept toward her out of the violent past. Elise, her old nurse, was on that iceboat and Stephen, her copper-haired lover of the Scillies when she was but sixteen—and baby Georgiana, the daughter she had borne him. It was the last time she had seen Georgiana, the last time she had seen Elise, and when on board the Sea Rover she had learned how the ship Wilhelmina had gone down with them aboard, she had sought death—and found life in van Ryker’s arms.
“I never wear the diamonds anymore,” she said in a choked voice. They bring back too much.
“Anyway, van Ryker was telling Veronique that he would turn her jewel case over to her if he found it.” A self-satisfied smile spread over Esthonie’s features, for in Imogene’s place she would have been furious, believing any jewels found should end up in her jewel case!
To her annoyance, Imogene shrugged and said, “Of course he would return it! Did they not find it?”
“No, and van Ryker was urging her to try to discover its location through the surviving Spaniards. Perhaps the officers could help her. Veronique thought a certain Spanish officer might know where it was secreted in the galleon. Van Ryker told her to seek him out.”
“Which Spanish officer?” Imogene had visited the captured Spanish officers’ quarters several times with great baskets of fruit—bananas, mangoes, plantains. Terrible those Spaniards might have been on the seas, but the remnant of them here on Tortuga seemed to her a pitiful lot, waiting forlornly for their families back in Spain to ransom them. She had asked van Ryker if he could not just let them go but he had explained it was established custom to pay ransom or work it out as an indentured servant for three or four years—and that was what gave Tortuga its style and elegance, for some of the capti
ves turned out to be master masons and ironworkers and carpenters.
“Which officer?” Esthonie frowned. “Oh, Navarro, I think his name is. Don Diego Navarro.”
“Yes, I remember him,” murmured Imogene, her mind conjuring up a tall, indolent-appearing fellow of impeccable manners who had always risen—albeit painfully—to his feet at sight of her and swept her a bow that must have cost him a deal, for his olive face was always a shade whiter when he straightened up. Imogene, who spoke no Spanish, had been unable to converse with him. “He is the one with the leg injury,” she supplemented. “The one Raoul is always visiting. Raoul told me he is the sole surviving officer of the galleon he sailed on. A gallant officer, according to Raoul.”
Esthonie nodded energetically. “The same. It seems he was one of the few who sprang up from the beach to fight the onrushing buccaneers and his leg was seriously injured in a sword thrust from van Ryker. Your husband admired his courage and so he has arranged for Dr. de Rochemont—Raoul, as you call him—” (Esthonie’s sniff told of a recent tiff with the Sea Rover's French doctor) “to pamper this Spaniard. Veronique was eager to question him.”
“And has her inquiry borne fruit?”
“Not yet,” shrugged Esthonie. “Although she has been to see him several times and has entreated him at length to tell her where the jewels are hidden. Navarro claims a head injury suffered at the time his ship was driven onto the beach and broke up during the storm. He claims a mast fell on him. Anyway, it seems to have damaged his memory.”
“Perhaps he is lying and knows where the jewels are. Wasn’t his ship one of those refloated and brought back here to Tortuga?”
Esthonie nodded. “I suggested that to Veronique but she is very sure that when Navarro remembers anything, he will tell her.”
Veronique’s smile of utter confidence flashed before Imogene—confidence in her sex and in her allure. Veronique was undoubtedly sure she could twist any man around her finger—even a former Spanish captor.
“So that is Veronique’s minor problem,” said Imogene ironically. “What of her major one?”
“Men,” said Esthonie significantly. “She is troubled by a surfeit of lovers. They fight and brawl over her, it seems. I heard her tell van Ryker it was for that reason she fled her native France aboard the Fleur-de-Lis—and had already entered into a liaison with the captain before the ship was captured by the Spanish. I don’t doubt she would have had a liaison with the Spanish captain too, save that he was occupied by a gale and then van Ryker seized his ship along with the rest of the flota. But he would have been next. I’ll warrant!”
And now van Ryker was next in line. The implication was clear. Imogene fought to keep down the flush that rose to her cheeks and was furious that she could not.
Esthonie was smiling mischievously at her and Imogene could well guess what the wife of Tortuga’s French governor was thinking: About time someone brought down that proud English wench who has snatched up the catch of Tortuga!' And raven-haired Veronique with her insatiable lust for men is just the one to do it!
Esthonie smiled and played her trump card.
“I thought I saw Captain van Ryker with Veronique yesterday afternoon,” she purred. “It was near the church, where the road disappears into a grove of pimento trees—so sylvan, a perfect trysting place.”
It was too much. Van Ryker had told Imogene he’d spent all of yesterday supervising repairs to the captured galleons. And she believed him!
CHAPTER 2
Imogene’s back stiffened ever so slightly. It was a warning sign and Esthonie should have seen it, but she did not for Malcolm had tired of chasing the chameleon and Esthonie was busy trying to push him away before he could shed any orange and white hairs on her dark skirts.
“I just realized my feet are in the sun, Esthonie,” Imogene said sweetly, glancing casually behind her at the huge trunk of a giant pepper tree that shaded the courtyard. Her gaze focused on a raw gash where a large limb had been sawed off. “Tell me, whatever happened to the limb that used to shade this bench so effectively?”
Esthonie’s smile became rather fixed. She forgot all about Malcolm and straightened up. “It scraped the house,” she said vaguely. “And frightened Virginie by making noises in the night. Some more limeade? It’s very cooling.”
“No, thank you.” Imogene toyed with her half-empty glass, considering her hostess through narrowed eyes. “Where is Virginie?”
Esthonie cast a hunted look around her. At her feet Malcolm, unnoticed now, was rubbing and purring and covering one side of her dark skirt with cat hair for he was shedding in the heat. “1 am not sure it was van Ryker I saw,” she amended hastily. “I only said it looked like him.”
“And I’m sure you have excellent vision, Esthonie.” “Oh, perhaps not!” A flight of seabirds wheeled by overhead. Esthonie looked up in exasperation. “Oh, those birds! They make so much noise.” She was suddenly aware that Malcolm was rubbing against her leg. “Go away, Malcolm!” She kicked at him and the cat gave her an injured look and strolled away disdainfully.
Imogene had watched all this calmly.
“Let us forget van Ryker, and the cat, and the seabirds for the moment, Esthonie. I asked you a simple enough question. Where is your eldest daughter?”
Everybody on Tortuga knew where Virginie was: locked in her room above them by a hysterical mother. Everybody knew how the pepper tree had lost its limb—and why. Esthonie’s plump hand shook as she busied herself pouring limeade from a silver pitcher.
“It was so clever of you to build a room on top of your house so Virginie could have a view,” Imogene continued. A view of the pepper tree. With the wall scraped by a limb sturdy enough for a man to climb. “I thought your explanation of why Virginie had left the first floor so amusing,” she added mercilessly.
“Well, as I told you, Gauthier had a sister who eloped—so unfortunate, the man was a gamester and they ended in ruin. Now that Virginie has reached marriageable age, it was Gauthier’s idea that we should build a room atop the house with a stairway that led up through his own room. For Virginie’s—protection.” She choked on the word.
So if hotheaded young Virginie, with her precocious hourglass figure and her bouncing black curls, decided one day to elope with one of the reckless young buccaneers with whom she flirted incessantly, Gauthier would be on hand to prevent it. How proudly Esthonie had shown Imogene the lock on Virginie’s door when that room had been completed and Virginie installed in it—that lock to which she had the only key. She had completely overlooked the pepper tree.
Virginie’s swains had not. Rumor had it that there had been a perpetual stream of them climbing into Virginie’s window by way of the pepper tree’s sturdy limb. Rumor was always rife in Tortuga, but there could be no doubting the one that had caused the tree limb to be cut down.
Last week Virginie’s latest lover, one James Notley, a young buccaneer from the town, had made a tryst with her. Unfortunately he had tippled a bit too heavily before keeping that tryst. Arriving at the window he made a dizzy grasp for the sash, missed, and fell with a howl into the courtyard below, landing on a marble bench similar to that on which Imogene was now sitting—and broke his leg.
Imogene could imagine what it had been like. The household, aroused by Notley’s howl, had bolted outdoors into the velvet tropical night. Virginie, in her night rail, must have tearfully protested her innocence—and probably most convincingly, since both Esthonie’s daughters were consummate liars. But a hysterical Esthonie had demanded the offending limb be removed. At once.
Accordingly the alarmed governor had hauled a sleepy carpenter out of bed (one of those Spanish captives working out his ransom) and ordered the limb sawed off. To the accompaniment of muttered heartfelt Spanish oaths it had been done and the limb had fallen with a crash into the courtyard.
“Esthonie,” said Imogene heartlessly, “don’t you think it’s time you let her out!”
Esthonie jumped as if pricked by a ha
tpin. “Out?” she quavered. "Out?”
Imogene leaned forward earnestly. “You are causing talk by keeping her locked in. On my way over here, I met Dr. Argyll and he urged me to speak to you about it. He said too much restraint could be as bad as too little, that he had a young niece who fled the house via a rope ladder and was never seen again.”
“Mamma.” Virginie’s plaintive voice floated down to them. “I promise you I have no ropes up here.”
“Virginie, be quiet!” hissed her mother.
“Why do you not take her driving?” suggested Imogene. “So people will know she is still alive!”
“Oh, and take me too, Mamma!” A head of thick shining black curls stuck up suddenly from behind a bushy shrub.
“Georgette!” Esthonie scolded her younger daughter. “You were listening!”
“Of course, Mamma.” Georgette rose to her full height.
Although only thirteen, she was taller than Virginie but more coltish in appearance. “I always listen. How else am I to learn what is going on?”
Imogene hid a smile. Esthonie’s tempestuous daughters, it was the general opinion, would be the death of her.
‘‘Eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves!” warned Esthonie.
“And nothing much good about anyone else, either,” agreed Georgette cheerfully. She came out from behind the shrub, her white dimity skirts billowing around her long slim legs. She took a mango from the silver dish beside her mother.
“Careful, you’ll ruin your dress with the juice!”
“I wish I had a dress the color of this mango.” Georgette held it up to the light, a globe of alternate red and gold. “I wish I had gowns like Imogene’s, made in Paris. And oh, most of all, I wish I had a black satin dress like Veronique’s. I’d give anything to wear black satin and pearls!”
“Disgraceful!” Esthonie’s scolding voice was cut into by Virginie’s disconsolate, “Oh, Mamma, please let me out!” A changing play of conflicting emotions crossed Esthonie’s plump face. “Well, I suppose we could. I was planning to go shopping tomorrow.”
Wild Willful Love Page 3
