The gowns she had chosen for Esthonie and her daughters caught her eye and she dressed quickly in a light linen dress. It was not split up the front so she omitted her petticoat, careless less questing eyes catch a shadowy glimpse of her figure against the glaring sunlight. She had loaded her arm with gold bracelets and put a gold chain dangling an enormous topaz around her neck. Her hair was casually dressed but topaz eardrops sparkled from beneath her huge wide-brimmed cream straw hat.
It was not her purpose at the moment to be demure. Rather, she wanted to be startling. Tossing aside both whisk and gloves, she told Arne she was off to see the governor’s wife.
Arne elected to carry her bundle himself, saying complacently the Cap’n had found no new mischief afoot in the town last night, although who knew what tomorrow might bring?
Imogene gave an impatient sniff. Who cared what tomorrow brought? If Veronique already had her claws into van Ryker, her own world was lost already.
In near unbearable heat, they had walked the short distance to the governor’s green-shuttered house, baking in the sun. And now in the courtyard, beneath the shade of the big pepper tree, with Malcolm purring at the hem of her skirts and leaving little tufts of his shedding orange and white fur on the creamy linen, she dragged herself back from bitter thoughts of van Ryker and the scene they would undoubtedly have tonight in that thick-walled fortress of a house.
“What were you saying, Esthonie?”
“That the clock is a regal gift, ma chère.”
It was on the tip of Imogene’s tongue to say. You have earned it, Esthonie—for warning me of what I was too blind to see for myself. Instead she looked about her with some distaste. “Where is Veronique?”
If Esthonie caught the implication, she showed no sign of it. “Out riding. She will wear that poor horse out!”
“I doubt she rides him for long at a time,” said Imogene ironically. “I imagine he finds long periods to rest and graze.” She could not quite keep the bitterness from her tone.
“Veronique is very happy these days—she sings a lot,” put in Georgette. She studied the peach dress raptly. “Will it need to be altered?” she asked her mother.
“Of course. It will have to be let down, for you are taller than Imogene—at your age! I cannot understand it. And it will have to be taken in at the bust, for you have not her figure.”
“I am fashionably flat,” said Georgette complacently.
Ordinarily, Imogene would have smiled at that, but it was a reminder that Veronique too was fashionably flat—and her charms were undoubted and compelling.
“I would like to grow up and look like Veronique,” said Georgette perversely, knowing this would irritate her mother.
“You are too like her in manner already,” sniffed Esthonie. “The manner of a worldly woman does not become a child.”
A child! Georgette held up the “mango” dress. “In this, all the men will say I am stunning!”
Beside her, Virginie, who had bent to pet the cat, burst into wild laughter. She picked up the purring animal, who flexed his wide paws delightedly. “Listen to her, Malcolm,” she cried. “Georgette yearns to be a femme fatale! Perhaps she may yet go on the stage like Cousin Nanette!” Malcolm convulsed her by yawning. Georgette gave her sister an intimidating look but Virginie was not to be intimidated.
‘Perhaps she will give us some advice about men?” she asked the cat.
“I will give you advice about men,” said Esthonie tartly. “They are all untrue. Do not expect anything else.”
Imogene was temporarily diverted from her own problems.
“Gauthier bought that liquor shipment on the quay!” she guessed.
“Go put your dresses away, girls.” Esthonie waved her fan at her daughters. “And take mine with you.” She waited until they had departed before leaning toward Imogene and saying in a dramatic stage whisper, “He said he did not but I am sure that he did!”
Imogene waited, brows elevated, for more revelations.
“And I am certain—although I cannot prove it—where it reposes today,” Esthonie added heavily.
Imogene could guess. It was well known that the little French governor frequently found solace from his nagging wife with Madam Josie, one of Cayona’s more elegant “madams.”
“So you think the wine is in her cellar?” murmured Imogene.
“Exactly.” Esthonie began to fan herself violently. She leaned forward. “Men are not to be trusted. I will not have my girls brought up believing they are saints, but I cannot blacken their papa to them either. It is a terrible situation.”
“It must be,” agreed Imogene.
“I should not burden you with my troubles. You are but a bride although—did someone not say you had been married before?”
“At sixteen,” said Imogene in a soft sad voice.
“So then you know about men!”
What I know has been hard learnt, thought the fragile beauty whose broad-brimmed straw hat shaded her pale set face. I gave my heart to a copper-haired lover who deserted me and who has since married someone else. And my hand to a mad Dutchman who nearly killed me—and then I told myself I had at last found the only man for me. And now he too has proved unfaithful...
Her cup of bitterness was full. But she would not burden Esthonie with that.
“Men crave variety,” grumbled Esthonie. “No matter how beautiful the wife, other fields are greener!”
Imogene rose. “I must take my leave of you. I only came by to deliver the dresses and tell you about the clock. Good-bye, Esthonie.” This was to be a real good-bye, although Esthonie was not to know it, for Imogene doubted she would ever see the governor or his family again.
Esthonie took her outstretched hand. “I can see by your eyes that you have found out about van Ryker. Veronique has told me nothing, but I have eyes to see. All men are false.”
Imogene wished she could deny it.
“Do you know yet where you will be going?”
“Barbados, according to van Ryker.”
Esthonie gave her a bright-eyed, commiserating look that said, You will not be gone long. You will sail away and van Ryker will chance upon some Spanish galleon, a prize too tempting not to be taken, and he will sail back to dispose of his goods. Your life will never change. And now he is enamored of a new woman.
Imogene could not bear that look. A dull pain pounded in her head. At that moment she cared not where they went.
From the hall came the chiming of Esthonie’s much despised lantern clock. It reminded her that at about this time thrice before she had seen Veronique leaving the pimento grove.
“But I had hoped you would stay longer.” Clucking, Esthonie followed her to the door. And as Imogene peremptorily beckoned to a lounging Arne, her curiosity surfaced. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
Imogene gave her a mocking look. “I am off to pick some flowers. For my hat.”
She left Esthonie staring at her open-mouthed from the doorway.
To Imogene’s chagrin, Veronique had already cleared the grove and the church. They met her smiling dreamily, walking her horse, already halfway back to the “governor’s palace.” She gave Imogene a scrupulously courteous bow as she passed and got a frosty bow in return.
“Where we be goin’?” demanded Arne, bewildered.
“To pick some flowers,” Imogene repeated grimly and walked fast toward the grove. It was possible, she told herself, that van Ryker was still there. If so, she would confront him!
Neither of them noticed a head that poked around the corner of a low shed, nor the silent wave with which that head’s owner beckoned to others behind him.
Arne gave her a wild look as she headed into the grove. “Here now,” he began unhappily. “I don’t know as how the Cap’n would like this.”
“Perhaps we’ll run across him and we can ask him,” Imogene flung sweetly over her shoulder. “Who knows, he may be picking me another bunch of flowers?”
Arne had his hands
full warding off palm fronds that snapped back at him from Imogene’s impetuous forward rush through this green jungle. Muttering in alarm, he surged after her, blundering into tangles of vines that snatched cruelly at his wooden leg, for Imogene’s slender form could swish sinuously through narrow openings in the brush that big Arne had to smash through.
In her anxiety to find van Ryker, and Arne’s concentration on following her without having a snapping branch blind him or a twisted root hurl him headlong, both were oblivious momentarily to what was going on around them. The grove could have been full of people and they would have been unaware.
So suddenly did Imogene come to a halt that Arne nearly plummeted into her.
Here before her at last lay the secluded clearing she had been afraid she would find. It was small and private and seemed surrounded by a breathless hush. Pimento trees and climbing vines rose around it and arched over it like a green roof, and it was here the Cups of Gold bloomed. Their vines ran riotously over the pimento trees, hanging from their branches, festooning them with brilliant yellow flowers, five inches across. This tiny clearing was at once spectacular, perfumed, and intimate—a perfect trysting place for lovers.
Imogene drew a quick hurtful breath. For there beneath the trees was a place where the soft waving grasses had been pressed down as if two bodies had lain on them, straining together in this place of enchantment. Van Ryker had gone but—the imprint of his body was still here.
A sudden blur of tears misted her eyes. She had so hoped to be proved wrong.
Imogene never knew why she turned. Perhaps it was a sound, perhaps some grunt of warning from Arne, but turn she did.
She was just in time to see a heavy cudgel swung. While she and Arne had been crashing about, four men had stolen up behind them—and now the lead fellow had felled Arne like an ox.
A scream tore from Imogene’s throat and she whirled to run. She was half across the little clearing before a big hand clamped down on her shoulder. She managed to jerk away but not before she heard a ripping sound and felt the wrench as her big detachable sleeve was torn from her arm. In a wild plunge she was away from her attacker and heading for the wall of yellow flowers at the opposite side of the clearing.
But she never made the trees.
Her head and arms were actually halfway through the hanging vines before she was brought down, grasped roughly and swung around so hard she stumbled and went down on her hands and knees. She would have been up again but that a hamlike hand clamped down on her naked shoulder and she was jerked unceremoniously to her feet.
She found herself staring into the hard blue eyes of a smiling giant with a mustard-colored mustache and unkempt oily hair. He was naked to the waist, wearing only coarse cotton breeches, a belt that supported a cutlass, and scuffed leather boots. The sun had bronzed his massive chest muscles almost to mahogany and his large white teeth gleamed as he grinned at her.
“Got ’er!” he called triumphantly over his shoulder, and Imogene’s dazed gaze swung to the others now crashing through the underbrush. They were dressed like the first fellow, in coarse drawers, boots and cutlasses—and they looked as murderous as he. One of them sported a mouthful of broken yellow teeth, another a fresh new scar that zigzagged down through his tan, and the third a single silver earring that looked as if a woman of quality might have worn it once.
Her gaze fled to Arne, stretched out unconscious on the grass. He was so still he looked dead.
The bright courage that had always marked her came to aid her now. Her delicate chin went up.
“It is plain you do not know who I am,” she said coldly. “But before you die of your mistake, I will tell you. I am Imogene van Ryker. All the Caribbean knows the temper of my husband’s steel. He is not likely to forget an injury done to me or to Arne. You had best clear out before he finds you.”
“Talks good, don’t she?” The giant, whose grasp had in no way relaxed, gave her a look of grudging admiration.
“And not afeard of us,” marveled Yellow Tooth.
“That’s ’cause she don’t know us yet,” chuckled Silver Earring.
Scarface spat.
“I give you this warning only to save your lives,” she told them steadily, her courage dimming a bit as she saw her words were having no effect on them. “Which are surely forfeit if you harm me.”
“Harm you?” The giant who held her laughed delightedly. “Who said we’d harm you?” He reached out and casually tweaked her breast with impudent fingers. She struck his hand away. He gave her a light cuff, but heavy enough to make her ears ring. “Easy, mistress,” he said lightly. “You be good to Ferdie, an’ Ferdie’ll be good to you.” His voice had a kind of insinuating crooning note in it that frightened her more than the blow. The softness of her woman’s flesh, the silkiness of her bright hair, the clean sweet scent of her had mesmerized him.
“Bring the wench and come along, Ferdie,” called Scarface. “We got a ways to go to reach the ship.”
“Can’t take her through town till after dark,” Ferdie flung over his shoulder. He was staring raptly down at her. Imogene felt pinned by that gaze like a butterfly. “Plenty o’ time,” he said lazily and flung her to the ground.
Imogene landed twisting and would have been up and away but that a heavy boot suddenly pinned her thigh to the grass. She gave a painful cry, only half aware of Yellow Tooth’s muttered, “Are you goin’ to let that Portugee have ’er first. Toss?”
What Toss answered she was never to know, for an arm with a pistol in it was stuck suddenly through the flowering vines and fired at point-blank range into Ferdie’s bronzed chest. The bullet entered just at the breastbone and Ferdie’s blank face mirrored his surprise. Imogene screamed as he went down, felled like a tall tree. She barely had time to roll out of the way before van Ryker dropped his smoking pistol—which contained, after all, only one shot—snatched up Ferdie’s cutlass and met the murderous charge of Yellow Tooth, who was closest.
Looking up, she thought she had never seen such a satanic expression on van Ryker’s face. He was white beneath his tan, which gave his face a strange gray cast, his lips were drawn back and his white teeth gleamed savagely.
To the accompaniment of Silver Earring’s explosive “My God, it’s van Ryker!” her lean buccaneer met Yellow Tooth’s charge with a ferocity unmatched in her experience. When Yellow Tooth’s cutlass took a vicious swipe at him, he was not there to receive it. But even as it bit into the bole of one of the old pimento trees, his own wide-swinging cutlass, which he had borrowed from the man he had just shot, described a wide savage arc and caught Yellow Tooth across his naked midsection. It went in far enough to sever the spine and send Yellow Tooth screaming to eternity. Simultaneously came a roar from Arne, who had been only stunned and now lurched to his feet.
The pair of remaining cutthroats hesitated, glanced at each other, and as one man took to their heels. Van Ryker wrested the cutlass free and flung it after them with deadly accuracy. There was a howl as it bit into Scarface’s muscular shoulder, but he stumbled on with Arne now in clumsy pursuit. They heard two shots.
Van Ryker made no effort to pursue. He bent in concern over Imogene, who had risen and whose knees had suddenly refused to support her. She was now sitting on the ground, trembling in every limb.
“Did they hurt you?” he asked tersely and there was fear in that face men said knew no fear.
She shook her head, shuddering. “A bruise only. Twill soon be mended.”
“I give thanks for that,” he muttered. “Rest a bit,” he counseled, watching her keenly. “You look as if you're about to be sick.”
Imogene felt about to be sick. She kept her eyes averted from the pair of dead men on the ground. She cast a stricken look at van Ryker. A fearsome picture he presented: cold gray eyes still flashing, jaw still grim, face alert and watchful. His doublet was slashed halfway across where Yellow Tooth’s cutlass had grazed him before it sank into the pimento tree, and the flowing sleeves of his white
shirt hung in torn streamers where briars had caught and ripped the fine cambric. He picked up his pistol and stuck it back in his belt.
Imogene bent her head down on her knees, trying to control her nausea. When her world stopped reeling, van Ryker helped her gently to her feet and she leaned against him. By now Arne had come back. He held a smoking pistol in each hand.
“I couldn’t catch up with ’em, Cap’n,” he cried, aggrieved. “They wouldn’t stand and fight! I shot twice at the one you got in the shoulder—missed him both times!” He looked frustrated.
“That’s all right, Arne. They’ll not escape Tortuga—we’ll get them later.” And then the harder question. “What the devil were you thinking of, letting my wife wander into this thicket?”
Arne looked sheepish. “I couldn’t stop her, Cap’n,” he mumbled. “She took off- ahead o’ me and I was hard put to keep up.”
“I don’t doubt it,” muttered van Ryker with a frown at Imogene. “Well, we’ll away from here before that pair collect their wits and bring back a few more of their fellows to work their devilment.”
“How did you find me?” asked Imogene soberly. She was still shaken as he led her out of the grove, holding back the thrashing palm fronds so that she might pass through.
“A rumor reached me that something might happen to you, so I came home to check up. When I learned you were at the governor’s, I went to collect you and escort you home. Esthonie told me you had gone to pick some flowers—I could guess where. On the way here I passed Veronique who said she had seen you entering the grove. I was in time to see four husky fellows slipping into the grove and followed them.”
“ ’Tis a lucky thing you come along, Cap’n,” interposed Arne morosely. “For they slipped up on me unawares.”
“How’s your head, Arne?”
“Aches somethin’ awful,” admitted Arne with a grimace. Imogene threw him a remorseful look. She felt steadier now.
Wild Willful Love Page 13
