Wild Willful Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  “My father assured me that I would learn to love Don Luis, that he had been long a widower and I would bring joy into his life again, that I would be happy with him. Happy! Don Luis wanted to marry me for one reason and one reason only: when the doctors had told him that Carlos, his only son, could not live much longer, Don Luis had cast about for a suitable bride to assure the continuance of his noble line! He had chosen me because the women of my family were considered to be prolific. He did not even bother to come courting himself, in fact he never called at all. It was all arranged through his emissaries. Don Luis had seen me once, they told my father, at a fiesta, and I was passable-enough looking. Passable!” Her indignation flared. “His only questions were about my health: would I conceive quickly? For the rest, my lineage he knew was of the best; my clothes, my jewels he would choose himself—I would be molded to his will!” She gave Diego a tormented look. “Can you imagine a man like that, who would take a bride in cold blood for no other reason than quickly to replace a son who lay dying?”

  Diego shook his head in wonder. “It is hard to believe,” he agreed, viewing the splendid creature before him. How could any man, he asked himself—even Don Luis, on his urgent search for a bride—overlook the fire, the passion that lay just beneath the surface of her amber eyes?

  “It is true, I swear it,” she declared passionately. “Don Luis told me on my wedding night what my mission in life was to be: I was to produce a son to bear his noble name.” A memorable night that had been, the sudden dark emptiness of her eyes told him. But her lips would not form the words to describe it. Veronique knew she would never tell Diego the horrors of that night, the callousness with which Don Luis had pierced her maidenhead, his heartless cruelty in the methods he had used on his exhausted bride to ensure that she would become pregnant during that first week of marriage. In another woman such harsh treatment would have created frigidity, a trembling terror of all men, but in proud, strong-willed Veronique it had created only a sense of outrage, and a hatred of Don Luis that ran deeper than any river on earth.

  “And then,” she said, her mouth dry from the very memory of it, “when I did not become pregnant—and for that I thank God, for it would have been a curse to bear his son—and when his son Carlos made a miraculous recovery, in spite of leeches and doctors and endless bleedings, Don Luis had no further use for me. He brought me to court as an ornament. I was to reflect further glory upon him!”

  “I would I had been there,” sighed Diego. “I would have taken you from him though I died of it.”

  “I know you would, Diego.” Her mood shifted suddenly to tenderness and she gave him a soft look. “The change to the world of the court was to me a welcome one. There was much to interest me there. And since Don Luis came no more to my bed, for a time I even thought it might work out, that we would reach some compatible arrangement, Don Luis and I. But then I shocked the queen by wearing my bodice cut too low.”

  Diego cocked an eye at the mound of wine red velvet lying tangled with her black lace-trimmed chemise upon the floor. That gown had a stunningly low décolletage. “You have made up for it since,” he observed.

  “I have tried,” she admitted demurely. “I asked van Ryker to find me the most shockingly low-cut dress he could find, and he laughed and said his wife had many such and would choose for me herself. I feel, Diego, as if I had been denied my girlhood,” she added, almost shyly. How to tell him what it had been like to be laced up in iron stays to keep one’s budding breasts from developing so one would be “fashionably flat,” to be continuously chaperoned by a stern duenna who kept ordering one to one’s knees to pray for sins only imagined? How to tell him how the wild-hearted young girl in her had yearned to leave her long enforced hours of embroidery and ride out and swim and make love in sylvan glades? And most of all, how to tell him what it had been like to meet and fall in love with the brave young stripling from a neighboring estate—young Diego Navarro, and to dream in her room of nights when the pale moon gilded her olive skin to ivory, how Diego would one day sweep her up on a white Arabian steed and carry her away through the orange groves and olive groves to make her mistress of his estate! She touched his hand shyly. “I used to dream about you, Diego. Long ago.”

  ‘‘And I”—his voice had a stirring quality—“took one look at the lovely young lady who came riding so correctly by the Lonja de la Seda, the silk exchange, looking neither to right nor left—”

  “I looked,” she laughed. “Every time I came to the Plaza del Mercado I looked for you. You just didn’t see me!”

  “And lost my heart,” he finished gallantly.

  But had he? she wondered wistfully. She had heard wild tales of Diego’s adventures with women, his frolics, his gaming. For a while it had been rumored that he would be excommunicated and she had prayed to the Virgin to spare him. Had Diego really been thinking about her, dreaming about her then—as she had dreamed about him?

  She would never know. But now she looked deep into Diego’s dark eyes and saw there an expression that told her she would never need to know. He was hers now. Hers alone.

  “I thought,” she told him with a catch in her voice, “that we would marry and live among the orange groves of Valencia, with the air filled with the scent of blossoms. And instead I was dragged off to a mountain stronghold in Castile with freezing winters and hellish summers. And a man who hated me.” She turned to him and her voice was the impassioned cry of a hurt child’s. “Oh, Diego, why did you not come for me then? When first you learned I was to marry him?”

  “I heard too late,” he sighed. He had often told her so but she stubbornly refused to believe that his soul would not have heard the urgent cry of her rebellious heart. “I rode for Valencia but—the thing was already done. You were just coming out of the cathedral when I arrived. The bells of El Miguelete were tolling—and you were already his wife.” He had no need to tell her what it had been like for him, a fiery young man, to see her thus; the face he glimpsed beneath her white bridal veil pale and set, her slim back arrogant and straight even as now, walking with measured steps beside the old grandee. “It was because of you that I went into Don Luis’s service,” he said simply. “I was not really offering him my sword—it was to you I offered my sword, querida."

  “But I never saw you again after my marriage,” she complained. For her dazed eyes on her wedding day, seeing the world through her bridal veil, had completely missed a dusty young man who had ridden up to the edge of the crowd, viewed for himself the bride and groom departing the cathedral, and dashed away with a haggard face to drown himself in wine.

  “At first I hated you,” he admitted. “I felt you had betrayed me by marrying him. And then I came to realize that my father had had wind of your betrothal and he had quickly sent me away before I learnt of it lest I do something rash and end up a scandal—or dead. I could not understand why you had not sent me word.”

  “I tried, Diego,” she whispered. “But I was closely guarded, watched. And no one sends word from the oubliette.”

  He winced, blaming himself for not trusting her—for not being there when she needed him. “You were always with me,” he said quietly. “I saw your face in every hearth-fire, in every glass of wine.” Veronique’s face flamed in triumph at this admission and her gaze on Diego was very soft. “Not a day passed that your memory did not strum across my heartstrings. It was torment, knowing you were in his arms. And then the day came that I knew I had to see you again. And what better way than to go into Don Luis’s service? I was so certain we would meet, that I could at least view you from a distance, perhaps even exchange a few words with you. But always Don Luis kept me busy elsewhere—far away where I did not even hear the rumors about his treatment of you that must have been circulating. Perhaps he had heard of my early fondness for you and that is why he chose to keep us apart.”

  “No. He would have mentioned it. He was quick to mention any man at whom I dared to smile, telling me in his cold harsh way that I would
not see that face again!”

  So they had kept their secret well....

  “He would never have sent you to the New World to find me, Diego, if he had thought you cared for me—or I for you. You do not understand him if you think that.”

  “Perhaps he thought that I would find you because I loved you, but that my honor would make me restore you to him.” Diego gave a bitter laugh. “He did not know how utterly lacking in honor I am where you are concerned.”

  “Oh, do not say that!” cried Veronique. “You have saved me from a monster!”

  “I have taken another man’s wife,” he said soberly. “A man to whom I swore fealty. I have broken my oath, I am dishonored before God and man.”

  “Never!” She threw her arms about him as if to shield him from his own self-recriminations. “Oh, Diego, without you I am lost!”

  He sighed. She had a hypnotic power over him, this woman. Her nearness swayed his senses like some dark perfume wafting his way—heady, overpowering, unreal. It seemed to him that he had loved her from the first time he saw her—a child and dramatic-looking even then as she walked sedately to church beside her duenna, with a white lace mantilla draped over her heavy black curls—and with her bright eyes darting merrily sideways to see the world passing by. She had seemed to him so vivid, so full of joy.

  And Don Luis had sought to wall her away from light and laughter. His heart hardened again against this man to whom he had sworn an oath of loyalty.

  “Have no fear, querida," he said more gently, ruffling her dark hair. “If we are lost, we are at least lost together. Perhaps we will find ourselves again—in France.”

  She clung to him silently, dry-eyed but crying inwardly, for she knew what this love of his had cost him: his honor, his country, his fortune, his family, even his name—all these he had sacrificed for her. Passionately she promised herself that Diego would never regret—no, not for an hour—that he had made this sacrifice. She would fill his bed, his heart, his world.

  “I will take a turn around the deck,” he said restlessly, detaching her arms from him. She lay on her elbow and watched as he rose and began to dress. She knew that it tore at him, the fact that he could never again return to Spain. But when he was fully dressed and starting for the door, she could not let him go.

  She slid back down in the bunk and held out her bare arms to him.

  “Diego,” she called softly. “Come back to bed.”

  He turned on her a bittersweet smile. “But it is not yet dusk,” he said. “And we have already had our siesta.”

  “I know.” Her voice was throaty. “But life is short and the world is sweet. Take me in your arms again, Diego, for who knows what hour may be our last?”

  It was a cry of sweetness from the heart and it touched him. Swiftly Diego shed his doublet and trousers and fell with her to a wondrous oblivion there in that small cabin aboard the merchantman La Belle France.

  Their lovemaking refreshed them, for they were used to these pleasant afternoon siestas—had they not enjoyed them every day, though with more brevity than they would have liked, in their private bower in the pimento grove on Tortuga ? Alone among the Cups of Gold...

  Hearts still communing, they dressed and went back to the deck, found a place apart and stood there watching the long light lengthen.

  “Why did you not tell van Ryker that we knew each other back in Spain?” he asked her curiously, for it was something he had long wondered about.

  She twitched a velvet shoulder. “I thought he might look with less favor upon restoring a runaway wife to a former lover—and, besides, we were not lovers in any real sense back in Spain. It seemed better to tell him that we had just met and I had won you to my cause. And having said it—” She shrugged.

  And he had propagated the lie. He supposed it did not matter, but he would have preferred to be entirely open with the buccaneer who had made their future possible.

  Beautiful Veronique was more complex than he.

  “How did you bring yourself to ask van Ryker for his help?” he puzzled. “It would not have occurred to me to ask him.”

  “When I saw that his ship, the Sea Rover, was the former El Cruzado—it gave me hope. I spoke to him about it, and discovered that he nursed an old grudge against my husband. It was then that I revealed to him my true circumstances and he agreed to help me. I think it was not just for myself,” she added frankly, “but because he respected your gallantry in defying him and his buccaneers as they stormed ashore in the Antilles.”

  “ ‘Gallantry’?” Diego made a gesture of dismissal that shrugged that off. “I attacked him in the surf and he overwhelmed me. Nombre de Dios, what a swordsman!”

  “He told me you near bested him,” she insisted.

  “Never! He could have had me through the heart but he chose instead to let me live.”

  “And crippled you,” she said dryly.

  “But only temporarily,” he protested. “The French doctor, de Rochemont, says I will soon be as good as new. The ligaments are slow to heal, that is all.”

  For Diego’s sake, Veronique hoped so. For her own, she knew she would love him even if he could not stir from his chair. She would love him if he was hurt or sick, she would love him when he was old. She would love him always.

  And now they were together again. For a moment it was as if the old terrible days had never been, as if they had always known they would win through to this.

  Smiling, they looked deep into each other’s eyes. Indeed, they might have gone back to their cabin there and then but that there was a shout from above and Diego drew back from her and peered intently into the gathering dusk. Beside him, Veronique leaned upon the rail and stared too, for around them suddenly there was pandemonium.

  Out of the dusk a handsome galleon was bearing down upon them—and she flew the flag of Spain.

  “I know that ship,” said Diego in an expressionless voice. “She is the Maravilloso."

  “Then she is one of Don Luis’s ships!” cried Veronique. “And she will have many guns, she is sure to take us!”

  “Yes, that much is certain,” agreed Diego quietly.

  “She will take us—to Spain," whispered Veronique.

  Before Diego could form an answer the guns of the Maravilloso thundered and a warning shot ripped through the water across La Belle France's, bow. They had been signaled to stop—or be blown out of the water.

  The Island of Tortuga,

  1661

  CHAPTER 15

  No one in the governor’s family would ever forget Virginie’s wedding night.

  Georgette, having told her mother she had thrown up and was very dizzy—and proved it by wavering on her feet—had been briskly packed off to her room, where she had shut the door and immediately started transforming herself into a reasonable facsimile of Veronique. Her hair was swiftly done, for she had been practicing arranging her hair like Veronique’s for days. She slipped into the black satin gown that was Veronique’s favorite for evening wear, and which she had earlier filched from Veronique’s room. She was just applying with great care the strawberry birthmark with Spanish paper when Virginie, attired in bridal white, burst into the room.

  “Why—what are you doing got up like that?” gasped Virginie.

  Shut the door and I’ll tell you.” Georgette never looked up. She continued to concentrate on making the “birthmark” into the identical heart-shaped mark that graced Veronique’s slender forearm.

  Virginie shut the door and leaned against it. Beneath her elaborately lace-overlaid taffeta bodice she was breathing rather hard. Jean Claude, who was by now drinking heavily had suggested with a leer that they go upstairs, and Virginie had said “later” and escaped the dance floor, meaning to hide in Georgette’s room until she could get herself together. “Veronique will kill you when she finds you’ve worn her gown, Georgette.” She stated that in a flat voice for her heart was not in it—she was caught up in her own problems and Veronique could fend for herself.

>   “Maybe,” agreed Georgette complacently. “But she won’t know about it till after I’ve worn it tonight.”

  “Where is Veronique?” wondered Virginie. “Mamma says she’s miffed about something and sulking in her room.”

  “No, she isn’t there. At least she wasn’t when I borrowed this dress.” Georgette nodded downward at her sleek low-cut gown. “Now that you’re here, Virginie, will you help me with these hooks?”

  Virginie moved forward like someone in a dream. Her world seemed to be coming apart at the seams. A tipsy bridegroom would soon be bringing her to bed and here was her younger sister getting herself up as a duplicate of their sophisticated houseguest.

  “You won’t dare come out among the guests in this,” she warned Georgette as she fastened the last of the hooks. “Mamma would skin you alive!”

  “Oh, I know that.” Georgette twirled before the mirror. “You know, I do look like her!” she exclaimed in delight.

  “You certainly do, but you’d better take it all off. Right now before anybody sees you.”

  “If anyone sees me, they’ll believe I’m Veronique!”

  “Not if they see you close up!”

  “Nobody’s going to see me close up except—” Georgette let that trail off tantalizingly, smiled a secret smile and twirled again before the mirror. The gleaming black satin skirts behaved as expected; they swung out in a lazy arc, then fell back into gleaming folds against her long legs. “I know you’ll find this hard to believe, Virginie, but I have a rendezvous tonight. With a man.” She watched her big sister out of the corner of her eye.