Wild Willful Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  “But—wreckers, Clara!” She still couldn’t understand how someone as straitlaced as Clara had been could tolerate this life.

  “I—I got friendly with one of them,” Clara admitted, hanging her head. “His name is Bowes Granby. I met him in Helston and then he sailed over to call. And one thing led to another and he moved in with me. I thought we’d be having the banns called but... Bowes weren’t the marryin’ kind. And then his friends came and ’twas then I learned Bowes's true profession. They’re wreckers, and they’d kill me, I do think, were it not for Bowes. And then too they need me to keep up the appearance of respectability when boats and fishermen chance by the island. Here, dry yourself with this. I’ll take the cat.” As if glad to be doing something, Clara tossed Imogene another towel and took Nicodemas from her and toweled him energetically. “There, you want a bite to eat, puss?” she crooned. “Here, set your little teeth in this!”

  She reached into a round iron pot that hung from a tripod at the hearth and pulled out a piece of meat, proffered it to Nicodemas who seized it with a purring growl and ate greedily. Pensively she watched him eat. “ ’Tis a wonder you managed to swim through the surf,” she told Imogene. “You’re the only woman who did.”

  CHAPTER 22

  So the other women had been lost to the sea.... Imogene shuddered, and then told herself bitterly that it was a better death than their men had met, believing themselves saved and then as they reached the shore, dragging themselves out of the surf to find they faced a new and implacable enemy.

  Imogene was toweling her dripping hair, rubbing life back into her wet body, still clad only in the remnants of her chemise.

  “Why don’t people stop them, Clara?” she demanded. “They must know about them.”

  Solemnly, Clara shook her head. She bent down to stroke the cat. “They’re not locals, and they pretend to be a religious sect seeking quiet and sanctuary. Big Lomax—he’s the one who struck you down and would have finished you had I not screamed at him to stop—can talk very pious when he’s a mind to. He can convince anyone, big Lomax can, nice as pie when he wants to be. And, besides, they don’t sell the stuff local. They take it somewheres else, to the mainland— Helston, I think. Move it by night, they do. About twice a week a boat sails over.”

  “And you mean no one even notices all this?” demanded Imogene indignantly.

  “Why should they?” shrugged Clara. “Lomax arranges the lights and after the”—her voice trembled a little—“the killing is over with and the stuff is on shore, we sorts it and arranges it in piles, and spreads things out to dry. And then the boat with the red sail comes and takes the stuff off.”

  “Red sail? I’m surprised they’d be so conspicuous.”

  “They’re not afraid,” said Clara bitterly. “Because none suspects them, you see.”

  “Who is it who comes?”

  “There’s never but one man in the boat and they keep me away those times so I never seen his face. But I heard him calling to Lomax once or twice and he sounded like gentry to me.”

  Gentry! Indignation fired Imogene. Mainland gentry stooping to this!

  “He puts up that red sail to say all’s well on the mainland. And when Lomax sees that sail he lights a fire on the rocks if all’s well. If ’tis not lit, then the boat sheers off.”

  Well planned, thought Imogene bitterly. And well manned —these men were professionals, luring in and stripping wounded ships, falling remorselessly upon the passengers. She shook her head to clear it of the dying screams that still echoed there.

  “But you, Clara,” she demanded passionately. “Once you knew what they were, why didn’t you run away? They’re not keeping you here against your will, are they?” she asked appalled.

  Clara hung her head. “’Tis because of Bowes,” she admitted reluctantly. “I ain’t never known nothing like it, the way I feel when he holds me in his arms. Not even when my man was alive, it weren’t never like it is with Bowes. All warm and lovely. I’d do anything for him, I would.” She sighed gustily.

  You already have, thought Imogene sadly. Out of loneliness, out of lust....

  “Your wreckers won’t let me live,” she told Clara quietly.

  “They will!” Clara stuck out her lower lip. “I’ll talk to Bowes about it.” Her eyes burned fiercely into Imogene’s. “But ye must swear to say nothing that will endanger us if I get ye out of here.”

  “Clara,” sighed Imogene as she toweled her hair, “you never even approved of me, and now you’re risking your life for me. Why?”

  “I do it for Elise’s sake,” Clara admitted frankly. “Because she loved you like her own child.” Clara dashed away a tear. “She’d want me to do it. Swear now.”

  “I swear I won’t bring the law down on them, Clara—but only because you’re here and they might kill you.”

  “There’s Bowes too,” Clara reproved her.

  Imogene held her peace on that; she had her own opinion about Bowes, a man who would ingratiate himself with Clara and drag her into this hell.

  “I’ll tell them ye used to live with me and there was wreckers here before,” Clara told her briskly. ‘‘They’ll believe me.”

  Imogene doubted it, but she surrendered her towel to Clara, who said, ‘‘Now I’ll get ye some dry clothes—hush, someone be coming. In there—quick!” she muttered, pointing to the tiny curtained alcove where she slept of nights with her wrecker lover. And the urgency of her whisper drove Imogene behind the curtains and into the feather bed in a bound.

  “What brings you back, Bowes?” Imogene heard her ask in an altered tone and even had Clara not admitted it, something in that tone, some warm shivery quality, would have told her that Bowes was Clara’s lover.

  “Some fellow from the ship give Lomax a knock on the head,” Imogene heard a surly masculine voice say.

  “Did it kill him?” Clara sounded indifferent.

  “No,” snarled Bowes. “It didn’t kill him. But it laid his head open and I come up here to tell you they’ll be carryin’ him up here as soon as we make sure there’s nobody left alive from the ship. It’ll be up to you to clean and bandage his wound.”

  “He can die for all of me!” Clara flared. “He called me a Cornish whore and not worth spit, he did!”

  There was a cry of pain and Imogene guessed that Bowes had seized Clara roughly to emphasize his words. “You’ll take care o’ him!” he raged. “And you needn’t worry about him sayin’ nothin’ to you. He’s out cold and who knows when he’ll come to?”

  She heard him stomp off and a moment later Clara jerked open the curtains. “They’ll be puttin’ Lomax in this bed,” she said. “But ’twon’t be for a while yet. Here, drink this hot soup—ye look about to fall down.” She ran to the tall hearth and from the heavy iron pot that hung there suspended on a chain, ladled out soup into an earthenware bowl and proffered it to Imogene.

  Wavering on her feet, her own head still ringing from the blow Lomax had given her, Imogene accepted the soup gratefully and drank it all before she spoke again.

  “What now?” she asked, feeling some strength return to her limbs.

  “Now we’ll change our plans,” declared Clara energetically. Seeing Imogene seemed to have drawn her away from the wreckers and back into the old respectable life she had once known. “Lomax is the only one as knows you’re here. None of the others saw you”—and as Imogene started to demur— “even if they did see you, they’ll have given you no mind, they’ll have thought Lomax finished you off. They didn’t see us slip away in the dark. And if Lomax can’t tell them—”

  “But he will tell them, Clara, when he comes to!”

  “No, he won’t!” Clara shook her head grimly. “Here. You take these.” She had been working as she spoke and now she thrust upon Imogene a hastily filled linen square containing a slab of cheese, some brown bread and apples. “And this.” She gave her a bottle of wine. “Bowes will never miss it. And take this kirtle and bodice—they won’t fit, but leastw
ays they’ll cover you up. And put this over your head.” She was tossing a big brown linsey-woolsey shawl over Imogene’s head as she spoke. “It will keep you warm. ’Tis best not even Bowes knows you was saved,” she decided. “You go down and hide among the rocks till I come for you.”

  Imogene stared at the older woman, moving so competently—and with her own life at stake if things went wrong. Clara had never liked her much, she was doing this for Elise who was dead....

  Silently she uncoiled her hair and held out the topaz and diamond necklace. The earrings were long since gone, snatched away by the angry sea.

  “Lor'!” Clara’s eyes glittered at the sight. “ ’Tis a good thing Lomax didn’t see that—he’d have split your skull for sure! Or that ring.” She cast a look at the emerald on Imogene’s finger. “He must have missed it.”

  Imogene moved the hand away from her. That ring was all she had left of van Ryker. She didn’t want to think about him but she wasn’t going to part with the ring easily, either.

  “Take the necklace, Clara,” she said quietly. “It’s yours, you’ve earned it. Hide it and if you get a chance to get away from here, do so! You can find a new life somewhere else, a better man than Bowes.”

  “No, I—I couldn’t go nowhere else.” Clara flinched away from the necklace, as if she felt that leaving here was a condition of the gift.

  Imogene sighed. We all made our own beds, she supposed—Clara as well as she. And then we had to lie in them, uncomfortable or not. “Take the necklace anyway,” she said. “Maybe Bowes will have a falling out with these people and want to run away. This will give you running-away money.” Clara’s eager fingers closed clawlike around the glittering topazes and diamonds. She stuffed the necklace down her bodice. “I’ll find a safe place for it later,” she promised.

  “Can you get word to Ennor Castle?” wondered Imogene. “I know Hal would sail me across to Ennor. No matter what he thinks of me—and he’s probably bitter, for I did jilt him once—he’d do it for Bess’s sake.”

  “Yes, ye’d be safe could I but get you to Ennor,” agreed Clara with a frown. “But I don’t know how soon I can get word to them nor where Hal’s at these days. Mayhap I can find a way to go over to St. Mary’s myself on some pretext.”

  Imogene wondered if she could really do that. It was plain Clara was out of touch with life outside this tiny island; would the wreckers trust her enough to let her wander abroad? She paused uncertainly in the doorway. “When they begin to search for me—”

  “They won’t search for you, not till big Lomax comes to,” Clara told her with a grim look. “And I don’t mean he should come to at all.” She nodded significantly at the lye-pot that she was about to use to make soft soap. “I mean to pour that onto the gash in his head as soon as they leave him to me and go back to the beach. He won’t call me names no more nor take off after you, neither! He won’t never wake up—this stuff’ll eat his brains out!”

  Imogene shuddered and went like a shadow through the doorway. She felt as if she were in hell. Clara had always been a decent, unimaginative woman. Now suddenly she had taken a wrecker to her bed and was calmly planning murder.

  It came to Imogene with force whose murder Clara was planning—a man with the blood of the Goodspeed's passengers and crew on his hands, and who knew how many other innocent victims? She hardened her heart and silently wished Clara luck with the venture.

  Moving stealthily, for she did not know if the wreckers had by now fanned out or were all still at the beach, she made her way into the concealing rocks, found a familiar cleft where she could hide concealed even in the daytime. She donned the rough linsey-woolsey clothing Clara had given her—too short and too full but welcome enough over the rag of her chemise. Wearily she wrapped herself in the shawl and even in this extremity—perhaps because of it, for the dangers she had just undergone had washed her mind clear of everything but survival—slept.

  Alone in the cottage, true to her promise, Clara poured lye-water on Lomax’s head wound—with unexpected results. The pain brought the giant to himself with a howl and he fetched Clara a blow that rendered her senseless. For a moment he stood over her with murder in his little piglike eyes, but the pain in his head drove him away from her to the washbowl where, groaning, he managed to rinse the lye-water from his head before it killed him.

  With a mouth afroth with curses, he charged back down to the beach. He was just in time to see the triumphant—and totally dry—removal of Imogene’s trunk from the ship. A howl of delight went up from the wreckers as the trunk was opened on the beach and displayed not only a sky blue velvet gown with an amethyst clasp and other feminine garments, but a silver goblet and two silver trenchers and silver toilet articles as well.

  “And lookee here!” came a shout as one of their number reached down a gnarled hand and brought up the heavy gold money chain, each glittering link of which would be worth in another century a hundred-dollar bill.

  “We’re rich!” bawled Bowes. “Must’ve had royalty aboard!”

  “Naw!” Still in pain, big Lomax lumbered down to the group. “That trunk must’ve belonged to that wench your slut wouldn’t let me kill!”

  “Wench? What wench?” On his knees as he rummaged in the chest, Bowes turned to him in astonishment. “Clara didn’t say nothing to me about any wench.”

  “Clara dragged the wench away with her,” shrugged Lomax. He groaned again as pain bit into his head. “That was afore she tried to kill me by pourin’ down fire on my head!”

  Bowes gave him a scathing look. “Probably whiskey,” he said. “I told her to clean out your wound. At least it brought you to!”

  “Brought me to?” bellowed Lomax. “It near finished me. I knocked her across the room for it. May have done for her,” he added indifferently. “I didn’t wait to find out.”

  “Done for—!” Bowes stumbled to his feet. Impelled by fury, he seized the larger Lomax by the throat. “If you’ve done Clara in,” he yelled, “I’ll do for you myself! You know she’s our safety! The locals round here know her, and she fronts for us!”

  Lomax growled and flung Bowes away from him. He moved away grumbling and let Bowes retrace his steps to the cottage, where he found Clara moaning with a concussion and unable to answer him coherently.

  The wreckers held a council of war. They decided that whatever had happened to the woman, it was of small account—she could not get off St. Agnes Isle. Clara was walking around dazed and would be in no position to help her, and the only ship that would probably visit in the near future was the wreckers’ own boat, which would visit by night when signaled by lights.

  So suppose there was a woman wandering around the island? Hunger would drive her to them, or if her fear was too great, she might finish herself off in the sea, trying to swim to some safer place. They’d search for her at their leisure. Meantime, there was more flotsam to be searched for, found and salvaged, and all that stuff to be hauled away from the beach lest some passing fisherman see it and get suspicious. By the time anyone called, they’d be back in their brown robes walking around piously with their heads bent as if in prayer.

  This decision gave Imogene precious time.

  Although Clara was in no shape to aid her, in the dusk of the next evening, a little recovered by her day’s rest and by eating bread and cheese and apples, Imogene made a discovery. One of the ship’s boats—perhaps the one that had overturned as they tried to launch it—had been beached by the waves. It lay now overturned in the sand, almost hidden beneath a shelving outthrust of rocks.

  She knew now what she was going to do....

  It was two days before she could put her plan into effect, two days in which Clara could make only muddled answers to Bowes’s angry questions as he glared down into her glassy eyes, two days in which the wreckers hauled away and sorted out their loot from the Goodspeed, two days in which the sea quieted so that great waves did not boom against the cliffs of St. Agnes.

  But on the evening of the thi
rd day, Imogene, from her rocky hiding place, saw the sails of a fishing boat approaching.

  She guessed that it was not coming here, but merely passing by on its way home. She timed its approach and hurried down through the dimness to the beach and the rocky overledge. It was only a short struggle to launch the boat through the now quieter surf. She seized the stout barrel stave she had found to serve her as an oar and bent her back to the task. She doubted her ability to row all the way to St. Mary’s, indeed she knew she could well be overturned. But she headed, struggling with all her might with her makeshift oar, toward the small fishing craft. She could see a man aboard that boat now, a small figure peering toward the island, and she waved the big linen square that had contained the food Clara had generously given her.

  She was sure the fisherman saw her, for he was coming about, heading toward her now.

  Someone else saw her too, for she heard a hoarse shout from the cliffs behind her. The wreckers had discovered her! And if the fisherman discovered a jumble of boats putting out to sea behind her and rowing fast toward him, he might well turn tail lest he be mixed up in something he didn’t understand.

  She had to prevent that, to keep him from sheering off. Her heart lurched—was his course wavering?

  With a wild cry that she hoped would carry to the approaching sailboat, Imogene stood up in the boat. She tore off the homespun kirtle and bodice Clara had given her and left them in the bottom of the boat. Wearing only the thin fragment of chemise in which she had swum away from the Goodspeed, she stood poised for a moment—a beautiful white and gold figure shining in the late afternoon sun.

  Then she knifed over the side with her gold hair blowing back and swam toward the fishing boat.

  The fisherman had seen her. Indeed he had been all but struck dumb by the sight of this near-naked beauty, her white flesh gleaming in the sun. And had she not waved to him— nay, beckoned him with her scarf? For such he considered the linen square to be. Predictably, he tacked toward her.