“Mistress North,” said Harry softly from the foot of the stairs.
But even as Imogene stood poised to take that first step, mesmerized by the sight of the man below her, there was a movement behind him in the dimness. Someone who had been bent down, perhaps taking a pebble from a shoe—someone she had not noticed with her surprised gaze riveted on Harry—rose up and a pair of cold, cold eyes considered Imogene from over Harry’s shoulder. There was a flash as an arm went up. A flash of—was it metal?
No—it was a fan. Imogene controlled that little shiver of fear that had gone through her and acknowledged her rescuer with a gracious nod. Then she lifted her head and went gracefully down the long staircase. From below she seemed a woman of light with her sheer pearl gray voile dress floating mothlike around her and the delicate black markings of the braid and of the stiff white petticoat making her seem to be a butterfly of note.
At the bottom she paused to extend her hand, for Harry was bowing from the waist.
“Harrison Hogue at your service.” Gallantly he kissed the hand she proffered. “And this,” he straightened up, “is my sister Melisande.”
Imogene acknowledged Melisande. In fact, she gave Harry’s “sister” a good look. Golden hair almost a match for her own met her gaze—except that Melisande's was excessively curled and pomaded. A pretty face, on the thin side with high cheekbones and deep startling brown eyes that looked like deep pools of swamp water. Mud puddles, she thought, and laughed at herself. It’s the dream, she told herself. It’s made me dislike a total stranger! For the fact remained, as she accompanied the others into the long dining room, that she had formed an instant and intense aversion to Melisande.
“You shouldn’t have waited breakfast, Bess,” murmured Imogene as Melisande settled her wide black and white striped taffeta skirts across from her and toyed with the black rosettes in her bright hair.
“I don’t know why not,” laughed Bess. “Mother takes her breakfast in her room. Mr. Robbins is out bird-watching. Nobody else was down until just now. Did you want me to sup alone? I see you’ve met Harry and Melisande.”
“I told Mistress Bess we’d met last night,” said Harry lazily.
“Yes, so you did,” laughed Bess. “It was good you took your new boat out, Harry, because from what you tell me, you may have saved Imogene’s life.”
‘‘Or at least her virtue.” Harry gave Imogene a humorous look.
Imogene gave him back a sunny smile. “I am beholden, sir,” she said. Indeed she was glad to be diverted by Harry, even though Melisande was giving her black looks, for the hurt van Ryker had given her was still very fresh and it was good to look into a man’s eyes and see herself reflected there gloriously. ‘‘You’re a wretch for dropping me off and not telling me you were staying here,” she accused. “Why did you let me make such a fool of myself?”
“Because you made such a delightful fool of yourself,” he declared coolly. “You were so certain I was going to rape you—at the very least.”
His “sister” gave him a furious look. “Don’t speak so, Harry!” she said with a false simper.
“Ah, here’s one who knows me for what I am.” Harry turned an affectionate smile toward Melisande.
“You do talk too wild,” complained Melisande. “Don’t he. Mistress Bess?”
“I don’t know—I enjoy the way he talks,” laughed Bess. “Imogene, any wild tales you’ve told him are justified. Harry is always pulling our leg!”
Imogene saw that Harry was gazing thoughtfully at the square-cut emerald she wore on her middle finger. For a violent moment, remembering van Ryker’s treachery, she wanted to fling it away from her. Instead she moved her hands gracefully so that Harry might be dazzled further. She saw Melisande studying it too, looking out from under her thick lashes in a furtive way.
Mr. Robbins did not turn up at breakfast, and Bess determinedly guided the conversation. In the course of that conversation Harry and Melisande learned that Imogene was indeed from Helston and a longtime friend of Bess’s.
“But being betrothed to a magistrate in Truro was a lie,” laughed Imogene. “I said that only to intimidate you!”
A somewhat steely light appeared in Harry’s blue eyes. “It didn’t have quite that effect,” he murmured, and the toe of Melisande’s shoe connected with his shin beneath the table.
“Will ye walk with us?” Harry asked Imogene as they rose from the breakfast table. “I know Mistress Bess is too busy with her carpenters and her beams, but ’tis our custom to take a stroll around the castle grounds after breakfast.”
Imogene bethought her of Lady Moxley, who might choose this inopportune moment to be early. “No, I’m still tired from last night’s dip,” she smiled. “I think I’ll nap till dinner. Will you have someone call me, Bess?”
“Of course.” Bess watched her go gracefully from the room.
Harry watched her go too. He was seized with a sudden desire to go up and nap with her, only sleeping was not quite what he had in mind.
“Coming?” His “sister” gave him a sudden dig with her elbow.
“What? Oh, yes, of course, Melisande.”
The two of them strolled away.
“What did you mean, ogling her like that?” demanded Melisande as soon as they were out of earshot.
“I wasn’t ogling her,” objected Harry. “I was trying to appraise that emerald she’s wearing.”
“Bah! That’s not an emerald—that’s glass.” Melisande sniffed. “The color’s wrong.”
“Maybe not—if it came from the Inca mines.”
Melisande considered that. She could always be diverted by the mention of jewels and money. Melisande adored both. “How d’ye intend to find out?” she asked suspiciously.
“Why, I intend to get close enough to get a real look at it,” said Harry in a suave voice.
“Ye could have done that when ye kissed her hand this morning—as if she was some duchess!”
“She was wearing it on the other hand and the light was bad,” said Harry coolly. “Besides, I wasn’t aware of it then.”
“You pulled her out of the sea and didn’t even notice her ring?”
Harry could have explained that it wasn’t Imogene’s hands that had occupied his attention on that occasion but the whole glowing length of her, but he thought it best to leave well enough alone. “It was getting dark,” he said mildly.
“I don’t want ye getting that close to her, Harry!”
"Why not?” asked Harry, surprised.
"I never seen you look at nobody that way before,” countered Melisande sullenly.
Harry gave a shout of laughter. “Melisande, you’re jealous!”
"My name’s Moll,” she flashed. “And I’ll thank you to remember that when we’re alone!”
Harry turned to her, his laughter quenched. “You’d best remember that it’s Melisande,” he said quietly. “If you don’t want us both to end up on the gallows.”
“C’mon, Harry!” Melisande gave him a light rallying blow on the shoulder with her fist. “Don’t be so dramatic! Everyone winds up on the gallows someday.” Her careless shrug dismissed it as unimportant.
That was a near truth, reflected Harry gloomily. A goodly number of their circle did wind up on the gallows—and weren’t the rest candidates?
“See that bunch of yellow flowers over there?” Melisande tugged at his arm. “Thicker’n a Turkey carpet! I’ve a mind to lay me down on ’em and—” She was pulling Harry down with her as she spoke, letting her skirts ride up so that her white legs flashed.
Harry reminded himself that he was gallows bait like the rest of them, and he’d best drain the glass while wine was still being poured. He grinned down at Melisande as he fell upon her, noting as he tore aside her whisk and pulled down her bodice, how white her breasts were—not weathered like the skin on her forearm. Noted, too, as he planted a kiss on one throbbing breast, the nasty scar on her bosom that came from a scuffle at Newgate with a black-eyed witc
h they’d called Dirty Emma—it was that scar and not modesty that made Melisande wear a whisk. The scar brought a softer light to Harry’s eyes, for he had a real affection for Melisande—and sympathy too, did she but know it. “They’ll see us from the house,” he chuckled, running his impudent hand up her leg, pushing her chemise up her squirming thigh and squeezing one cheek of her round bottom while she made mock efforts to evade him.
Melisande gave a sudden lurch that rolled them both over, laughing, and got strands of grass in Harry’s hair and hers. “Won’t no one see,’’ she gasped.
But Imogene did, from her window, and turned away feeling suddenly bereft. It seemed to her as she flung herself face downward upon the bed that everyone had someone to love—everyone but her.
And far below in the grass, when Melisande and Harry had finished their brief tumultuous lovemaking, Harry lay beside her with the golden mane of her hair cascading over his shoulder. He chewed thoughtfully on a grass stem and let the fingers of his left hand run along Melisande’s throbbing body, making her gasp now and then as his fingers grew impudent again.
He felt good and complete and for the moment he had almost forgotten how desirable was the woman who lay in the castle above them, napping.
“Could be I’ve figured out a way to find out if the emerald is real without getting close,” he murmured.
But although Melisande teased him, and near tore his clothes off demanding he tell her what that way was, Harry refused. “I’ll show you at dinner,” was all he’d say, no matter how she baited him. And Melisande had to be content with that.
“While I was out sailing this afternoon, I was hailed by a fisherman,” he told them at dinner, watching Imogene. “He had a woman’s dress on board that he said he’d found. It was so pretty I bought it on the spot for my sister, but then I remembered, you said you’d lost yours when you went swimming on St. Agnes. Could it be yours?”
“It could if it’s blue,” said Imogene calmly, remembering the dress van Ryker had stowed in her trunk aboard the Goodspeed.
Harry smiled into those calm blue eyes. “I’ll bring it,” he said, pushing back his chair. He strode from the room, ignoring Melisande, who had half risen from her chair in indignation, and Bess, who had lifted her hand as if to ward off something.
As they waited, Mr. Robbins, the bird-watcher, leaned forward. “Swimming? Did you say you were swimming?” he asked incredulously.
“Without my dress,” said Imogene in a clear voice.
Melisande gave her an evil look. Bess repressed a shudder.
All eyes were on Harry when he came back into that long cavernous room. He was walking briskly with that slight swagger that he always affected when he felt he had a good-looking woman’s attention, and it gave him a certain jauntiness that, combined with his boyish smile, brought a soft light to every feminine eye at the table. Over his arm he carried a sky blue velvet creation that, when he spread it before Imogene, caused her to exclaim, “It is mine. But...” She studied the neckline regretfully. “The amethyst clasp is missing.” The wreckers were getting more reckless, she thought. Selling goods locally to such as Harry.
“‘Amethyst clasp’?” Harry, consummate actor that he was, turned a blank look upon the lady. “Oh—amethyst clasp. Lost in transit, I suppose.”
Melisande had been looking at him stormily. She had snatched the amethyst clasp and was in no mood to part with it.
Bess leaned forward. "A couple of hooks sewn in, a rosette to cover it and it will be as good as new, Imogene,” she said briskly.
“My friends must have left it for me on the shore when they left the island,” said Imogene carelessly. “Was anything else of mine found? My shoes perhaps? I am missing a pair.”
“Your friends took your dress!" cried the bird-watcher.
“And my shoes and petticoat as well,” said Imogene.
Bess hoped this conversation never reached Star Castle or Lady Moxley; no one at Ennor would ever hear the end of it if it did.
Harry looked surprised. “Indeed, dear lady,” he said tolerantly, “there was no real reason to believe even this dress and petticoat might be yours. Except”—his tone grew caressing, it raked over her senses with gentle claws—“that you’d mentioned you lost yours and this seems to complement so well the color of your eyes.”
“And seeing it you thought of me?”
Harry felt himself squirm under that level blue gaze.
“I am beholden to you, sir. But then you are out of pocket for—?” She gave him a questioning look.
Harry’s chest expanded happily. “Accept it as my gift. The debt will be more than paid if you will but wear the gown,” he declared gallantly.
“Indeed I shall wear it—tomorrow! That is, if Bess is able to work her magic with a needle so that it does not fall open in front!”
“Will you be here in September, for the pilchards?” interrupted Bess, for the bird-watcher was looking shocked.
Harry looked blank. “’Pilchards’?”
“ ’Tis a great sight. Men called huers watch from the headlands for the first tinge of purple on the sea—”
“That’s a French word,” explained Imogene. “It means ‘to shout.’ ”
“All along the western coast of Cornwall in September you’ll find the huers watching. And when they see the telltale purple on the sea that tells them there’s a great shoal of fish out there, they cry out ‘Heva, heva!”
“That means ‘found, found,’ ” explained Imogene.
“And then everyone is away in the seine boats and they all wave calico-covered wooden frames called bushes, and they take the fish in the great seine nets. Sometimes they take thousands and thousands of them.”
“Millions,” corrected Imogene.
“It’s very exciting,” said Bess. “You must stay for it.”
“Fishing never interested me much,” admitted Harry.
“Always angling for something else, Harry was!” put in Melisande sarcastically.
“Millions, you say?” said Harry as if Melisande hadn’t spoken. “There must be lots of huers!”
“And lots of pilchards,” smiled Imogene.
“Perhaps we will still be here,” said Harry, kindling to that smile.
“Ha!” Melisande tossed her head. “Wintering someplace else we’ll be, and on our way by then.” Her truculent expression dared Harry to deny it.
“Where will you go?” asked the bird-watcher politely.
“Someplace else!” snapped Melisande in such a belligerent tone that the whole table fell silent, addressing themselves to what Imogene believed to be the most elaborate meal ever served at Ennor Castle, for it featured a delicious green sallet, fricassees, baked “cheewits,” a chine of beef, “stewed” broth, jiggets of mutton, and a bewildering assortment of breads and preserved fruits.
And through it all, Harry Hogue’s speculative gaze seldom left Imogene, while Melisande smoldered.
After supper, the bird-watcher wrote to his brother in Kent:
These people here at Ennor most remarkable I've met. Odd crowd, prickly as pears. Woman named North seemed to be missing a gown which she’d lost while swimming in the sea. Quite beautiful—woman, that is. Turned up on the arm of a fellow at dinner—gown, that is. Saw vast numbers of cormorants today, kittiwakes, terns. Fine long necks—cormorants, that is. Visiting island of Annet tomorrow, where I’m told millions of puffins breed. Should abandon your roses, come down here. Yrs, R.
Meanwhile Melisande stormed into her bedroom and turned on Harry. “ ‘Accept it as my gift!’ ” she mimicked savagely. “You gave her my dress, Harry! How could you do it? I wanted to snatch it back and scratch your eyes out!” She struck at him wildly.
Harry caught her arms and grinned down at her. “Cheap at the price!” His voice was exultant. “An emerald like she wears will buy you a dozen such dresses—and now we know it’s real.” Before Melisande could refute that, he added ' softly, “Besides, you still have the amethyst clasp.�
��
While the bird-watcher was writing his garbled letter, and Melisande and Harry were working out their differences, Bess was pacing up and down in Imogene’s room.
“Do you think it was wise to claim the dress?” she demanded in a worried voice. “Grant you it’s beautiful and with a rosette stitched on it you can wear it again, but it makes talk. You saw how scandalized Mr. Robbins was! Suppose word reaches Lady Moxley? Do you think she won’t descend on us and demand to see the infamous Mistress North?”
Imogene sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “Stop pacing about. Don’t you know by this time I’m seldom wise?” She strode restlessly to the mirror, frowned at her reflection as if to chide herself. “I don’t know why I did it—or, yes, perhaps I do. It’s been a very long time since I wore blue and it’s my best color!”
Bess regarded her with open-mouthed astonishment. Her best color! As if that mattered when perhaps one’s life was at stake!
“As for Lady Moxley, I could hear her snoring as I came down the hall.”
“She must have left the door ajar. I’ll go close it.”
“Oh, later, Bess. You said yourself she’ll be gone in the morning. And how’s she to hear? Robbins will be on Annet poking around in the sea pinks for puffins’ eggs!”
“I suppose you’re right.” Bess stopped pacing and picked up the blue dress. “I’ll sew a rosette on this right now and you can wear it tomorrow,” she declared energetically.
Imogene watched her work with a hunted look on her face. After a moment she walked to the window and looked out. Down below she could see a man running and she squinted her eyes to see him better. Why, it was Harry! Running barefoot and unshirted, clad only in his trousers, down toward the water. Escaping from Melisande, she’d no doubt! As she watched, he climbed aboard his boat and cast off.
“Here, now it’s ready.” Bess bit off the thread with her teeth and turned to Imogene. “Come try it on and see if it holds.”
Imogene turned away from the window. If she had stayed there it would have altered the course of events.
Wild Willful Love Page 34
