Bold Breathless Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  Now he sat, becalmed and fuming, in a stationary boat upon a glassy blue surface, still as glass. Already he was suffering from the heat in the splendid gold-laced saffron satin doublet and matching trousers he had worn to impress Imogene.

  And having time upon his hands, he suddenly wondered how Imogene had reached Saint Agnes. Hal Duveen had not sailed her there, for he had seen Hal in the distance as he clambered aboard this hastily borrowed boat, and waved at him. And Imogene herself was no sailor. Surely her maid had not . . . his teeth clenched. That Linnington fellow! He would have brought her. Well, they would be well rid of him, for now that they were betrothed, he meant to forbid Imogene to have anything further to do with Stephen Linnington. And he had a perfect excuse, for had not that Linnington fellow insisted on dueling with Tom Mowbrey over her? A young lady about to marry into the pretentious Avery family could not be too careful about scandal. Imogene must be made aware of that! Giles gave a vengeful look up at the wilted sails and at the sun beaming down furiously overhead. He could feel a trickle of sweat running down his backbone and he’d no mind to look wilted when he arrived. Finally he tore off his doublet and stood in his white ruffled shirt peering toward the island where that bit of blue cloth he had glimpsed had long since disappeared.

  And so Giles fumed and sweated in the heat while the lovers strolled out of his sight.

  Holding hands they wandered down to one of Imogene’s favorite haunts—Saint Warna’s Bay on the island’s south coast. At first it was hot, but as they reached the bay the wind came up, blowing Imogene’s hair back from her hot neck and cooling her pink cheeks.

  And although the lovers did not know it, that same wind lifted and billowed the sails of Giles Avery’s borrowed boat so that it sped like an arrow toward the island with a panting and wilted Giles aboard.

  “Now we will cool us, my lady.” Stephen tossed back his copper hair with an indolent gesture and smiled down upon Imogene. “In the water, for there’s no one to see.”

  Imogene shot a look around the deserted bay and gave him back an impish glance. “You just want me to take off my clothes!”

  “That too,” he admitted with a grin, and sat down and began removing his boots.

  “I think I’ll just sit on the beach and wait for you,” she decided, wanting him to beg her.

  "As you like.” He gave her a steady look. “But I’m for a swim.”

  A little nettled that he should choose not to urge her, Imogene sat down and fanned herself with her hand. She watched Stephen undress, admiring the sleek ripple of his strong back muscles as he pulled off his shirt, the breadth of his shoulders, the leanness of his hips and thighs as he pulled off his trousers. He caught her watching him and grinned, then strolled down the sand and into the surf.

  For a moment she pouted. He might have insisted a bit that she swim with him! Then, plagued by the heat and with her whole being yearning to join Stephen in the water, she stood up and swiftly shed her clothes. For a moment she stood, stretching luxuriously in the sunlight, and looked up at the two tall standing stones . . . Adam and Eve. So must the original Adam and Eve have felt in the Garden. And who was to say this was not Eden?

  Smiling at her own thoughts, she ran down to the surf and swam out toward that wet copper head, shining in the sunlight.

  “I see ye have changed your mind,” he approved as she joined him.

  “A woman’s privilege!” She splashed water at him and turned and swam away from him. Stephen knifed through the water after her and together they swam lazily in the clear water, brilliant blue beneath an endless blue dome. In the sparkling sunlight they were playful as young dolphins. Suddenly Stephen dived under and as she looked about for where he would come up, his hand darted impudently between her thighs, causing her to jump and swallow a gulp of sea water. In retaliation, as he came up dripping and laughing, she reached out and playfully ran combing fingers through his thick copper hair, now dark and wet and gleaming—and suddenly, twining her fingers in that strong mass, jerked his head under.

  Almost as a reflex gesture, he reached out and pulled her under with him and they turned end over end in the water, for they were both nearly unsinkable. Suddenly Imogene felt Stephen’s teeth playfully graze her bottom and she surfaced with a shriek and struggled free and swam away in mock terror to shore. She ran from the water and shook a shower of silvery drops from her wet body—and stood on the hot sand, looking over her shoulder and laughing.

  That lighthearted shriek was to cost her much, for Giles Avery, who had at last reached the island, had left his boat beside theirs and had been walking about, fanning himself with his plumed hat, searching for sight of her. He had been about to turn back and climb the hill and ask for her at Clara’s cottage. Had he done so, Clara would have managed to hold him there drinking a cooling tankard of cider while Elise slipped away and found the lovers and warned them—and all might have been well. But his head came up at that playful feminine shriek and he turned about with a frown.

  Walking softly now, he began to comb the coastline, studying those weird rock groupings that might shelter a man and a girl.

  All unknowing, thinking herself and Stephen as alone as the tall frowning menhirs of Adam and Eve on the hill above the bay, Imogene, splendid in her naked loveliness, stood on the beach shaking sea droplets out of her wet hair while Stephen came ashore behind her. The sun glanced warm down upon her slender shoulders and she glanced up at the hill with a half smile toward the two great standing stones the ancients had erected . . . the old gods were true, they had indeed sent her a lover—and what a lover!

  Behind her Stephen paused in the surf to study her loveliness. It was a sight that shook him: the straightness of her back, the soft feminine jutting of her hips and buttocks, the long graceful line of her legs. As he watched her, hardly daring to breathe, for she seemed to him like a delicate bird poised for flight, droplets from her long wet hair slid glittering down her white hips and legs to dampen the sand below.

  Imogene turned to regard him with a look of splendor in her eyes. Seeing the answering gleam in his, she spread out the blue linen kirtle she had removed before their swim and he joined her on it, stroking her breasts.

  God, how soft her skin was, he thought, how magnificent her body! How gloriously she returned his passion—kiss for kiss, sigh for sigh, tremor for tremor. He reveled in that.

  For Stephen—so experienced with women—it was, achingly, as if it were the first time, with all the ecstasy and hesitancy and delight. That was the way it had been for him that night with her at Star Castle, that was the way it had been for him every time since. And now some inner wisdom told him why: Many women he had had—and some had loved him—but now for the first time he loved, truly loved, in return.

  He was in love with Imogene. He’d known he should let her alone but—he hadn’t been strong enough to resist her feminine charms. Now he knew with fear in his heart that he could deny her nothing. Fear, because his own reckless neck might well be marked for the gibbet and he must be careful not to take lovely Imogene Wells with him.

  But if Stephen was having dark thoughts, Imogene was not. She nipped at his ear and giggled as he—firmly nuzzling her right breast with his tongue—retaliated by twisting his fingers in the pale wet triangle of silky hair between her thighs and wringing as if to dry each strand while she wriggled and laughed and slapped playfully at his hands and tried halfheartedly to resist him.

  Then the playfulness ended as their lovemaking became more serious. Imogene’s eyes were dark pools as Stephen’s arms gripped her to him and he drove within her in a turbulence of passion that even he had never known.

  They were like two splendid animals, straining, sharing, evenly matched—thoroughbreds both.

  Rising on peak after peak of ecstasy, they were oblivious to all but each other.

  Until the toe of a boot landed cruelly on Stephen’s pale gleaming buttock and a voice choked with rage—and perhaps with pain as well—cried, “So this
is what you’ve been doing— behind my back!”

  CHAPTER 5

  In a single violent leap, Stephen catapulted off Imogene’s yielding naked body and landed on one hand and one knee in the flying sand as he whirled to face his unknown attacker.

  Startled—and still throbbing with emotion—Imogene looked up with a gasp, to feel hot sand sting her face as a pair of wide boots shot across her field of vision. She had a sudden bewildering impression of a flash of saffron trousers and a saffron doublet vaulting over her prone body. From her appalled position on the sand, she could see from below Giles Avery’s crimson contorted face and hear the choking sob in his voice as he shouted hoarsely at Stephen, “I’ll kill ye for this, damn ye!”

  Hardly had Giles cleared her body before Imogene jackknifed up and spun to her hands and knees. Her head swung around in time to see Stephen uncoil like a spring from the position in which he had landed and hurl himself full length through the air toward his sword, which lay a little distance away in the sand. His long body slid in the sand as his hand sought and found his sword hilt.

  Giles had already dragged out his sword and was rushing forward, even before Stephen was airborne. In his blind rage, he apparently intended to run through a naked unarmed man with the point of his blade.

  Frozen in terror for Stephen, Imogene screamed.

  Neither man paid the slightest attention to her. It is doubtful if they even heard her. Bent on attack, Giles hurtled forward. Bent on defense, Stephen, landing in the sand, got his sword free of its scabbard in a smooth lightninglike gesture and brought up his blade’s protective point just as Giles lunged.

  To Imogene, wildly intent upon the scene before her, it all seemed to happen in slow motion. It seemed to her an eternity—although actually it all happened in split seconds—before Stephen’s blade cleared its scabbard and flashed in the sun. Giles was almost on him; she was sure he would run Stephen through the body, and her heart almost collapsed in her chest.

  Lying fully extended in the sand, with only a split moment between him and death, Stephen twisted his body to the side as he brought up his blade. Almost upon him, Giles was charging true as a bull to a red cape and never deviated from his path in the slightest. But that last-moment twist of Stephen’s muscular body was to prove his undoing. Giles lunged forward, missed Stephen by a hair’s breadth—and drove his point deep into the sand.

  Too late he saw Stephen’s defensive blade snake up. He could not stop. With a howl he impaled himself upon it, the very momentum of his charge driving the point through his body and out the other side.

  Imogene rose with a shriek and ran to the combatants.

  As she reached them, Giles was slithering down the bloody blade to the sand and Stephen, very pale now, had caught him gently by the shoulders and was trying to ease him up and off the blade before it sliced a wider path through Giles’s trembling body.

  “There,” he said, expertly withdrawing the blade. “Now to see how bad ye’re hurt.”

  Pettishly, Giles struck Stephen’s hand away from the red stain now spreading across his saffron doublet. “I want no favors of you, Linnington! Nor of you, Imogene!” His bloodshot eyes glittered at her shrinking naked figure. “Brazen doxie! And to think I came to bring ye news we were betrothed!” he lamented, wincing as he moved. “The shame of it!”

  “Ye’d best not be talking of shame,” observed Stephen, ignoring Giles’s protests and tearing open Giles’s doublet and shirt. “For that’s a bad wound ye’ve got, and we must get ye to a doctor and speedily!”

  “I’ll go nowhere in your company!” flashed Giles, spitting up blood and coughing.

  Stephen noted that bad sign with a frown. “Then I’ll bring a doctor here,” he said quietly and began to pull his clothes on.

  “I’ll stay with him,” said Imogene, kneeling on her bare knees beside Giles in the sand.

  “Lying doxie!” He jerked his head away from her and the motion sent him into a paroxysm of coughing.

  “Let him alone,” said Stephen sharply. “Every time he moves the wound bleeds worse. Rip off the bottom part of your chemise. Perhaps we can stanch the blood with that.”

  Giles, lying in an expiring heap upon the sand, managed to control his cough and gave Stephen an evil look. “I’ll see ye hanged for this!” he bellowed.

  “Come, come,” muttered Stephen, adjusting his trousers and pulling on his boots. “Love is no hanging matter!” He turned to Imogene. “Hurry with that cloth. He’s sinking!”

  “It—won’t—rip!” Imogene, bent over her chemise, gave the fabric a jerk. “There.” She managed to tear off a long strip and was handing it to Stephen, when Giles, with a murderous glare, suddenly lunged toward Stephen’s sword, which lay withdrawn and bloody upon the sand.

  The effort cost him his life. He doubled up, choking, before he ever reached it. And coughed out his life in Imogene’s white arms there on the sands of Saint Agnes.

  Stephen, well aware that it was too late to seek medical help, had remained. “The lad meant to run me through at the last,” he muttered. “He’d more spirit than I thought.” He sounded regretful.

  “Oh, how can you say that?” cried Imogene, so upset she hardly knew what she was saying. “He sneaked up on us and tried to kill you!”

  Stephen was frowning down at the youth whose blood ran red upon the sand. “The fault was mine.”

  “ ’Twas not your fault! Giles leaped on you when you were naked and unarmed.”

  “With you locked in my arms.” Stephen’s lean face twisted into a sardonic smile. “Oh, there’s no doubt whose fault it is. I seduced the girl this boy loved and he caught me at it. There’s no doubt at all where the fault lies.”

  She was staring at him. At that moment she looked very frail and helpless and his heart went out to her, caught up in something she had not bargained for. “I mean, you couldn’t help—you weren’t trying to kill him, Stephen.”

  “True, it was an accident. I meant to do no more than defend myself—as I would have with an irate husband.”

  He was speaking as if Giles had property rights in her! Imogene’s head went up indignantly. “I had no way of knowing my guardian had betrothed me to Giles! Indeed, I would not have consented!” Her voice trailed off at the sad little smile that was playing around his mouth.

  “The unlucky thing—for us, Imogene—is that it happened here on this near-deserted island. For there was no challenge flung, no witnesses, and so under the law it will be accounted murder.”

  She sprang up. “I am a witness!”

  His sardonic smile deepened. “Think you your word will be of much account in this matter? The lad who lies here dead at our feet is heir to the greatest fortune in Cornwall—an only son. Think you his parents will rest until the man who killed him is brought down? They will drag you before the Lord Constable and ask you what you were doing that so enraged their son. And when you tell them, they will say that you were not a witness but a co-conspirator, an accessory to murder—and perhaps worse. I must save you from that. I’ll put the lad’s body in his boat and tow it out to sea and sink it. Pray God I’m not seen doing that. And then I’ll sail away on Hal’s boat, and when the Duveens come looking for you, you’ll say we quarreled and that you left me on the beach and went into the cottage with Elise and her sister, and that I must have sailed away in anger, but you did not see me go. You’ll say you saw naught of Giles Avery. That way, if the law decides there’s been foul play, ’twill all be on my own head—where it belongs—and not yours.”

  “I’ll not do it,” she said staunchly, snatching up her torn chemise and stepping into it. “I’ll take the same path you tread and tell the same story. And if you ran away, I’ll go with you.”

  He gave her a fond look. He hated to see her dressing, for he knew it was the last he would see of her lithe, lovely body. “Well spoke, Imogene,” he said gently, “but we both know it cannot be.”

  “Why not?” She was pulling on her kirtle now, unmindfu
l that it was damp and covered with sand. “Why could you not take me to your family in Devon? We could be married there and since I gather they have influence in Devon, they could protect us.”

  Stephen winced at the open simplicity of that thought, and tried to tear his tormented gaze from the white legs that flashed tantalizingly as she tried to brush the sand from her skirt. In another day, another time, it could have happened that way. But he had found love at the wrong time, in the wrong place, in the arms of another man’s betrothed. Even so, they might have worked something out—he’d had wild dreams of late that he might somehow find the highwayman’s sister and the tavern maid and buy them both off and divorce them and so return to Imogene once again an eligible bachelor—but by sending Giles to the island to catch them making love, life had dealt them both a cruel blow.

  They could swear on all the Bibles in the land that there had been no concerted effort to kill Giles, that it was an accident brought on by the very heat of Giles’s nature, but who would believe them? And disbelief could well bring Imogene beside him to the gibbet.

  His jaw hardened. Whatever transpired, he was not going to let that happen.

  “You cannot come with me, Imogene,” he told her with finality.

  She flinched as if he had struck her, and her fingers, fumbling with the hooks of her blue linen doublet, were stilled. “You mean,” her voice trembled as realization flooded over her suddenly, “you will not return to the Scillies?”

  Stephen was bending over Giles’s fallen body, but now he straightened up and spent a long time studying her, as if to fill his eyes with her for all time. Every nerve in his body ached to tell her she could go with him, she could walk his path, they would fare well or badly, but they would be together—always.

  Had it been last year, had it been some other woman, he might have done just that.

  But knowing Imogene had changed him. For Stephen Linnington, late of Devon, late of York, late of half of England, had looked into a pair of clear delft blue eyes and seen himself mirrored there—not as he was, but as he once had been: a man of birth and breeding, a man a young lady of rank and fashion might give her arm to, might dance across a castle floor with—might even choose to marry. And now on the hot beach of Saint Agnes Isle, with reality crowding in upon him, he felt a sharp pang of sorrow for his misspent youth. Bitterly, he wished himself a stripling again, with all the world before him.