Bold Breathless Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  Even though she realized that her letter sent from the Scillies had not had time to reach Amsterdam ahead of them. Mistress Peale was indeed discomfited when the servants at the Schillerzoons’ majestic residence, to which they had been so carefully directed by the innkeeper, told them the family was away at their farm outside Haarlem and it was uncertain when they would be back. But Imogene was secretly glad. Now she could explore this unusual city without additional Dutch chaperons—perhaps more efficient than the English!—to hamper her.

  “We can come back tomorrow and inquire,” she told Mistress Peale, and pulled her away as she hesitated on the steps. “Today we can shop and wander about.”

  Verhulst van Rappard sauntered after them as they wandered about, pursuing this vision in lemon silk as he might some distant goddess.

  Imogene was unaware she was being followed. She was delighted with everything she saw. If only Stephen were here! For instinctively she knew he would share her approval.

  And well he might, for in the 1600s Amsterdam was unique. It was a wayward town, a tolerant international town where worldly women wore the latest fashions—silks from Italy and the Orient, pearls from the Caribbean and the Far East, musky perfumes from the Orient, and beaver hats from the New World. They decorated their houses with Flemish lacework and their tables with thick soft rugs from the Near East they called “Turkey carpets” and set on their wide, tall mantels, above the spotless dust ruffles, silver candlesticks that had been seized by Dutch privateers from Spanish treasure galleons—for Holland was endlessly at war with Spain. Beside canals crowded with water traffic moving everything from cabbages to lumber, men stopped by market stalls and conversed in a dozen languages—and every day fortunes were being made in the Exchange. An exciting town to visit, an exciting town to live in.

  Even Imogene, desolate at being sent here, away from Stephen, felt that excitement.

  At one of the waterside stalls that lined the canals opposite tall narrow houses with gardens in the rear, Imogene had paused to admire a beautiful blue fan with peacocks painted on it. She was trying to buy it but the stolid woman who ran this stall spoke only gutteral Dutch and Imogene could not find out the price. She rummaged in her purse, pulling out a variety of English coins, but the stall-woman only shook her head—she wanted to be paid in Dutch money.

  It was just the opportunity Verhulst van Rappard had been waiting for. He strode forward and bowed impressively before Imogene. “Permit me, mistress,” he said in his excellent English. While they watched he paid out the coins to the woman in the stall and presented the fan to Imogene with a flourish. "With my compliments.”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t accept it!” she said, startled. “I’m most grateful to you, sir, but I don’t know you.” Although his face did look vaguely familiar. "So I couldn’t possibly—”

  “Permit me to introduce myself,” he said impressively. “Verhulst van Rappard, patroon of Wey Gat in New Netherland—in America. And the fan is but a small tribute. I will be desolated if you will not accept it, for—it matches your eyes.”

  Mistress Peale, frowning at this forward gentleman, was somewhat mollified by the title “patroon.” But to accept a gift from a gentleman—and a stranger at that! It was not to be thought of! Before Imogene could frame an answer, she cut in. “Come along, Imogene, you don’t need a fan!” She was plucking at Imogene’s skirts as she spoke and awkwardly backed into a wide-trousered man carrying two baskets of live ducks suspended from a wooden yoke slung across his shoulders. He staggered backward as Mistress Peale backed into him and the yoke fell off his shoulders. The baskets fell to the street, the ducks let out enraged squawks, passersby stumbled over the fallen man and his quacking load—and Mistress Peale gasped at the havoc she had unwittingly wrought.

  “Allow me,” Verhulst said smoothly, once again pressing his advantage. He bent over the fallen man, proffering money. The man looked up from dusting off his trousers and trying to rescue his ducks. At sight of the coins he began to grin and scrambled up, seizing the money.

  “I have paid this man for his ducks,” Verhulst said, turning to Mistress Peale. “And now I am suffering a surfeit of food, for he insists on taking the ducks to my inn and I cannot eat all these ducks. Unless you ladies will join me for dinner tonight at my inn, the Red Lion?”

  “But we’re staying at the Red Lion, too,” cried Mistress Peale.

  Imogene gazed at Verhulst in amusement. Now she knew where she had seen him—this morning, from her window. She made him a delightful curtsy. “We would be delighted, mynheer. I accept for us both.” And then, in a wicked aside, “You have been following us, mynheer!”

  “I admit it,” said Verhulst solemnly. “For this morning your face dazzled me and I have been attracted to it like a moth to a flame.”

  Imogene laughed. It might be fun to have a light flirtation to pass away the time here in Amsterdam until she could return to the Scillies—and Stephen. “You should have spoken to us sooner,” she mocked, “for we could hardly understand the servants this morning at the Schillerzoons’ when they told us the family was away.”

  “Indeed I should,” he said gravely. “For I am a man who desires to spend his time in the company of beautiful things.” And I have seen nothing so beautiful as you in Amsterdam, his gaze told her.

  Mistress Peale, at first shocked that Imogene should accept an invitation from a stranger, no matter how fortuitous his appearance, was mollified at dinner when, over orange duck and green sallet and tansies, Verhulst told them casually that he was in Amsterdam to acquire treasures to decorate the great house he was building on the North River in New Netherland. His father had begun it—he would complete it. No, he was not married. Or betrothed. His parents had been killed by Indians, scalped—the ladies shuddered—and he, an only child, had come into his patroonship early. Mistress Peale listened to his almost faultless English and studied as if hypnotized the handsome gold chain that swung on his black satin brocade doublet, the rich Flemish lace at his throat and the ruby that sparkled from it, the bloodstone signet ring set in heavy gold on his finger. She wondered if he had come to Amsterdam to acquire a wife as well.

  To acquire a wife had been the last thing Verhulst had been thinking of. But now, sitting across the table from the English beauty clad in a lustrous gown of pale amber silk and with a whisk so sheer he could see the pearly sheen of her breasts through it, he wasn’t so sure. Not only Verhulst but all the diners in the common room were captivated by this dainty display.

  “We should have had a private dining room,” Verhulst told them, vexed by all this neck-craning interest Imogene had aroused, “but I asked too late; they were all taken.”

  “It is no matter,” said Imogene eagerly. “It is very pleasant to sit among travelers from all over the world and hear a dozen languages spoken.”

  She exaggerated, for, except for one table where two plumed-hatted gentlemen argued in vociferous French, only Dutch was being spoken at the nearby tables. But Verhulst cared nothing for that—he was warmed by her approval.

  “Tell me about Wey Gat,” encouraged Imogene.

  And Verhulst did.

  When the young patroon had ceased speaking, she sighed. “I don’t wonder you are in Amsterdam to acquire treasures for it. As you spoke I could almost see the wide river running between sheer cliffs and big, rounded mountains all covered with a virgin forest—the waterfalls spilling over the dark rocks, the deep mossy places—oh, we have nothing in the Scillies like it. Surely such a place is a treasure in itself.”

  But Verhulst van Rappard had for the moment forgotten the thick-piled rugs from the Orient, the delicate teakwood screens and rustling Italian silks and heavy plate and delicate China he had come to Amsterdam to acquire. For of all the treasures he had seen, Verhulst wanted Imogene herself the most. How she would grace his fine rooms at Wey Gat! A golden woman, her supple beauty enhanced by her negligent feminine gestures as she talked. And there, to his fevered imagination, she would be a
golden bird, singing for him . . . only for him. His young face hardened. He meant to acquire this English beauty, as he had acquired priceless paintings and sculptures and rare spices. He meant to ship her home carefully with himself to guard her and spend his life admiring her as she wandered through the spacious halls of Wey Gat. His imagination raced ahead: Occasionally, he told himself, he would exhibit her to guests, as he did his other treasures. Imogene, smiling at him across her orange duck, would have been astonished and indignant to know that Verhulst had just decided that she was to be his golden songbird and Wey Gat her gilded cage.

  The next day Verhulst escorted them round to the Schillerzoons’ again, and this time they were back, having arrived home late yesterday evening. Vrouw Schillerzoon was a tall, determined woman who viewed Mistress Peale—a distant relative of her husband’s—with some dismay, but nevertheless ushered them all into her spotless parlor, a dark, rather forbidding room that Imogene guessed rightly was used only for special occasions. The young patroon Vrouw Schillerzoon welcomed with suspicion, for her husband had had recent dealings with the New Netherland Dutch—dealings in which he had lost money. And she gave Imogene Wells one startled look and promptly sent her only marriageable son back to Haarlem to oversee some things at the farm—Vrouw Schillerzoon had no intention of letting her son Hans, so easily smitten, marry anyone but the daughter of their next-door neighbor, whose father had ships that would be convenient to transport Mynheer Schilierzoon’s considerable merchandise.

  All in all, it was an uncomfortable afternoon they spent sitting on straight chairs in Vrouw Schilierzoon’s immaculate parlor, but their hostess made them promise to return next day for supper, and Mistress Peale left in consternation.

  “She did not even invite us to spend the night,” she mourned to lmogene after they had returned to the Red Lion.

  “She’s afraid I’ll seduce her son,” grinned lmogene. “Did you notice how quickly she sent him from the room, and then told us he was away to Haarlem?”

  “Do not speak so!” cried Mistress Peale. But she was afraid that lmogene was right. Hans Schillerzoon had disappeared from their sight rather precipitately. “As if you would have such an ill-favored lad!” she added venomously.

  lmogene laughed.

  Snubbed by the Schillerzoons, who could have opened up Amsterdam society to them, lmogene and Mistress Peale spent their days in leisurely sightseeing with the young patroon to guide them.

  From the wedding-cake spire of the Zuiderkerk to the medieval Waag, with its five-foot-thick walls, that housed the guiId-chambers, they saw it all. At the Schreierstoren, the Weeping Tower, they watched sobbing women clinging to their sailor husbands for a last farewell before they departed on long voyages.

  “I am told the stones here are always moist from their tears,” Verhulst told her soberly. “For the women know that many of these men will not come back. And yet my father sailed away on such a voyage, and I am a patroon because of it.”

  And because of it your parents lie far away beneath alien soil, thought lmogene, chopped to death by Indian hatchets. But it was too lovely a day to quarrel. “You told me you were going shopping,” she said, for the great variety of Amsterdam’s shops fascinated her.

  Verhulst’s eyes lit up. She was taking an interest in his purchases, in his home across the sea. That was a good sign! He promptly escorted the ladies into the busy Warmoesstraat, which was the main street of the city, found a draper and let lmogene pick out the window hangings for the great double living room at Wey Gat.

  “The green damask is handsome but I like this amber velvet best,” she told him, fingering the rich stuff lingeringly. It seemed to run through her fingers like water—like a caress; she hated to remove them from its gleaming surface. “Here, touch it, mynheer.”

  Verhulst’s hand brushed hers as he took the gleaming fabric from her. lmogene hardly noticed that brief contact, but Verhulst was shaken by it.

  “Yes, you are right, it is beautiful.” And how your hair will shine against it in the candle’s glow! he thought, and promptly bought an amount that made the shopkeeper’s eyes shine.

  “Perhaps we should decide on draperies for—a lady’s bedroom next.” Verhulst stumbled over the words, for he had almost said “your bedroom.”

  “ ‘A lady’s’?” lmogene turned a mischievous glance toward him. “But I thought you were not married, mynheer.”

  Above the rich Florentine lace at his throat, Verhulst flushed happily. How different was this English girl’s steady blue gaze from Rychie’s scathing look! “I am not, Mistress lmogene, but one day I hope . . .”

  “Will not your bride prefer to choose her own things?"

  “I am sure her taste will coincide with yours.”

  Imogene ignored that as a pretty compliment but insincere—as pretty compliments were prone to be.

  “But the room should accent her coloring,” she mocked him. “Have you already decided what color her eyes will be, this bride you have yet to meet?”

  “Yes,” he told her with decision. “I have decided that her eyes will be blue.”

  Imogene gave a peal of laughter and Mistress Peale, fingering some fabulous gold-shot silk from India and wishing she had the price, turned and gave her a reproving look.

  “Then why not this sky blue satin?” suggested Imogene. Sky blue ... she had been wearing a doublet and kirtle of sky blue linen that first night Stephen had made love to her . . . and again, the day he had killed Giles Avery by accident and sailed away from her. Her face clouded as she bent over the fabric.

  “Is that what you would choose for your own bedroom?” he asked, studying her.

  “Oh, yes, if I could afford it, which I cannot!” Imogene wrenched herself back to the present. “It is much prettier than these murky-looking damasks, and handsomer than these flowered calicos. And you could have curtains made of this fine white lawn. Are they casements?”

  He nodded. “And they look down the bluff to the river and across it to the bluffs on the opposite shore. It is a wide, airy room with a high ceiling and polished floors.”

  “It sounds lovely.” She was still trying to tear her thoughts away from Stephen. “If you have not completed the fireplace, you should give it a French mantel. I saw lovely ones of white marble in a shop down the street.”

  “I will attend to it,” said Verhulst gravely.

  Imogene shot him a surprised look, wondering if he was laughing at her.

  “I thought perhaps a Turkey carpet?” he suggested later, when they were considering a shipment of rugs just brought by a tall-masted East Indiaman from the Orient.

  “These two are the most beautiful.” Imogene stroked the thick, soft pile of two rugs from China with extravagant designs of dragons and birds set in muted jewel colors against a background of cool Chinese gold.

  “I will buy them for the drawing room,” said Verhulst instantly, eager to please her, although he himself had thought a dark red would be richer. He turned to the shopkeeper. “Do you have a blue one for my lady’s bedroom?”

  The shopkeeper, thinking by “my lady” Verhulst meant Imogene—as indeed he did—hurried to show them an assortment of blue rugs and Imogene chose one of medium blue with a wide dark blue border and a trailing design of white flowers lavished across it, as if it were a painting instead of a floor covering.

  Verhulst bought it.

  He did not stop there. He bought wallpaper from France depicting hunting scenes in the forest of Versailles, where elegant bewigged gentlemen and wide-skirted ladies riding side-saddle followed the hounds through sun and shade beneath magnificent old trees. He bought numerous pairs of heavy knobbed brass andirons and delicately worked brass fenders, sumptuous table linens of Holland flax trimmed in heavy lace—on all of which he ordered his monogram to be embroidered. And because Imogene liked them he bought a pair of branched candlesticks of baroque silver so heavy that the boy who carried them away to be packed staggered beneath their weight.

  �
��You are making that young man spend too much money,” chided Mistress Peale after they had returned to the inn.

  “Nonsense. Mynheer van Rappard told us he was in Amsterdam to acquire treasures for his house. And he asked for my advice.”

  “I am sure he would not have bought that elegant silver tray and pitchers and those pearl-handled fruit knives and all those blue and white China plates if you had not raved over them.”

  “He is but seeking a woman’s opinion, and I am glad to give him mine.”

  He will be seeking more than your opinion, thought the older woman shrewdly, but she let the matter rest.

  “And besides . . .” Imogene was letting Elise dress her for dinner in ivory silk and wondering if she dared push her whisk down any lower, for Mistress Peale had insisted she wear one because they were “causing a sensation in the dining room” as it was. “We are not going shopping tomorrow. Mynheer van Rappard has promised to show us the countryside. We will see the polders, as the farms here are called, and their windmills. Verhulst has promised to show me a thousand windmills, and I shall hold him to it!” she added blithely.

  When she repeated this threat to Verhulst next day, he threw back his dark head and laughed. “Mistress Peale doubtless thinks we would be better off counting the thousand ships moored in the Damrak, ships that could carry you both back to England!”

  “Yes,” smiled Imogene. “Perhaps she does.” She had sometimes found herself looking longingly toward the Damrak, from whence one day a stout ship would carry her back to England—and Stephen. But she would not tell this fiery-eyed young Dutchman that.

  But even though Mistress Peale pronounced herself entirely enervated by their day in the country, Imogene was delighted with everything. Verhulst pointed out wagon wheels perched atop chimneys to attract storks, and great creaking windmills with giant sails that turned lazily above a landscape flat as a floor. He showed her fields of tulips and canals adrift with swans, and dikes that rose above that landscape so tall that great white ships seemed to sail by them on dry land. She brushed aside Verhulst’s apologies for not having been able to find them a kermis, or fair.