Bold Breathless Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  “It doesn’t matter,” Imogene sighed, stretching her slim arms luxuriously—an imminent peril to the tight blue flowered calico of her bodice. “We didn’t need a kermis, it’s been a perfect day.” She smiled at the sight of a sturdy peasant and his wife, harnessed to a pakschuyt, or water dray, dragging it home from market along the canal in the waning light. The woman, in her wooden shoes and peaked white cap, was singing softly in Dutch and her song floated out to them. It had a dreamy quality in the summer dusk. Imogene did not know what future the world would mete out to her and Stephen, but if only she could be as happy as that woman, gladly dragging her heavy burden back home alongside her man. . . .

  Perfect, thought Verhulst ecstatically. His lady had called the day perfect. Surely that must mean—!

  He was still basking in the memory of her casual remark when they returned to the city, and just before they reached their inn, a man nearly bumped into them, hurrying by. He was so oddly dressed that Imogene remarked on him.

  Verhulst turned to look at the black-clad figure with its wig and air of importance and long black crape streamer billowing from his black-plumed hat.

  “He is an aanspreeker,” he told Imogene. “It is his duty to go and invite people to attend funerals.”

  “But don’t they come anyway? Must they be invited?”

  “No, they do not come unless the aanspreeker brings them an invitation.” He held open the inn door for her. “And those who attend are given rich gifts.”

  Imogene thought this very odd—but on a par with the church service which they had attended with Vrouw Schillerzoon, where the women had clustered in the center of the church and the men had drifted to the sides and the nobility had sat in elaborately carved circular pews, each built around one of the lofty columns. “I suppose that is why they call some people ‘pillars of the church,’ ” she had murmured irrepressibly later and Vrouw Schillerzoon had given her a black scowl, for though the Schillerzoons were wealthy, they were not yet possessed of such a pew.

  So the pleasant days passed for Imogene in Holland. She went everywhere, saw everything, and shopped for household items that were far beyond her reach. And Verhulst pranced and postured before her, assuming noble poses that made him—in his own mind—appear emphatic, or imposing, or charming.

  He would have been astonished and indignant to know that Imogene, her mind and heart still filled with Stephen Linnington, scarcely saw him at all.

  But her chaperon did.

  He is very taken with her, this rich young patroon from the Americas, she wrote ecstatically to Imogene’s guardian, Lord Elston. I feel sure he will offer for her!

  The letter had scarce been posted before Verhulst made his offer. Earnestly he described again the noble setting of the great house at Wey Gat, the beauty of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, the gaiety of its people. But the headstrong English beauty gazed back at him from her wide blue eyes and saw but one thing: Here was a way to return to the Scilly Isles and be reunited with her Stephen! Hang the betrothal, once back in the Scillies she and Stephen—who must have come back by now—would run away together. The wrong she was doing the intense young Dutchman never once occurred to her. Her reckless heart told her this was the way, straight as an arrow, to Stephen’s arms—and Imogene had always followed her reckless heart.

  “I’ll marry you, Verhulst,” she promised after she had kept him staring at her in agony, and hardly breathing, for a suitable time. “But not here. Back home in the Scilly Isles.” She never meant to go through with her bargain, of course. Verhulst was only to be her passage back to the Scillies—and Stephen.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Oh, ye’d not do it, lmogene! Ye’d not marry this Dutchman!” Elise protested in horror when she heard it. “Ye can’t!”

  “Can I not?” The two women were alone in their room at the Red Lion, for Mistress Peale had bustled away downstairs. Now lmogene turned from looking into her small silver mirror, for she was pushing back an errant curl that kept falling over her forehead. With raised eyebrows she surveyed Elise. “And why not, pray?”

  “Ye can’t marry with him—and him believing ye’re a virgin!” gulped Elise.

  The hand mirror slapped down upon the bed with a force that would have broken it had it not landed on a soft surface. “Hold your tongue, Elise! You’d no right to be spying on me!”

  “I’ve not spied on ye.” Elise shook her dark head vigorously. “But—I know ye, lmogene, and your blood runs hot. You and Stephen Linnington were often alone. I knew what was going on.”

  Imogene bit her lip. “You’ll not say anything to Mistress Peale?”

  “I didn’t then and I won’t now,” Elise told her sturdily.

  “Then naught stands in the way.” Imogene’s voice was casual. She went back to arranging her hair.

  Elise stepped back to study her. “Ye don’t intend to go through with it, do ye?” she said slowly. “ ’Tis only a way to get back to Stephen Linnington?”

  The mocking look Imogene flung at her was answer enough. “If my guardian does not send for me, I must find my own way back,” she told Elise.

  “But this Dutchman is in love with you. You will hurt him.”

  Imogene shrugged. “There are plenty of women in the world, Elise. He will find someone else.”

  Elise went away, shaking her head. She had never been able to win an argument with reckless Imogene.

  Back to the Scillies they would certainly have gone, for Verhulst had already arranged passage for them all, had not a letter arrived in Amsterdam that same day. It was brought by a sea captain who had touched at Saint Mary’s Isle in the Scillies; he had had the letter from Bess Duveen’s hand and had promised faithfully to deliver it to the Red Lion in Amsterdam—for Imogene had written to Bess her first day in Amsterdam, hoping for news of Stephen.

  I knew you would want to know this, Bess wrote, and her falling tears had blurred the ink of some of the words. For we have just heard by way of friends in Penzance that Stephen Linnington has been killed in a duel somewhere in Cornwall. We do not yet have the details, but they had it from friends farther north. The Lord Constable is furious, for now that Giles Avery's body has been washed ashore and he was found to be run through by a sword rather than drowned as had been thought, he was planning to pursue Stephen for Giles’s murder—and demand that you be brought back and questioned, for he felt you knew more than you had told. I write you this as a friend, Imogene—and I pray it reaches you. Stay in Amsterdam, for he will try to make someone suffer for the deed and it could well be you. I know Stephen would never kill Giles except in self-defense and that he must have left the Scillies to shield you from your part in the affair, but I have not spoken of this to anyone, not even to my brothers—nor will I, you may depend upon that. Here the quill pen had paused over the paper, for Bess could not bring herself to repeat to Imogene the vile rumors that were spreading about Stephen—that he was a bigamist, a murderer, a cheat. If I find out more about Stephen’s death, she had written in an unsteady hand, I will let you know, for I know he was as dear to you as he was to me.

  Imogene read the note and fainted.

  All that day she stayed in her room at the Red Lion and wept. That day and the next and the next. Not all of Verhulst’s entreaties—faithfully relayed through an anxious Mistress Peale—would budge her.

  “I have told him you had bad news from England,” Mistress Peale told her nervously on the fourth day. “That a distant cousin in York to whom you were devoted has died in childbirth and that it has given you a migraine. May heaven forgive my lies! He says to tell you that he respects your grief.”

  Imogene, still in her night rail, her legs drawn up in her locked arms and her chin resting on her knees, stared out at the endless blue of the sky over Holland. Her face was drawn and reserved and she gave only the barest indication that she had heard. The letter that had turned her life upside down, now read and reread and stained with her tears, lay at her bare feet. Stephen was gone
. . . gone. She would have to live all of her life without him. Everything that was said to her seemed to be spoken in a kind of nightmarish dream.

  If only I had stayed, she found herself thinking. If I had only insisted on going with him, done anything—flung myself into the sea, forced him to take me with him, perhaps I could have prevented the duel that killed him. She bent her head and drenched her night rail with her tears, for these were bitter thoughts. Her guardian, in a pensive mood, had once muttered, If I had my life to live over. . . . Now at last she knew what he meant.

  Every hour that passed made her more remote. Her body—which refused to eat or sleep—was trapped in Amsterdam, but her spirit had fled to England and memories of Stephen. Once again she felt his every caress, knew the burning passion of his kisses, lost herself in the glow of his turquoise eyes, felt his arms enfold her.

  “Her grief is so strong I am afraid she will die of it,” worried Elise to Mistress Peale.

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” sighed Mistress Peale, who had not been allowed to read the letter that lay at Imogene’s bare toes, and had not been able to wring from Imogene the source of her woe. “I do not know how much longer I will be able to hold the young Dutchman off. He is growing very restive—I do believe he thinks I am keeping Imogene from him! Certainly I cannot think of any more lies to tell him. Grief, you say? For what does she grieve? What is wrong with her?”

  Elise, who had been told simply. He is dead, and loyally kept silent, looked with pity at that straight defiant back across the room. The brilliant light from the casements spilled over Imogene’s cascading golden hair, haloing it. In the delicate night rail her slender figure looked slight and lost. “She will not talk to me about it,” Elise told Mistress Peale sturdily. “But at least she has stopped weeping.”

  “Yes, but now she sits and stares straight ahead of her and ignores what we say! She will not talk to me.”

  “I know, I know,” frowned Elise. “But it will pass.” Behind her, Imogene could hear them talking. And now, through her grief, had come shafts of reality. There were decisions to be made, bitter decisions. And she alone could make them.

  She could not go back to England.

  She could of course linger on in Amsterdam—provided the wealthy Avery family did not send someone to seize her from Amsterdam’s streets and kidnap her and drag her back to the Scillies to answer for her “crime”; such things had happened before and would happen again. She could linger here living on what her guardian sent her. But Lord Elston was old and when he died all his property would be inherited by a nephew who—when she had slapped away his impudent questing fingers that had found their way into her bodice—had developed a deep dislike for her. When he inherited, Imogene’s allowance would be promptly cut off and Mistress Peale summarily returned to the Scillies. After that she would find herself dependent upon the charity of such as Vrouw Schillerzoon.

  Or she could try to find honest work. And that would be difficult, for Amsterdam was a town of fierce guilds that protected their own and kept out outsiders seeking work. She had no special skills, she was not a clever seamstress, or adept at baking. She knew no foreign languages, she did not even know how to milk a cow. She had not the temperament for a servant. Grimly then, she assessed her assets: Beauty—she had that. A good seat on a horse—and what did that matter in a town where all the traffic went via canal? An aristocratic if provincial upbringing—she wore clothes admirably, she was expert in light banter, she danced well.

  It all added up to one thing, and the answer rang through her tired head like a tolling bell: A woman like her really had only one choice: She must marry.

  On the fifth day she waited until Mistress Peale had gone downstairs, clucking, to breakfast, and then rose with decision and dressed. Her mirror showed her a pale, determined face with dark circles under her eyes, which she whitened with ceruse, and added a touch of “Spanish paper” to rouge her pale cheeks. But she was dry-eyed and in control of herself when Mistress Peale came back up from breakfast much perturbed.

  “Your young Dutchman was much exercised that you did not come down to eat—again,” she told Imogene severely. “I told him you still suffered from your migraine, but I could scarce restrain him from sending up a doctor.”

  Imogene brushed that aside. “Mistress Peale, you cannot winter in Amsterdam, your health will not stand the cold.”

  “But—but we are all going home, are we not?”

  “No, you must return to the Scillies, where the weather is mild. Verhulst has already paid for your passage. But—I will not be going with you.”

  “What?” cried Mistress Peale, scandalized. “ ’Tis one thing to excuse yourself from dinner, but quite another thing to excuse yourself from an ocean voyage! Your young Dutchman will hardly relish taking me back to the Scillies and leaving you here!”

  “You will be going back alone.”

  Startled by the expression of sudden pain on Imogene’s lovely face. Mistress Peale’s great girth sank down upon the bed. “What—what has happened?” she faltered. “You did not tell me what was in the letter that upset you so.”

  “Bess has written me that the Lord Constable will take me into custody as soon as I arrive—and doubtless he will torture me also, to make me say I had some part in killing Giles Avery.”

  “In—in killing Giles Avery?” Mistress Peak’s voice rose on a note of hysteria. “But he was drowned at sea!”

  “It would seem he was not. His body has been found and ’tis said he died of a sword thrust. The Lord Constable believes Stephen Linnington killed him—and that I had some part in it.”

  “Then—” Mistress Peale recoiled in horror—“you can never go home!”

  All night, once her first grief was spent, Imogene had been wrestling with that problem. It was true. While the Lord Constable lived she could never go home.

  “I am not going home,” she said quietly, “l am going to marry Verhulst van Rappard, a man who loves me, and go with him to America.”

  Verhulst was delighted that Imogene had changed her mind about going to the Scillies, for he did not relish spending any time in England—Amsterdam was the place! He was more than delighted to be rid of Mistress Peale, although he was resigned to taking Imogene’s dour maid to America.

  Now that Imogene was to remove herself from Amsterdam a married woman, Vrouw Schillerzoon suddenly warmed to them all and offered her big front living room with its shadowy drapes and polished floor, for the nuptials.

  Dryly, Imogene refused. She did not like Vrouw Schillerzoon and she did not intend to start her new life—for that was what she meant it to be, a new life in which she would try to change, mend her reckless ways, and be a good wife to Verhulst—in Vrouw Schillerzoon’s front parlor. To Verhulst’s amusement, she told a startled Vrouw Schillerzoon that she had decided to be married adrift in a flower-decked boat and float down the glassy waters of the canal toward the sea, a bride.

  “You are a romantic, Imogene,” Verhulst teased, but his face was flushed with pride in the proud lovely girl who sat so still beside him, coolly facing down Vrouw Schillerzoon, who was muttering darkly that any girl who chose to be married on a kanaalboot needed a dokter for her head.

  “Perhaps,” Imogene agreed casually with both of them, but she was glad when they took their leave of the affronted Dutch housewife and she could prod Verhulst to tell her more about America. For she must not look back—she must not. Verhulst was her future.

  “I will show you America, Imogene. But you know it will not do, this marriage in a kanaalboot. We will be married on shipboard by the captain of the Kierstede on our first night out. The ceremony can be held on deck, if you like, where the sea wind will blow your hair and ruffle your bridal veil.”

  “ ‘Bridal veil’? But I have not bought one.”

  “I have bought one for you. It is of fine point lace, sheer as a spider web, white as the ocean’s foam—I but quote the shopkeeper, who is something of a poet.”

  A bri
dal veil . . . Imogene felt she was not entitled to a bridal veil, but she could hardly refuse to wear one, since Verhulst had already bought it for her.

  “A marriage on the ship’s deck—yes, I would like that,” she said in a faint voice—and beat back the thought of the white sails beating from island to island in the Scillies, and Stephen beside her on the swaying deck. This marriage would open the door to a new life—what did it matter where the ceremony was held?

  But having decided that, Verhulst seemed in no hurry to board. And had Imogene been less stunned by the news of Stephen’s death, which seemed every day less real to her so that she moved in a kind of unhappy dream, she would have wondered about that. They let the Kierstede sail without them, although its hold would transport many of the treasures Verhulst was shipping to America, and took passage on the later sailing Hilletje—on the pretext that they must see Mistress Peale off.

  Standing on the dock, Imogene watched her crying chaperon waving from the deck—and felt the last bit of England she had known was slipping away from her. “I will miss her, truly miss her,” she murmured, and beside her Elise sobbed into her apron.

  “Come, come,” said Verhulst in some surprise. “It isn’t the end of the world. Mistress Peale will come and visit you at Wey Gat.”

  “No.” Imogene shook her head and dabbed at her misty eyes. “She will never do it. Mistress Peale was seasick the whole way here. She will not attempt a long ocean voyage again.”

  There was a measure of relief in Verhulst’s eyes. “Then I must cheer you up,” he said firmly—and took Imogene on a round of shopping that left her dizzy.

  “I am not going to be presented at Court, Verhulst,” Imogene protested in some amazement when he presented her with three dozen ostrich plumes in assorted colors.

  For a moment his dark eyes went murky and she sensed anger boiling up in him—she had touched his pride. “You will be the wife of a patroon, Imogene,” he said silkily. “Remember that. And we have excellent hatters in America. Your plumes must always be fresh and match your costume.”