Imogene had tensed. This was the moment.
Then: “Move over, Imogene,” he had said huskily. “There’s not enough room.” And almost collapsed beside her, face down into his pillow.
She had waited, confused and anxious and annoyingly pinned down—for Verhulst’s body, when he fell forward upon the bed, had caught the spreading length of her night rail with his hip and now the fabric lay beneath him, effectively holding her. She was so stunned by his behavior that she hesitated to pull the material out from under him. Could it be that he was disappointed at the sight of his bride in her night rail? Her worried gaze had scanned the silver sheen of her knee, rising from a foam of lace. No, she was sure she must present a desirable picture to any man there in that moon-drenched room. What, then, was the matter? Beside her the steady stertorous breathing remained muffled by the pillow that hid her bridegroom’s face, and his thin figure in the handsome damask nightshirt continued to lie beside her, unmoving.
When the tension in her had mounted to a point where she felt she might scream, she had given the material of her night rail a little tug to wrest it from beneath him and he had lifted his head a little and said in a hoarse voice, “Ye’d best to sleep, Imogene.”
Imogene came back from reliving last night. Elise was speaking to her.
“Then you were up with him all night?” Elise prodded.
Up with him? For all she knew, her bridegroom had slept the night away! Toward morning she had drifted into a fitful sleep, studded by nightmares that had kept her restless and moaning.
“No, no,” she said. “I was not up with him at all. I tried to lie very quietly beside him so that I would not disturb him, but once I turned over in bed and my bare leg brushed his thigh, for my night rail had ridden up and he groaned—groaned, Elise, as if I had hurt him!”
“ ‘Groaned at such a light pressure?’ ” Elise was scandalized.
Imogene nodded and frowned. In her concentration she failed to notice the sweeping bow of an immigrant from Leyden who would later report to the captain with a chuckle that the patroon’s young bride must have passed an enjoyable night—indeed, she had looked quite tired when he passed her on deck this morning!
“This morning I asked him what was wrong,” Imogene told Elise.
“And what did he say?”
Imogene remembered waking up in a tangle of covers and looking through eyes still glazed with sleep at the astonishing sight of her bridegroom, fully dressed and trying to tiptoe out of the cabin. She had sat up with a start, pushing back her tumbled golden hair. The ribbon holding her night rail had become tangled in the bedclothes and with her sudden rise it had broken so that the loosened white fabric had slid down off her shoulder exposing one pearly breast to his gaze.
In the doorway Verhulst had stiffened. “You must cover yourself,” he had told her in a strangled voice. “I am about to open the door.”
"I can see that you are,” she had answered tartly. And then she had asked him what was wrong. Was she not beautiful enough? Did he, who had been so hot to wed, regret his bargain? Did he no longer desire her? She had watched the red rise into his sallow cheeks, heard the slight tremor in his voice as he answered before hurrying from the room. How eager he had seemed to escape her!
She could not tell Elise all that!
"When I asked him what was wrong,” she said carefully, “he told he he was not sure, but that all night he had felt very unwell. And as there is no doctor on the ship, he wishes you to move in with me and he will take your smaller cabin during this voyage. That way he will be able to sleep without being disturbed.” Her voice grew ironic. “It seems I passed a restless night when finally I dropped off to sleep.”
Elise gasped. A groom on his honeymoon demanding separate quarters from his bride? She could hardly credit it! “But if he is so ill,” she protested, “will he not want you by his bedside to take care of him?” She caught her breath as out of the corner of her eye she saw Verhulst himself swinging across the deck toward them in the clear morning light. His costume was unusually striking—for him. For above his usual black velvet trousers he was wearing a black-figured velvet doublet with a yellow silk lining against which the heavy gold chain he habitually wore around his neck glittered. Yellow tassels adorned his wide-topped black Spanish leather boots and yellow ostrich plumes waved gracefully from his wide-brimmed black hat. He looked very fit.
“I am not sure what is wrong,” muttered Imogene, turning to survey her resplendent bridegroom. “But you can be very sure he does not want me at his bedside.” She faced him now with a bright smile, for she had promised herself in Amsterdam that she would be well and truly his mate, that she would forget old loves and be to him all that a wife should be. “Good morning, Verhulst,” she said. “You are looking much better.” Did a shadow pass over his face? Or did she only imagine it?
“I am a little better,” he admitted, “although I fear me the pains may return tonight.”
“Perhaps it was something you ate yesterday? We could speak to the ship’s cook.”
“No, do not do that,” he said crossly, returning the bow of a passenger across the deck. “I do not wish to appear infirm. Come, Imogene, we must meet our fellow passengers.”
So he did not wish to discuss his malady, whatever it was. . . . Imogene fell silent, allowing Verhulst to propel her toward a portly lady and gentleman in dark fustian, who were striding energetically about the deck. With a frightened look at the patroon, Elise drifted away, murmuring that she would remove her things to Imogene’s cabin and replace them with the patroon’s.
“What is the matter with that woman?” muttered Verhulst as they crossed the deck. “She looks at me as if I were the devil!”
“She is seasick,” supplied Imogene imperturbably. “It has damaged her expression. She will be better shortly.”
“Let us hope so. You understand, Imogene—” his tone was low and hurried, for they had almost reached the little group of passengers beaming at the new bride and groom—“these people are of no importance and you will invite none of them to Wey Gat, but during the voyage one must be pleasant.”
Imogene sighed. “I understand, Verhulst—during the voyage.” She met the dazzled gaze of a teenage girl who doubtless was already dreaming of being invited to some great ball given by the patroon—and felt like a hypocrite as she returned the girl’s smile.
Soon she was engulfed in small talk, but Verhulst would not permit her to talk long to anyone. “You must not become involved in their affairs,” he told her privately. “It is beneath the dignity of a patroon’s wife.”
Verhulst’s ideas of a social life were difficult for her to adjust to. Nor did his “health” improve. Imogene slept alone ....
The sea lanes plying between New Netherland and Holland were busy this time of year, and on their twelfth day out Imogene and Verhulst were standing by the captain on the poop deck while he held forth on the difficult art of navigation. Imogene was not listening. The salt wind was blowing her hair and she was studying a fleet and beautiful ship with a golden hull that had come up suddenly out of nowhere and seemed to be pacing them.
Suddenly a shot came across their bow in the sea just ahead.
The captain looked startled and muttered something in Dutch that sounded like a curse. Imogene turned to Verhulst in alarm. “What does it mean, firing across our bow? Is not that ship flying the Dutch flag?”
“It means he wants us to stop,” frowned Verhulst. “And that ship may be flying a Dutch flag but she is a pirate ship all the same. That ship—” he gave her the Dutch name in English—” is the notorious Sea Rover.”
In bewilderment, Imogene turned to the captain, who had recovered his composure and given orders to bring the Hilletje about.
There was a hail from the other ship, and a shouted conversation in Dutch between the two captains followed. Imogene, with the sun shining in her eyes, could not see the Sea Rover's speaker but the sun glanced blindingly off his metal breastpla
te. Was he dressed for battle, then? She felt the general unease that spread through the clustering passengers, who by now had all swarmed out on deck.
She was further bewildered as Verhulst leaped forward, his thin face white with fury. “I won’t do it!” he cried.
To this outburst, the Hilletje's captain gave a chiding answer. “Be reasonable, mynheer. That is a ship of forty guns out there, set to sweep us broadside. If the gunports were to open and the guns to speak, we are all dead men. All her captain asks is that you and I and your lovely bride share a glass of wine with him aboard his ship.”
Share a glass—? Imogene’s mouth dropped open. Speechless, she turned to Verhulst.
“It is that damned pirate, van Ryker,” he explained between clenched teeth. “He intended to make us drink with him in Amsterdam and now he has caught up with us on the high seas—insolent dog!”
Imogene’s laughter pealed with pure relief—and with a hint of malice too, for Verhulst’s neglect had nettled her. In these last moments she had been imagining dreadful things, like being seized by armed men and made to walk the plank. When Verhulst had cried, “I won’t do it!” chills had gone up her spine. “If that is all he wants,” she said blithely, “ ’tis an easy thing to accommodate him and we’ll be none the worse for it save that we may lose a few minutes of sea time.”
“The lady is right,” agreed a tall-hatted passenger who had crowded up beside them. “We must do whatever this pirate wants, else he may blast us out of the water.”
“Yes—we must!” cried one of the Dutch ladies. “I have met Captain van Ryker. If he insists, my daughter and I will accompany you to his ship.” She gave her homely, marriageable-age daughter’s arm a tug. “Stand up straight!” she hissed.
“Captain van Ryker requests only the company of the patroon and his bride—and myself,” sighed the Hilletje's captain—for the lean buccaneer’s popularity with the ladies was well known; not a house in New Amsterdam but would gladly receive him.
“I will have to dress,” stated Imogene, smothering a laugh. “This gown I have on will hardly do for such an occasion.” She looked down at the becoming slate blue velvet skirt that swept away from a tight velvet bodice heavily embroidered in a deeper blue. The bodice had a deep-cut square neck that was chastely filled in with a whisk whose sheerness had distressed Verhulst.
“You will not change—you are already dressed far too well to board a pirate ship,” objected Verhulst testily. “If you were wearing jewels, I would have you take them off!”
“As you like.” Imogene shrugged with a ripple of big detachable velvet sleeves that exposed their ice blue satin lining. She shook out the frosty lace of her full white lawn chemise sleeves that spilled fashionably down from her elbows. “Then I am ready to confront this—pirate,” she declared merrily.
“You are sure you would not feel safer with two other women along?” The Dutch lady’s gaze was on her petulant—but marriageable—daughter.
Imogene managed to keep a straight face. “I feel sufficiently protected by my husband and Captain Verbloom,” she said and watched the lady’s lips tighten. “Well, Verhulst? Captain Verbloom?” She turned to the Hilletje's captain. “Do we go over straightaway? Or do we wait until this impatient gentleman shoots off our masts?”
Captain Verbloom met her mirthful look with some annoyance, for he had a fuming patroon on his hands and several dazzled ladies aboard who would be only too overjoyed to accompany them on this visit to the dangerous Captain van Ryker’s ship. “Now will do well enough,” he growled. “And l will remind you, ladies—” he encompassed them all in his warning—“that Captain Van Ryker and his men may be very popular in New Amsterdam, but now we are at sea.” His emphasis was significant.
“Are you implying they are so desperate for female companionship that they must stop us in mid-ocean to ravish us all?” demanded Imogene lightheartedly. “For they are but recently out of Holland, which teems with willing wenches! Indeed, I would think them to be still resting from their exertions!”
There was a titter of laughter among the women.
“Imogene!” choked Verhulst. His face was scarlet.
Imogene turned to him. “What, would you have me confine my opinions to the weather and the wine?”
“At least do not express them so publicly,” he muttered.
Imogene cast her eyes down demurely. It was the first time on this tiresome voyage that she had truly enjoyed herself. With sparkling eyes she climbed into the ship’s longboat beside her smoldering husband. This was adventure! A sudden gust of wind caught at her hair and as she reached up to keep it from streaming into her eyes, she managed to catch her fingers in her whisk and with a blithe gesture tore it from her throat and let it fly away into the waves. Verhulst made a wild snatch for the whisk and was saved from going overboard only by the Hilletje’s captain, who seized him around the waist and hauled him back into the boat. In horror, Verhulst’s gaze rested on the newly bared expanse of his wife’s lustrous breasts. Why, her nipples were almost showing! He drew in his breath with an angry sob. Imogene, amused by the situation she had created, gave him a sweet, innocent smile. She was beginning to suspect Verhulst of faking his nightly “pains” that kept him from her bed and at the moment she did not care that her young husband looked almost apoplectic. She watched with interest as a sailor from the Sea Rover dived over the side and swam toward the floating whisk.
It would be, of course, too wet to wear. . . .
Captain van Ryker had doffed his metal cuirass by the time they boarded, and handed her on board the Sea Rover with aplomb.
He was, she noted, extremely well dressed, and wondered if that had anything to do with her. He would of course, since sending a shot across their bow, have had time to change into the gray trousers and silver-shot doublet he was wearing. His linens, as in Amsterdam, had a fresh-donned look and the smile he shot her was a brilliant flash of white teeth in his sun-bronzed face. His narrow gaze hardly rested on the snowy gleam of her bosom at all—although heads all around the deck craned with interest, and Verhulst’s sallow face was suffused with angry color.
“Captain Verbloom,” said van Ryker affably. “Mynheer van Rappard and your lovely bride—” he swept Imogene a low bow—“how nice of you to accept my hospitality.”
“Hospitality offered with a shot across one’s bow from a ship of forty guns is hardly to be ignored,” responded the Hilletje's captain dryly.
Van Ryker’s dark brows shot up. “But I sought only to attract your attention,” he said suavely. “You had somehow overlooked my signal.”
A bit of telltale color rose in Captain Verbloom’s cheekbones and Imogene realized that he had deliberately chosen not to return that signal. The captain coughed.
“Can we not get this over with, van Ryker?” asked Verhulst testily. “You have stopped our ship and dragged us over here for some purpose other than to drink our health, I would imagine. And if we linger long enough on the high seas, the Spanish men-of-war will find us and shoot us all out of the water.”
A steely glint appeared in the gray eyes that studied Verhulst and the answer was stern. “While you are under my protection, mynheer, you may rest assured that you will be safe from Spanish guns. And you are right, I did invite you here for another purpose besides drinking your health—although it will be my pleasure to do that too, since I was thwarted of it in Amsterdam.” He turned to the Hilletje's captain. “I had word from a passing ship that there is a Spanish squadron prowling far north of their usual run, perhaps to strike at Dutch shipping from New Netherland. Since you have rashly chosen to sail alone, rather than with a sister ship, it is my intention to give you safe conduct by convoying you myself to New Amsterdam harbor.”
Captain Verbloom was taken aback at being chided for his rashness by a buccaneer but pleased at this surprising offer of protection. “My sister ship broke her rudder at the last moment,” he explained.
“You should not have sailed without her.”<
br />
“Aye, you are right.” Ruefully. “I had not expected Spaniards so far north. ’Twill be a comfort to my passengers to know that we are protected by a ship of forty guns.”
“And now perhaps ye’ll all share a glass with me in my cabin?”
Even Verhulst was somewhat mollified by this mention of a prowling Spanish squadron, for he had no illusions as to their fate if they were gunned down by a passing Spanish ship, and this offer of escort was a handsome one. “The damned Spaniards have no business to claim this western ocean as their own domain,” he muttered.
“Ah, but they do,” was the urbane reply. “And I do not think ye’d like a season of rowing in their galleys.”
“ ‘A season’?” Captain Verbloom seized on that eagerly. “I'm told you had a season of rowing in their galleys, Captain van Ryker. What was it like?”
“Hell,” said van Ryker shortly, and for a moment Imogene glimpsed a wolfish glimmer in the gray eyes and knew why this lean buccaneer hated the ships of Spain. She’d heard stories of agonizing death by torture of English prisoners in Spanish jails—and other slower deaths as galley slaves, chained to the oars of some majestic galleon. So van Ryker had been one of those. ...
The thought temporarily silenced her banter as van Ryker presented the ship’s officers. Together with Barnaby Swift, the ship’s yellow-haired master, and Raoul de Rochemont, the ship’s mustachioed French surgeon, they followed the dark buccaneer captain across a well-scoured deck to his great cabin in the Sea Rover’s stern. Imogene was glad they had been speaking in English for her benefit and surprised and impressed by the ship’s magnificence, for not only did the brasswork glitter from polishing, but the shining table about which the debonair buccaneer captain seated his guests was of solid carved black oak, the seat into which she sank was cushioned in rich garnet red velvet tasseled in gold, and the wine that the cabin boy was even now bringing had the golden gleam of fine Canary.
Bold Breathless Love Page 14
