Bold Breathless Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  “The iceboat struck you.”

  “Where is Stephen? He is hurt—I must go to him!”

  The anguish in her voice strengthened van Ryker’s resolve. He frowned. “I am afraid you cannot. He was hurt badly. Raoul said there would be no chance for him at all aboard a lurching ship. We left him with a family named Culp.”

  “In New Amsterdam? And sailed away? But what will he think? That I deserted him?”

  Van Ryker hardened his heart against this soft outburst. He reminded himself that he wanted a clear field. For this was the woman he desired above all others—he had to have her.

  “Linnington was dying, Imogene. We had no choice but to leave him there.” He sighed, hating himself for this deception. "He gave his life for you, Imogene.” One could afford to be generous with a fallen foe, he told himself grimly!

  “Oh, no!” She put her hands over her face and sank back with a little cry, then started up, eyes staring. “But my baby? What of her? What of Elise?”

  “Willem told Raoul they sailed on the Wilhelmina, bound for Jamaica.”

  “I must go to them!” She would have sprung up but he stayed her.

  “All in good time. You are not yet well. Now that you are conscious I will carry you on deck where you can enjoy the sun.

  Enjoy the sun ... a sun Stephen would never enjoy again. A sob caught in her throat as memories wrenched her, as she remembered how gloriously the sunlight had glinted off his copper hair and sparkled in his bold eyes. She had lost him ... twice. But—her chin lifted tremulously—he had come back from the dead to save her from Wey Gat and she would carry that knowledge with her to her grave. Listless now, she let van Ryker carry her to the deck. She gave no thought at all to the lean buccaneer who lifted her as lightly as a glass of wine and strode on deck with her, to deposit her, well wrapped up, in a hastily arranged hammock.

  “When we reach more southern waters, we’ll arrange a thatch over this hammock as a sunshade to shield out the sun’s more blinding rays,” he told her with a smile.

  Imogene did not answer. Her thoughts were far away—he wondered if she heard him.

  “I will leave you now,” he said, looking down with pity into her sorrowful eyes. She closed them and he saw tears squeezing out from under her lashes. Tears for Linnington! Van Ryker’s jaw hardened and he turned around and moved away with rather more energy than was necessary. He hated himself for hurting Imogene, he hated himself for lying to her and yet—jealousy gnawed at him. It was even possible that he had told her the truth, that Linnington was dead—after all, Raoul had said he might die. Stonily van Ryker faced the truth—he wanted Linnington dead so there would be no competition for Imogene’s affections.

  In his jealousy, it did not occur to him that he was enthroning his rival in Imogene’s affections. Van Ryker had only offered her his cabin—Stephen had given his life to save her. To an emotional woman like Imogene, the difference was clear. Lying there on deck she thought about the two men and it seemed to her that all of Stephen’s actions were noble—and all of van Ryker’s base.

  True, Stephen had deserted her in the Scillies, but from the kindest of motives—he was trying to shield her from being implicated in Giles’s murder. True, he had not written, but that too was from the kindest of motives—in hiding, he had undoubtedly heard of her marriage (and of course, he could not have known about that garbled tale of his death in a duel that had reached her!) and had no wish to intrude upon her supposed happiness. But when he learned from Bess Duveen of her real circumstances—here Imogene’s heart leaped—he had rushed to save her... and given up his life in the doing of it.

  Tears stung her eyelids and slid down her cheeks.

  Van Ryker, on the other hand, had toyed with her affections. Although she was reluctantly grateful for the care he had given her, she could not but think of him with a kind of contempt. He had assailed a married woman with a shipboard romance and she—reckless fool that she was, bored and disappointed with her loveless “honeymoon”—had responded by flirting with him. She had almost driven the dangerous captain too far, for he had thought to kidnap her from the Governor’s Ball and she had only driven him off by telling him she was in love with Verhulst. His desertion had been different! To him she had been only a plaything, a passing fancy—sweet to hold in his arms since she was there, unimportant when she was not. Resentment stirred within her, for it seemed to her that van Ryker had proved that by simply disappearing from her life. He had never sailed upriver to see what had become of her, never written to inquire of her welfare. It must have been public knowledge that she had tried to escape her husband—surely van Ryker could not have missed hearing about it when he made port in New Amsterdam. Yet he had made no move to save her—not until his aid had been actively sought! It did not occur to Imogene that van Ryker had shunned New Amsterdam in an effort not to wreck her marriage and spoil her “perfect” happiness—indeed, she would have been incredulous had that been suggested.

  Yet she knew guiltily in her heart that she would indeed have gone away with the buccaneer if he had sailed the Sea Rover upriver and dared the guns of Wey Gat as he had threatened to dare the guns of Fort Amsterdam in her behalf. She would have become, without a second thought, a buccaneer’s woman—and she was deeply ashamed of that, for now it seemed a treachery to Stephen, who had loved her so devotedly. Steady as the North Star, Stephen had never veered in that devotion, she told herself. And now because of her he lay dead in some foreign place. And she was to blame.

  Van Ryker had lusted for her, but Stephen—Stephen had loved her.

  Now her old resentment born of the buccaneer’s “desertion” of her led her to indifference toward him. Of course she was beholden to van Ryker for taking her away from New Amsterdam, where Verhulst’s agents might have found her. She would recompense him with her jewels. She wondered with a sudden stab of bitterness how many light loves he had held in his arms since professing his love for her!

  Ah, what a difference there was between them: Stephen the constant, the godlike—van Ryker of the shifting heart.

  Van Ryker would have been astonished to know that he had brought this about: Unknowingly, by that single lie, he had crystallized Stephen’s position in Imogene’s heart. Had she known Stephen was alive she would have thought of him as mortal and having human failings. She would have looked forward to seeing him again but she would have begun to wonder why the tone of his first note had seemed so cool—something she had not questioned in her extremity at Wey Gat. She would have asked herself why he had stayed away so long, how the story had come to circulate that he was dead. And she would have remembered how attracted she had been to the lean buccaneer.

  As matters stood, that feeling of attraction now seemed unworthy of her, base—a betrayal of Stephen.

  Unwittingly, van Ryker had arranged his own undoing.

  He did not leave her long on deck, but even that short time seemed to tire Imogene. Gently van Ryker carried her back to the great cabin. He ordered a tray sent in, explaining that he could not eat with her, for drifting debris from some wreck had fouled the rudder and he was needed urgently on deck. When he came back the food was still untouched and Imogene sat beside it, bent over and rocking with misery.

  He was stabbed into remorse by the sight. “Would you like to retire?” he asked gently, for she had not stirred from the chair she had requested.

  “Where?” She lifted her head and looked around her without interest.

  “Here,” he said, indicating the bunk.

  He had expected her to look startled and protest, but she said only, “Is this where I have been staying?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have been sleeping here? In your bunk?”

  “In the circle of my arms,” he said steadily, and when she would have spoken, he raised his hand to silence her. “It was all quite platonic, I assure you. Raoul had given you up, but I was determined to make you live. I warmed you with the heat of my body—” his voice grew husky—
“bathed you, fed you.”

  And all for lust! She sighed. “Poor van Ryker, too bad it was all for nothing.”

  “You will grow less despondent as the days go by. All things pass.”

  She gave him the shadow of a mocking smile and settled back into her grief.

  Restless, he stood a moment in indecision. Then he began to strip off his clothes: his belt, his leathern breeches, his shirt. He was astonished that she made no move to protest. Soon he was peeled down to his smallclothes and stood before her barefoot, clad only in his underdrawers. She seemed not to see him, handsome animal that he was. He studied her with a frown. “Now that you no longer suffer from chills and fever, I will sleep there.” He indicated a position across the door.

  “Why?” she asked indifferently.

  “Imogene, this is a buccaneer vessel,” he told her patiently. “There are reckless men aboard—men who would give their lives for a chance at a woman of far lesser beauty. Knowing that you hovered between life and death gave you a certain safety but now you have appeared on deck and all have been reminded of your beauty. For your protection, it is my intention to lie with my body against the door. Any slightest effort to open it will wake me and I will defend you instantly.”

  Her eyes fell before that calm direct look. Van Ryker was guarding her like crown jewels—she who no longer cared what happened to her.... She was silent as he helped her to the bunk.

  “If you need me,” he told her in a low vibrant voice, “I am here. You may ask anything of me, Imogene. Anything.”

  She shrugged dolefully, her head still sunk upon her chest, her bright hair spilling down over her slender shoulders. She looked so young, so hurt, so defenseless, it was all van Ryker could do not to sweep her into his arms and whisper passionate words of love into her ears, to tell her that she would forget Linnington, that he, van Ryker, would care for her and her child, that her life would change, would brighten, that she need do nothing—that he would accomplish all this, that for her he would do anything, anything.

  But he fought back that urge and having deposited her in the bunk, pulled the curtain across it. For himself he never used that curtain, but Imogene, now that she was better, would appreciate the privacy.

  That night he slept rolled in a blanket on the hard floor of the cabin with a naked sword beside him. For his crew had seen her beauty on the deck this day and even fragile as she was—for she had hardly begun to bloom into her old self—hers was a beauty to stop a man’s heart. And van Ryker had pledged himself that no harm would come to Imogene—not while he lived!

  PART TWO

  The Golden Lover

  A toast to the man who can never say no

  To a woman's tempting smile,

  To the fellow who’d fling his life away

  Just to be with her... a while ...

  The Sea Rover, 1659

  CHAPTER 28

  The Sea Rover's voyage from the Carolinas to Tortuga threatened never to end. It was a series of calamities. First a sudden gale stripped the sheeting from the Swallow, then she fouled her rudder and they had to stop and make repairs. Then another gale swept them back toward the Carolinas, and there they chanced upon a foundering coastwise vessel, victim of the storm. They rescued her crew, taking them aboard the short-handed Swallow for the run to Tortuga, after which they would be free to go their separate ways.

  From a member of this crew they heard some news that caused van Ryker and Raoul to look at each other in consternation. The crew member reported what was by now general knowledge, that the Wilhelmina had run into a Spanish man-of-war off the Great Bahama Bank. Two good broadsides and she’d been shot out of the water. The Spaniard had raced on after another merchant ship that had dared to invade the “Spanish” waters of this western sea and left the crippled Wilhelmina to her fate. She had burned to the waterline, and sunk with all hands.

  “Imogene is not to know of this,” van Ryker cautioned Raoul.

  “But you must tell her,” insisted Raoul, ‘it would come better from you than from some chance stranger who might tell her an appalling tale of how fire consumed the ship!”

  Saddened, van Ryker agreed. He was almost sorry now that he had told her Linnington was dead, for it would serve to magnify her tragedy. Of course, she had recovered beautifully from that—on the surface, of course; who knew what scars she carried in her heart?

  For there was one bright spot in all this. Imogene had begun to eat, every day she grew stronger. She had inner strength. That first night after van Ryker had told her of Stephen’s death she had stared dry-eyed at the dark ceiling above her bunk and told herself she must not cry for Stephen—she had Stephen’s child to think about. Georgiana was what counted—she must grow strong so that she could take care of her. By the end of the week her color had returned and she had begun to look like her old self.

  Van Ryker heartily approved this change. He welcomed her to table with his ship’s officers and they rapidly became very fond of her, especially young Barnaby Swift who secretly fancied himself a poet and composed silent sonnets to her when he was on watch. These dinners were festive affairs, meant to divert Imogene—for all knew of the loss of the Wilhelmina, something Imogene herself did not know as yet. The ship’s officers dressed for these occasions as though for some ball, they raised their glasses in gallant toasts and their voices in merry song, hoping to win a smile from her—although van Ryker cautioned them all about tiring her too much. This admonition was greeted with pity—and with envy.

  “Never was a man so besotted by love,” muttered Raoul.

  “Never was there such a lady,” sighed Barnaby, who was privately composing an ode to Imogene. “Who can blame him?”

  While Imogene was fighting for her life against the fever, Stephen’s wound had healed rapidly—whether from the “Indian medicine” of leaves and bark or from his own strong constitution none could tell. The Culps had scrupulously kept their word to the buccaneers and had shown their gratitude by making it clear to their prying neighbors that this was a wounded man from the ship that had brought Johann home—they owed it to Captain van Ryker to do their best for him. Since Stephen was housebound while his wound healed, and since Culp prudently gave him a new name—one that made Stephen laugh, “John Sawbones”—no one associated Culp’s boarder with the copper-haired Englishman named Linnington for whom an empty coffin had been buried so ceremoniously at Wey Gat.

  “And you’ll oblige me by tying back your hair and putting on these leathern breeches and this apron,” Johann Culp told him. “For now that ye’re up from your bed, ’tis best ye look like a tradesman turned buccaneer lest somebody remember ye and all hell break loose!”

  Stephen had long since told them the whole story, but the loyal Culps were sworn to silence out of gratitude to van Ryker. In turn, they had told Stephen the stories that had circulated about New Amsterdam—stories of the Governor’s Ball and how Imogene had slapped Captain van Ryker’s face and everybody had thought they were having an affair, stories of her attempts to escape the patroon, and how it had been whispered that the lean buccaneer would come and take her away from Wey Gat but, surprisingly, he never had.

  To Stephen it was all too clear: van Ryker had fallen in love with tempestuous Imogene—as who would not? But somehow they had quarreled and he had sailed away. Perhaps she had tried to contact him and failed. A nasty suspicion now flitted through Stephen’s mind. No matter how he tried to push it away, it seemed to fit the facts.

  Van Ryker valued his trade with the Dutch burghers; if he kidnapped a patroon’s wife, he would be denied that trade—therefore the buccaneer had needed someone to do that task for him. Van Ryker had known Stephen was going to Barbados; Bess Duveen had written to Imogene from Barbados. It was not impossible that Imogene and the buccaneer had mousetrapepd Stephen Linnington to snatch her from Wey Gat and bring her downriver where her buccaneer lover was waiting. No matter that van Ryker had seemed surprised to see Stephen or that he had questioned him—that
could have been a cover-up, a sham, so that Stephen would never know he had been used. In any event, van Ryker had promptly seized Imogene and sailed away with her. Had it been prearranged? Stephen was inclined to think so. And although he recognized that he had a responsibility to Imogene and her child, he could not but feel a tug of bitterness. Imogene was a woman he had held in his arms and loved for a season—she might at least have left him a note. Granted, she’d been unconscious when he saw her last, but she could have penned something ahead of time to leave with him, or sent him some word by now. ...

  So reasoned Stephen Linnington, unwilling to accept at face value the recent happenings at Wey Gat and New Amsterdam.

  He sighed. At least, van Ryker’s ship’s doctor had left him in a secure place to recover—of course the buccaneer captain had owed him that, he told himself grimly, for had he not gone to Wey Gat and brought his woman to him?

  As he recovered from his wound and began to walk again, he took Culp’s advice and wore—although it went against his aristocratic grain—tradesman’s clothes. He shunned the taverns where he might be recognized, and claimed to have been a carpenter before chance and necessity had made him a buccaneer. None doubted his claim. And because he was bored, he spent his time learning Dutch from the Culp family.

  And all the while, Imogene was bitterly mourning his death and scorning van Ryker for not “measuring up” to the glorified memory she had of Stephen.

  On a blustery spring day Stephen was out walking—he called it exercise but he was actually strolling out of curiosity to see the new stone house that Peter Stuyvesant had built only last year. He was passing the parsonage of Domine Bogardus and admiring its silver door knocker when a strongly built woman carrying a basket blundered into him. The impact caused her to drop her basket of tulips and when Stephen bent to pick up the basket and she looked into his face, she fell back a step and gasped in Dutch, “But it cannot be—Willem said the buccaneers took you aboard ship with the woman and sailed away!”