Bold Breathless Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  With a shock, Stephen realized he was looking into the broad honest face of Willem’s sister, into whose house he had been carried, half-dead of his gunshot wound.

  By now he was fluent enough in Dutch to understand her and even to speak to her haltingly. It was a shock to him to learn from her that Imogene had never regained consciousness in this woman’s house, that she had been carried away unconscious by Captain van Ryker—whose face all in New Amsterdam knew by sight.

  “I am glad to run into you like this,” the woman told him earnestly. “For my brother Willem, for all his other good points, is a liar, and although I insisted that he must tell the buccaneer doctor that the maidservant and the child had sailed on the Wilhelmina bound for Jamaica, I am not sure that he did tell him. Oh, he spoke words in English and the doctor responded, but he seemed so indifferent to what Willem said. Willem had told me that the child was not the maidservant’s but belonged to the unconscious lady—and now if she is not dead she must be wondering where her baby is. When you see the poor lady—” for the good Dutch vrouw never doubted that a man who had risked his life to save a woman would see her again—“would you tell her where to find her child?”

  Her child.. . his child. All of Stephen’s plans for a speedy return to Bess and Barbados went out the window. Even if van Ryker and Imogene had tricked him, he still owed a duty to his daughter—a duty to see her reunited with her mother.

  “I will tell her, mevrouw,” he promised soberly. “When next we meet. Can I carry that basket for you?”

  She shook her head. “Willem would not wish me to be seen in your company, and although he’s gone back to Beverwyck with none the wiser about the whole affair, still—I’ve a jealous husband to think about.”

  Stephen grinned broadly at her heavyset departing back as she stomped away with her heavy-footed gait. He was trying to envision this goede vrouw’s jealous husband!

  But the smile left his face as he thought of what he must do now: He must find Imogene and tell her Georgiana was safe with Elise—and where she could find her.

  The first buccaneering vessel to call at New Amsterdam took Stephen Linnington away when she sailed. He was welcomed on board as a wounded member of van Ryker’s crew, recovered and anxious to return to Tortuga to rejoin his captain aboard the Sea Rover.

  Stephen could not bring himself to write to Bess because he did not know yet what demands Imogene might make on him—suppose she and van Ryker had quarreled again and she wanted to be transported to Jamaica and her child? He would feel obligated to do it. And he could not bear to disappoint Bess by a promise not to be fulfilled.

  So on Barbados, Bess Duveen drooped, wondering what had become of her lover.

  The days, the weeks, went by for Bess. She ran the plantation—she ran it well. She made her appearance as expected at the Governor’s Ball clad in a shimmery sea green silk dress trimmed with forest green velvet ribands, the overdress caught up over a silver-shot foam green satin petticoat. That dress was to have been part of her trousseau—a typical gown for an island colonist, she had told herself, laughing, when she was having it made: For its striking Italian silk and French-made satin had been destined for the American colonies and seized as contraband in mid-ocean by a passing Spanish galleon. The galleon had been sunk off the coast of Cuba in a sea battle with buccaneers who had managed to save the cargo and sold it at the busy international marketplace on Tortuga’s quays. There the lovely fabrics had struck the fancy of a planter from Barbados who had gone there to trade. He had brought them back and Bess Duveen had bought these lengths of silk and satin in the market at Bridgetown. She had enjoyed making up fanciful tales of the origin of her trousseau and telling them to Stephen.

  Stephen ... at the very thought of him her gray eyes filled with tears, as bright as the necklace of diamonds she wore, studded with dark green peridots.

  Now, at the ball, she turned swiftly, fluttering her ivory fan, and spoke to the governor’s lady, who asked her about her plantation.

  “All is well at Idlewild,” said Bess.

  “I am surprised that you are not married,” the governor’s lady told her frankly. “You are so pretty and so well-bred and here in these islands you are a great catch.”

  “You are kind indeed to say so,” smiled Bess, “but perhaps I was not meant to marry.” Her soft voice held a touch of bitterness.

  “Indeed?” Elevated eyebrows met this declaration. “I would not have thought so. “I have a cousin from Yorkshire who has arrived only yesterday from England. He is still very fatigued from the long sea journey, but I could not let him miss the ball. Come, you must meet him.”

  And so Bess met Francis Tourney, a younger son of a Yorkshire squire, and together they danced the night away. Francis was handsome and eligible and quite taken by Bess. And having commented in some surprise on the sumptuousness of her gown (for he had been assured in England that he would find Barbados a savage land and very out of fashion), he was astonished and delighted at her rambling tale of the fabric’s history.

  “Bought with blood and gold,” Bess told him frankly as he whirled her around the governor’s ballroom. “As are most of our goods in these islands!”

  “My father has offered to buy me a piece of land here,” Francis told her. “For I am a younger son and must make my own way.”

  “Then you have come to a good place,” said Bess heartily.

  “And I will be glad to tell you all I know of running a plantation—for I have had to learn the hard way, by the doing of it!”

  Her forthrightness and good sense intrigued him. Here was no simpering Court lady, knowledgeable only of pomades and gossip—nor was she a backward provincial as he had been led to expect the ladies of Barbados would be. Here was a woman who could discuss with enthusiasm horseflesh and trading rights and shipping and the price of rum! He determined that very night that he would offer for her hand—for he felt toward Bess a kinship that he had never felt toward any woman—he felt that it would be good to spend his life beside her. Good and refreshing and joyful.

  He kept Bess laughing with his quips, his stories of English life—all of which seemed very droll to him and elicited a bittersweet homesick response from Bess. She felt drawn to him and told him eagerly that Mill Oak was for sale, for Robert Milliken had developed the gout and had decided to go back to England. It would be good, Bess told herself, to have this charming fellow for a neighbor, and she could help him get started—indeed, with no knowledge of these islands, he would need a friend!

  But in spite of Francis’s gallantry, she could not keep her thoughts from Stephen Linnington, and when Francis asked how she managed to run her estates, unmarried as she was, she said, “I had a factor to run them for me. Now that he is gone I—I do not know how I will manage.” Her voice held a wistful note that went straight to Francis’s heart.

  “There, there,” he murmured, touched by her quiet beauty, her sweetness, her interest in everything—and her obvious need of assistance, which appealed to his hearty masculinity. “We will find a way.”

  But Bess at that moment was not seeing Francis’s ruddy face before her—she was seeing Stephen’s. “Oh, yes,” she agreed, lifting her chin defiantly. “I will find a way.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Not until lmogene insisted on being put aboard a Jamaica-bound ship did van Ryker tell her—and then reluctantly—of Elise’s and Georgiana’s fate. She was stronger now and he hoped she would be able to bear it.

  For a long time she was utterly silent. She sat with her head bowed, utterly still, so quiet he thought she had not taken in what he was saying. Then she lifted a white face in which the eyes were dark pools of horror.

  “Oh, God,” she said, looking out into a vista of hell, an imaginary landscape in which a burning ship, blasted by cannon fire, went down, down... a vision torn by screams and littered with dying people, some of them afire and throwing themselves overboard into waters where dark fins darted in and out to feast.... “And I though
t Verhulst would follow them, that it would be Verhulst who might endanger them. I never thought—!’’

  “Verhulst is dead,” he told her. His intent was to comfort her, for he had had the news of the Dutch patroon’s death and the monuments he had erected to Imogene and Stephen, from the captain of a passing ship who had sailed from New Amsterdam. “He can no longer pursue you. You need have no fear of him.”

  “Verhulst is—” She turned on him a look of pure horror. “Verhulst too? You mean I have killed them all? For without me, none of this would have happened. They would all be alive today if it were not for me. Oh, Georgiana, my little Georgiana—I knew you such a little time...” Her voice broke and she collapsed in a paroxym of weeping, her body swaying in misery.

  “’Twas not your fault.” Van Ryker made an awkward gesture to comfort her, but she recoiled from him.

  “It was! It was!” she cried passionately. “All of it was my fault. If I had not borne Stephen’s child, if I had not married Verhulst—oh, let me alone, I cannot live with it!”

  If I had not borne Stephen’s child... That caught him up sharply; somehow it had not occurred to him that the child was Linnington’s. A former lover, he had thought him—but not the father of the child. He had assumed the father to be Verhulst. It put a different light on the whole thing.

  Unable to watch her grief, he strode from the cabin and paced, with his head bent, up and down the moonlit deck, struggling with his own tumultous thoughts. He was captain of a great ship, master of dangerous men, and Linnington was far away. He desired this woman as passionately as a man can desire a woman; his need for her burned into his very soul. And had he not—as surely as Linnington—snatched her from the jaws of death? Raoul had believed she would never wake. But he had refused to admit defeat. During the long cold nights he had lain beside her, he had spoken words of encouragement into her ears—words he never knew if she heard—he had rubbed her wrists and exercised her frail body and sponged her perspiring forehead and forced food and drink down her throat and bathed her and held her and cared for her as tenderly as if she were a babe. In the silence of his great cabin in the pale featureless dawn, he had risen from the table where he had been morosely drinking wine and gone and knelt by her bunk and silently prayed to the God he had forsaken to grant him this one favor—to give Imogene back her life.

  He had made promises to that God, promises that, in the harsh light of day had made a wry smile cross his mouth and brought back bitter memories of the days when he had cursed God for letting the Spaniards seize and destroy his father while grief ate away his mother’s life. He had promised in those dark and watchful hours when he guarded Imogene that he would give up this freebooter’s life—if only he could have this one woman, alive and well and in his arms, his to hold and love forever.

  And now he had been forced to bring her this tragic news....

  Evening found him elegantly clad. He would entertain his lady at a private dinner in the great cabin, he would take her mind from sorrowful things.

  She did not even look at him as he entered—or at the elegant gray and shot silver garments he had so carefully donned. She did not see the emerald ring that sparkled on his finger or the diamond of price that was thrust carelessly through the Mechlin at his throat. Her gaze never even passed over the shining dark hair he had so carefully combed or the clean-shaven jaw from which he had carved every whisker. She was not near enough to smell the faint scent of musk from the chest in which his garments had lain, or the light masculine scent of Virginia tobacco that permeated his doublet. She did not even raise her eyes. Her head remained sunk on her chest and she studied her hands, endlessly twisting her fingers together.

  At least she had stopped crying, he thought, relieved. “Come,” he said heartily. “You must eat. And here is a repast that should please the most particular.” He indicated the food the cabin boy had brought and left upon the table; it looked very tempting.

  “Why?” she responded with a listless shrug. “Why must I eat?”

  “So that you will gain weight.” He was urging her to the table as he spoke. “You are too thin for my taste.”

  She let him seat her in the chair he pulled out, but her lips twisted. “Does it really matter, van Ryker?”

  “It does to me.”

  She lifted her head and gave him a haggard look. “I cannot eat. Food would choke me.”

  His heart went out to her. “Try,” he urged.

  But she only toyed silently with her food, pushed it away at last. “No, I cannot.”

  He waited, suffering with her, respecting her grief, and feeling jealousy gnaw at him that part of that grief was for his rival, Stephen Linnington. He drank his wine and smoked his handsome pipe and watched her, wishing he could find a way to comfort her. If only she would cry, if only she would let him hold her in his arms and sob it all out on his shoulder....

  But her proud white face was drawn and distant. She kept her hands clenched tightly in her lap.

  Suddenly she looked up and her blue eyes were swimming with tears. “I would like to be alone now, van Ryker.”

  He rose at once. “I will be on deck if you need me.” Her indifference told him she would never need him. Van

  Ryker left, feeling dejected. He stood alone on deck in the moonlight, wondering what he should do now. Was there no way to help her through this? It was a windless night. The sails slapped listlessly and a silvery ocean lapped against the hull of the ship. All the world seemed to be waiting...

  After a time he heard a noise and turned. Imogene had come out on deck and was making her way toward the ship’s rail. The air would do her good, he thought, moving toward her on silent feet almost without conscious volition.

  When she reached the rail, he was close behind her. Wrapped up in her sorrow, oblivious to the world, she did not see or hear him. And although it hurt van Ryker’s heart to see her shoulders drooping so, he hesitated to make himself known in this hour of private tragedy.

  She was leaning over the rail now, far out—too far out! She was going over! Van Ryker leaped toward her with a hoarse cry and caught her around the waist, dragged her back. She did not resist him. She might have been a rag doll in his arms. She made no more effort than a dead woman. Even her eyes were glazed with sorrow. Haunted eyes.

  For a moment he stared down at her, drenched with cold sweat and shaking at how close a call it had been, for through the silvery phosphoresence of the water he had seen dark fins moving, prowling—sharks. He had a sudden harsh vision of Imogene falling listlessly into the water and those dark fins converging in an instant. He saw a sudden silvery flash of open jaws, jagged teeth, a rending while the sea turned red. He shook his head to clear it. Imogene was here in his grasp and he was trembling, so great had been his fear for her. With a great effort he stilled that trembling, swept her unresisting form up in his arms and carried her back to the great cabin, set her down upon a chair.

  “That was a daft thing to do, ” he said gruffly. “Leaning far out over the rail like that. You were falling in when I caught you! Couldn’t you see, there was a forest of sharks out there—and ’twas on you they’d have been feeding had you slipped from my grasp.” He was careful to make it sound like she’d been going over the rail by accident, not by design. And he meant to scare her, so she’d never try that again—for it is a different thing altogether to consider death by sinking quietly beneath clear silvery water or being tended by a slithering field of sharks. But his words made no impression on Imogene. Instead of being frightened, she looked up at him queerly.

  “Why did you save me?” she demanded. “Couldn’t you see I wanted to die? Don’t you know I’ll only do it again, sometime when you’re not looking, sometime when you’re not there, sometime when your back is turned?” She turned her head away from him.

  Van Ryker had been bending over her. Now he straightened up and brushed his hand across his forehead. Droplets of water from the cold sweat that had seized him at her nearness to de
ath flipped from it and danced against the light. “Life is all you have,” he said roughly. “ ’Tis all anyone has. I’ve given you back yours; the least you can do to reward me is to hold onto it.”

  She turned to him with a wild feline gesture.

  “Oh, can’t you understand?” she cried in a heartbroken voice. “It’s because of me they all died—my baby, Stephen, Elise, even Verhulst! It is as if I were a scourge, a curse upon the world! I should die myself, I deserve to be punished!” Her hands balled into fists and her eyes closed as her voice rose almost to a wail. “Can’t you see, I want to die! I killed them all. I’m responsible. Oh, God, van Ryker, don’t stand in my way—I’ve nothing to live for!”

  In consternation he stared at her, this woman for whom he would so willingly give up his life. In astonishment he saw her rise from her chair and try to dart past him out of the cabin—on her way to the rail again, doubtless.

  He tossed back his damp dark hair with a flick like a whip and in one stride he had intercepted her. His strong fingers seized her arm in a cruel grip and swung her back to face him.

  “Nothing to live for?” he roared. “I’ll give you something to live for, Imogene!”

  He dragged her back and this time flung her not into a chair but upon the bunk. He kicked the door shut with his boot, tore off his boots individually and tossed them across the room.

  Imogene watched him, paralyzed.

  “This night ye shall find a reason for living,” he promised her through his teeth.

  Even as he spoke he was ripping off his handsome clothes—his shot silver doublet, his gray trousers, his full-sleeved cambric shirt with its ruffled cuffs. Stockings, boothose, garters all vanished as if by magic. The frosty Mechlin left his neck so violently that the lace tore and the diamond so cleverly caught in it fell to the floor and rolled away like a drop of water, glimmering as it went.