“Very well.” Nicolas sighed and rolled out of bed. He paused to stretch his long arms above his head, to let his strong muscles ripple in a display calculated to entice her, to show her what she was missing. He was a little nettled that Erica’s gaze passed over him with casual indifference.
“Breakfast here or downstairs?” he asked, padding over toward his smallclothes, leaning down to pick them up from the floor.
“Downstairs,” she said, surprisingly, rustling into her apricot silk petticoats, smoothing them down around her. “I think I would like for us to be seen together—in some public place.”
He looked up sharply and his dark golden brows lifted. “And why is that?”
“Hurry,” she said, not bothering to answer. The apricot velvet gown was already over her head and she was swiftly fastening the invisible hooks. “You can bathe later. I will go downstairs first so that we will not be seen to arrive together. It is best people think I came in off the street.”
Nicolas nodded, pulling on his clothes. It was his custom to let the women he brought to his bed leave it in whatever manner they preferred. As he watched Erica run a comb briskly through her gleaming fox-hued hair, he wondered what she was up to. Doubtless she would tell him at breakfast.
Moments later Erica had slipped into her cloak and hood. She brushed by him as if he were some chance-met stranger and opened the door. There was no one about and she went through the door like a shadow, with her tall pattens slung over her arm along with her muff as she pulled on her peach gloves. She walked down the hall and at the head of the staircase she paused, keenly eyeing the room below. Finding it for the moment deserted, she hurried down and seated herself at a table by the window in the low-ceilinged common room.
It was there Nicolas found her, easing out of her fur-trimmed cloak and hood as if she had just arrived. He looked out through the steamy leaded panes and noted that it had stopped snowing and that shovels were busy as thickset men in stocking caps and with woolen scarves pulled up around their ears and noses red from the cold, set to work. At least it was warm in here from the crackling fire on the hearth. He seated himself across from Erica in some amusement.
“There is not much choice this morning,” she informed him. “I have ordered you some porridge and—”
“I will take what is offered,” he said dryly and sat and grinned at her. Despite this morning’s disappointment, Nicolas was feeling quite pleased with himself, for it had long been his intention to bed Brett Danforth’s vivacious mistress and he had spent a delightful night with her.
A dark muffled shape went past the window and Erica waved a peach-gloved hand. It was impossible to tell whether the man saw them through the steamy panes or not; at any rate he did not wave back.
“What game are you playing now?” asked Nicolas mildly. “Do you hope by making sure you are seen with me to incite a duel between Danforth and myself? I will tell you now that I do not mind killing him, but it would gain me nothing—there would only be new heirs to be dealt with.”
He was silent as their porridge was brought in pewter porringers with the omate perforated handles so popular with the Dutch.
Erica waited until the serving girl had departed with her tray. Then she said in a quarrelsome voice, “It is not my intent to bring on a duel between you.”
“But some jealousy, perhaps?” he interposed smoothly.
“Some jealousy might be welcome,” she admitted calmly, toying with her porridge. “But I resent your suggestion that I am playing a game. It is you who are playing a game—with me.”
“How can you say it, Erica?” Nicolas’s tone was rich and eloquent and bore a note of surprise. “Especially after last night?” His hand dropped lightly to cover her own gloved one on the table.
An ever so slight frown drew Erica’s high-arched brows together. “All night you teased me about your plans—without ever telling me what they were. Now I demand to hear them.”
Nicolas leaned forward. His wicked blue eyes held a sultry remembered glow as he studied her across the tankards and porringers. “That was not all I teased you with,” he murmured. Indeed he had been surprised by Erica's sophistication in bed. And her ardor—which he admitted with inner candor might have been faked. Erica was born to be a king’s courtesan, he thought—and was not. Just as he was born to be a patroon and was not. And here they both were for reasons of their own in this raw Dutch town on the North American mainland the English had rechristened New York. Adventurer and adventuress—it took one to know one, he ruminated.
“Do not twit me with what I am, Nicolas,” she said indifferently. “I cannot help it—any more than you can.” But her soft lips parted temptingly and she moistened them with a pink tongue as she spoke, even while her amber gaze challenged him. “It was a lovely night. All of it. But it is over now. Tell me what you intend.”
He grinned but he let go of her hand. “But I have already been so generous with my information,” he complained. “For which I paid your brother dearly!”
“I am surprised,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “that you do not avail yourself of the information to dash to Bermuda and wed the girl yourself. It would make good your claim to the property, would it not? In your view? Not in Brett’s, of course.”
He acknowledged that with a rueful nod. “Indeed, I’d follow your advice if someone would but advance me the money, for I find I am sore embarrassed for funds. Hardly a florin do I possess, now that your brother’s through with me—certainly not enough to carry me all the way to Bermuda and there put up such a show as a man must to win a maid’s hand.” He paused thoughtfully. “Of course, if we two could strike up a bargain?”
Erica’s eyes twinkled. “You are actually suggesting—without quite saying it—that I send you to Bermuda?”
“Well, I would be glad to share the proceeds of the venture with you,” he declared innocently.
She threw back her head and gave a throaty laugh. It was a very pretty laugh and a man who had just come in the inn door and was stamping the snow off his boots noted it and resolved to regale his friends by telling them how he had seen Erica Hulft in close conversation with Nicolas van Rappard, and wasn’t that strange, since everyone knew she was Brett Danforth’s mistress, and Danforth and van Rappard were on opposite sides of this quarrel over the land? Which only went to prove that a mare might change riders in midstream.
“Nicolas, I admire your impudence,” said Erica, leaning back. “But I would hardly finance you in a venture to impoverish Brett!” Her voice turned malicious as she cocked her head and shot him a look upward through her long reddish lashes. “And, anyway,” she shrugged, “how do you know that I will not rush straightaway to Brett and tell him everything you have told me?”
Nicolas sat very still. There was no expression at all on his face. “Because your enlightened self-interest will tell you, Erica, that he might rush forthwith to Bermuda and wed the girl himself to ensure his title—and then where would you be?”
“In his bed most likely—if I choose.” Erica’s tone was contemptuous but he saw her color rising a little in her creamy cheeks and knew he had touched a nerve.
“And besides,” he added in a soft deliberate voice, “there is another deterrent.”
“And what is that, pray?” she challenged him.
“That I would strangle you with these hands,” he told her pleasantly, lifting one of them with a negligent gesture as if he were pointing out something in another part of the room.
The smile in her eyes died. The memory of that story he had told her yesterday was still fresh. Erica had no doubt at all that Nicolas had personally drowned young Marrilee’s unfortunate bridegroom. It took one to know one but—Erica had never dealt in murder.
“I will see what I can do to silence Claes,” she said in a more distant tone.
“Send him to some far place,” advised Nicolas. “Madagascar might be a good choice.”
“Claes will refuse to go to Madagascar.” Tranquilly
.
“Get him drunk enough and he will go.”
Erica gave the man across the table a reproving look. “You forget, I have a sisterly affection for Claes. I will not send him out to be murdered by the pirates of Madagascar.”
“Well, at least get him away from here,” said Nicolas irritably. “Or we may both find our applecarts overturned.”
As if goaded by his warning, Erica rose suddenly and Nicolas leaped up solicitously to help her on with her cloak and pattens.
“Will you be needing a coach?” he wondered.
“No, I think I can make it as far as the tavern on foot,” she said with a trace of irony. “Au revoir, Nicolas.” She gave him her hand with a delicate gesture. Her expression turned suddenly roguish. “Look me up again,” she said blithely. "If you win out over Brett—and if you can avoid the hangman’s noose!” Her laughter pealed.
“I shall hope to manage both,” he told her, brushed her hand with his lips and watched her go. And wished again that he had money enough to go to Bermuda himself and secure his claim beyond question. And there was regret for something else in his face too, for Erica in bed had been wonderfully soft and warm and passionate. She had made his blood race as few women had done—and now, as she said, it was over.
He sighed. Erica Hulft was an expensive wench, and he could not afford her. Again he envied Brett Danforth, and hoped that he had managed by bringing Erica into his confidence to spike any chance that Claes might tell Danforth what he knew and that Danforth might go to Bermuda and ruin in one swoop all of Nicolas’s chances to win in the courts what he could not get by other means. Wistfully he fingered the serviceable sword at his side—if only it could be settled that way. But if he succeeded in killing Danforth, new claimants would arise out of nowhere, relatives of Danforth’s ready to step into his shoes and argue the case for ownership of Windgate with Nicolas van Rappard.
For her part, Erica was already outside, leaning against the strong wind that swept this port town, and making her way with surprising speed on her high pattens along the snowy street. Men tipped their hats as she passed, or tugged at their stocking caps and bowed—and then leaned on their shovels for a moment to watch her as she went, and dream for the moment of being a patroon with a stylish mistress like this one.
Nicolas, still at the table and dramming his fingers as he frowned, was not watching her progress down the snowy street, so he had no way to know how determined she looked. Indeed he might have hurried out without his cloak and caught up to Erica if he had known what was even then going through her mind.
She was thinking that Claes was in no shape to travel anywhere, that he was deeper in his cups each day and that he would undoubtedly—since she had refused to finance his drinking himself into an early grave—go to Brett and try to sell the information as soon as he drank up the money Nicolas had paid him for it. It chilled her a little that Claes had never told her about this child growing up in Bermuda with the power to ruin Brett. He might have lied to Nicolas in order to extract money from him, but she did not believe Claes was lying, for she knew he had visited Bermuda once or twice—and the first time he had come back with considerable money. She wondered now if he had blackmailed someone for it—possibly the maidservant, Elise.
Well, there was an answer to her immediate problem, if' not to Nicolas’s problem. She would tell Brett boldly about the girl—she would be vague, of course, she would not tell him where she had got her information, she would say only that it might be true—and it would be a way to mend things between them, which had been going from bad to worse lately, for was she not looking out for his interests? She would tell him so—and warn Claes that she had told him. And, then, if Brett became curious about the girl, she would get him to send her to Bermuda to find the van Rappard heiress. It would be logical enough, for had she not told Brett about the girl’s existence in the first place?
And, then, who knew? A lovely smile curved her mouth. Perhaps it was the girl who would be sent to Madagascar! And reports of her “death” could filter north!
Nicolas, of course, had no inkling of what was going on in Erica’s agile mind. He left the inn shortly, whistling and cursing his lack of funds, but still feeling that he had done what he could. He glanced up at the big snow-covered windmill that overshadowed the town and hunched his cloak around him against the cold. Behind him came the sound of children’s high-pitched laughter, and a pair of sturdy little boys in stocking caps came flying past him carrying ice skates. They were joined up the snowy street by a little girl and her older sister, obviously acting as chaperon.
For a moment Nicolas gave a fleeting thought to the pretty child growing up in Bermuda in ignorance of her vast heritage on the Hudson. He wondered idly if she really had grown up to be a beauty. Then a snowball caught him broadside and he turned with a roar and forgot all about Bermuda and the van Rappard heiress.
If Nicolas could have seen into the future, he would have ignored that sudden rain of pelting snowballs and forthwith strangled Erica Hulft. Or kidnapped her and held her captive—which would have been, all things considered, very pleasant.
But Nicolas could not see into the future and while he warded off the snowballs, Erica Hulft picked her dainty way through the fresh-fallen snow to the tavern and paid her brother’s bar bill. Erica had powers of persuasion that Nicolas lacked—she knew all Claes’s weaknesses. She had Claes—awake now and singing loudly off-key while he drunkenly waved a bottle of Kill-Devil rum at passersby—loaded into a wheelbarrow and carted off to her home. And once there under the suasion of a hot footbath, hot rum, and sentimental talk of other, better days before he had become a drunk and she a wandering jade, she pried from him a bit of information that Nicolas had not.
She learned from Claes that the van Rappard heiress now went by the name of Anna Smith.
The Bermuda Islands, June 1673
II
The Ingenue
Manors and mansions and vast estates,
Every day dressed for a ball!
Yet to be first in her lover’s heart,
Young Anna would trade them all!
With her golden hair tossing like the silver mane of the dancing Arabian mare she rode so effortlessly, young Mistress Anna Smith cantered down the long driveway through dappled sun and shade. She was faultlessly groomed in a dove gray riding habit that fit her slim figure to perfection. A wide-brimmed hat with a silver band, surmounted by tossing gray plumes, shaded burnished gold curls that had been carefully combed and groomed by her personal maid, Doubloon. Her imported gray leather gloves matched her riding habit and a froth of expensive white lace spilled out at her throat and cuffs. Her turquoise eyes, brilliant and deep as the sea off the nearby Bermuda shoreline, were calm and, although only fifteen years old, she bore herself with the self-assurance that became the heiress to mighty Mirabelle Plantation. Behind her down the long drive lay the handsome white stone cross-shaped house over which she had reigned as mistress ever since Mamma Jamison died—and these days, with Papa Jamison away in Jamaica so much, she was effectively the plantation’s sole proprietor. Slaves and bond servants, agents and overseers—all of them answered to the girl who was walking her horse in the heat of a Bermuda afternoon down a long green aisle where leafy branches met overhead. Anna loved this driveway and always lingered here, for in this leafy greenness with the big white house behind her she felt there was all the best of Mirabelle—this and the beautiful forest of virgin cedars that lay up the hill. Before her yawned the tall gates that were always open to visitors, for Papa Jamison’s hospitality was renowned, and around her stretched the broad reaches of meadow and beach, of cane and cedar, that encompassed Mirabelle.
There was reason for the arrogant way Anna sat her sidesaddle, reason too for the slightly haughty lift to her chin. For Anna’s childhood had been spent as the barefoot niece of a bondwoman, Eliza Smith, and now those same hot sands and dusty lanes over which her little feet had scampered were hers—or would be hers one day
, for had not Papa Jamison promised to leave her Mirabelle?
But it was not wills or money or the power she wielded in ruling Mirabelle that preoccupied Anna that June day or made her clear turquoise eyes gaze so dreamily at the big trees passing by.
It was the thought of a lover.
Of course, all the lads who pursued her had something to offer—and had detractions too:
Lance Talbot had his magnificent horsemanship (he was engaging and flirtatious, but lord, he was more interested in horses than women! And besides, her best friend Sue was madly in love with him, which made him off limits as far as Anna was concerned). Broad-shouldered Ross Wyboume had his father’s ships—but any wife he brought home would always play second fiddle to the sea. Bumbling Grenfell Adams, who loved her to distraction and was always composing dreadful sonnets to her eyebrows, had his long lineage and his great inheritance to look forward to—but he would always have his head in a book, Anna knew. And wild young Flan O’Toole, who beyond doubt would fight any man for her—and probably win!—had his tarnished reputation—since half Bermuda believed he had murdered his betrothed—and his desperate background as a reputed wrecker’s son. And Arthur Kincaid had his glamour as a visitor from Boston; indeed the whole island was ago with talk of his wealth there, his enviable position as an only son, what an excellent match he would make for some lucky girl.
Arthur...
Anna’s turquoise eyes kindled.
Arthur Kincaid attracted her. Perhaps it was his novelty value, for he was different from the other young men she had known. Handsome Arthur dressed like a fop and swore like an Englishman and had a mouth half-cruel, half-smiling. Yes, she decided, Arthur was probably the most interesting of the lot. She would turn her horse’s head toward Lilymeade, where Arthur was staying as a guest of his cousins, the Meades. She would be passing by—and find some pretext for stopping.
Rich Radiant Love Page 3