“I have heard your story of course—as by now all on the river have heard it: how the maidservant Elise Meggs fled with you, somehow escaping death on the ice, and managed to keep your identity a secret even from you. A romantic story.” His gaze rested on her mildly.
“I suppose it is a romantic story to one who did not live it,” Georgiana agreed shortly. “But I was too young to know what was happening. All I remember is growing up in Bermuda.”
His alert eyes held a flash of understanding. “Yes, many events seem romantic to those who do not have to experience them.” He sighed. “I had hoped to hear the story from your own lips?”
Georgiana’s mouth closed rather tightly. Instinctively—although his manner was kindly enough to lure her into trustfulness—she was afraid of Nicolas.
Wouter came and went from the dining room. A little maidservant brought more rolls. Outside, the rain beat down, chattering against the windowpanes.
Across the table Nicolas’s pensive voice goaded her. “Perhaps, if I heard it as you would tell it, you could even persuade me to withdraw my suit?”
“I doubt I could persuade you to do that,” said Georgiana bitterly. “The lavishness of this house and the extent of Windgate’s land must be a tremendous incentive to lay claim!”
“You are a woman of rare understanding,” Nicolas admitted, and she realized suddenly that his leisurely gaze was traveling rather more intently than seemed justified over the bare expanse of her white neck and bosom, that he was studying the depth of her neckline and the tempting cleavage there with fascination.
Under that hot caressing gaze, Georgiana moved restlessly. “Perhaps I am speaking too plainly, mynheer. It is not hospitable of me. You must forgive my lapse.”
“Hospitality you have already given,” he said with a magnanimous gesture. “Truth would be an even greater gift.”
Was there an implied threat in his words? Certainly his tone was mild and there was no change in his bland expression.
“And what truth do you seek, mynheer?” she asked bluntly. Nicolas leaned forward. The candlelight made his blue eyes brilliant—and hard. She had not before realized how hard. “I seek to know a little more of the lady who vanquishes me. Is that so difficult to understand?”
No, she supposed it was very natural. In his place, she might have felt the same way. She tried to relax. “What is it you wish to know, mynheer?”
“Just that you tell me of your early life so that I will understand how you—a patroon’s daughter—came to be lost for so long.”
“I was not washed overboard,” she told him ironically. “I was presumed drowned when the Wilhelmina was fired on by a Spanish warship, burned to the waterline and sank. Nobody in New Netherland knew at the time, I suppose, that the ship had made an unscheduled stop in Bermuda to take on fresh water. It was there Elise Meggs—whom I knew as Eliza Smith—brought me ashore.”
“All that I knew already. And this Eliza called you—what? ‘Georgiana van Rappard’?”
“No, she called me ‘Anna Smith’ and passed me off as her niece.”
“I see. Why would she do that? Did she not realize that the patroon your father would pay a large price to have you back?”
“I think she felt the patroon would have her head for taking me away from him,” said Georgiana slowly. “For she was my mother’s old nurse and when my mother—” she hesitated.
“Ran away with her lover,” Nicolas prodded in a soft voice. Georgiana stiffened. “If you have come here to insult my mother—” she began hotly.
“Forgive me, I meant no offense.” He raised a hand laughingly to fend her off. “But all along the river know the story of how the lovers fled together by iceboat and were drowned when the ice gave way beneath them. Indeed, there was an eyewitness—one Schroon, who gasped out the account with an Indian arrow draining away his life.”
Georgiana had not known about Schroon. ‘‘An eyewitness who saw the iceboat go down?” she faltered.
Nicolas nodded. “I am wondering how Elise—this Eliza Smith who brought you up—managed to make her escape when the others died.”
“I do not know,” said Georgiana truthfully. “She never told me.”
“Then how"—he leaned forward—“did you discover you were daughter to the patroon of Wey Gat?”
Neither noticed that he had slipped back into calling Windgate “Wey Gat.” Both were rapt in concentration.
“I learnt it from—from my husband.” Georgiana’s voice trembled.
“Ah-h-h-h.... I see. You learnt it from a fortune hunter. Then the woman who brought you up never told you any of this?”
Fury washed over Georgiana. “I also learnt it from a letter she left me!” she flashed. “And how dare you call Brett a fortune hunter?” Too late she realized what she had said. She caught her breath as across the table Nicolas van Rappard’s smile deepened. He looked positively cherubic.
“Ah, so now we get to it! There is a letter! Excellent! Might one be permitted to see it?”
That incriminating document! Anna cursed herself for having thrown caution to the winds as she spoke out in defense of Brett. That letter could well destroy his chances!
“I have misplaced it,” she said coldly. “It may have been lost in the hurried packing for the journey north. But I assure you there is a letter and it names me as Imogene van Rappard’s daughter—and none could know better, for Eliza—Elise as you call her—was there when the baby—when I—was delivered. She nursed me as a child even as she had nursed my mother back in England in the Scilly Isles. Eliza kept all this from me because she feared—” No, she could not say Eliza feared some harm would come to her, Georgiana. What harm would a man do his own long-lost child? “She feared what might happen to her for having aided my mother in her flight,” she finished.
“And so poor Elise lived in abject terror of my Cousin Verhulst all those years,” Nicolas mused. “Well, I am told he was a man to be feared.”
“Obviously.”
“But”—his gaze was tranquil—“at some point she did sit do»n and write it all down for you?”
Georgiana swallowed for she saw the trap Nicolas was laying for her. “No, she did not. She dictated her story as she lay dying. Someone else wrote it down for her and she made her mark to sign it.”
“Who wrote it down?”
Georgiana shrugged irritably. “Some minister—long gone. I was a small child at the time. Do not ask me to remember these things very clearly for I cannot.”
That genial smile played over her again. “I had heard Elise Meggs could neither read nor write,” he admitted.
Cold hands seemed to caress her. She must tread warily with Nicolas. Suppose she had tried to brush him off by simply agreeing when he asked if Elise had written it down? He would have trapped her neatly!
“What kind soul did you say wrote it down for her?” he wondered.
“The minister. His name I’ve forgotten. He took down what she said on her deathbed and witnessed it.”
Nicolas looked pensive. “A deathbed statement—yes, that would have some force. And when she died, you rummaged among her things and found it?”
“No,” choked Georgiana.
“No,” he agreed. “For Elise Meggs died while you were still a child and if you had known of your great inheritance then while you were penniless you would certainly have told someone, would you not?”
He knew too much! Erica Hulft must have made exhaustive inquiries about Anna Smith in Bermuda—she must have discovered all these things and told Nicolas!
“She entrusted her dying words to the minister who witnessed the paper and instructed that it be delivered to me on my wedding day!” snapped Georgiana defensively.
“And why did he not apprise you at once of the contents, since it was obvious you would be a great heiress once the facts were known?”
“He was sworn to secrecy!” cried Georgiana. “Eliza had made him take oath on it and he honored that oath!”
; Nicolas, who had been leaning forward, fell back and cast a mystified look at the ceiling. “Now why would Eliza do that?” he puzzled. “The woman was dying, Verhulst could not hurt her, he was long dead—”
“Eliza did not know he was dead!”
“All right, granted she did not know Verhulst was dead. That is almost worse. Since her death would put her beyond Verhulst’s reach, why would she not at that point have returned you to him so that you could assume your rightful place in the world?”
His logic could not be faulted. Georgiana felt smothered. “Remember, Eliza was dying,” she said steadily. “She had lived in fear of him for so long she may not have thought of that.”
“H’mm,” he said thoughtfully. “So this minister who witnessed the document gave it to you?”
“No, he had left the island. It was his successor.”
“His successor?”
“Mr. Cartmell, the minister of St. Peter’s Church in St. George.”
“And Cartmell gave you the letter in advance, knowing that you were to be married in New Orange?”
Georgiana had the uneasy feeling that all of this was going to be checked. “Brett and I had an earlier wedding ceremony in St. Peter’s Church,” she admitted. “Mr. Cartmell officiated. Afterward he gave the letter to Brett. There are witnesses who saw Brett leave with the packet!” she finished in exasperation.
“The packet?” Nicolas looked fascinated.
“Packet,” she repeated woodenly. “I am neglecting my duties as a hostess, mynheer. Will you not have some more of the capon? Or some of this river shad? I am sure you will find it very tasty.” She had let her own food grow cold but she went hurriedly on, urging on him ham and rolls and vegetables—anything to keep him from interrogating her further, for she felt she was getting mired in deeper and deeper. Nicolas seemed to sense her reluctance and desisted. He took ample helpings of everything she offered and ate thoughtfully.
Suddenly he looked up. “You have set my mind at rest on many things, mevrouw, but I am still perplexed about one thing. How did you live, all these years in Bermuda? Was this Elise Meggs—this Eliza Smith as you knew her—independently wealthy?”
Georgiana stiffened. “You know as well as I do that Eliza Smith was a servant,” she told him haughtily. “She supported herself in Bermuda as any servant must—she took employment.”
“Employment?” he echoed.
“She bound herself.”
“So you were supported in Bermuda by a bondswoman, and yet a story has reached me that you were wealthy there, that you wore fine clothes and cut a dashing figure on your horse. You were accepted as the daughter of the house on a plantation called Mirabelle.”
Erica Hulft had undoubtedly told him that!
“That is true. The Jamisons of Mirabelle had lost their only child. They brought me up after Eliza died and treated me as their own daughter.”
“Then you are twice an heiress?” he murmured.
Georgiana shrugged and urged on him more wine. She had no doubt that even now a ship was hurrying to Bermuda to find out all about Anna Smith’s recent past—and they would learn much! But she at least did not have to supply the information.
“These candlesticks that you see on my sideboard were a gift from Samantha Jamison for my dowry,” she told him ironically, and had the grim satisfaction of seeing Nicolas’s eyes widen.
“A lavish gift,” he commented. “They must be worth a king’s ransom!”
“I don’t think of them in terms of money,” said Georgiana quellingly. “They are dear to me because they were at Mirabelle and had been part of Samantha Jamison’s dowry when she was wed.”
“Will we be seeing something of these Jamisons?” wondered Nicolas.
Georgiana wished she had not spoken. “No, they are both dead.”
“Then you have already inherited from them?”
“Mynheer, you ask too many questions,” said Georgiana crisply. She wished in her heart that she had cut off this conversation long before this. “Guest or no, this inquisition is beginning to weary me. You see the candlesticks before you, I have told you my story. Let us make an end of it.”
“True, you have told me your story.” He gave her an indulgent smile. “But, then, Brett is such a resourceful fellow, and a man of such wealth as might sway others to—” He let the words drift off, leaving the subtle implication that Brett might have purchased the witness, purchased the candlesticks.
White-faced at his implication, his hostess rose. “Stay where you are,” she told him menacingly. “I will settle this conversation in a way that even you will find hard to refute, mynheer!”
She left him looking mildly astonished and went upstairs. When she returned she was wearing the gold and sapphire ring that had belonged to Imogene.
“With your thoroughness, mynheer, I am sure you must have not only a list of all the furnishings and linens in this house but certainly a list of the jewels Verhulst van Rappard gave his wife!”
Nicolas gave a pained, deprecating shrug, indicating that this might be so.
“Then I think you will recognize this,” she said ruthlessly, flashing the stone at him. “It was my mother’s. But in case you do not, I suggest you read the inscription.” She tore off the ring and tossed it onto the table.
Nicolas caught it as it bounced. “You are careless with a valuable stone, mevrouw!” He was turning the ring over in his hand.
“My patience is at an end,” she cried. “Read the inscription!” Nicolas held up the ring and squinted his eyes to read the inscription by the light of the candles. “To Imogene, my golden bird of Amsterdam,’’ he read.
“There is one other word you have omitted from the inscription,” Georgiana told him in a chilly voice. “That word is ‘Verhulst.’ This was in the packet!”
Nicolas looked again, squinting. When he looked up his gaze was suddenly very sharp, very penetrating. “This is but one of her jewels,” he said in an altered voice. “Cousin Verhulst showered his bride with gems.”
“I know.” The journal had mentioned that, bewailing a man who would give gifts of gems but never the gifts of trust, of comradeship, of confident abiding love.
Nicholas leaned forward, his blue eyes intent upon her face. “You mean you have the van Rappard diamonds?” he demanded incredulously. “It was presumed they went down when the iceboat sank into the Hudson!”
That brought Georgiana up short. Her mother had been vague about the jewels Verhulst had given her, as if they did not much matter to her—or as if other things mattered so much more. She had never once mentioned the van Rappard diamonds. She would have to tread more carefully, she saw.
“You are to presume what you like,” she said loftily. “I only brought you this ring as proof because you claimed kinship with me!”
“But you do have them?” he prodded.
Georgiana thought it safer to stick to the truth. “No, I had only some lesser pieces my mother had given Elise,” she said honestly
Some of the tension seemed to go out of the man before her. Silently he handed her back the ring. “I think I owe you an apology, mevrouw.” His voice was bland; she did not trust it.
“I think you do! But in any case you have given me a headache. I will bid you good night, mynheer.”
“Nicolas,” he corrected her imperturbably.
Georgiana brushed that aside. She did not feel she had arrived at a first name relationship with this irritating Dutchman. “Linnet, my maid, will show you to your room,” she said stiffly. “I trust you will rest well. A hot bath will be brought up to you shortly. And breakfast will be brought to your room in the morning—myself, I do not rise till noon.” A lie, but a useful one for she did not want to see Nicolas van Rappard on the morrow. If tonight was any sample of his zeal, he would have a whole new batch of probing questions for her then!
Nicolas saw he was being dismissed. He rose with alacrity. “I am sure I will be most comfortable, mevrouw. Although I wish,” he added plai
ntively, “that you would call me Nicolas and let me call you Georgiana, since it seems we are blood cousins.”
Georgiana gave him a baleful look. “It will take time for me to feel close to you, mynheer,” she said in a cutting voice. “Perhaps a lifetime!” Her velvet skirts swirled as she turned to take her leave.
“Nevertheless, I bid you good night—Georgiana,” he called after her. “It is my hope that we shall be good friends.” He sounded quite happy. “Perhaps the weather will be so inclement that I will not be able to ride back?” he added hopefully, inclining his head to listen to the patter of the rain as he followed her to the stairs. “Then we might enjoy lunch together?”
On the stairway Georgiana turned regally. “If the weather be foul or too muddy for you to attempt the ride downriver, you will be delivered to the ten Haers’ by sloop, mynheer—I shall leave word with the schipper of the River Witch that it be done!”
“Dismissed, dismissed,” he chuckled, his admiring gaze enfolding her like a blanket. “And dismissed by such a beautiful lady. I could imagine you clad in gossamer silk—”
“Good night, mynheer,” she told him firmly.
“Good night. Until the ten Haers’ ball, Georgiana!”
Georgiana ground her teeth as she fled up the stairs. She hoped she had seen the last of Nicolas. Still, insufferable as he was, there had been an appreciation of womanflesh gleaming from those sparkling blue eyes and merry devils danced invitingly in his smile. A man who might sway many a woman—not such a one as herself, of course!
Chapter 11
Georgiana had a hard time falling asleep, for the harrowing thought occurred to her as she got into the big square bed that she should not have told Nicolas that the ring was in the packet, for Brett had acquired that ring thorough Erica Hulft’s brother and might not Erica have known about it—and told Nicolas? If so, she must invent some new lie and brazen it out!
She awoke with the whole thing preying on her mind and saw that the rain had stopped and the sun rode high in the heavens. A deep sense of relief stole over her—her unwelcome guest would now be gone, either by horse or, if the terrain was too muddy, the River Witch would have taken him away.
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