Rich Radiant Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  They had all come upstairs together after their snack, with Erica lighting their way with a candle held high. Erica had lighted the way to Georgiana’s room and would have waited while Georgiana entered, to light Brett to his, but that Brett said quietly, “I’m stopping off here. Erica.”

  If there was a double meaning in his words, Erica appeared not to catch it. She was gone, on down the hall, tossing them a blithe “Good night” over her shoulder.

  Georgiana half expected Brett to go on through the connecting door to his own room, but he did not. He stood watching her.

  “I think I’ll sleep in your room tonight,” he murmured, for he had noted the torment in his bride’s eyes and guessed that Georgiana’s suspicions might have been aroused by the midnight rendezvous in the dining room that she had chanced upon.

  Staying in her room, was he? Georgiana’s senses quivered, but any yearning she felt was overcome by a sense of indignation that he had been trysting with Erica downstairs while his wife presumably slept!

  “As you like,” she said indifferently. She crossed the moonlit carpet and flung herself into bed, turning her back on him. “Good night,” she said, her voice muffled by the pillow.

  “Good night?” he echoed, and to her annoyance he sounded amused. His voice grew caressing. “I had thought your late night snack might make you wakeful?”

  “Well, it hasn’t.” She tried to sound sleepy, and managed only to sound childishly resentful.

  “No? Well, I’ll just sleep here tonight anyway,” he said companionably, sliding into the bed beside her.

  Georgiana was very aware of his long body, only a breath away. She hardened her heart.

  “Good night,” she said again. Firmly. Before he could gather her into his arms, before he could begin making love to her, before he could work his magic to still her wild thoughts. She felt shaken, bruised by what she had seen and heard, but at the moment being held in Brett’s arms would not reassure her. She lay beside him, stiff and still, until the sound of his even breathing assured her he was asleep.

  After that, she tossed and turned. Every word she had heard spoken downstairs was grinding and searing through her mind. Erica’s passionate: Nothing has changed... this marriage need make no difference between us! It gnawed at her.

  When Brett had had time to think about it, what would his answer be?

  There was no sleep for the island beauty that night and she rose restlessly as dawn was breaking.

  Brett, who had waked as she left the bed, was lying on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, watching her.

  “You’re rising very early,” was his mild comment.

  “I have a guest to speed on her way!” snapped Georgiana.

  Brett made no rejoinder. Instead he watched her with a steady gaze as she flung things about, muttered angrily when she could not find the petticoat she wanted and finally, in a rare temper, threw her shoes across the room.

  “Jealousy of what’s past will avail nothing,” he said at last.

  She turned on him, barefoot and trembling with anger. “How can I know it’s past?”

  That steady gaze now held a steely light. “Because I tell you so, Georgiana.”

  She bit back the words that rushed to her lips, words to accuse, to condemn. “I must go downstairs and supervise breakfast,” she said in a muffled voice, found her shoes and left the room.

  At the top of the stairwell she heard a light step behind her and turned to see Erica, fully dressed and wearing a sweeping hat decorated with orange plumes that were outrageously close to the color of her fox-burnished hair. Unlike her hostess, who was a trifle pale and grim. Erica seemed blithe as the morning. In her gold-laced orange brocade gown, which fit her enticing figure as if a man’s hands clasped it, a gown that swirled out into rustling brocade skirts over a burnished gold satin petticoat, she was a sight to turn any man’s head.

  Looking at Erica, Georgiana regretted having dressed so hastily “I did not dream you would be astir so early, Erica,” she said with forced politeness.

  “I am equally astonished to find you up,” smiled Erica, “since brides have a habit of sleeping late.” She was drawing a pair of orange kid gloves over her slender hands as she spoke. “Indeed, I had thought that Brett, who rises early, might be up to bid me Godspeed—but this is more than I had hoped for.”

  The subtle irony of her tone brought a flash to Georgiana’s turquoise eyes. “Well, since we are both up, you must stay to breakfast,” she told Erica crisply. “I am sure Brett will be down shortly—to bid you Godspeed.” The irony of her tone matched Erica’s and Erica’s brows shot up. Making a great effort to be civil, she added, “Your sloop’s schipper will no doubt be glad of the respite.”

  “Seylns, our schipper, is a dour man,” sighed Erica. “He eats alone.” She dimpled for she had been about to add, “He sleeps alone too now that his teenage mistress is no longer our stowaway—that is why he is so dour!” And what would this virginal bride from the islands think about that?

  “Well, this morning Seylns may share our breakfast.”

  “How kind of you,” murmured Erica, rustling downstairs beside her hostess. “But I doubt Seylns will accept. I imagine he will already have broken his fast.”

  But Seylns did accept. With alacrity. Having missed dinner last night in Windgate’s big kitchen on orders from his employer’s intended bride to stay aboard at all costs, she might be leaving suddenly, he relished the thought of sugared cinnamon pancakes and fat sizzling sausages in the big dining room at Windgate—the glories of which he had heard. He hurried up the slope, all smiles, refuting Erica’s comment that he was dour.

  Georgiana, still clad in the simple blue gown she considered a most unfortunate choice against Erica’s startling finery—but a gown that brought out the turquoise of her wide dark-fringed eyes and complemented the heavenly gold of her hair in a way that made Erica study her irritably—presided over her long table with grace. Seylns, Govert’s schipper, was enchanted by her. He sat back expansively, filled with pancakes and good will, and spun her sea stories while Erica raised her brows in annoyance.

  Brett could barely conceal his amusement and prodded the fat schipper into further endeavors. Georgiana listened politely, her mind but half on what Seylns was saying, but Erica gave Brett a black look.

  They were about to rise from the table when a messenger arrived. Brett spoke to him in the hall. When he came back to the dining room, his face was grave.

  “It seems there has been a murder in one of our northern bouweries,” he said. “The neighbors accuse the wife of complicity and say her lover did the deed. The wife pleads innocence and claims a passing Indian fell into a quarrel with her husband. I had best look into it.”

  That meant he would be sailing north alongside Erica’s sloop!

  “Can you not send for the sheriff?” cried Georgiana.

  “Doubtless I will send for the schout soon enough. But first I owe it to the dead man, Michaelius, who was my tenant, to look into the matter myself. I may be away two or three days, Georgiana.”

  He was moving toward the stairs as he spoke and Georgiana threw down her napkin and hurried after him. She was conscious as she passed of the convulsed amusement Erica Hulft was hiding behind a gloved hand.

  In the bedroom, where Brett was preparing rapidly for his journey north, Georgiana confronted him. Hands on hips, both feet planted, and full of suspicions that he had somehow contrived this so that he might be alone with Erica on the river, she cried, “Must you sail north with that woman?”

  He seemed surprised and looked up from pulling on his boots. “I will not be aboard Govert’s sloop, Georgiana. I am taking the River Witch north.”

  “It is the same thing! Sloops pull up easily along riverbanks and exchange their passengers!”

  Brett gave her a long slow look and stood up. He seemed to tower over her and his answering tone was hard. “You may come along if you like, Georgiana, although you are like to fin
d it an unpleasant journey, full of briers and thorns once we leave the sloop and turn inland.”

  Blazing with jealousy, she yet refused herself the comfort of going along to make sure that, once out of sight, the sloops did not pull alongside so that Brett might sweep Erica over the side of the River Witch into his arms.

  She would maintain at least a semblance of dignity!

  “I have too much to do here,” she said loftily. “I wish you joy of your journey!”

  “Doubtless I shall have it,” said Brett ironically. “Although what joy there will be in comforting a weeping woman and trying to learn whether or not she killed her husband, I’d not be knowing!”

  He tossed a russet cloak over his shoulders, stuck a couple of pistols into his belt and strode away downstairs. Georgiana, feeling angry and rebuffed, followed the clatter of boots in his wake.

  She walked down the steep slope with them, for she told herself that it would be the height of rudeness not to tell her unwanted guest good-bye at the landing—but she knew in her heart that she was making sure that Erica did not somehow depart on the wrong sloop!

  The two craft departed at almost the same time, for Brett’s cheerful Dutch schipper was always in readiness and kept the River Witch at the ready for his master’s whims.

  Once before, just as she had in Bermuda, Erica Hulft was looking at her from a departing ship, with triumph written all over her beautiful face.

  Georgiana waved to Brett from the wooden pier and watched the two sloops pacing each other upriver until they disappeared. Then, blindly, she turned and ran back up the slope to the big empty house, up to her bedroom where she threw herself on the bed in a paroxysm of weeping.

  Brett was gone, making his way upriver with tempting Erica within easy reach. Gone a couple of days, he’d said. Anything could happen in a couple of days, she told herself passionately.

  Lying there in tears, she felt betrayed.

  But being the kind of woman she was, she did not lie there long. She jumped up and rubbed a kerchief across her wet cheeks and stared out the window at the beautiful Hudson, the river the Indians had called The River that Flows Two Ways.

  Did Brett’s heart, like this river, flow two ways? Toward Erica Hulft in one direction and toward herself in another? And if so, was not the answer to make Brett jealous? Why should not her own heart bend two ways—toward Brett her husband and toward debonair Nicolas van Rappard?

  And she would see Nicolas at the ten Haers’ ball!

  With anger sparkling in her turquoise eyes, Georgiana made her plans.

  But each day’s passage was irksomely slow with Brett gone. Georgiana tried to learn Dutch ways and Dutch words, she consulted with the seamstress who was trying with some difficulty to remake a heavy velvet dress from the sea trunk Brett had given her aboard the Dame Fortune, she supervised the cleaning and making up of the bedchambers in case they should have unexpected guests—and she moved the furniture about.

  “We must clean behind each piece,” she insisted. “Heaven knows when it was last done!”

  “Even that?” They were standing in Georgiana’s bedchamber and Linnet looked in awe at the seven-foot-wide armoire of solid cedar that rose to towering heights above them.

  Somewhat daunted, Georgiana stared at the armoire. Since most of the furnishings were heavy and carved, she had already enlisted the services of a straining Wouter and one of the stableboys but the weight of this gargantuan piece looked to be beyond them.

  At that moment a moth chose to fly out from behind it.

  “Even that,” she said firmly.

  “ ’Tis a massive piece,” sighed Wouter when she told him she wanted it moved to the other side of the room. And enlisted the aid of yet another stableboy.

  With maddening slowness, the three of them moved the heavy piece, for they had no doubt of its value and since it was not only richly carved but gleaming and polished, they knew they must take exceeding care.

  And to everybody’s surprise, once the armoire was moved a door was uncovered—a door that not even Wouter had known was there. When Georgiana opened it, another shock met her. It was, she saw, an anteroom. Elise must have slept here in the days when this had been Imogene’s bedchamber. But now it was full of trunks and when the trunks were opened, they revealed women’s clothes.

  Looking at the rich laces, the gleaming satins and velvets, the gold and silver tissue and stiff brocades—all of it heavily scented with lavender—Georgiana marveled. This trove must have belonged to her mother—to Imogene! Verhulst must have put them in here to get them out of his sight, all these reminders of his golden woman—and he had barricaded the door with that great heavy wardrobe lest in his grief he be tempted to seek again the things she had worn and touched.

  How he must have loved her, Georgiana thought, awed. And for the first time she pitied the young patroon who had held her mother prisoner in this big echoing house, and who had not long survived her.

  She felt tears sting her eyelids as she bent over these things that her mother’s fingers had touched, these rich and delicate fabrics she had chosen, these elegant clothes she must have loved—and for a long, sighing moment Georgiana felt that Imogene, the wild young mother she had never known, was there beside her.

  “I think we have moved enough furniture now,” she told Linnet hoarsely. “Thank Wouter and the stableboys and tell them cook has a big pasty waiting for them to share in the kitchen.”

  She was still bending over the trunks, bemused, as the men’s footsteps died away.

  “Help me bring all these things into the bedchamber, Linnet,” she told the girl when she came back. “I want to try them on and see if I can wear any of them.”

  As it turned out, she could wear them all. Although she was about two inches shorter than her mother, so that the gowns now swept the floor, they fit her figure admirably. Some, she realized regretfully as she paraded before the tall pier glass while Linnet marveled, were quite out of style now. But some with only the slightest alteration could be worn.

  She tried on all but the wedding gown. That she touched with reverence and laid away to rest in its white, lavender-scented loveliness. Her turquoise eyes were brooding as they fingered the elaborate white satin brocade encrusted with seed pearls, the petticoat of shimmering white silk, the delicate gloves. Her mother had been as young as she when she had worn this—and as filled with dreams.

  She would not disturb those dreams now. Silently she laid the dress away.

  “I’ll wager if Erica Hulft had known these things were here, they wouldn’t be here now!” Linnet’s cheerful voice broke in on her moody thoughts.

  Erica.. .in the excitement of finding her mother’s things, Georgiana had forgotten Erica.

  “I don’t doubt you’re right,” she agreed dryly. And, then, to banish Erica from this day of discovery, she pointed out to Linnet one of the loveliest of her mother’s collection of ball gowns. “I think this one would be perfect for the ten Haers’ ball, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” sighed Linnet, stroking the heavy Chinese gold satin of the dress Georgiana had chosen. Although neither of them knew it, this was one of the dresses that had made Verhulst van Rappard call Imogene his “golden bird of Amsterdam.”

  With its heavily embroidered lemon satin petticoat and the special chemise, obviously meant to be worn with it, made of fragile white lawn with big puffed sleeves that spilled a spidery web of white lace caught up with golden ribands, it was dreamily beautiful. Georgiana, trying it on and marveling, could almost feel she was touching her lovely doomed young mother, who had worn this dress before her.

  But in the back of her mind hovered the thought that if she wore this gown to the ten Haers’ ball, even sumptuous Erica Hulft would not outshine her!

  Brett returned and Georgiana, who had spied his sails from the window, promptly retired to the kitchen to consult with cook until she was sure he must have reached the house. She did not intend to ran out and meet him, she would not run ou
t to meet any man who had left with his sloop pacing Erica’s!

  When she could not find him downstairs, she went up to her bedchamber, intending to act surprised at seeing him. She found him standing in the newfound door to the anteroom. He whirled as she entered.

  “What’s this?” he demanded.

  “We found it when I had the armoire moved over there.” She nodded toward its new place, bitterly conscious that he had given her no real greeting.

  Brett was looking about the anteroom, puzzled. “Verhulst must have blocked it,” he muttered. “I wonder why? What did you find in here?”

  'Nothing but those trunks of clothes,” said Georgiana, coming up behind him. “They belonged to my mother and I think he must have walled them up because he couldn’t bear to look at them after she was drowned—they reminded him of her. I imagine Elise slept in here—it’s large enough. You can look inside the trunks if you like.”

  “No, I’ll leave that to you,” said Brett restlessly. He ran his fingers through his hair. “Georgiana—” he began, and stopped.

  She looked at him inquiringly.

  “Is supper ready?” he asked. “I’m starved.”

  She was sure that was not what he had meant to say, and said “almost ready” and waited, but he did not enlighten her. She did not ask, for she was half afraid that what he had to say concerned Erica. It made her manner toward him cold at supper but Brett did not seem to notice. He was reserved, distant, preoccupied.

  No sooner had the dishes been cleared from the table than Georgiana announced that she had a headache and went upstairs to bed. Brett did not follow her. He stood moodily, staring at the fireplace. She was not even sure he heard her crisp "Good night.”

  Once in bed, Georgiana waited tensely for the sound of his footsteps in the hall. When at last she heard them, she hastily pretended sleep. She noted that he paused at her door before going on into his own room. He had “looked in on her,” no doubt! But he had not—as she was sure he would have before Erica Hulft’s visit—come in and quietly joined her in the big bed.