Rich Radiant Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  Swiftly he dressed—it was an easy business since, in order not to frighten shy Mattie, he had worn most of his clothing to bed. Mostly a matter of donning boots and blade and saffron-plumed hat.

  Having clapped on his hat, he lingered, considering the young girl on the bed. So trustingly she lay there in the dawn’s first pinkish light. He must remember to tell Klaus to have her waked in an hour or two, so that if Arthur recovered earlier than expected from last night’s drugged wine, he would find Mattie beside him and never suspect in whose arms she had spent the night. He considered waking her himself and giving her what was left of the powder he had put into Arthur’s drink last night, so that she might use it on Arthur again to gain a night’s peaceful sleep the next time Arthur turned nasty. But he decided, on thinking about it, that Mattie would not use it, she would not risk hurting anyone—not even a vicious brute like Arthur. She was too gentle for that.

  He frowned. It hurt him to think that he was returning her to Arthur, but return her he must.

  He cast a last look about him, making sure he had not left anything that would incriminate Mattie if Arthur should later check out the room. It occurred to him of a sudden that this was the same room in which he had seduced—or been seduced by?—Erica Hulft the night he had told her about the existence in Bermuda of the van Rappard heiress. That might even be the same red quilt that covered the bed. But it never occurred to Nicolas to compare Mattie’s shy ardent warmth with Erica’s worldly passion.

  He smiled gently at Mattie. She was sleeping like a baby, curled up in a childish crouch, with one arm outflung and her long thick hair spread out like a skein of rippling brown silk across the creamy linen of the pillowcase. The hem of her night rail had ridden up around her neck—that neck that had worn so briefly his diamond pendant—like a ruff. An inch or so of bare skin showed between the tumbled white froth of her night rail and the red quilt, which he had drawn around her against the cold. She looked small and helpless and vulnerable and very, very young.

  He picked up her flowered dressing gown, which had fallen unheeded to the floor, and laid it carefully across the foot of the bed, and for a wild moment he wished he could stay with her—pick a quarrel with her young husband, run him through with his blade, and scoop up Mattie and take her with him. The thought died aborning. This night of sighs had been a totally new experience for him, but Nicolas van Rappard had other fish to fry upriver.

  He gave a last lingering tender look to the girl on the bed and stole out, softly shutting the door behind him. But he was thoughtful as he left, clattering downstairs into the common room that was just coming awake as sleepy servants scuttled about carrying mops and pails and trays of fresh tankards.

  Georgiana had awakened his gallantry, his sense of a better life waiting for him out there somewhere. But this brief bittersweet interlude with little Mattie had given him an inkling of what it might be like not only to win a woman but to love her, really love her. Forever, without a thought of self.

  Nicolas did not tarry in New Orange that wintry morning, but made his way quickly upriver by the first sloop that would take him, to resume his stay at the ten Haers’ handsome Dutch farmhouse. And if a pair of soft brown eyes had haunted his journey up the Hudson, he shook off their influence the moment that Haerwyck was sighted. He arrived at the pier his usual jaunty and confident self and swung off the sloop smiling broadly at all about him, for now he felt that he had stumbled upon the right weapon to win for him possession of Windgate.

  Her name was Linnet.

  Part Two

  The Naive

  It is a sad heartbreaking joke

  That words of love were all he spoke

  When all the time, if truth be told

  His thoughts unswerving were on gold!

  Windgate on the Hudson,

  Winter 1673

  Chapter 26

  Winter had closed in on the Hudson River Valley. The trees that graced the bluff at Windgate were barren now of leaves; only a few hickories behind the house kept a tattered remnant of their summer foliage against the bleak gray sky. The woodchucks had burrowed into the hillsides to sleep the winter away and the beaver were cozy in their winter quarters in the quiet already ice-laden ponds and cold streams, even the raccoons had left the big trees for their rocky dens. Even the odd snapping sound of the wood borers at work in the trees had slowed to a stop in the winter chill.

  The first snow had fallen on the valley and all at Windgate were in a fever of preparation for the costume ball that was to be held on Thursday. Invitations via river sloop had gone out to all those on the ten Haers’ guest list and many besides, and feather mattresses were being shaken and fluffed and trundle beds rolled out in preparation for the large crowd that would descend on Windgate two days hence.

  In a shallow pond behind the house the ice had hardened smooth as glass and several of the servants had been out to try it on wooden skates. Brett had offered Georgiana a pair with handsome metal runners and she had accepted them in some trepidation, for ice skating was an accomplishment she could hardly have been expected to pick up in sunny Bermuda.

  Plainly he expected her to learn.

  Georgiana waited until he was occupied in the office and went out and tried it. With Linnet to spur her on—and indeed to lean upon for she found her ankles, unaccustomed to ice skating, were weak and tended to collapse—she gamely made it across the pond to collapse, panting, on the snowy opposite bank.

  “And to think I promised them ice dancing!” she wailed. “There’ll be no hope of my joining them. And I thought it would be so easy—like any other kind of dancing!”

  “It is easy,” insisted Linnet, who hailed from Yorkshire and had skated since she was a tot. Her mother had been the best skater on the River Swale and had taken joy in instructing her small daughter—and Linnet had profited by it and become a flying butterfly on skates. Now, on a pair of skates carved out of bone, she whirled away from Georgiana into a perfect figure eight, swooped backward across the ice with one foot raised in the air and made a graceful recovery with a sweeping curtsy before her astonished mistress.

  “I can hardly believe it,” said Georgiana, her breath making a white fog before her in the cold air. “Linnet, you are a wonderful skater!”

  “I won a pair of earbobs for best skater in my village the time we held the frost fair, ” admitted Linnet, flushed with pride at Georgiana’s wonderment. For a moment her eyes were haunted by the remembered flash of skates on English ice, and the wild and beautiful country of the North Riding flashed through her mind. It was on a day like today that she had won her earbobs at the frost fair. She had been fifteen and apple-cheeked and deliriously happy at winning. And a young gentleman in scarlet—at least she had thought him to be a gentleman at the time; he had turned out to be something less, a roving gambler from Lincoln but one step ahead of the law—had scooped up the exultant winner as his prize and dazzled her with his wicked laugh and merry sallies. He had swooped her away to an inn where she had drunk deep of unfamiliar rum “to warm her” and waked alone and confused in a big bed minus her virginity, with a constable dragging away the protesting gentleman in scarlet and with the frowning innkeeper demanding she pay him for the night’s use of the room “now that her lover had gone.” In the ensuing scandal, Linnet’s betrothed, the young son of a dairy fanner on the Swale, had promptly broken their engagement, her stern Puritan employers had dismissed her, her angry father had turned her out—and Linnet had ever since instantly distrusted any man garbed in scarlet; she felt they were deceivers all. Homeless, angry, confused, without money, Linnet had drifted to the coast, worked at odd jobs for poor pay, drifted southward. She had been working as a tavern maid in Kingston upon Hull when a Newcastle trader, his ship blown into the mouth of the Humber during a gale on its way to the colonies, had seen her bright face smiling at him over his tankard of ale. Expansive and drunk and wanting to impress her, he had told the rosy-cheeked Yorkshire girl of the glories of New York, �
�a veritable London with palaces rising.” Linnet had listened scoffingly, but she was tired of tavern life with its rough talk and surreptitious pinches on the bottom. She had signed Articles of Indenture with the trader so that she might emigrate. Sold and resold in New York, she had eventually arrived at Windgate on the Hudson, far, far from home.

  But now her young mistress was talking to her. Linnet collected her wits. “I always loved to skate,” she mumbled in a rather melancholy voice.

  “I can see you must have!” Georgiana was at a loss to understand the shadow that had passed over Linnet’s usually bright face. “I can’t imagine anyone skating better than you!”

  “There’s some as do,” sighed Linnet. “And perhaps I’d have been better off if I hadn’t skated so good. I might have been...” She stopped and looked away, up toward the wild Adirondacks stretching far away.

  “Why?” teased Georgiana, imagining some embarrassing spill in front of spectators, with petticoats riding up and striped woolen legs spread out awkwardly on the ice. “What would you have been if you hadn’t been such a good skater?”

  "I’d have been wife to a dairyman in Yorkshire,” murmured Linnet, “with a thatched-roof cottage and children of my own about me....” She shook her head as if to clear away cobwebs and turned with determination to Georgiana. “I can tell that you will be a good skater too, my lady. But I fear you will not have time to learn before a party that is only two days away. You had best stay off the ice.”

  “You are right to warn me. And indeed I will stay away from the ice before my guests, Linnet, lest I land in an undignified fashion on my backside!” Georgiana remembered smartingly the hint of laughter in Nicolas’s voice when she had briskly informed him that by the time the masquerade ball was held she would have learned to skate! He had told her something else as well—that both Katrina and Erica were excellent skaters.

  ‘‘I suppose Katrina ten Haer can be counted on to bring her skates,” she said moodily, imagining the statuesque saffron-haired Katrina making her elegant way across the ice.

  Linnet nodded. “And Erica Hulft too. She is very fond of skating. And better at it even than Katrina.”

  “Perhaps Erica will not favor us with her presence,” countered Georgiana sharply. “Now that she is betrothed to marry an older man who will probably prefer smoking his pipe in comfort to gliding over the ice.”

  “I think she will be here,” said Linnet. “The river is not yet frozen over, the channel is open all the way to Rensselaerwyck—I heard Lars say it. It is hard to believe that Erica Hulft will allow herself to miss the greatest ball of the season!”

  Linnet spoke with a knowledge of Erica, Georgiana realized bitterly, acquired firsthand—right here at Windgate. “Is Erica as good a skater as you are?” she asked suddenly.

  Linnet thought about that. “I do not believe so,” she ventured. “I can do leaps and turns that I have not seen her do—and I can do them faster, which impresses people.” She sighed. “I had a fine pair of skates in Yorkshire, but now I have only these carved bone things, which are not reliable and indeed may break under me.” She cast a discouraged look down at her skates.

  Yes, Linnet’s skating was very flashy, Georgiana had to admit. She had hoped to shine in Brett’s eyes by giving this ball with a sure and practiced hand, leading out the masked dancers onto the ice, but now she saw how impossible that was. Brett of course must have known it from the first—and had not warned her. So now she was faced with the unpleasant fact that Erica Hulft—if she came—would certainly outshine her.

  Linnet, watching the play of emotions over Georgiana’s expressive face, guessed what she was thinking. “You will learn to skate,” she volunteered. “I will teach you.”

  “But not in time.”

  “No,” echoed Linnet honestly. “Not in time for the ball.”

  “And you are right.” Georgiana’s voice was energetic, for she was determined to put her rivals out of her mind. “You do deserve better skates than those.” She gave the girl’s woolen mitten a pat with her fur-lined glove. “And you shall have better, Linnet. Here”—she began to unfasten her skates—“I will give you these. I can get others later when I have time to learn.”

  Linnet flushed at the unexpected offer of so handsome a gift. Georgiana was by far the kindest mistress Linnet had ever had and she adored her. “I don’t deserve them,” she said, looking upset.

  “Nonsense,” shushed Georgiana. “Of course you do! I’m sure your skating puts everyone on the river to shame!”

  It was not skating that Linnet had in mind. She hesitated. “Then, “I—I have a suggestion,” she said in a hurried voice. Georgiana, looking up into Linnet’s anxious face, could not know that the girl’s anxiety came from something she had done, something about which she felt very guilty.

  “And what is that, Linnet?” she asked, finally freeing the last skate strap.

  Linnet sank down beside her in the snow. Her eyes looked dark and enormous and her voice was exceedingly earnest—almost pleading. “Well, I was just thinking that we are the same height and almost the same size and it will be a masked ball. If you were to wear something that concealed your hair—a flowing costume of some kind, you could announce that you would skate for us. Alone. With everybody gathered round watching.” She swallowed and hurried on. “But it would be me doing the skating, for I would have taken your place. I would be wearing your costume, and none would be the wiser. And by next season you would have learned to skate, for I would teach you, and you could make excuses and not try the harder things until you are able to do them for yourself!”

  “Oh, I—I couldn’t do that, Linnet.” Georgiana shook her head firmly.

  “Why not?” cried Linnet. She sounded quite desperate. "For if you do not, then surely everybody will be looking at Erica Hulft and Katrina ten Haer, for they are the best skaters on the Hudson!”

  Best skaters on the Hudson ... the words rang cold as the clash of skates on ice in Georgiana’s ears. They would be out there, her rivals, dancing on the ice, swooping about gracefully—and Brett would be out there skating with them, while his wife moped about on shore! It was very tempting to imagine herself giving a dazzling display on skates—and outshining both her rivals!

  “Oh, but I couldn’t,” she demurred, rising to brush the snow off her gray linsey-woolsey skirts. “For even if no one recognized me while I was skating alone on the ice, the moment there was general ice dancing, Brett would be sure to seek me out and—he would know the difference between us, Linnet.”

  “But you could tell him ahead of time,” cried Linnet.

  "Others would know the difference between us too,” said Georgiana dryly. She was thinking of Nicolas and the color deepened in her cheeks. “You would be out there, trapped on the ice with people who wanted to crowd around and talk—and our voices are nothing alike. It wouldn’t work.”

  But Linnet had an answer for that too.

  “When I finish, I could skate to the far side of the pond,” she said earnestly. “Away from the house, where there wouldn’t be anybody. There are trees there and I could take off my skates and trade places with you and you could say—oh, that you turned your ankle a bit—you might even manage a graceful hobble or two, and everyone would understand, for their minds would be filled with the beauty of your ice dancing.” She stopped abruptly, for she had used a phrase that the gentleman in scarlet had used years ago when he had lured her to the inn. He had said his mind was “filled with the beauty of her ice dancing.” She gave her mistress a suddenly bleak look, almost of panic.

  The brushing motions of her fur-lined gloves ceased as Georgiana looked at Linnet thoughtfully. The idea appealed to her reckless nature. She could imagine Brett frowning at the very thought and mentally tossed her head in disdain. He of course would point out how embarrassed she would be if she were found out. But as Linnet described it, she felt they could brazen it through without being discovered.

  In the gray overcast skies an eag
le soared overhead.

  “It would be fun,” Georgiana admitted with a little laugh, “to outshine Erica out there on the ice where you say she is so sure of herself.” And Erica deserves a rebuff, her wayward heart insisted. And my “performance” would so astonish Brett it would take his mind off Erica entirely.... That was certainly in its favor!

  ‘I would be glad to do it,” urged Linnet. “And I am sure we could carry it off. We could change places right before my performance, and I would dash away right after. Perhaps some friend of yours would pick me up and carry me away to remove my skates and we could swiftly change places!”

  Georgiana sighed. “I have no friends among this crowd that’s coming—at least none who’ll be out there skating on the ice.” She was thinking of Vrouw Berghem, who had befriended her mother.

  “Your husband, then?”

  Georgiana gave her a wry look. “Brett would never do it. He is not devious. He takes all his objectives frontally. But...” her eyes gleamed suddenly. “Nicolas would do it!”

  So enchanted was she with the idea that she did not notice the slight start of Linnet’s shoulders beneath her brown cloak or the strained expression on the girl’s face.

  “Nicolas is game for anything, Linnet,” she laughed. “A complete rake—and I am sure he will come, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” agreed Linnet in a stifled voice. “I am sure he will come.” In point of fact, she was absolutely certain Nicolas would come, for she had seen him but two short hours before. In a rare appearance, dour Jack Belter had come by the house on horseback. Linnet had seen him from the kitchen window where she was munching doughnutlike olykoeks. A big black-bearded man, he was sitting there studying the house while his gray horse stamped and blew clouds of steam into the cold air. His eyes narrowed as he saw her face peering out and he took a quick look around, then beckoned to her, a swift surreptitious gesture. Puzzled, Linnet had stared at him through the frosted panes for a moment, wondering why Jack Belter should be beckoning to her, for she had scarce said two words to him ever. But curiosity overcame her and she swallowed the rest of the olykoek, rubbed the grease from her hands and went outside, lifting her flannel skirts carefully as she stepped into the snow.