Rich Radiant Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  “And now we won’t see each other again for a few days,” Nicolas told her.

  “But—” She would have protested, so disappointed was she, but the sudden flash of anger in his blue eyes forbade it.

  “I will be back for you,” he said testily. “If you doubt it, consider where you are—Windgate. Do you think I will go away and forget Wey Gat?”

  No, she did not think so. She cast her eyes down. “I will do as you bid,” she mumbled.

  “Good.” Satisfied she would obey him, Nicolas gave her rump a quick familiar pat. “That’s a good girl. Mouth tight shut, don’t believe anything you hear, and I’ll see you in a week or two.”

  Thoroughly unhappy now, Linnet watched him go, swinging jauntily down the shadowy upstairs corridor toward the main stairway. He had left her without even a kiss! When all the time she had been hoping—yes, even planning!—that he would sweep her into one of the guest bedrooms and latch the door and they would try out the featherbed before those who were supposed to sleep in it this night got the chance!

  Suddenly it came to her that he had said he would be gone a week or more, but had said nothing about returning the packet—Georgiana might miss it, there would be an uproar, she might be blamed! She ran down the corridor after Nicolas.

  He heard her feet pattering after him and stopped, turned about. “What now?”

  “The packet,” she gasped. “What about the packet?”

  “I will return it to you before I leave,” he told her smoothly. “Do not worry about it. Just show us what a magnificent skater you are and remember—I will be watching.”

  Somewhat mollified, Linnet stood and watched him turn the corner to go downstairs. After Nicolas had seen her skate, she told herself confidently, he would be so thrilled he’d want to return to her at once; perhaps he’d even spend the night with her in the servants’ quarters, slipping in through the darkness. For she was sure to shine on the ice. Her life long, she’d been known as a glorious skater. Daydreaming, she leaned against the wall until a group of chattering ladies sailed by looking for their maids.

  Nicolas, meanwhile, had gone downstairs; there was someone he must see.

  Almost everyone was dancing now, with the exception of some of the older guests like Govert Steendam and Dr. Pos. Erica Hulft was being whirled around the floor by an energetic Dutch schoolmaster who was overjoyed to be dancing with her, but her gaze was on Brett, now dancing with a pouting Katrina ten Haer. Georgiana had excused herself to go and speak to cook, for after the ice dancing there was to be a late supper, and now that she was back in the drawing room her gaze drifted over the dancers. The many candles from the chandelier and wall tapers picked out a variegated crowd. Some of the costumes were beautiful, some garish, some—like Dr. Pos’s bearskin—rather unpleasant. And one—her gaze focused suddenly on a black hood of coarse material with only slits for the eyes that fell down over the shoulders, and she shivered. That was an executioner's hood. Looking at it one could almost hear the whisper of the axe. Impossible to tell who was wearing it; its owner was wearing a long black cloak that swept the floor and black gauntlet gloves. She wondered who the executioner was; certainly she and Brett had not greeted anyone garbed like that. Probably some late arrival who had come while they were dancing. Conscious of the executioner’s glittering eyes watching her through the slits in that black hood, she moved toward him like a dutiful hostess, meaning—in spite of her revulsion for his costume—to welcome him to Windgate. He moved on through the crowd. Somehow there were always people between them. She decided not to chase him around the room. Allowing herself another slight shudder of revulsion at his costume, she turned back to her other guests.

  The eyes of the executioner followed her malevolently as she turned away, for those eyes belonged to Arthur Kincaid, who had managed to slip into the house by mingling with a group of late arrivals who had come in during the dancing. He had to conceal a tremor of rage as he watched Georgiana strolling through the crowd across the room, a dainty picture in her blue and white shepherdess costume. Nearby a lady tapped him with her fan and said something. To her casual pleasantry Arthur muttered something inaudible and brusquely went his way, for he was shaken again by Georgiana’s beauty, which he had not remembered as so dazzling by half, even though he had alternately raped her or beaten her every night in his dreams ever since he left Bermuda.

  He had been amazed at the size and magnificence of Windgate—but that made no difference. Damnable wench, he would tame her! This marriage of hers was nothing—a sham. He’d not given his consent to it, and she was his bondswoman. True, he’d been forced to sign her over but any court in the land would promptly rectify that, seeing plainly it had been done under duress—certainly any Boston court would and that was where he meant to take her.

  Detaching himself from the crush of milling guests, he leaned against the wall and imagined himself tearing that shepherdess dress from her luscious body. First he would jerk open that blue ribbon that held that dark blue corselet thing about her ribcage. The corselet would fall free; in his imagination he could see it strike the floor. Then he would insert his fingers in that breathtakingly low neckline, not minding if his nails left a red weal on those snowy breasts—his breath came faster for he yearned to feel her wince beneath his rough handling. As the material came away, tearing alike her bodice and the light chemise beneath it, she would scream—he licked his lips at the thought. But if she resisted—ah, if she resisted and she would resist—he would slap her cheeks until they were red as apples, knocking her head from side to side like a pendulum. He would seize that fetching mass of burnished gold hair, coming free from its pins and falling down about her shoulders under this treatment, and he would jerk her around by that hair to face him when she tried to run away; the blue ribands would fall out, sliding down her white shoulders and heaving bare breasts to tangle themselves in her tumbled skirts.

  He would then address himself to those skirts, grasping them by the hem in one strong authoritative hand and tossing the whole of them violently over her head, where he would pinion her struggling arms with them—oh, he had it all worked out, every step. He had thought of little else these past weeks.

  And then her flailing white legs—he was trembling all over now as in his imagination he went at them.

  “Faith, have ye the ague?”muttered a familiar voice in his ear. “Ye’re not sick, are ye?”

  Arthur, half overcome with his violent visions and wanting to scream his disappointment at the speaker who had interrupted, for he had just begun his imaginary rape and wanted to bring it to a properly dramatic conclusion, came up out of the mists of fancy and realized that Nicolas was speaking to him.

  “No, I’m not sick,” he said in a muffled voice.

  “Then come into a corner of the room where we can talk more freely under cover of all this hubbub.”

  Arthur followed, listened silently as Nicolas in an undertone outlined what Linnet had told him and how he proposed to proceed.

  “You understand?” he asked impatiently when Arthur still did not say anything.

  “Perfectly,” mumbled Arthur in a sullen voice. He was still angry at having his lascivious musings interrupted.

  Nicolas frowned at his sullen cohort. He wished unhappily that he could deal with someone less obnoxious than Arthur in this matter. But his sigh was lightened by a sudden cheerful thought—Arthur, unpleasant as he was, was the perfect person to shift the blame upon. And disliking Arthur as he did, it would be a joy to do it!

  But contempt for Arthur’s treatment of Mattie had made Nicolas underestimate Arthur. For all his bad manners and violent temper, Arthur was nobody’s fool. All the way upriver he had been thinking deeply about what Nicolas proposed to do and he had come to the inescapable conclusion that Nicolas was planning to get what he wanted, disengage himself from the enterprise and let Arthur take the blame for whatever happened—in case something should go wrong.

  With that in mind, he had come prepare
d for such an eventuality.

  After Nicolas left him, he made his way to a back stairway. It was an easy thing with so many of the servants out front, to slip up them on silent feet and make his way to Georgiana’s bedchamber. He found it by the simple expedient of heading toward the majestic front of the house and trying all the doors. The one in which he found her clothes would be hers, of course—and he knew he would have no difficulty in recognizing it by the sumptuous gowns it contained.

  When he found it, he was aghast at its opulence. The gall of the woman—his bondswoman living in a luxury that he himself could not afford! A delicate night rail, so sheer he could have read print through it, lay casually tossed across a chair. The thought of Anna's pale tempting body encased in that half-transparent garment sent his nostrils flaring.

  He finished his business and left.

  The evening wore on. Ice dancing by moonlight had been promised and many of the younger guests and even some of the hardier older ones had brought their skates. Although the river was as yet unfrozen, many of them were familiar with the beautiful pond in the wooded area near the house. Some had seen the torches that were even now being set up to throw vivid light upon the scene, for the moon was proving unreliable, scudding back and forth behind the clouds and some of the more apprehensive guests were already muttering that it might become “a wild night with sleet and snow coming down from the north” and maybe they’d best cut their stay short and sail home before the river became a raging torrent that tossed sloops about like toy sailboats.

  Amid the whirl of dancers and the pouring of wine, Erica Hulft had been drinking rather more than was good for her. Brett had rebuffed her, telling her that she was mad to risk alienating Govert Steendam by seeking him out so publicly, and in her anger she had prowled upstairs and clawed about in her things to find a certain piece of jewelry. Having found it, she stood smiling with wicked malice down upon it, before she clasped it around her neck. Then she picked up her fur-trimmed velvet cloak about her shoulders. She would go down and confront Brett, she told herself recklessly. She would insist that he stroll out across the snow with her—and Georgiana would miss him, and perhaps look out and see them together.... Or someone might tell her where Brett had gone and with whom—Katrina ten Haer could be counted on to do that. And she and Brett would return, laughing, out of the snow to find the child bride (for that was how Erica thought of Georgiana) standing in the hall in impotent fury, watching them make their entrance. Perhaps Georgiana would even make a scene, burst into tears, shout. Still smarting under Brett’s rebuff, Erica relished the thought.

  Downstairs, Georgiana decided that it was time for the ice dancing. The weather was looking unpredictable—they had best begin. She signaled to Linnet to join her and started upstairs—and met Erica Hulft on her way down.

  Erica was a breathtaking sight in her fox-lavished apricot velvet cloak with her white powdered hair and that black court plaster beauty spot to show off the pallor of her sheer complexion. When Georgiana would have brushed on by, Erica stepped deliberately in front of her, blocking her way.

  “Go on upstairs, Linnet,” said Georgiana in irritation. “I’ll be up in a minute. One of my guests”—her voice had an edge to it—“seems to require my attention.”

  Standing on a step above looking down at her. Erica laughed. “I had thought you’d be dressed in more queenly garb and wearing the van Rappard diamonds to down us all,” she said with a slight curl to her lip. “And yet here you are—a mere shepherdess.” She lifted her brows and looked bored.

  “What do you know of the van Rappard diamonds?” demanded Georgiana, gone suddenly cold.

  “Oh, I know a great deal about you, Georgiana.” Erica shrugged aside her elegant furs for a moment and revealed about her neck, complementing the tangerine velvet of her gown, a necklace of pink fresh water pearls with heavy wrought silver links.

  Georgiana drew in her breath. She had seen that necklace before—in Bermuda. And Erica had chosen to wear it here, in her house.

  “I think you are wearing something that rightfully belongs to me,” Georgiana said steadily. “And I think I know how you came by it.”

  Erica shrugged—Claes had sold her the necklace long ago, but not till she confronted him with Nicolas’s story had he told her where it came from. She was in a mood to taunt and there was a lazy malice in her amber glance that was in no way diminished by her fragile black lace mask. “I think you have something that belongs to me, Georgiana, and I care not a whit how you came by him—I want him back.”

  For a long minute the two women stared at each other, with measuring glances.

  Then, “You will never have him,” said Georgiana, but her voice was unsteady.

  “We will see,” said Erica with careless confidence. “Life has many strange turnings. Perhaps I will win in the end.”

  Perhaps she will, thought Georgiana, and felt all the joy go out of the evening. “If you marry Govert Steendam,” she warned Erica, “you will have to cease your pursuit of Brett. Steendam will never stand for it. He has a stern face.”

  Erica’s laughter rippled. “I think I have frightened you,” she said softly. “But do not worry, little Bermuda bride. I am not ready to take him away from you—not yet.”

  She swept on by and the implications of that remark swirled through Georgiana’s brain as she hurried up the stairs to join Linnet. She felt humiliated—and glad no one had been in the hall at the time to hear the exchange between Erica and herself. She did not really know what to do about Erica, whose pattern, she could now divine, was to misbehave scandalously and then to repent and apologize gracefully—and expect to be forgiven. She was beginning to see what Brett must have gone through with Erica. What a chase she must have led him!

  Perhaps, she thought, the situation would resolve itself. Perhaps Erica in her present reckless mood would become so incensed over the ice dancing that she would do something so rash and so irrevocable that it would wreck her with Brett.

  Certainly it was to be hoped!

  She found Linnet waiting for her in her bedchamber, where they both hastily changed into their rag doll costumes. Then they parted, Linnet creeping unobserved down the back stairs to make her way into the forested area and wait for Georgiana behind the big bush near the pond.

  Georgiana meanwhile strolled down the front stairs unmasked, carrying her headdress with its thick yellow woolen braids and attached mobcap and mask in one hand, and with her skates slung negligently over her shoulder.

  Those skates were the problem. They were rather strikingly made, there was only one pair like them, and they must be given to Linnet in the woods.

  Numerous faces looked up as Georgiana moved down the stairs, for word that the ice dancing was about to commence had spread about and the guests had milled out into the hall. Brett was among them, and Erica, and Katrina ten Haer. Halfway down the flight, Georgiana paused and smiled down upon them all.

  “I have promised you ice dancing,” she cried merrily. “And to lead the way, I shall be first upon the ice. If you will all wait five minutes before you come out, I will be ready for you.” While they watched, she fitted the headdress smoothly over her own burnished gold hair. “You shall see what a rag doll can do!” she promised them blithely.

  Although the headdress with its long woolen braids was now firmly in place, she was still holding up with both hands the attached mask of loose white silk that was to come down over her face and be fitted into her collar, as she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  She looked about her. “Here, will someone help me pin down this mask so that I will look like a real rag doll—and so that it will not blow up into my face when I skate and blind me when I execute a difficult turn? Or when I fly over something—for I warn you, I intend to close my little skating exhibition by leaping over three barrels, which are already in place; they were placed on the pond this afternoon.”

  A little murmur went through the onlookers. This Bermuda bride was going to leap
over three barrels?

  Georgiana was enjoying herself. “Perhaps you would help me pin down this mask, Katrina?” she asked sweetly. “Or you. Erica—I am sure you are very adept at handling sharp things!”

  Brett stepped forward, barring their way. “I will pin down your mask,” he said. She could see the concern in his face as he bent his big head down toward hers, but he pinned the white silk mask with its appliqued rosy cheeks of pink silk quite competently to her collar.

  “Are you mad?” he muttered.

  “Perhaps.” He could feel her shoulders shrug.

  He was still working with the pins. His lips were very close to her ear; nothing he said could carry to the assembled company about them. “Let me join you, Georgiana,” he murmured. “We will dance together. I will whirl you about as I skate so that your skates barely graze the ice. I have often leaped over six barrels—I can easily carry you over three.”

  Georgiana stood there regarding him for a moment.

  It was a handsome offer—but it had come too late. Her plans were already made and Linnet was out there waiting.

  “I can do this by myself, thank you,” she told him crisply and brushed past him. The guests parted to let her pass.

  Hoping desperately that Brett would not follow her, she went out the door and out into the white moonlight, made her way into the trees. Behind her the crowd muttered, but she felt they would wait the allotted time if only to see what their surprising hostess had in store for them.

  In the trees she met Linnet and handed over the skates.

  “Make Erica Hulft wish she were dead!” she told Linnet breathlessly. “It is all I ask of you—and if you do it, I will give you not only the skates but your choice of my petticoats!”

  That was a grand offer indeed, for in New Netherland a girl’s fortune was often counted by the number of petticoats she owned. They were of the richest materials, hand-worked and embroidered, and Georgiana’s were remarkably handsome.