Rich Radiant Love

by Valerie Sherwood

“Where are you going now?” she could not resist asking.

  He shrugged and his golden hair rippled on his broad shoulders. “I need a change of scene. If I can just avoid Katrina ten Haer, who is making her way toward me with battle in her eyes, I think I’ll just find me passage on some ship. One bound for Bermuda, I think, now that we’re no longer at war with the English. After all, Danforth found a wife there. Yes, I think I’ll go down and see Mathilde. Who knows, she may still favor me?”

  “Mattie will never have you,” she sniffed. “And, anyway, Sue will send you packing if you reach Mirabelle!”

  “Thank you,” grinned Nicolas, “for telling me where she is.” He left them jauntily.

  “The likeness is amazing.” Brett was gazing on Imogene with wonder. “You could almost be Georgiana’s older sister.”

  “Save that her hair’s a shade more copper and she’s a breath more slender and—she has her father’s eyes. Turquoise.” Imogene gazed tenderly upon her offspring. “We have so much to tell each other, Georgiana, so much to make up for, so much time lost.”

  People swirled around them. Wealthy burghers, losing no time to congratulate Brett on his victory, for they hoped to be trading with him. Neighbors along the river, who wished no rift between themselves and the now firmly established wealthiest patroon in all New Netherland. Curious faces, trying to get a better look at the stunningly beautiful face of Imogene, about whom so many stories swirled. And people gazing in awe at the notorious Captain van Ryker, who had become a legend in his own time.

  “You must all have supper with me.” Vrouw Berghem bustled up. “For I turn over the key to my home tomorrow and sail back to Holland. And this evening will give me something to talk about all my days!”

  Imogene hugged her. “It is wonderful to see you again, Vrouw Bergham!”

  “And don’t forget, I am expecting to hear all about you and Captain van Ryker, all you have been doing since last we met.”

  Imogene gave Vrouw Bergham an affectionate look. “That, I am afraid, will be a very long story.”

  “And one you will have time to tell,” chimed in Georgiana. “For I will not let you go so quickly, now that I have found you at last!”

  She looked up at Brett and saw him smiling fondly down upon her. We have won, she thought. We will have it all—Windgate, Mirabelle, everything.

  “But now,” she said “you must return my mother’s journal to her—and Elise’s letter, for I think she would like to have them both.”

  Silently, Brett handed over the documents and Imogene took them.

  Her daughter was safe now. Safe from a scoffing world. Safe— surprisingly enough—at Wey Gat! No, she must remember to call it Windgate, as Georgiana did. Windgate.

  Windgate. It had a lovely sound—like Eden on the Hudson. A place for lovers.

  BOOK XI

  The Wedding

  You owe me some repayment

  For the tears I shed

  That in bridal raiment

  I would never see you wed. . ..

  New York, New York

  March, 1674

  Chapter 43

  At the feast that night at Vrouw Berghem’s house, mother and daughter exchanged tales, caught between laughter and tears. Imogene listened raptly as Georgiana told her of Bermuda and Arthur—and they both wept over Elise’s death.

  “If I had only gone to Bermuda instead of all those other places,” said Imogene, “how different it would all have been....” Her lovely face was lit by a radiant smile, which rested on Brett with a brilliance that dazzled him. “I thank you,” she said softly, “for all that you have done for my daughter. Windgate is yours—it always was yours. I will never trouble you about it, whatever wind may blow.”

  “You never meant to come back,” murmured Georgiana. “And yet it is so beautiful there.”

  A pensive smile curved Imogene’s lips. “No, I never meant to come back, for to me its loveliness was tarnished. To me it is a place of sad memories. I will not visit you there, Georgiana, but you will visit me. And you will bring your children, when you have them—and your grandchildren.”

  But after dinner she took her daughter aside. Beside a branched candelabrum she took Georgiana by the shoulders, held her at arm’s length and studied her carefully. “You do not really look like me,” she said at length. “Or at least the resemblance is superficial. No, you look more like Stephen—you have his copper hair and turquoise eyes. I have been watching you and you have handsome ways, like your father—quick to anger, quick to repent. But you have inherited my recklessness—I saw that in the courtroom today. It is a dangerous combination.” She turned her sunny smile toward Brett across the room. “I am glad you found him,” she said frankly, “because I think he is just what you may need! And since I find you already a bride, Georgiana, I have a mind for wedding gifts.”

  She took from her neck the blaze of diamonds on which Rychie ten Haer had looked so enviously—that gift from Verhulst so long ago, in the days when he cherished her and thought her his. It belonged at Windgate, she thought, for it had the style and richness of the man whose gift it was.

  “I give you”—she clasped the necklace around her daughter’s neck and stood back—“this little token of my affection.” She made a slight careless gesture. So a queen might have gestured, thought van Ryker, watching her from across the room with endless pride. “But like most gifts, it has a condition.”

  Georgiana gasped at the gift of the necklace. The van Rappard diamonds—these stones were worth a king’s ransom! Her eyes shone. Her mother too had handsome ways; she could toss away a fortune with a shrug of her elegant shoulders. She flashed a proud look at Brett and met a swift smile on his face, for he had seen Imogene’s generous gesture and the happiness that had lit up Georgiana's face.

  “I thank you with all my heart,” said Georgiana. “And I accept your gift—on any condition.”

  “You have just proved again your recklessness,” said Imogene coolly. “For my condition is—since I was deprived of the opportunity to see you wed, which I had longed to do—that you repeat the ceremony on board the Sea Rover. Now. Tonight.”

  “But I have already been twice wed to Brett!” gasped Georgiana.

  Imogene shrugged her lovely shoulders. “I have been robbed of your childhood, your girlhood—I refuse to be robbed of your wedding. It is every mother’s right to see her daughter married. It is true you will not have the wide curving staircase of our Carolina plantation to walk down—but you will have a swaying deck to walk across. And you will not have a church or candlelight around you—but you will have starlight and white sails floating above you. And you will not have a tinkling virginal—lord, how Verhulst tried to make me learn to play one—but you will have a strumming on the viola da gamba and the deep-throated song of the buccaneers. You will walk across the deck with your bridegroom beneath an arch of cutlasses held high and have your health drunk in good Jamaica rum! And the best blade in the Caribbean will perform the ceremony—van Ryker! And I myself will give the bride away!”

  “Thrice wed?” murmured Georgiana, shaking her head and laughing.

  “And you will wear that very dress you have on—for it was my wedding dress when I married Verhulst and that was on shipboard too. God knows it brought me no luck, but it has already brought you luck—I could see that in the courtroom today when you swept all before you!” Her brilliant smile challenged her daughter. “Come now, Georgiana. Does not every girl yearn to be married in her mother’s wedding dress, with her mother standing by, dreaming of white satin and old lace beneath the stars?”

  Turquoise eyes met blue ones, locked and held. And suddenly Georgiana was not laughing anymore. It was as if a veil had been lifted and beneath Imogene’s lighthearted banter she seemed to see another woman, proud and strong and loving—-yearning for her and yet too proud to beg for her esteem.

  “Oh, Mother!” Georgiana went into her mother’s outstretched arms and Imogene, holding her daughter close a
fter all these years, closed her eyes and fought back tears—for tonight was not a tearful occasion, it was a wedding night, an occasion for merriment, for joy!

  “Georgiana,” she whispered. “Your father would be proud of you.” Tomorrow she would tell Georgiana that her father was alive. Alive and married and living on Barbados. Tomorrow she would tell Georgiana how glad he would be to see her.

  But tonight was hers. Her triumph. Tonight, this beautiful night of stars that reflected down on quaint New Amsterdam—no, she must remember to call it New York—those stars that sparkled on the North River’s dark surface—no, she must remember to call it the Hudson—tonight belonged to her.

  And so it was done.

  A “buccaneer’s wedding” was held that night aboard the Sea Rover. Brilliant paper lanterns lit the scene and from the shore a tipsy crowd cheered the bride, for on this night, with the colony “changing ownership,” people were too stirred to go to bed and curfew was forgotten. They cheered as Georgiana in her elegant white gown and a necklace of glittering diamonds that put the stars to shame glided across the Sea Rover’s deck on van Ryker’s arm and took her vows with Brett Danforth—once again. They cheered as van Ryker pronounced them man and wife. They cheered as Brett slipped over her finger once again that gold and sapphire ring that had once been Imogene’s and that had such a strange history. They cheered as the bride walked with the “English patroon” beneath an arch of crossed buccaneer cutlasses, and continued cheering as the ship seemed to burst forth with song and the bride and groom were toasted in good Jamaica rum.

  On shore this was a night never to be forgotten, for had the crowd not seen with their own eyes a dead woman sail in on a buccaneer ship long ago reported sunk to claim a daughter who was the scandal of New Netherland? And were they not even now celebrating the nuptials of a bride and groom now thrice wed—and this time the ceremony performed by the formidable Captain van Ryker? Such a story to add to the wild saga of the patroons of Wey Gat! It almost capped the change of ownership of the colony!

  Now the buccaneers were singing again, deep-throated male voices rising in haunting melody against the creaking of the great ship’s timbers as she rode at anchor. They sang of things lost and forgotten, of wasted lives and blasted hopes—but it was to this music that Windgate’s patroon led out his ravishing bride to tread the first measure of the dancing that followed the starlit ceremony. He looked very dashing and his white teeth flashed in high good humor.

  “Faith, I might have thought twice about marrying you, had I known I would acquire such formidable in-laws! Not content that we are already man and wife, they arrive on a ship of forty guns to insist we be wed again! Thrice wed!” He shook his head in mock dismay as he whirled Georgiana across the deck. “Surely so much has not been asked of one man since the gates slammed shut on Eden!”

  Another cheer went up from the shore as Captain van Ryker, resplendent in gray and silver, gave Imogene a sweeping bow and led her, light-footed with amber velvet skirts swirling, across the swaying deck.

  Over van Ryker’s broad shoulder, Imogene could see the bridal couple looking more than handsome and the bride’s diamond necklace rivaling the stars in brilliance. They danced raptly, intent on each other, as if this were the first moment he had held her in his arms. Watching them through misty eyes, Imogene remembered her own “buccaneer’s wedding” on Tortuga and smiled at the look of blissful happiness on her daughter’s lovely face. All her soul was mirrored there.

  Georgiana looked up at Brett. Just as her virginal heart had clutched him to her bosom, now her woman’s love—deep and full and true—went out to him. Looking down he met that misting gaze with tenderness, and their eyes met and held and plighted once again their troth.

  “Windgate will be our Eden,” she murmured.

  And Imogene, who had been swept from the Scilly Isles on the wings of a wish made long ago to two tall standing stones called Adam and Eve, heard her daughter’s breathless words and smiled. She had found her own Eden with a tall buccaneer who had chased her across half the world. And now her daughter, her lovely daughter lost so long ago, was returned to her and had found an Eden of her own.

  They had both won through!

  She followed her heart and she rode to the skies,

  She never was cautious, she never was wise,

  And the truth to be learnt from her life, my fine friend,

  Is that love is a story that has no end!

  Epilogue

  Across the seas a wayward breeze

  Wafted these two together

  And firm and fast, true to the last

  They'll ride the storm together!

  Time changed their story, of course—as it always does.

  There were those who protested that the man who showed up in that Dutch courtroom at the head of a band of buccaneers was not van Ryker at all, for it was well known that the real van Ryker had died in a landslide on the Cornish cliffs. And that beautiful woman who had stunned the courtroom with her beauty and her claim of being Imogene van Rappard—she too must have been an impostor, for everyone knew the real Imogene had perished when an iceboat sank into the Hudson. And, as proof, these skeptical souls cited a self-evident fact: Neither van Ryker nor Imogene were ever seen on the Hudson again, nor did the Sea Rover sail again into New York harbor.

  Indeed, the Sea Rover disappeared as if it had never been (no one thought to look for the majestic ship along the Cooper River in Carolina, where she carried the name Victorious). And eventually most people persuaded themselves that they had never seen her, that none of it had ever happened, that they had all suffered a kind of mass hysteria due to the strain of learning of the Treaty of Westminster and the English takeover of New Netherland.

  Nicolas never doubted what he had seen of course. Married at last to Mattie—a surprising Mattie who bossed him about—he was well aware that van Ryker’s ship of forty guns was lurking about somewhere to ensure his good behavior. And Linnet heard about the happenings downriver but she did not really care, because by then she was planning to marry a handsome young schoolteacher and all her energies were bent on learning to read and write.

  Vrouw Berghem bragged of that evening all her life—but that was in Holland and she was old and garrulous, so no one believed her.

  So in spite of the Sea Rover’s last buccaneering venture, the landgrave and his lady were not found out, and the patroon and his lady kept their counsel at Windgate on the Hudson and only smiled when questions were asked of them.

  Some loves, they say, are everlasting.

  To fate they are beholden for

  This rapture so sublime—

  The world is always golden for

  True lovers in their prime!