Windsong

by Valerie Sherwood

  ‘Andrew has been telling me about the family seat,’ confided Virginia, taking another sweetmeat. ‘Will you and Rye live there after - ’ She paused, seeking words.

  ‘After we are legally married?’ Carolina supplied coolly.

  ‘Well, I didn’t mean it quite that way!’ protested Virginia.

  ‘I don’t know where we will live,’ Carolina said briskly. Or if we will ever be legally wed, she told herself silently. Fate seemed always bound to intervene . . .

  ‘It would be wonderful if you do decide to live in Essex,’ Virginia said shyly. ‘For I promise to visit you endlessly - oh, Carolina, I have never felt so at home with anyone in my life as I do with Andrew! We can talk for hours about books, about anything, and never run out of interesting things to say!’

  Carolina personally considered Andrew a rather dull stick - well-meaning but dull. She gave her sister a wistful smile.

  ‘Perhaps we will live in Essex,’ she murmured. ‘Who knows?’

  And suddenly Virginia’s perpetual munching and her bright-eyed happiness were too much to bear. For a nameless fear had settled over Carolina - she chose not to give it a name. Not yet.

  ‘Get your beauty sleep, Virgie,’ she counselled as she left. ‘So you can fascinate Andrew tomorrow!'

  When Carolina got back to her room, Rye was still not back. She climbed into bed. There was no sense waiting up even though she ached to do it.

  She was still not asleep when Rye came in. He closed the door behind him softly, then muttered a curse as his scabbard clanged against a chair leg in the darkness.

  Given such a good excuse as that, Carolina sat up.

  ‘Rye!’ she exclaimed, as if he had just awakened her. She ran combing fingers through her long hair in the moonlight. ‘It must be late, where have you been?’

  ‘My business took longer than I had expected,’ he said, and as he crossed the room towards her the moonlight struck his face and she saw that he looked haggard - as if he had been through some great battle. ‘And afterwards, we sat about the common room of his inn and quaffed some wine. I had a bit too much.’

  ‘Oh,’ Carolina said blankly.

  ‘I’m sorry I waked you,’ he said, as he crawled into bed beside her. ‘It’s late. Go back to sleep.’

  So Rye had seen a face that reminded him of his lost love and he had gone out and tried to wash away the memories with strong drink . . .

  Carolina lay back, entirely miserable.

  The incident had served sharply to remind her that she had no real hold on him, that she was only - just as was Reba - a Fleet Street bride.

  18

  Rye was gone when Carolina awoke the next morning. She dressed abstractedly, her mind still on the events of yesterday. She was still hooking up her creamy bodice when there was a knock on the door. It was a plump smiling serving girl collecting the laundry.

  Carolina piled her own rolled up laundry into the girl’s arms, then picked up the shirt Rye had flung upon the chair last night. As she handed it to the servant girl there came to her a faint musky odour of exotic perfume - surely it was the highly distinctive scent she had noticed yesterday as she plummeted past the Spanish ambassador’s wife at Drury Lane! She stiffened and would have bent to sniff the fabric but that the girl was eagerly snatching it from her hands, exclaiming over the fine fabric. The girl smelled so strongly of bacon grease and onions from the kitchen that Carolina’s sense of smell was immediately overpowered.

  By the time she trailed down to breakfast, Carolina had persuaded herself it was all her imagination. She had been thinking so fiercely about that incident of yesterday - which had made such a sharp impression on Rye that he had stayed out half the night drinking - that her senses had played a trick on her.

  She did not mention anything about the incident to Virginia, who in any case was entirely wrapped up in the sonnet Andrew had composed for her, reading it raptly and exclaiming her delight.

  The sense of foreboding that had come over Carolina outside the theatre at Drury Lane clung to her all that week. But although she had taken to guiltily sniffing Rye’s shirts, there was no further whiff of that strange musky perfume and eventually she dismissed it from her mind.

  Rye was very busy. He was provisioning the ship for the return voyage to the Caribbean. Carolina did not see much of him because he was not only busy by day, he was trying to round up as many of his officers and men as possible - and getting them away from home and family was proving difficult.

  He would come home late, harassed by the day’s problems, be preoccupied at dinner, then often make some excuse and be gone for a large part of the evening.

  Even Virginia, caught up in her own affairs, remarked it.

  ‘Rye is leaving you alone a lot these days, isn’t he?’ she asked commiseratingly one day when they were upstairs freshening up for tea which would be drunk downstairs with Andrew, Rye being as usual absent.

  Looking into the mirror as she combed her hair Carolina gave a sober nod. It was true enough - anyone could see it.

  ‘Well, I suppose he is occupied with important things, Virginia turned her head about to view her strawberry curls. ‘But - I am glad Andrew is not so busy. Did you know he has written me another sonnet? And he keeps telling me how much I will enjoy living in Essex and that the family seat is very old and there are such romantic stories about it. Oh, I can hardly wait to see it with him!’

  Neither can I, thought Carolina sadly. With Rye. But when will that be? He is going to sail away soon and leave me here in London. I suppose I will go on to Essex, but what will Essex be without him? What will any place be without him?

  She finished her combing and they made their way down the wooden stairway of the inn, deciding as they went that they would like to go to a music hall that night.

  But when, over teacups, they broached the subject to Andrew, he seemed embarrassed and muttered that he was not much of a dancer. And Virginia - a Virginia more vivacious and self-assured than Carolina had ever seen her - tapped Andrew lightly with her fan and told him she would teach him to dance, indeed she would make him an expert!

  Carolina was astonished to hear it, for Virginia herself was no expert dancer. But looking at her sister’s flushed happy face and shining eyes, she decided that love would blind Virginia to her own shortcomings just as it would blind Andrew to her mistakes. She looked about her restlessly for their company was becoming tedious - it was not much fun for her always to be the ‘extra girl’ with Rye occupied elsewhere.

  They remained there, whiling the afternoon away in the low-ceilinged common room of the Horn and Chestnut. The common room was not crowded at this time of day and they were alone save for two tables of gentlemen, leaning back and smoking their long clay pipes and casting occasional covert glances at the blonde beauty in the cream-coloured gown.

  For her part, Carolina kept casting covert glances through the small-paned window at the street outside, hoping to see Rye’s tall form striding along it.

  Across the table Virginia and Andrew had drifted into an animated discussion of the book reviews in the London papers. Virginia was fascinated.

  Carolina was not. She glanced at the red and white satin bindings of the new books Virginia had bought that morning and which now reposed on the table before them - and thought silently that she preferred the older green and purple velvet bindings embroidered in silk at the edges that she had found in Ralph Wormeley’s library back in Virginia - and the fine leather-bound volumes. She did not say that, however.

  And anyway they were off on another topic now. Andrew was telling Virginia that writing a book was such a risky venture that many writers now prepared a prospectus and circulated it to prospective buyers so that they might know in advance how many copies to have printed - Dryden had done it, and others. An edition might be a hundred copies!

  Carolina sighed. She was restless, her feet wanted to dance. Rye had promised to be home early - what could be keeping him?

  And then sh
e saw him, walking briskly towards the inn door. As always, her heart leapt at the sight of that lithe masculine figure, the sureness of his movements, the confident way he carried his dark head. She melted at the white flash of his smile as he came in, spied them sitting there and hurried over.

  ‘Twas difficult,’ he told them, ‘but I managed to get away. What festivities have you ladies planned for the evening?’

  ‘A music hall,’ they both answered at once, and he laughed.

  ‘You want to go dancing?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Carolina, her gaze suddenly challenging. ‘We have not danced a step since we have been in London.’

  ‘I had forgot,’ he murmured. ‘You were deprived of balls in Essex when Andrew reported it unwise to go there . . .’ His gaze was warm upon her, like a caressing hand, but there was a wistfulness in it, too, that puzzled her. ‘Of course, I will take you dancing - and Andrew here will squire Mistress Virginia. You will both wear your best gowns, and give a sailor happy memories to dream upon when he puts to sea . .

  At that mention of his impending journey, Carolina caught her breath. ‘But that will not be for a long time, Rye!’ she protested.

  He was about to speak but the serving maid appeared with more tea and there was much discussion about whether the ladies should stay and drinks theirs or dash out and buy riband rosettes to wear upon their dancing slippers.

  In the end the rosettes won and Carolina had no real chance to speak to Rye about his plans, for he was already dressed for the evening and downstairs conferring intently with Andrew when the two girls breezed merrily back into the inn with their purchases and dashed upstairs to dress.

  Carolina felt that it was their first really gala evening in London. She wore her emerald necklace and emerald earbobs, careless that they would attract attention wherever she went. The flawless skin of her swelling young breasts would attract attention too in the low-cut silver-frosted ice-green gown she wore - the same she had worn to Drury Lane. Its gauzy billowing skirts and drifting lace made her look like a great silver-winged moth as she floated down the stairs beside a more prosaic Virginia dressed in a rich umber-hued gown with bronze lace overlay, which also was cut fetchingly low.

  Both gentlemen rose from their table in the common room at their approach. Rye’s grey eyes glinted at the sight of his lovely lady, but Andrew looked positively dazzled by the sight of Virginia’s elegance as she approached him with her head high, walking more confidently than Carolina had ever seen her.

  ‘Mistress Virginia,’ Andrew said humbly, ‘your beauty overwhelms me.’

  Virginia flushed with pleasure and gave her fan a saucy flirt.

  ‘Your costume needs only one small item to make it perfect,’ Andrew told Virginia earnestly. ‘This.’ He stepped behind Virginia and fitted around her neck a dainty gold necklace with a topaz pendant that flashed from the cleavage between her breasts.

  Carolina guessed where Andrew - whose clothes were just short of being threadbare - had got the necklace, and flashed Rye a grateful look. He smiled blandly back at her, unwilling to admit that the necklace had really come from him.

  For a man whose apparel up to now had been unremarkable, Rye’s garb was singularly conspicuous this night. As if to honour his lustrous lady he was sporting a splendid gunmetal satin coat, wide-cuffed and trimmed in silver braid and a plumed tricorn. He seemed to pay no attention to the fact that he might at any time be recognized. Indeed he seemed blithely not to care and his rich laugh rang out as they made the rounds of the music halls. It was as if a great weight had been lifted from his body, leaving him carefree.

  It was a wonderful evening. Carolina was sure there was not a music hall in London they missed, and they swirled to popular music, sometimes played by tipsy musicians. They laughed and drank delicate sparkling wines and watched Virginia exclaim endlessly over her topaz necklace - and danced some more. And after it had grown late they took a moonlight boatride on the Thames, drifting along the silver ribbon of the moonpath . . .

  Carolina, letting her hand drag in the cool water over the boat’s side as they drifted along the moonlit river, wondered if Rye had received some new information that had made him feel safer. Had he been cleared, and the pirate who had dared to impersonate him off the Virginia coast been caught and brought to justice?

  No, if that were true, surely he would tell her. She stole a covert look at him as he leaned back, relaxed, gazing at the dark London skyline drifting by. Perhaps he was saving such wonderful news for tonight — when they were alone, their bodies pressed close together in the big bed at the inn. Her lovely face softened at the thought and she leant against him the more luxuriously. The ghost of a contented sigh escaped her lips and she moved slightly against him, feeling with a little thrill the slight pressure under her breasts of the long arm he had thrown carelessly about her.

  He bent his dark head and his face lost itself in her lemon-scented hair.

  ‘Did you enjoy the evening?’ he murmured.

  ‘Yes - oh, yes.’ She snuggled the closer, tinglingly aware of that long hard body she rested against. ‘It’s late, Rye. I-I think we should go home.’

  He gave a low laugh and nuzzled her ear. ‘And I wonder what we’d be doing there?’

  To her chagrin - and his delight - Carolina blushed. "Tis late,’ she repeated virtuously, hoping the other occupants of the boat did not notice her embarrassment. ‘Honest folks should be home abed.’

  He chuckled. ‘And we are honest folk and ’tis late indeed.’ His long fingers were toying with a lock of her fair hair as he spoke, and the back of his hand was brushing the back of Carolina’s neck as he did so, making little ripples of feeling race up and down her spine. He sighed. ‘Tis time to end this boatride, Andrew, lad,’ he called over his shoulder to his brother. ‘My lady is for bed.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Andrew absent-mindedly, for he was deep in a discussion with Virginia as to whether Christopher Marlowe had really authored some of Shakespeare’s plays, and the two of them hardly noticed whether they were on land or sea.

  As if she weighed nothing. Rye lifted his lady out of the boat when they reached the shore where their hackney coach was waiting for them - although Carolina had protested that the night was so fine she would rather walk. But Rye insisted that the waterfront by night was too dangerous a place for her, with thieves and cutthroats leaping up out of alleys to plunder the unwary. She had no doubt he had experience of such things. ‘But was it so much safer in Tortuga?’ she murmured humorously against his coat.

  ‘Did I ever take you walking through the town there by night?’ he countered - and she had to admit he had not.

  She let him hand her in then and snuggled against him dreamily as they clattered back to the inn.

  The downstairs of the Horn and Chestnut was only sparsely populated as the four of them swept through it, and there was nothing to remark this evening’s end from any other, save that before their door Andrew suddenly detached himself from Virginia to wring Rye’s hand.

  ‘What was that about?’ Carolina asked Rye when their bedroom door had closed behind her, then before he could answer, ‘Oh, I suppose he was thanking you for giving him the topaz pendant for Virginia?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said her tall lover, looking down at her inscrutably from his great height. ‘I think tonight we will have a candle,’ he said, pausing to light one as he spoke. I would like to watch my lady undress . . .’

  Carolina flushed but she made no demur to the candle and by its lickering flame she took off first the emerald necklace and earbobs. They cast brilliant green lights that seemed to dazzle her eyes and turn their silver-grey to silver-green as she laid the jewels carefully on her bedside table top.

  Across the room Rye had removed his sword and loosened the lace at his throat. He looked very commanding, standing there, she thought, and as always she thrilled to the sight of him. The world might know him as a dangerous buccaneer and the best blade in the Caribbean, men might take heed and
warning from the cold eyes that lit his sun-darkened sardonic countenance - but she knew him as a lover, a man who would dare anything, risk anything - for her.

  Gracefully, knowing she was being watched, she took off first her high-heeled satin dancing slippers, and then her sheer silk stockings, pulling up her skirts to reveal long silken legs as she did so.

  Rye stood by, undressing desultorily, watching her with hot appreciative eyes.

  ‘Turn a little,’ he said. ‘So that the candlelight strikes golden on your breast - I want to remember you thus.’

  Carolina gave him a startled look. ‘But I will be here in plain sight,’ she protested. ‘There will be no need to remember me!’

  ‘Even so,’ he said, smiling.

  She turned about as she was bid and the candlelight sparkled in her silver eyes, turning them to gold. It gilded the long pale hair she now let down into a white-gold shower that spilled like cascading water over her slim shoulders. She would never know how lovely she was at that moment, but the very sight of her made him catch his breath.

  ‘I will need help with these hooks,’ she said.

  He stepped forward with alacrity, still feasting his eyes on her, and swiftly unfastened the hooks of her bodice down the back - and even as she would have eased the sleeves down from the point of her shoulders he said, ‘Here - allow me,’ and did it for her, stroking down the sleeves caressingly as he brought them sliding down her slim arms. And then, standing behind her, he cupped his hands beneath her breasts as her tight bodice fell away from her slim torso.

  ‘How good these pretty things must feel to be released from their satin prison,’ he murmured in her ear as he toyed with her breasts.

  ‘Rye,’ she said breathlessly, for she could feel her senses quiver with each tweaking touch of her sensitive nipples. ‘Rye, in another moment one of us will step on my gown and tear it - you must let me undress.’

  He laughed, but he let her go and stood back to watch her step at last out of the glamorous panniered ice-green gown. It slid in silver-frosted luxury to the floor and glimmered there.