Wild Willful Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  “I’ll send for Raoul to have that head looked at. That was a solid blow that felled you. I came up in time to hear it.” Arne grunted his gratitude and disappeared toward his own quarters when they reached the house. By mutual consent van Ryker and Imogene continued on through the stone courtyard and up the stairs. The wide-eyed servant who scurried away to find the doctor thought the Captain looked exceedingly grim and his lady’s lovely face bore a threatening expression that boded him no good.

  For all he had rescued her—and the danger had driven everything else temporarily from both their minds—they were now back on the track.

  Imogene was furious with van Ryker, who had, she was now certain, betrayed her with Veronique, and van Ryker guessed what she was thinking.

  He kept his hold on her, almost dragging her into his bedchamber. Then he closed the door firmly behind him and turned to face her. She jerked away from him pettishly.

  If she had expected him to hold on to her, she was surprised. He let her go with a suddenness that shocked her. The gray gaze that raked her was as cold as winter ice. “Take off your clothes.” It was not a suggestion, it was an order. As he spoke he was tossing his pistol aside, unbuckling his belt.

  “In your room?” she asked contemptuously.

  “Or yours. Whichever you like.” His indifferent voice told her he couldn’t care less in which room she disrobed.

  CHAPTER 10

  Imogene sniffed, noting warily that van Ryker was stripping off his torn doublet. She had no intention of taking off so much as a shoe while he was in the room!

  “Off with them,” he said peremptorily. “Strip!”

  Did he think he was going to make love to her? Now? After nearly being caught with Veronique? Certainly he had made haste to drag her to his bedchamber! The astounding thought that van Ryker might be considering imminent contact with her flesh filtered through lmogene’s brain, making her feel dizzy. And with it—ancient as Eve and as crafty—came another thought. She would approach this thing obliquely, she would surprise him into an admission of guilt.

  As he flung away the shreds and streamers of his torn shirt, she turned away from him so that she did not quite meet his eyes. “Georgette is growing up,” she said carelessly, just as if none of the events of the past hour had happened. “She is experimenting with new hairdos. Veronique”—she could not resist a spiteful emphasis on the name—“is teaching her that overdone hairstyle she affects. Esthonie does not favor it.” She watched him catlike out of the corner of her eye.

  Van Ryker made no comment.

  “In the carriage the other day, I mistook her for Veronique. Was it not strange?”

  “I would rather hear less of Veronique.” Van Ryker’s eyes narrowed. He was already pulling on another shirt.

  “Would you? Would you?" She turned on him in fury. “Do you ask me also to be blind, that I do not see you meeting her, spending time with her?”

  “Ah,” he said, “so that is it. You are jealous of Veronique. Ask yourself, have I given you cause?”

  "Yes!" she shouted. "Yes, you have given me cause!"

  He studied her for a minute; she could not read his gaze. He advanced upon her. So formidable did he look that she almost gave ground.

  “Come, if you will not strip, at least let us see that bruise. That bastard tramped down on you pretty hard with his boot.” He reached down and would have pulled up her skirts but that she slapped his hand away.

  “Don’t touch me, van Ryker!” she almost spat at him. She was thinking how that strong bronzed hand that he now extended toward her must have fondled Veronique, touched her intimately.

  His hand dropped away instantly. “If you will not suffer my inspection, then I will send Raoul round to examine you.”

  'There is no need,” she flashed. “I’m not hurt.”

  He accepted that. “Were there any others besides the two who fled?” He was buckling on his rapier as he spoke, checking out two large pistols. “I saw only four.”

  Her anger was winding down. “I saw but four. You’re—going after them?” she asked raggedly.

  “Yes.” Curtly. “I am. And find them too.”

  She had no doubt he would.

  “Stay in the house until I return,” he said dispassionately, and shouldered past her. She could hear his boots clattering down the stairs, striking the stone floor as he strode across it.

  And Imogene, caught up again in jealous impotent fury, swept her arm across a low cabinet and sent van Ryker’s comb and brush and two silver tobacco jars flying across the room.

  She was a long time picking them up and her hands trembled as she did it. Van Ryker was off to avenge her but—had he only this afternoon broken faith with her?

  Her thoughts gnawed at her, allowing her no rest. She paced the floor and finally went back to her own room. Time passed. She refused dinner.

  A long scented bath refreshed her and she drank a tall glass of cooling limeade and slipped into her night rail. A big orange moon crept over the skies. The palm fronds rustled restlessly. Although she would not admit it, she had begun to be afraid for van Ryker. He would thrust himself unhesitatingly into any danger, she knew. Perhaps they had set a trap for him. Perhaps ...

  But all her anxiety translated itself into anger again when at last she heard van Ryker’s quick step in the hall below, heard him speaking to someone—the guard drowsing at the door, no doubt. She debated pretending sleep, but jumped up instead. She wanted to confront him!

  She thought he looked tired as he swung into the room and closed the door behind him. There was a long rip in his doublet but—her heart gave a lurch—it was not bloody. One of his shirt sleeves had been torn entirely away—but the sinewy arm beneath was unscathed. And that bruise on his cheek (where a tankard had been thrown at him by a dockside whore in the brothel where he had at last run down Imogene’s attackers) was light enough, considering the mayhem he had wrought.

  “You found them?” she asked. And at his curt nod, “What—did you do?” But she knew already.

  “I rid the world of them,” he said conversationally, tossing his sword into a corner. “What would you have had me do? Leave them about to attack some other poor woman who had no strong blade to protect her?”

  “No.” She shivered. “I’m glad you killed them.” A frown crept over her face as she saw that he was undressing. “You’re not planning to sleep here tonight, are you?” she asked sharply. “In my bed?"

  He looked up in some surprise. “That was my intention.” His calm assumption that he could assert his marital rights with her made her fury wash over her again.

  “I don’t see how you can face me!” she cried. “After what you’ve done?”

  “And what have I done,” he asked coolly, pulling off his boots. “Except to save your pretty hide and chastise your attackers as a warning to others?”

  She had been lying on her elbow on the bed and now she bounced up. “You’ll not sleep in my bed!”

  He drew back, eyebrows elevating sardonically. “So? I had noticed a change in the weather. You have been blowing hot and cold lately. Let us have it out between us, whatever is bothering you.”

  “You know what is bothering me!” she shouted, feeling he was making a fool of her.

  Again he quirked an eyebrow at her. “Do I now?” he wondered. “Let me see. You visit the governor’s house frequently and come back looking preoccupied and worried. Suddenly you decide to gift Esthonie with one of your favorite possessions—the marquetry standing clock. I would suggest it is in the nature of payment for something. And what would Esthonie have to sell? Information, perhaps. Am I right so far?”

  Choked with rage, Imogene stared at him. How dared he stand there playing at word games with her? Her hands balled into fists. “And what could she tell me, van Ryker?” she asked at last in a tone of suppressed fury. “What would Esthonie know that I don’t?”

  “I have no idea,” he said blandly. “I suggest you tell me.’’


  “I do not need to have Esthonie tell me anything! With my own eyes I saw Veronique coming out of the grove behind the church—where she goes day after day! With my own eyes I saw you brush the Cup of Gold petals from your shoulder!”

  “And you assumed I was meeting Veronique in the grove?”

  “Of course!” she shouted.

  “Well, you are wrong. I only escorted her there. She was meeting someone else.”

  “Liar!” she accused bitterly.

  “Imogene.” He frowned. “Have I ever lied to you?”

  “Yes!” she cried.

  A ghost of a smile played over his sardonic face. “You are right,” he agreed, then countered with, “but have I ever lied to you for other than a good purpose?”

  “You are now!” she flung at him. “Esthonie is right. You are like Gauthier and have wandering ways. You have found a new woman!”

  His face seemed to harden. “Esthonie’s opinion is of little interest to me.”

  “Tell me it is not so!” she flashed.

  Van Ryker studied the flushed face before him in the bright moonlight. Imogene’s golden hair was disheveled but shining. Her breast, beneath the thin lawn of her lacy night rail, heaved mightily and he could see the pink tips of her nipples surging against the delicate fabric. A tiny scratch marred the white column of her pulsing throat where a twig had scraped her this afternoon. Somehow his gaze seemed to focus on that scratch and a great overpowering tenderness stole over him. He loved this girl so much, and the accusations she had made—she had made because she was jealous. Of him.

  It was a thing to be forgiven.

  He gave a deep sigh. “Imogene,” he said. “I had not intended to tell you this, but now I will. Come and sit down.”

  “I can take it standing,” she said promptly. “If you have taken a mistress, be good enough to say so.” Her voice was filled with stinging contempt. “Do not beat about the bush!”

  Van Ryker gave a rueful laugh. He left her side and walked over to the window, stood before it looking out into the midnight blue sky drifting serenely over Tortuga. His broad muscular back was to her so she could not see his face but something distant in his voice told her he was seeing other skies, other shores.

  “What I tell you now is told in confidence,” he said sternly. “A woman’s life depends on it—yes, and a man’s too.”

  Imogene gave a contemptuous sniff.

  He ignored that and went on. “The woman you know as Veronique Fondage is not French but Spanish.”

  Imogene’s racing thoughts skimmed back to that gliding walk of Veronique’s. The ladies of the Spanish court walked that way, she had been told. It took endless practice but they gradually achieved a gait that sent their long skirts floating over the floor as if they had no legs at all. And that unusual coiffure—it was made to support a high-backed tortoiseshell comb, as indeed it must have done in Spain. She should have recognized a Spanish aristocrat, she told herself in surprise. A woman who had been born to command, to walk over people; had Veronique been a man, she would doubtless have faced van Ryker from behind the guns of some majestic galleon challenging his right to use the seas.

  “But she was a captive aboard the galleon Delgado,” she burst out. “Esthonie said so!”

  “She was not a captive in any ordinary sense,” he explained. “Although she was indeed a captive. She is the runaway wife of Don Luis Alvarez, the duke of Sedalia-Catalonia—of whom you may have heard.”

  Imogene gave that broad back a startled look. Who had not heard of Don Luis? He was a grandee of Spain whose many ships ranged the seas, mortal enemy of all buccaneers. She sank down upon the bed and listened raptly as his level voice continued.

  “It was one of Don Luis’s ships that attacked my father’s merchantman, sank the vessel, and carried him away to Spain. It was in one of Don Luis’s dungeons that my father languished in chains, starving in darkness, gnawed by rats. It was to Don Luis that my mother sent the ransom—raised by selling our family home of Ryderwood and all we possessed. And it was that same Don Luis who accepted that ransom and sent my father back to us—starved, maltreated, and dying.’’

  “And Veronique is his wife?" gasped Imogene. “But she is young and I had heard that he is an old man!”

  That dark head, turned away from her, nodded soberly. “In Spain marriages are arranged. Veronique’s maiden name is Maria Theresa del Rio de Guarda. Hers is one of the loftiest families of Spain. She was thrust at sixteen into the arms of a man old enough to be her grandfather.”

  And you are rescuing her, thought Imogene, feeling hot jealousy pour over her.

  “Not only old, but a cold man, a proud man, a cruel man. Maria Theresa—”

  “Call her Veronique.”

  “Very well. Veronique was young and reckless. Appearing at court, she one day wore a dress cut too low—and the queen remarked it. Don Luis set out to punish her for this slur on his honor. He had all her clothes gathered together and burned while she watched. Then he ordered for her a new wardrobe of heavy fabrics in solid black with long sleeves and necklines that reached to her chin. She was young and spirited and she cast her gaze elsewhere; it was a harmless enough affair, to hear her tell it.”

  Imogene doubted anything Veronique had ever done was entirely harmless and she knew Spanish ladies of rank favored black, but her heart—the heart of a girl who was forever tossing away her whisk—went out to anyone obliged to wear stiff garments that reached to the chin.

  ‘‘Don Luis heard of her straying ways. He could prove nothing, but he determined to exact vengeance on his young wife. He sent her from court in disgrace under armed guard, exiled her to one of his country estates and told her that she would never leave it, that she would receive no visitors, buy no new gowns, be forbidden even to ride, that she should spend her days on her knees seeking forgiveness and her nights in prayer that such forgiveness be granted.”

  ‘‘But surely he couldn’t have meant forever!” protested Imogene, shocked.

  Again that large head nodded. ‘‘Veronique believes Don Luis would never have relented, that she would have grown old there—alone. For Don Luis had said that he intended never to lay eyes on her again. She managed to bribe one of the servants, sold some of her jewels—jewels that were part of her dowry—and secretly secured passage to Cartagena. She intended to go on to Lima, Peru, and live out her life under a new name. What that name was cannot matter now—she never reached Lima. Don Luis tortured the servants until they revealed what she had done. He then sent one of his ship’s officers—a most intrepid fellow—to the New World to collect her. She was to be returned to Spain for execution as a heretic.”

  Imogene shivered. She knew that in Spain the Inquisition had been twisted in strange ways: a disobedient child—or a disobedient wife—could be declared a heretic and disposed of under church law.

  “The man he sent to accomplish this was Don Diego Navarro, who had little heart for his task. He found his quarry easily enough—a woman with a face so striking is hard to conceal.” Again that little quiver of jealousy went through Imogene. “He loaded Veronique on to one of the galleons of the treasure flota, intending to deliver her back to Spain.” Like other treasure wrested from the New World, she thought suddenly. A woman with amber eyes and hair of flashing jet. ... “There was one trouble with his plan.” Van Ryker’s voice grew ironic. “Diego Navarro, gentleman of Spain, had fallen in love with the lady.”

  “And he is the man whose leg you injured in the fighting on the beach the day you took the treasure flota?”

  If he was surprised that she knew that, his voice did not show it. It continued even and calm. “The same. Diego Navarro had toyed with the idea that he and Veronique would make their escape in Spain when the ship landed, make their way to some out-of-the-way place and live as peasants in the hills.”

  Hard to imagine elegant Veronique doing that!

  “But then the storm came up and you captured the treasure flota and all that changed,” s
he murmured.

  “Right. At that point, Diego decided to sell his life dearly.” There was admiration in van Ryker’s voice. “We must have seemed an overwhelming force, sweeping in across the beach, but Diego, almost alone, leaped forward to meet us. I was the first man to reach the shore and he waded out in the surf to meet me. We clashed swords and he came off the worst of it. I pray that his wounded leg will not leave him crippled—Raoul says it will not although it still pains him and he will limp for some time to come.”

  Imogene’s gaze was misty. She could understand van Ryker’s feelings about Diego—gallantry calls to gallantry. “So you are telling me they are lovers,” she said at last.

  “I am telling you more than that. I am telling you they are lost lovers if something is not done to help them, for although Diego’s ship’s company died to a man and the surviving Spanish prisoners have apparently accepted his story that she was a French captive being returned to Spain to be ransomed, they have no future. They cannot return to Spain.”

  “What will become of them?”

  “They meet secretly in the grove each day. I have let the world believe it is I she trysts with—but that is only to aid Diego, whom I have come to admire and like. She is teaching him French, which she speaks so fluently she has even been able to fool the governor’s family into believing she is French. When La Belle France leaves our harbor for Marseilles she will carry with her Monsieur and Madame de Jonquil, an unfortunate French couple who were shipwrecked and lost their papers. In Marseilles they will buy new papers—her jewels, which I restored to her, will keep them going—to prove beyond doubt that they are Monsieur and Madame de Jonquil. Veronique will leave without saying good-bye. Her horse will be found riderless beside the sea. She will be presumed to have drowned. Diego will be presumed to have escaped—I will say so.”

  “So you arrange this happy fate for Veronique because you admire Diego’s gallantry,” Imogene murmured. “And not because she is a poor helpless female of striking attributes?” He swung about and the anger in his dark face struck her like a physical blow. He looked satanic as he spoke.