Wild Willful Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  “You’re right, I don’t believe it,” said Virginie bluntly.

  Virginie’s disbelief irritated Georgette. “Well, I do,” she said airily, reaching for the pair of black silk gloves she had taken from Veronique’s room. “And you’ll never guess who it is!”

  “It’s Andy Layton, I don’t doubt—I saw him come to the house yesterday when you thought I was taking a nap. I saw you talking to him in the courtyard and serving him limeade!”

  Georgette made a face at her and laughed.

  “Be careful of Andy,” Virginie warned. “Unless you really do want to marry him. For Mamma will make you marry him, you know, if she thinks he has had his way with you.”

  “I don’t see why!” Georgette tugged at the black gloves. “After all, Jean Claude won’t be the first to have his way with you—and Mamma didn’t make you marry any of the others.

  Of course,” she added in fairness, “maybe she would if she’d known about them.”

  “Don’t say that!” Her nerves rubbed raw, Virginie’s voice had gone waspish. She had been distracted for a minute by Georgette’s masquerade, but now she was back facing her main problem and she couldn’t bear to be twitted about her worldliness by Georgette.

  “Well, you said—” began Georgette argumentatively.

  “I don’t care what I said! None of them ever had his way with me and you’d best take care with Andy, Georgette! I mean that!”

  “Then you really are a virgin?” Georgette stopped struggling with the gloves. She looked awed.

  “Of course!” snapped Virginie.

  Georgette gave the recalcitrant glove a mighty tug. She was thinking indignantly how Virginie had lorded it over her with that loss of virginity. She would strike back!

  “I shouldn’t want to lose my virginity to my husband,” she declared with a lift of her chin. “It sounds very dull. I intend to lose mine to some exciting married man.”

  Virginie gave a scornful laugh. “Who?”

  “Captain van Ryker,” said Georgette airily. “I have a rendezvous with him tonight. At his house.”

  “At his house!” Virginie stared. “I don’t believe it! And, anyway, he’s downstairs.”

  “We’ll slip away. I’m to meet him outside.” And to Virginie’s disbelieving look, “Why do you think I am got up like this? He wants me to look just like Veronique so that I can come and go without being suspected.”

  “You do know that everybody says she’s his mistress?”

  “Yes, but I don’t believe it,” scoffed Georgette. “Else why would he—”

  Virginie didn’t let her finish. “Georgette, he’s married to Imogene. She’ll never let him go!”

  “She doesn’t have to,” said Georgette with a heartless smile. “He can cast her out and we can have a buccaneer’s marriage.”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t! Mamma would die!. And Papa would—” Her older sister peered into Georgette’s face. “It’s none of it true!” she accused.

  “Wait and see,” said Georgette blithely. “Captain van Ryker has promised me a string of pearls in the bargain—just for this first time.” She emphasized that strongly. “Who knows what gifts he will shower on me later?”

  Virginie sniffed.

  “I don’t intend to be a fake like you,” Georgette told her, striking back for that sniff. “I intend to come back from this rendezvous—” She lifted her arms and pirouetted as gaily as a child “—a woman of the world. And rich!”

  “A string of pearls won’t make you rich,” said Virginie tartly. She was half inclined to believe Georgette now and she found the thought alarming.

  “No, but it’s a start,” Georgette told her. “And one must start sometime.”

  “I’ve half a mind to tell Mamma!” said Virginie. Georgette’s dark eyes narrowed and her gamin face assumed an ugly expression. “If you do,” she warned her sister menacingly, “I’ll tell Mamma and Jean Claude that I saw Jim Notley climb into your window and stay all night'.

  Virginie hesitated. She knew Georgette would do it! “All right,” she said in a resigned voice. “I won’t tell.”

  “Better than that,” suggested Georgette, seizing her advantage. “Tell Mamma you looked in on me and I was asleep. She’ll believe it.”

  Virginie was quite sure Mamma would believe it. She was too busy keeping track of her party guests to keep track of her daughters. For a moment she felt bitter about that. “Georgette,” she began halfheartedly. But it was no use. Having tugged the gloves on, Georgette gave her sister a wave with one black-gloved hand. “Georgette!”

  But Georgette was already slipping from the room. She’d make it unobserved into the courtyard and then outside where Captain van Ryker would be waiting for her. Not only would she win a string of pearls tonight by acting out a lie, but she would triumph over Virginie by telling one! And Virginie, she told herself, would be gone to France, shipped out with Jean Claude, before she could ever learn the straight of it.

  Idly she wondered where Veronique was—and dismissed the thought. Veronique was keeping her own rendezvous, no doubt—perhaps she had quarreled with Captain van Ryker and was teaching him a lesson. Or perhaps she’d met someone else and that was why Captain van Ryker needed her to play this trick on Imogene. Or perhaps... her mind was full of vivid imaginings as she reached the courtyard.

  Meanwhile, shaken, Virginie sat down and stared whitefaced into the mirror. She had already forgotten all about Georgette and was imagining in lurid detail what might happen tonight upstairs in her bedchamber. She was not only tired—she was scared to death.

  Just as he had promised, van Ryker was waiting for Georgette outside and he escorted her swiftly—and unnoticed save by one sharp pair of eyes—to his house. That particular pair of eyes belonged to Andy Layton, who had been skulking about the shrubbery out front trying to get up the nerve to crash the party. Every time anyone wandered by, Andy had hastily shrunk back into the concealing cover of the shrubbery and he did the same when van Ryker appeared with a tall black-satin-clad creature who appeared to his eyes in this indifferent light to be Veronique. He held his breath as they passed, and indeed he never got a good look at the slender lady the buccaneer captain was escorting away from the governor’s house.

  Andy had heard the gossip, of course, that linked Veronique’s name with van Ryker, but it was the first time he had actually seen them together and alone. He thought about that for a long time and regretted not having followed them, for it would have been interesting to see where they went. Van Ryker, Andy felt, could hardly take Veronique home with him. Suppose lmogene came back and discovered them together?

  The laughter and music from the house drifted out to him, making him feel disconsolate. In spite of his show of bravado, Andy was a timid soul. He could not quite summon up the courage to present himself uninvited at the governor’s door—for Esthonie Touraille had a sharp unforgiving face and suppose she ordered him cast out? He would die of embarrassment and, besides, he would cut a ludicrous figure before Georgette!

  He had almost decided to give up his fruitless vigil and return home to Dr. Argyll’s house, where his brother was spending the evening absorbed in one of the books from the little doctor’s excellent library, when his attention was suddenly attracted by the sight of a dozen men who were moving purposefully and with remarkable silence toward the house.

  Some internal mechanism warned Andy that he had best stay out of sight until they passed. To his surprise, they did not pass at all, but melted like shadows into the shrubbery and disappeared, he thought, into the courtyard. Andy blinked his surprise at this, for they had all been cutlassed and carried big pistols. They had looked to be buccaneers, and this was the governor’s house of a buccaneers’ island, so why were they hiding?

  Meanwhile van Ryker had settled Georgette on the sofa, given her some cotton to stuff the fingers of her gloves so that her short-fingered grubby hands would look long-fingered like Veronique’s. He had shown her graphically what he expected of her
. And hurried back with Arne to collect Imogene.

  Bewildered now—and afraid to leave lest he attract the attention of the cutlassed crew who were even now, he was certain, hiding in the bushes, Andy saw van Ryker stride up to the governor’s house with Arne. He saw Arne and Imogene come out, saw her throw a scarf over her head and walk off in the direction of the quay while van Ryker strode off in the direction of his house. Afraid to leave and curious too, Andy waited there, puzzled, certain that things would eventually be made clear to him. Unknown to him as he waited, Georgette performed her little charade on the long sofa of van Ryker’s house like the accomplished actress van Ryker had assured her she was. She never saw Imogene come into the house—or leave it. All Georgette heard was a sudden gasp behind her, and van Ryker kept a tight grip on her to discourage her from looking around.

  He was frowning as he brought her back to the “governor’s palace” and Georgette, who was finding it hard to keep up with his long stride, was afraid she’d jeopardize her pearls if she asked him why.

  “Hurry in before you’re missed,” van Ryker told her in a taciturn voice and turned on his heel. Georgette scuttled away from him, snapping back a branch in Andy’s face as she passed the place where he was hiding. Andy, who had leaned forward meaning to get a good look at “Veronique” and see whether she looked happy or sad, was hard put not to cry out for that whiplash blow nearly blinded him. When he could see again, he saw that “Veronique,” as he believed Georgette to be, was strolling through the shadows of the courtyard—for indeed Georgette was enjoying her masquerade and was loath to have it end. She only hoped one of the guests—some dashing buccaneer preferably—would leave the house and come out into the courtyard for some air and she could stand in the shadows and make believe that she was Veronique and lure him on....

  The door to the courtyard opened and with that in mind. Georgette stepped back deeper into the shadows. But it was only Dr. Argyll tottering out to knock the fire out of the bowl of his long clay pipe. She watched as he made his unsteady way back inside.

  Georgette gave a sniff. She supposed the rest of the guests were in no better condition, for the drinking had become heavy even before she had left the party. She decided she’d best go back to her room and get out of these clothes before Veronique came back and found her in them and perhaps set up an outcry. With that in mind, she moved to step onto the moonlit stones that would take her back inside.

  For a moment as she brushed aside a palm frond, her arm was gilded by moonlight. Her sleeve had fallen back and the red heart was suddenly shown in vivid relief.

  There was an abortive movement nearby. Georgette’s head swung around sharply. She would have cried out but that a hand suddenly crunched down over her mouth. Georgette struggled. She tried to scream. In the darkness she could see still darker shapes converging around her. She thought her heart would stop, so wildly was it beating.

  And then a gag was thrust into her mouth—but not before she bit the fingers that thrust it in and was rewarded by a grunt of pain. Then something large and dark and smothering—she thought it was a blanket—was thrust over her head and she was heaved up onto a sturdy shoulder and carried away. Terrified, half fainting from being stifled, she heard the sounds of the party recede in the distance.

  In sudden blinding terror it came to Georgette that none of the Tourailles would notice her disappearance. She had instructed Virginie to tell her mother she was sleeping—and Esthonie would undoubtedly let her “sleep” till next day, never dreaming that she was on her way to God knew where, being carried away by a party of grim and silent men who had not spoken since they had taken her.

  Georgette had never much believed in God, but now in panic she prayed to Him, making all manner of heartfelt promises if only He would get her out of this.

  But the watcher in the bushes had seen it all.

  Appalled, Andy Layton crouched in the sheltering shrubbery, afraid to move a muscle, and saw “Veronique” taken by this group of “buccaneers” who had come out of nowhere and snatched her up and were carrying her fast away.

  Piled on top of the other events of the night, it was too much for Andy. He gave no alarm—indeed his throat was too dry to speak. With saucerlike eyes he watched the men depart, moving silently on a path that would avoid the quay and lead them out of town and down the coast. And then Andy—who would have fled all the way to Philadelphia at that point if he could only have walked on water—took to his heels and made it back to Dr. Argyll’s green-shuttered house in record time.

  “That you, Andy?” His brother looked up sleepily from his book. “I wondered where you’d got to.”

  Andy made a strangled sound in his throat. He was too scared even to tell his brother where he’d “got to.” His teeth were chattering for he’d seen, he knew, an abduction. And he wasn’t about to get involved in it, no, sir! That was a group of buccaneers who had fallen upon “Veronique”—and just after van Ryker had brought her back to the house! Could van Ryker have been in on it? If so, it behooved a young man from Philadelphia to forget all he’d seen. At least until tomorrow.

  Even though it was a hot night, Andy hastily pulled a sheet over his head and pretended sleep when toward morning Dr. Argyll looked in on him.

  CHAPTER 16

  At the governor’s house, the guests, most of them much the worse for wine, had departed one by one until only little Dr. Argyll was left. He was too unsteady on his feet to walk and Esthonie would have packed him off home in a wheelbarrow in care of a servant but that Gauthier stopped her. Dr. Argyll, he told her sentimentally, needed them on this—he waxed flowery, like the voluble Frenchman he was—“occasion of his bereavement.”

  “Bereavement?” cried Esthonie, scandalized. “Why, he’s better off without her! The woman was nothing but a trollop—worked in one of those awful houses down by the quay.” She gave her husband a hard look. “I don’t see how a decent man could stomach such trash!”

  Gauthier, who was well aware that his wife was speaking not of Dr. Argyll’s errant sweetheart but of his own light of love, Josie Dawes, cast about for a diversion, for he was well aware that he was about to be called on to endure one of Esthonie’s famous tongue-lashings.

  “We owe it to him,” he insisted. “Don’t you remember when Virginie had the fever two years ago how kind he was to her?”

  “And well paid for it!”

  “Nevertheless, he got her through it. Come back, we must sit with him for a while until he is a condition to go home.”

  “I wonder if I gave Virginie enough advice,” fretted Esthonie. “Jean Claude dawdled away and then he took her upstairs so quickly.”

  “If you haven’t, it is too late,” said the governor firmly. “The time for advice is past, Estie. Jean Claude will take over from now on.” Even as he spoke he was urging her from the hall where they had been quarreling back to the drawing room, which the recent festivities had left in a shambles.

  Muttering, Esthonie accompanied her husband back into the big empty room full of drooping flowers, guttering candles and a pervasive odor of fresh paint. There on a tall-backed chair sat Dr. Argyll, dignified and straight as a poker but leaning slightly to windward as if he might at any moment topple from his perch. There was a long smear of lavender paint down one of his sleeves and another on his white ruffled cuffs.

  “Have some coffee made,” said the governor quietly and turned a cheerful face to his guest. “Well, well, Dr. Argyll, do you think that Layton fellow will be coming soon to pick up his sons?”

  “I hope so, I hope so.” Dr. Argyll shook his muddled head. “Wouldn’t want them to go astray on Tortuga. Not under my care.”

  Esthonie, having ordered the coffee, came back and sat down, settling her black and gold skirts about her. She was looking at Dr. Argyll, but her ear was cocked alertly toward the bridal chamber upstairs where Jean Claude had just escorted a blushing Virginie.

  She hoped Virginie would heed all that she had told her, for just before Jea
n Claude held out his hand to escort his bride upstairs her mother had leaned forward and whispered a last admonition in her ear. “Don’t let yourself be dominated! If you do, you’ll become a doormat!”

  Thoroughly confused, and with both Georgette’s and her mother’s advice ringing in her ears, Virginie was in a near hysterical state when at last she faced Jean Claude across the bridal bed. Jean Claude, who had had a bit too much to drink of the governor’s excellent Canary, stumbled but once as he rid himself of his boots and regained his feet with dignity.

  He swayed before her in his blue satin suit, a marvel of French tailoring that had been a last gift of his embattled family, bestowed on him with the admonition to marry the wench or face debtors’ prison. The effect of his splendor was but slightly dimmed by the fact that the lace at his throat was askew from being clawed at in the heat, and he had lost one of the rosettes from his cuffs.

  All evening Jean Claude had been feeling extremely sorry for himself—forced suddenly into marriage on the lure of a wedding gift that had turned out to be but a dozen silver goblets and not a chest of buccaneer’s treasure. And now in this heat he must face the exhausting task of deflowering a virgin! Ah, well, better get on with it. With intense concentration, he addressed himself to removing his blue satin doublet.

  Across from him, Virginie, standing like a statue in her lace-overlaid taffetas, did not move.

  Jean Claude flung aside his doublet and began unfastening his white shirt.

  Still, Virginie continued to stare at him.

  Jean Claude looked up. He thought Virginie was looking exceptionally fiery as she stared at him across the bed. He had not considered her a particularly good-looking wench but now he could see that she had a certain shimmering magnetism. ... Somewhat befuddled by drink, he thought she was excited at being brought to bed for the first time.

  “Aren’t you going to undress?” he hiccuped, noting that while he was down to his trousers and smallclothes that she was still standing there completely bedecked in her bridal finery, even to her veil.