Wild Willful Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  “They—couldn’t have survived it?” she whispered.

  “Not a chance,” he said cheerfully. “No, don’t look— nothing to see, anyway. That last wave washed what was left of them out to sea. No one will find them now—not for a while at least. You’re free, lmogene—because those men up there believe that woman was you.”

  ‘‘It’s horrible.” She shuddered.

  “Yes,” he said, stroking her hair. But he was remembering that they had had her, might have killed her... van Ryker was not sorry for the pair who had plummeted to the rocks. “We must wait a while,” he told her. “For you’d be conspicuous in a crowd of men. But soon the townsfolk will arrive in abundance—and the curious from other parts. We can make our way through them like ordinary citizens—you in your homespun and myself an inconspicuous stranger.”

  “You could never be inconspicuous, van Ryker,” she protested in a tremulous voice, thinking of his height, the mighty wingspread of his shoulders, the majestic commanding look of him.

  “Well, I’ll hunch my back a bit,” he grinned, “and try to look humble. Now tell me, lmogene, what brought you to this pass?”

  The story poured out of her then—about the shipwreck, the wreckers, the trial, about Bess and Ambrose and Lady Moxley, about the Averys and the huers—but not about Harry, not about Melisande. Van Ryker listened raptly, holding her close to him there in that sheltering cleft in the rocks.

  When she had finished, there were tears on her lashes, and very tenderly he kissed those tears away.

  “I’ve men and a longboat waiting down the coast,” he told her softly. “We’ll to the Sea Rover, lmogene, where you can forget all that’s past. We’ll to Amsterdam and thence to London—and Ryderwood.”

  lmogene remembered then what in the trepidation of the last few minutes she had clean forgot. She pushed him away.

  “I’ll go with you to the Sea Rover, van Ryker,” she said, giving him a scathing look from her smoldering blue eyes. “But not to make a future. You can drop me off at any safe port—say in Amsterdam, if that wouldn’t be putting you out!” And to his shocked expression, “For I’ll not spend my future sharing you with Veronique!”

  “Veron—?” His astonishment was almost as unsettling to her as had been his calm assumption that she’d spend her future with him on any terms at all. “But didn’t you get my note, lmogene? Arne told me faithfully he had put it in Captain Bagtry’s hand! That note explained all!”

  She shook her head. “Captain Bagtry lost it overboard when he leaped forward to rescue a child from the railing.”

  Van Ryker’s expression changed to one of remorse. “Then all the time you thought—”

  “That you had taken a new woman,” she said steadily. “As indeed you have. And don’t bother to deny it—I saw you together on the long divan with my own two eyes!”

  “lmogene—”

  “And all the notes in the world couldn’t wash that away!” He would have put his hands on her shoulders but that she shrugged him off.

  “lmogene,” he said earnestly—but there was a twinkle of mirth in his gray eyes, swiftly controlled at her gathering rage. “The woman you saw on the divan was not Veronique—it was Georgette.”

  “Then you are not only a lecher but a cradle robber,” she gasped.

  “No, no.” He reached out to catch her for, unmindful of the crowd atop the cliffs, she was flinging away from him. Holding on to her trembling shoulders, he told her how it had been.

  “Then Georgette impersonated Veronique?” she began indignantly. “Oh, how could she lend herself to such a charade?”

  Van Ryker pressed an unexpected kiss on her lips that cut off her words, left her breathless with her heart pounding. Then he lifted his head. “Georgette would do anything to own a string of pearls.” His voice was suddenly overborne by laughter—and a note of triumph too, for had he not found his woman, saved her, was she not clasped here safe in his arms? “And now she owns such a string.”

  “I wonder,” murmured Imogene, falling in with his lightsome mood, “how she explained them to Esthonie?”

  “Said she found them in the street, I shouldn’t wonder, the little minx—knowing Esthonie would never say ‘La, we must look for the rightful owner!’ ”

  It was true, Imogene knew. Esthonie was at heart more of a buccaneer than any of those scarred and cutlassed gentlemen who purchased letters of marque from her plump, perspiring husband. She leaned against van Ryker’s deep chest, hearing the strong steady beat of his heart.

  “But it was a cruel thing to do, van Ryker,” she murmured reproachfully. “Didn’t you know I’d suffer the agonies of the damned over your defection?”

  “I thought you’d suffer only long enough to clear the harbor,” he explained frankly. “And after that I expected you’d be shaking your fist at the Sea Rover's, sails and wanting to get your hands on me to straighten me out tor tricking you!”

  “Your sails?” she asked blankly. “But you were nowhere in sight! I stood on the deck all night, and when dawn came I couldn’t have missed seeing them.”

  He frowned. “Didn’t Captain Bagtry explain that I was shadowing the ship?” he asked sharply. “Didn’t he lend you his glass so that you could see for yourself?”

  She shook her head. “He told me nothing. Perhaps he was diverted by the fire when that little boy knocked over one of the cooking pots on deck.”

  “Fire?” he said. “Good God!”

  “It was soon put out. And after that there was talk aboard that you’d sailed only far enough to make sure the Goodspeed had not turned around and headed back for Tortuga—at my instigation. They said you had rid yourself of me and were making sure that I was not returned!” And in my despair I believed it. It was there in her voice like frozen tears.

  “Did you really think me of such little account, Imogene?” He looked searchingly deep into her eyes.

  “I was too confused to think,” she muttered, dropping her gaze before his deep probing one. “And after what I’d seen.... The thought that you had taken another woman melted my brain!” And made me easy prey for such as Harry, she realized—but left the words unspoken. “So it was none of it true,” she mused. “And to think, I left Esthonie my lovely marquetry standing clock to thank her for telling me lies!”

  “You did not leave it,” he said quietly. “The clock is aboard the Sea Rover at this moment. I told Gauthier of your decision to leave the clock and he said that his wine cellar was low in stock and he would much better appreciate some of my fine Canary. I left him beaming, with bottles stacked up around him, and took the clock with me.”

  “Oh, van Ryker!” Imogene burst into wild laughter—a relief after all the emotional turmoil she had been through. “Can you imagine Esthonie’s face when she discovers Gauthier afloat in a sea of wine and the marquetry clock she coveted has sailed away?”

  “She’ll get over it,” he said, ruffling her hair. “Esthonie complains but she always accommodates herself to circumstance. I think she could get over the loss of anything. But you...” his voice deepened. “I would never have gotten over the loss of you.”

  Her heart strummed happily at the rich tenor of his voice, at the tenderness reflected in his gray eyes. Someday she would tell him how she had challenged the jury, frightening them with him, how she had threatened everyone in the courtroom with loss of life—at his hands! He would throw back his great head and laugh—and then his face would become sober and thoughtful, for what havoc might he not have wrought if they had killed her, if he had come ashore only to find her lifeless body swinging from some high gibbet looking out to sea?

  The threat had been real enough and they had understood it, those twelve good men of Cornwall. They had traded a buccaneer’s fearless woman for their lives and property—and would be to the end of their days glad of the bargain.

  “I was right about one thing,” he said. “Two great Spanish galleasses were waiting for me off Cayona Bay and had the battle gone otherwis
e, you might have been taken.

  “As it was, I was merely shipwrecked,” she said crisply “Seized by wreckers, and finally tried for my life on old trumped-up charges.”

  He winced. “I did not foresee the storm,” he admitted. “Nor could I know you would not receive my note explaining everything.”

  She gave him a cold look. For, perversely, now that he was here—this man she had desired so ardently with the whole of her being—she was determined not to let him off so easily. Faith, he had put her through a real hell! That it had all been a mistake counted for nothing—it had all been of his contriving. She gazed at him accusingly. “You almost drove me into other arms!”

  Van Ryker studied the hot-blooded woman before him. Her beautiful flushed face was stormy with conflicting emotions.

  “I set a trap for you, Imogene—and trapped myself,” he admitted with a sigh.

  “Yes. You did!” Resentfully.

  “And these other arms,” he said steadily. “Were they so tempting?”

  Hot color flooded her face as she remembered Harry and all that she had, so briefly, felt for him. But for the intervention of the law’s long arm, what might not have happened on that soft scented night in the garden at Ennor Castle when he had clasped her to him urgently and she had felt surrender flowering within her? “I—do not want to talk about that,” she said in a suffocated voice.

  “I don’t doubt it!” His face hardened.

  “After all, I thought you were with Veronique the whole time. You had given me reason to believe it!” she flashed resentfully. “I imagined you making love to her in the Sea Rover's great cabin—after all, Esthonie had told me you gave her the great cabin on the voyage from the Antilles to Tortuga!”

  “True—and bunked in with de Rochemont.” He nodded urbanely. “But more to the point, where is this fellow—my rival?” His voice was nonchalant but he was loosening his sword in its scabbard as he spoke.

  “You have no need to kill him, van Ryker.” Her voice saddened as her gaze flew involuntarily to the broken cliff face. “The world—and his own folly—have already done that.” For a moment Harry’s face rose up before, her, merry and roguish. He’d had lighthearted winning ways, had Harry—and one fatal flaw: he never faced up to anything. But—she had been on the brink of falling in love with him.

  “Then he was the man who fell when the top of the cliff gave way?”

  She nodded.

  “A fellow you were holding a gun on when I found you? A fellow who ran away and left you to a mob?” He sounded incredulous.

  “It’s—a long story.”

  “And the woman?”

  Imogene shrugged. “Some London wench who had dragged him down. I think Harry might have made it, had it not been for her. She wasn’t right for him, even though he loved her.”

  “And I suppose you were?” He snorted.

  The face she turned to him was stripped of artfulness or pretense; it was grave and sad. "Perhaps. But Harry wasn't right for me. For me he filled a need, a void, a—oh, haven't you ever felt like that, van Ryker? I couldn’t love him, but I—I tried to. I wanted to. God, how I tried!”

  “I didn’t know women felt like that,” he admitted thoughtfully. “I knew men did.”

  "And so, in a way, I failed you,” she said in a small voice “Nothing happened but—something would have happened had I not at that moment been seized and dragged away to jail. I wasn’t entirely true after all.” She forgot Harry, who had been, after all, but a romantic interlude and never meant to last, she forgot everything but the tall stern man before her looking down at her with such love and understanding. “Van Ryker...can you ever forgive me?” she asked wistfully.

  And her tall buccaneer answered her as he had once before, the night they had plighted their troth, "lmogene, lmogene. how could you ever doubt it?” And gathered her into his arms.

  He was thinking how true she was, that she could suffer over what had never been but only might have happened. His lady, his peerless lmogene, there would never be anyone like her. Faith, her near-miss with infidelity might trouble her—but it would never trouble him. Good God, had he not thought about it himself once or twice? And resisted, of course.

  And holding her, he swore a great oath to himself: that she would never have cause to doubt him again. Nor would she ever again wander unprotected through the world. By God, he would never leave her side!

  After a time of sighs and touching, of lingering kisses that took the breath and caught at the heart, of murmuring promises and soft regrets, a time when they wished themselves aboard the Sea Rover and lost in the magic of its great cabin, lying in the big bunk looking out at the stars through that bank of slanted windows in the stern, after all that had to be said urgently was said and all the cobwebs and misunderstandings cleared away, van Ryker put her gently away from him.

  “ ’Tis time to go, Imogene. There’ll be enough people wandering about these slopes now that we can mingle with the crowd and not be noticed. My buccaneers may become uneasy and strike out to find me. Best we not keep the longboat waiting.”

  For a moment Imogene hung back. ‘‘But first shouldn’t I find Bess and thank her for all she did?”

  Van Ryker cast a speculative look at the broken section of cliff that had tumbled down carrying Harry and Melisande to their death. “That pelting crowd of—what did you call them? Huers? They believed they were chasing you," he pointed out. “And now, for the time at least, until they find the bodies of those two, they believe they did you in. Let’s leave it that way. Safer for you.”

  “But Bess—she wouldn’t tell anyone!”

  “She might be tricked into it. By her brother, perhaps. You said he bears you no love.”

  “Yes, that’s true, but—”

  “You can let Bess know your fate later—on Barbados. Although”—he gave the dazzling woman beside him a sardonic glance—“you might be doing Bess a favor to let her think you were no longer in the land of the living!”

  She caught his meaning: So that Bess need never have a qualm about how she stood with Stephen ... yes, perhaps that would be a gift, a silent way to show her gratitude. To let Stephen and Bess think that she was dead.

  She gave van Ryker a look of silent appreciation. No one would ever suit her as he did. And to think, she had been on the verge of leaving—with Harry!

  Panic over that narrow escape made her throw herself against him again, burying her face in his deep chest. There was a wonderful haven here, listening to the strong beating of his heart throbbing in her ears.

  She cast a look back at the cliffs, at the broken shelf from which Harry and Melisande had plunged to their death. He had been very enticing, had Harry. And had it happened slightly otherwise, she might even now be in his arms sailing away to an uncertain future. Or perhaps on a fast horse heading for London, with Melisande and the wreckers in full cry after them—and van Ryker a part of her past.

  “It was foolish of you to deceive me,” she said softly, touching his lips with gentle fingers. “It was dangerous—and reckless.”

  “But then I was ever so,” he assured her, and seized her lingers and kissed them. “As are you, Imogene. Perhaps ’tis why you please me so.” He held her off from him and his voice was deep and rich. The glow in that voice promised her everything.

  She smiled up at him. Then, trustingly—for he was worthy of her trust—she gave him her hand and let him lead her over the grassy slopes and through the milling people, down the coast toward the longboat and his waiting buccaneers. Somehow she seemed to have walked this path before, she thought dreamily as she sat beside van Ryker in the prow, with strong oarsmen bending their backs to carry them to the waiting Sea Rover.

  Van Ryker’s arm was around her and her long bright hair, loosed now from the gray silk scarf and shimmering like the Sea Rover's golden hull in the afternoon sun, was blowing over his shoulder. It blew across the saturnine features of the man who looked down on her so tenderly. He brushed it away, then
bent to press a gentle kiss upon those shining strands and rub his cheek against her fair head.

  “All our lives lie before us, Imogene,” he whispered, and she knew thrillingly that it was true.

  Tonight there would be a celebration aboard the Sea Rover. Her decks would be dancing with lights, the air filled with music and song. They would paint the name Victorious across her golden hull and drink fine captured wines and congratulate one another on the world that they had won.

  Then they would depart the Scillies forever and sail away toward their destiny. And as the great ship beat its way into the English Channel, she and her lean buccaneer would have their own celebration in the luxurious great cabin with only a low-hanging moon to watch them. They would toast the future and then—because they had been so long apart—an impatient van Ryker would not even let her finish undressing. When she was only down to her chemise, he would sweep her up and carry her to the big familiar bunk where so much had happened, and lay her down upon it tenderly and there divest her of her remaining garments, while little shudders of feeling coursed through her.

  And then he would shed his own clothes. She would marvel for a moment at the wondrous vibrant masculinity of him, standing broad-shouldered and dominating and lean-hipped in the moonlight—but only for a moment would she marvel, for he would move swiftly to join her, lowering his long hard body gently onto hers, and all the past would be forgotten in his arms.

  Her woman’s body, her throbbing heart, her very soul would respond to him, soar with him, become one with him. And all the misunderstandings, all the troubles, all the dangers would be blotted out. Their naked limbs would intertwine—and tremble with the joy of it. Their bodies would lock sinuously, their lips meet and hold. Ardently, urgently they would embrace and the passion that shook them whenever they touched would engulf them once again. Soaring and honest and real, that passion would thunder through their veins like an earthquake—it would swallow them up and leave them shaken and amazed. As it always did.