Bold Breathless Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  Which of course he could not do, having already two wives, although at the moment he could not pinpoint the location of either.

  “Are ye sorry?” he asked abruptly. “About last night?”

  “Never!” Her voice rang with sincerity. And whatever happened to her in the future, she knew that was true—she could never be sorry about last night. “Are—are you?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Never!” He swung her up in his arms and kissed her lips and carried her away with him down toward the beach.

  Lying content in his arms, Imogene’s heart sang.

  The duel was won, her virginity lost—and not regretted.

  It was a magical day, that day she spent with Stephen. They lounged in secret places hidden among the rocks of the beach, they sought the lonely places that only lovers know—lovers and seabirds, shrieking their lonely way on the gossamer currents of the salt wind in the azure dome of the sky.

  As the day wore on, in shadowed clefts of the old gray lichened rocks they laughed and made love and teased and forgot there would ever be a tomorrow. In late afternoon they found a shabby fisherman roasting his catch in the ashes of a little fire—and for a few coins, gladly taken, they joined him in his dinner. Then they strolled farther and swam and made love in the shadow of a beached forgotten wreck, half buried in the sand. Lying beneath the bleached bones of the old hull, they slept for a little, lulled by the heat of the late afternoon sun.

  Imogene woke first, with a start. The sun was going down. It burned low in the west and like a dying ember it gave all the sky a last red glow. As she watched, the red glowing ball was suddenly eclipsed—and she realized that her view of the sunset was blocked by an enormous flight of seabirds, returning home to the Isle of Annet, where they bred at this time of year. Now her eyes followed their path across the darkening sky.

  She sat up, running her fingers through her long hair, and smiled down at the man stretched out long and lean beside her. She hated to wake him and yet she must go back before a search was actually mounted. Elise could cover for her only so long. Still she hesitated, unwilling for this lovely day to end. And so she idled, tracing patterns in the sand with a lazy finger as she looked down on Stephen’s face. He looked so young and vulnerable as he slept, she thought.

  Strange ... she had always expected to be taken in bed—that first time. But now she hugged her bare silver knees in ecstatic remembrance . . . last night had been perfect; she wouldn’t have had it any other way. Indeed, she felt a ridiculous sense of triumph over other mortals, as if she had risen above them in some way with this new joy, this new ecstasy.

  Lying back on the sand again, she studied the darkening sky overhead and told herself playfully that after they were married—for she never for a moment doubted that they would marry—they would live in the sea, swimming endlessly, tirelessly by day and beaching themselves by night, making love till first light.

  Her fantasies were lovely. They gave her a glow that made Stephen s eyes light up in wonder when he came awake at her touch.

  She was headed for tragedy but she did not know it. Not yet.

  CHAPTER 4

  From her vantage point atop the low hill, Elise watched the lovers lingering by the sailboat they’d beached at rugged Saint Agnes Isle.

  Three weeks had passed since the ball at Star Castle, three weeks in which reckless Imogene Wells and the tall, sardonic gentleman from Devon had managed to slip away and meet almost daily. Three harrowing weeks for Elise, who had had to cover for Imogene, first at Star Castle and then at Ennor Castle, where they had gone to visit the Duveens. At Ennor they had lingered a scandalously long time, to Elise’s way of thinking, for poor Mistress Bess Duveen, who’d always worn her heart on her sleeve, was plain as day in love with the Linnington fellow, who couldn’t see her for the dust.

  Elise hoped that impetuous Imogene would soon forget Stephen Linnington and find some new toy, but she wasn’t so sure that was going to happen. At least Giles Avery, continually rebuffed by Imogene when he came to the Duveens to call on her, had gone away, back to his Tudor manse at Lands End it was presumed, so she could breathe easier on that account. For Mistress Peale might wander about asking plaintively where Imogene was, and sweet Bess Duveen might guess their whereabouts—but Bess was Imogene’s friend and would never cause her trouble, not even on Stephen’s account. Giles had been a different matter altogether. Elise had been cold with dread that he would come upon Imogene and Stephen in some compromising position and shout it to the world.

  If that were to happen, Imogene would be ruined. Her only chance then would be if Stephen Linnington would choose to marry her—and so far as Elise could tell, he had not offered.

  Her jaws closed with a snap.

  Men!

  She turned away from the sight of the golden beach and blue sea and bluer sky. Tall and gaunt in her serviceable brown homespun, she strode the short familiar distance from the shore to the stone hut where her widowed sister Clara had lived alone these five years since her husband had died. On Elise’s strong arm was swung a basket filled with fruit kind Bess Duveen had sent Clara. But on her forehead rode a worried frown, and her unseeing gaze passed without interest over the rugged familiar mass of Saint Agnes, southernmost of the Scilly Isles. Beyond lay only Annet, tiny islet of the seabirds, and past Annet a spattering of dark rocks dotting the ocean’s blue unruffled face.

  It was storied ground over which she walked, wild and beautiful, with sea-scarred and sea-blasted black rocks rising in weird shapes, and lonely cliffs, sea-sculpted and desolate. To others it was a place of legends and mystery—but not to Elise. To her it was home, had been since that long-ago night when Spanish raiders had surprised the little village of Mousehole on the mainland where the young Elise lived, and put the town to fire and sword. After that terrible day, all that had been left of the Meggs family had been eleven-year-old Elise and her younger sister, Clara, who had fortunately been visiting her aunt, who lived in a hunt on Saint Agnes, when the Spanish came. To this hut the two refugee children from destroyed Mousehole had been welcomed and here on Saint Agnes they had grown up and, after the death of her aunt, young Clara had married. On that day Elise had realized how small was the one-room hut, how little privacy would be afforded the shy married pair.

  Determined to do something about it, Elise had found herself a job in Penzance on the mainland. And into her empty arms had been thrust tiny Imogene, to care for and to love.

  Elise was fiercely protective of Imogene, for in her secret heart she considered Imogene to be hers, just as if she, Elise, had borne her. And now that Imogene’s own parents were dead and Imogene had been thrust into the household of an unfeeling guardian who spent his days puttering among his roses and his nights, by candlelight, with his nose in musty leather-bound books, Elise felt that mother instinct even more strongly.

  It was her love for Imogene that had brought Elise here today.

  Her thoughts were abruptly cut off, for she had reached the hut. Through the open door she saw Clara bent over a ball of yarn. As Clara heard her step, she dropped the yarn, darted around the spinning wheel and ran toward her sister.

  “Elise, ’tis good to see you.” Always more demonstrative than Elise, Clara hugged her.

  “How have ye been, Clara?”

  “Well enough. I burned my hand baking fish in the hot coals—” she indicated her bandaged left hand—“but ’tis near mended now.”

  “Ye should not live here alone,” observed Elise, casting her eye around the spotless one-room cottage, so barren except for the few objects of serpentine work, gift of a brother-in-law who worked as a stone-carver on the mainland.

  “Ye should have married,” countered Clara. She shot a fond, sad look at her husband’s musket, which she polished once a week and which still reposed on the rude mantel, and his well-worn clothes, which she could not bear to part with and which still hung on a nail in the corner.

  “ ‘Married’?” For a moment the smell of s
weat and blood and musketry came back to suffocate Elise and she was eleven years old again and back in Mousehole, lying in the dirty street. She felt again a Spanish knee pressing against her childish stomach, holding her down, and then the burning thrust inside her that sent yet another racking spasm of pain through her childish body. In memory she could hear her own thin scream and see, like a vision of hell, the roof of the burning Church of Saint Paul on the hill fall in with a crash and a shower of sparks like Fireworks. A burning timber landed in the dusty street nearby and the soldier straining above her cursed thickly as another soldier, waiting his turn at Elise, kicked it away with his boot. Her encounter with the first soldier left her bleeding and nauseous. By the tenth the pain had become a steady agony that wavered and peaked, and her sobbing scream had become a continuous keening wail like that of a dying animal.

  Mercifully, an officer had come running by just then barking a command in Spanish and the little knot of soldiers had all scrambled up from their ring around the tortured child and hurried away to carry their hell to the nearby town of Newlyn. They had gone on to ravage Penzance, those two hundred men from the squadron of Spanish galleys, before they were turned back by organized resistance—and in retaliation the English had later attacked and burned Cadiz.

  But none of that, no promise of vengeance to come, had mattered to the little girl, with her family murdered, lying more dead than alive in Mousehole’s bloody street. She had crawled back to the low wall that surrounded the smoking ruin of her family cottage—and fainted.

  It was there the searchers had found her and sent her to her aunt on Saint Agnes who had nursed her back to life.

  But though Elise’s body recovered, her soul did not. Men had done this to her! Ever after, when a man looked on her with kindness, she would remember the day the Spaniards came and a look of menace would come over her face and a caustic note creep into her voice that would take him aback.

  That day in Mousehole had marked her life.

  Now, in answer to her sister’s query, she said in a level, contemptuous voice, “No, I should not have married.”

  Clara sighed. It was always like this with Elise. “Come sit here.” She lifted a basket of mending from a bench and beckoned Elise to it. “What of Mistress Imogene? Even here on Saint Agnes, I hear of her escapades.”

  “They are none so bad,” sniffed Elise. “ ’Tis her beauty makes her the object of envy, and her guardian cares nothing for her. His head is always bent over his books—he sees not that she is a young girl, with a young girl’s dreams.”

  Clara looked surprised to hear Elise mention dreams. What could grim Elise, who had urged her not to marry, know of a young girl’s dreams? She gave her older sister a speculative look. “ ’Tis a hot day, Elise. Here, I’ll pour ye a tankard of cider.” She was passing the cottage’s one tiny window when she paused, glanced down toward the beach. “I see ye’ve brought Mistress Imogene and her lover with ye,” she said in patent disapproval.

  “Ye’ll not be calling him her lover,” Elise said crisply. “I’ve told the Duveens ye’re sick and Stephen Linnington volunteered to sail Hal’s boat over and bring me to see you. Mistress Peale was feeling poorly again and let Imogene come along with me.” Her voice sharpened. “Remember that, Clara.”

  Clara looked uncomfortable. “Ye should not involve yourself so in Mistress Imogene’s affairs, Elise,” she grumbled. “If Lord Elston were to hear that ye encourage her in her escapades, ye’d be dismissed.”

  “He’ll not be hearing it, unless you speak of it!”

  “You know I won’t. And I suppose they’re safe enough here on Saint Agnes, whatever they do, since I’m the only person living here at the moment now that old Mister Drureton has died. But what of the Duveens? Don’t they notice that an affair is going on under their noses?”

  “The Duveens think of nothing but sailing—save for Bess. And Bess Duveen is Imogene’s friend—though I do think she’s in love with Stephen, too.”

  Clara threw up her hands and rolled her eyes. “He charms them all!”

  “I am worried, Clara.” Elise sighed and sat down. “I do not know how it will all end.”

  “It will end with her pregnant!” said Clara energetically.

  “Ah, do not say that, Clara.” Elise’s hand shook on the tankard Clara had given her and she took a quick gulp of cider.

  Clara’s hands were on her hips; for once she had her bossy older sister on the defensive. “I thought you told me her guardian had his heart set on marrying Imogene off to Giles Avery.

  “Elise, heartened by the cider, gave a vigorous nod. “He does. And thanks be to the Almighty that Giles Avery has gone back to sulk at Lands End. He was angry that Imogene paid so little attention to him and left in a huff.”

  “But he may return,” pointed out her sister.

  “Time enough to think about that when it happens. How are matters with you, Clara?”

  Clara waxed voluble about how matters were with her. She sat down—glad to have someone to talk to, to complain to—and kept Elise’s attention focused on her.

  So neither woman noticed the sailboat with one man aboard that was heading for Saint Agnes Isle.

  On the beach Stephen and Imogene might have noticed it, had they not been so preoccupied with each other. Imogene was talking, dreaming aloud of the future—their future. “And will you take me home to Devon to meet your family, Stephen?” she wondered.

  “Aye,” lied Stephen. “Soon.” His voice was easy but he could not meet her eyes, for in this short time he had come to love her and it went hard with him to have to always be lying to her.

  "Will they—like me, do you think?”

  “How could they not? There’ll be no maid in Devon half so fair!”

  She gave him a look of pure enchantment. “And will we be married there? Or here in the Isles?” It was a bold thrust, for Stephen had never mentioned marriage.

  Hypnotized by her beauty, by his overwhelming desire for this slim girl in the blue dress, by the absolute rightness he felt about their being together, Stephen leaned toward her and planted a light kiss on her forehead. “We’ll be married wherever you like, Imogene,” he told her recklessly.

  There, he had said it at last! Triumph welled through Imogene. We’ll be married wherever you like . . . now the only other question was when.

  “After I’ve met your family?” she guessed.

  “Yes.” He felt relief spreading through him, for there were many ways to delay such a meeting—not that it could ever come about, for he had learned from the only sister who still spoke to him when they met that his father had changed his will and cut him off with a shilling. “After you’ve met them would be best.”

  So in love was she, she had half hoped he would say, “We’ll be married as soon as may be and meet my family later.” Oh, well, perhaps this way was best. “I’m sure I’ll like Devon, you’ve told me so much about it,” she said in a slightly quenched tone. Then, her spirits rising, “Come, Stephen, we must plan our lives. Let us walk down to Saint Warna’s Bay and make our plans where the two tall stones, Adam and Eve, can see us—for ’twas they who sent you to me!” She laughed at her own fancifulness, grew serious again. “Are they very formal in Devon? Will they really like me there, do you think?”

  “They will love you in Devon, Imogene,” he said huskily. And so they would, he thought bitterly, could he but bring her there as a bride . . . which he could not.

  “I shall wear white to be married unless you think it—not appropriate?” She gave him a shadowed, questing glance.

  “I think it most appropriate.” His voice deepened. “In my heart you will always wear white, Imogene.”

  And Imogene, strolling beside him, asked herself if anyone had ever been so happy.

  In the sailboat, Giles Avery—never a good sailor and cursing now as he tried to handle a borrowed boat he could not manage very well—was having trouble with the wind. His spirits had leaped when in the distance he thoug
ht he spied Imogene’s blue dress upon the shore near where the boat that must have brought her to the island rested—and now, looking up, he saw that he had lost the wind. He gave an oath as he stared at his drooping sails in disgust.

  For Giles brought exciting news to the Isle of Saint Agnes and to the girl in the blue dress.

  He had interpreted Imogene’s apparent lack of interest after having at first smiled at him so brightly—and her frequent disappearances—as coyness. She was baiting him, he told himself, urging him on with these coquettish feminine wiles to seal the pact that would lead them to the altar. For Giles, young peacock that he was, and with wealth to boot, had never doubted his own desirability.

  Having decided this, the impatient youth had promptly journeyed to Lands End to get his parents’ approval. It had been hard won, for his mother had had her heart firmly set upon a marriage to someone other than a penniless beauty—some heiress perhaps to unite their fortunes, or someone who would have Court connections if by chance the rightful king returned to claim his throne, or at the very least a decorous, obedient maiden who would cast her eyes down and do her mother-in-law’s bidding without question—which she doubted beautiful, restless Imogene Wells would ever do, for on the one occasion on which she had met Imogene she had thought her far too spirited.

  But eventually, by dint of much persuasion and pleading—and at one memorable moment even bursting into tears—Giles, spoiled darling that he was, had won his parents’ consent. Yesterday his father had journeyed with him to Tresco to make suitable arrangements with old Lord Elston, who was as eager for the match as was Giles. The betrothal agreed upon, the two had spent the night as Lord Elston’s guests and today Giles’s father had returned to Lands End. But Giles, chafing that Imogene still lingered on as a houseguest of the Duveens—a family he did not like overmuch—had taken himself to Saint Mary’s to bring Imogene the glad tidings in person. There at Ennor Castle a subdued Bess Duveen told him Imogene had gone to Saint Agnes to spend the day, and Giles had promptly borrowed a boat and followed.