But he could not bear the heartbroken look on her lovely face as she slowly hooked up her linen bodice.
“I will come back to you, Imogene,” he said slowly, knowing even as he said it that he would not.
“You promise?” A wisp of a sound.
“I promise.” He would burn no more in hell for this lie than for his other sins, a list too long to count.
She flung herself into his arms, her soft breasts crushing themselves against his chest, her body a sweet heavy burden, her hair smelling of lemons and the salt sea.
“I will not let you go!” she cried brokenly.
He held her to him as a dying man might hold onto life and caressed her hair, her slim body. He cupped her wistful face in both his hands and looked deep into her eyes. “ ’Twill be only for a little while,” he soothed her, for her safety depended on her carrying this off coolly and with determination. Tears would only bring suspicion on her. “ ’Twill only be until the hue and cry dies down and I’ve time to make my arrangements. Then I’ll don a black wig and a new name and sail back to the Scillies some fine night and snatch you from your guardian’s house on Tresco and we’ll away like the wind. Show me a cheerful face, Imogene. Remember, ye must not be found when they come looking for you, as indeed they will, with dark circles under your eyes or a tearstained face. You must say I mean nothing to you, that we quarreled over some trivial thing and that you had no idea I would sail away and leave you here, but when you came out of the hut, I was gone.”
“But that’s as good as pointing a finger at you, that you killed him, for there’ll be those who know Giles came here to find me, and they’ll put two and two together.”
He nodded soberly, feeling her skin like silk beneath his yearning fingers. “Even so, you’ll do it. For if I’m to come back for you, Imogene—and see me again, you will, never doubt it—there must be no thought that you were implicated in a murder. For you’ve a memorable face and figure and men would remember having seen you—we’d have no chance at all to escape them if they should come looking for you. My own looks are easy changed.”
She tried to believe him, tried to see the merit of his argument as he gently put her away from him—but could not.
But she could see one thing clearly. He had hoisted Giles’s body to his shoulder and was swinging along toward the place where they had left their boat. She ran along beside him, silenced by the urgency of his long stride.
“There—that must be the boat Giles came in, there beside ours.”
Stephen nodded and shifted the dead boy’s weight. He felt ashamed that he should have killed the lad, but for the life of him could not see how he could have avoided it. Pray God no fishermen came by this way to see Imogene here with him. Working fast and silently he put Giles’s body in the boat that had brought him and made fast a line so that the one boat could tow the other.
Imogene tried to help but she was half blinded by her tears. The wind was drying them on her cheeks even as they fell.
But in the cottage above the beach where the two boats lay, Clara, passing before the window, had suddenly exclaimed, “There are two boats down there!”
Elise had leaped up. Crowding past Clara, she saw Stephen carrying an inert body, clad in saffron, saw that he was putting it into the other boat, lashing the two together with a towline. In a moment he would cast off.
She pushed her sister away from the window. “You saw nothing—nothing. Remember that!” she cried harshly, and ran out of the cottage and down toward the beach.
The sails of Stephen’s boat had already caught the wind by the time she reached there. Imogene stood on the beach hugging her arms about her as if she were chilled, with the taste of salt tears and Stephen’s lips still lingering on her trembling mouth.
“What’s happened?” cried Elise sharply. “Why is Mister Linnington sailing Hal’s boat away and towing that other boat along?”
Imogene turned a face to her that was suddenly older. “You don’t want to know, Elise,” she said sadly. “Don’t ask. What we must tell them is that I left Stephen outside and came into the cottage and we talked for some time and when we looked out again the boat was gone—that’s all we know. We must stand by our stories, Elise—Stephen says my life depends on it.”
“Your—life?” whispered Elise.
“My life.”
Elise’s arm went around Imogene protectively and together they watched Stephen sail away. Imogene would never know what it cost him to leave her there, how it took all his willpower not to turn the sailboat around and pick her up and take her with him and never let her go.
But he kept his head turned resolutely toward the blue water ahead. Whatever he had told her, there was no turning back. If he left her now, she would soon forget him—like any other bad dream, he told himself—and marry some likely young lord and have the kind of life that he could never give her.
Forlorn, with the wind whipping her blue skirts, Imogene stood on the beach, pushed back her blowing blond hair, and watched the billowing sails until they disappeared over the horizon. She was blinking back tears and she had to hold on to Stephen’s promise with all her being: I will come back for you. And he would do it. He would, she knew it.
But once his boat was gone and she and Elise were staring out over an empty sea, she returned abruptly to reality.
“How will we get back to Saint Mary’s?” practical Elise was asking.
“We won’t, until they come for us. Will your sister mind keeping us overnight? For I doubt the Duveens will realize we aren’t coming back and delay coming for us until morning.”
“Clara will be glad of the company, but 'twill be crowded, for she’s only the one room.”
Imogene gave a laugh that was half a sob. “This day I’ve caused one man’s death and perhaps another to be hanged—I’d not sleep this night had I the softest bed in England!”
So the man she’d seen slung over Stephen’s shoulder was dead. Elise had no need to ask if it was Giles. She moved closer to Imogene as if to protect her.
It was harder to protect Imogene from her guardian’s wrath.
As Imogene had predicted, a boat came from Saint Mary’s the next day, seeking them, wondering why they had not returned. The boat was piloted by Hal Duveen, who swore manfully when he learned that Stephen Linnington had left the women here and sailed away—in Hal’s boat—they knew not why.
“Ye must have some idea!” he insisted.
“No, we have not,” said Elise stoutly. “We were all three of us in Clara’s house and Clara was showing Mistress Imogene how to make lace, when I chanced to look out the window and saw that the boat was gone. We waited, but Mister Linnington did not come back for us.” Her voice sharpened. “Is that not the way it happened, Clara?”
Clara had always felt dominated by her older sister. She felt dominated no less this day. “Yes—that is how it happened,” she said faintly.
“I quarreled with Stephen,” Imogene admitted in a troubled voice. “But it was over a small thing—I did not expect him to be so affronted that he would leave us here.”
“ ‘A small thing’?” Hal’s voice sharpened and he gave her a suspicious look.
Imogene had the grace to color up and a look of understanding came over Hal’s face. So Linnington had tried to go too far with the wench! And then gone off in a huff when she’d rebuffed him! Devil take the fellow!
Shaking his head and muttering, big Hal conveyed them back to Ennor, where Bess Duveen’s gray eyes turned dark with fear when he told her what had happened. “But Giles Avery sailed to Saint Agnes to see you, Imogene,” she protested. “Did you not see him? He stopped by here for you and I told him you had gone there. He said—he said that he and his father had just left your guardian on Tresco, and that your guardian had agreed to your betrothal.” Her voice faltered.
“He must have changed his mind and sailed somewhere else,” said Imogene flatly. “For we did not see him. And my guardian would surely have spoken to me
before he betrothed me to Giles.”
But though the women might stoutly maintain they had not seen Giles Avery or his boat, there were several others who had. During the next two days, a story of sorts was pieced together: Giles had sailed for Saint Agnes Isle in fair weather. The Duveens had seen him start out. Some fishermen had chanced to notice two sailboats lying together at Saint Agnes later that day, and another fisherman had seen Hal Duveen’s boat towing another away from the island.
They could not prove foul play, but they inferred it. A nasty scandal broke over Imogene Well’s pretty head. Her guardian sent for her and she went back to Tresco in disgrace with Bess’s last words to her, “Oh, Imogene, what have you led Stephen into?” ringing in her ears.
She found her guardian, Lord Elston, not at his musty, leather-bound volumes, but pacing the floor with his hands clasped behind his back, lost in thought. He looked up as she entered the familiar book-lined study with its big trestle table and worn leather-covered chairs.
“So ye’re back.” He gave her a gloomy look from under bushy eyebrows. “I knew ye would be nothing but trouble, Imogene.”
“Why?” she was startled into asking.
“ ’Tis your beauty,” he said heavily. “It goads men and infuriates women. One or the other, they’ll always be making trouble for you. ’Tis why I tried so hard to marry you off.” He took a turn around the room, ended up before her, a formidable old man with bushy hair and eyebrows. “I’ve known since you were eleven that suitors would be banging at the door. What I never guessed was that you’d turn all of the steady ones down and take up with a rakehell.” He sighed deeply. “Well, you’ve ruined yourself in the Scillies, my girl. My only hope is to send you away until the talk dies down and hope that I can arrange a good marriage for you with someone who knows nothing of this affair—say in the north of England.’’
“Send me—away?” faltered Imogene, for she had not considered this possibility. How would Stephen find her, if she were sent away?
“As far away as possible,” he said dryly. “Mistress Peale has relatives in Amsterdam on her mother’s side. We’re not at war with the Dutch right now, thank God. I’ll send you both there.”
“But—but I don’t want to go to Amsterdam.”
The bushy brows came together fiercely. “The divil be damned if ye don’t want to go! Ye’ll to Holland, my girl, if I have to send you there in irons!”
Amsterdam! It seemed a world away. Imogene felt stunned. “Can I—can I take Elise?” she wondered.
Her guardian’s wrath had abated as swiftly as it had appeared. “Aye, take Elise,” he said wearily. “I suppose ye’ll need a maid if ye’re to appear as gentlefolk over there. Between them—” his expression hardened and he reached for his pipe—“Mistress Peale and Elise should be able to keep ye in check.” He took a long time lighting his pipe. “Though they’ve not,” he added in a more thoughtful tone, “done such a good job of it before!” Imogene’s cheeks crimsoned. She supposed she deserved that but it was hard hearing it. It was as if—as if Stephen had somehow smirched her with his love—and nothing could be further from the truth. Their love had ennobled them, made them better than they were before. She couldn’t find the words to tell him that, this dry old man with his pipe and his books, and she didn’t try, for she knew it would be no use. Why, if she told him Stephen Linnington had promised to come back and marry her, he’d probably lock her up! She stumbled out into the sunlight, where Elise, looking worried, was waiting for her.
“Elise,” she said dully. “We’re going to Amsterdam.” Her tears broke through then. “Where Stephen will never find us!”
“There, there, of course he will.” Elise held Imogene in her arms and patted the girl’s slender back awkwardly. “For he’s a resourceful man. He’ll be back for ye, ye’ll see.”
But in her heart she could not help wondering if it would be best if he never came back, if the copper-haired gentleman from Devon went back where he came from and forgot lovely Imogene so that—in time—she could forget him.
PART TWO
The Golden Temptress
A toast to the sweet worldly women
Who lure men from home and from grace,
Who lure them forever to follow
A smile and a beautiful face.
Amsterdam, Holland, 1657
CHAPTER 6
It was the beginning of another glorious day in Amsterdam: A day when billowing clouds, gray and soft as goosedown, would chase each other lazily across a blue and turquoise sky, and the sun would shine down, scattering gold upon the shoppers who strolled along the Kalverstraat. But for now the dawn was just breaking. Its pink light frosted the tall pink chimneys where storks built their gigantic nests, and picked out sleepy vendors stumbling along in wooden shoes, bringing their carts of flowers and vegetables to market. It shone on flower-laden boats in which sat wide-trousered men and women in white peaked caps, gliding along the canals. In another few minutes the sun would gild the carved lions and crowns and sea monsters that decorated the hoisting beams that protruded from the elaborate facades of warehouses and private houses alike, for the tall, narrow, elaborate homes of the merchants had enormous attics, and goods were hoisted into them from the canals and stored there—a feature that made the face of Amsterdam different from that of any city in the world.
In the room she shared with snoring Mistress Peale and her maid, Elise—a room taken upon their arrival in Amsterdam last evening—Imogene Wells could not sleep. She tossed and turned and at last, as the dawn’s first light pinked the sky, she rose from her unfamiliar bed and threw wide the casements, leaning out over the sill to look down curiously into the magical darkness of the narrow street below.
She had been despondent on the voyage, sure she would never see Stephen again. Mistress Peale had been seasick the whole time and blamed Imogene bitterly for her plight. It had been a relief to sail into the great port city and disembark, a relief to walk on dry land again and spread out their trunks and boxes in the relatively large quarters of the inn the captain had recommended—the Roode Leeuw, or Red Lion.
And with the change from monotonous ship’s fare, the release from travel over an uncertain ocean, and the exploration of Amsterdam ahead of her, Imogene’s spirits had soared. She would see Stephen again, of course she would! Somehow she would get back to the Scillies, Stephen would come for her as he had promised, and they would be away on the wings of the wind!
And because of that certainty, there was a glory in Imogene’s delft blue eyes, and on a note of hope and happiness she began to sing softly, a lilting Cornish lullaby, to the dark narrow street below.
Suddenly the casements of the room next door flew open and a dark head stuck itself out. Imogene turned in surprise and found herself looking into a pair of amazed dark eyes set in a narrow face. Her disheveled hair haloed gold around her face in the dawn’s pale light and her winsome smile flashed mischievously into the dazzled face of the stranger.
“We are alone with the dawn, mynheer,” she said blithely—and disappeared from his view as Mistress Peale mumbled sleepily, “Don’t be standing at the window in your night rail, Imogene—ye’ll catch cold.”
She had had a devastating effect on the stranger, but Imogene, with all of Amsterdam waiting for her outside, promptly forgot him.
At Mistress Peale’s insistence she dressed that morning in a rustling lemon silk dress, trimmed in blue ribands that matched her eyes—and with a white lawn whisk drawn carefully across her bosom to conceal anything the gown’s low cut might reveal—for this morning they were to call upon Mistress Peale’s relatives in Amsterdam, who, hopefully, might invite them to visit and thus relieve them of the difficulties—and the expense—of living at an inn.
Imogene, intent on all the strange sights that greeted her along the street of orange-brick buildings, was not aware that her exit from the inn’s oaken door was avidly watched by a handsome young man in rich black brocade. No sooner had she passed tha
n he turned in excitement and clutched the arm of a passing chambermaid. “There—that's the girl I saw this morning,” he muttered in an anxious undertone. “Can you tell me who she is?”
But the chambermaid did not know and young van Rappard, afraid he would be rebuffed by Imogene’s formidable chaperon if he tried to introduce himself, hurried to follow them out and match his pace to theirs at a suitable distance as he followed along behind the strolling ladies.
What a charmer she was, in her yellow silks! Like a lovely little yellow bird he had once possessed, singing its heart out every dawn through the bars of its wicker cage. The young patroon from America bumped into passersby and had to mutter a dozen pardons as his neck craned to see every move of the lissome young woman ahead. Now she was crossing a humpbacked stone bridge over one of the canals, pausing a moment to watch a flower-laden boat disappear beneath, now she was fingering some cloth at a waterside stall, now pointing out a pasty to her impatient chaperon.
Lord, how he would like to buy her that pasty! His fingers itched on his purse and he was hard-pressed not to shoulder his way through the throng and boldly introduce himself with a flourish of his sweeping plumed hat.
But prudence forbade that. So, although he was chafing with impatience, he followed them unseen to a handsome address on the Herengracht, where the ladies were turned away from the door. Van Rappard’s ears stuck up at that. No welcome for the English beauty and her entourage? And now the chaperon looked quite put out.
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