Bold Breathless Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  Even Captain Verbloom was startled by the sumptuousness of the high-ceilinged great cabin with its wide bank of windows in the stern. He had not dreamed that buccaneers lived so well....

  Amid the gilt and the handsome furnishings, there were heavy gold candlesticks, and Imogene, studying her host narrowly, remarked on them.

  “Seized from some Spanish ship, no doubt?”

  His smile mocked her. “As was the ship herself. She was not always called the Sea Rover. She was El Cruzado—the Crusader—out of Barcelona.”

  He looked like a crusader himself, she thought, with his reckless smile and serviceable sword that never left his side. “You—took her, then?” Somehow she was surprised. She had expected this ship to have been built in Amsterdam for the East India trade.

  He nodded, and she saw lights flicker in his gray eyes as he remembered the battle. “And refitted her to my taste. She is faster now.”

  “I’ll wager there’s a story there,” Captain Verbloom, making up for his earlier churlishness, said heartily.

  “Yes..Their host looked restive, and as their glasses were filled by a cabin boy in the leather breeches and coarse cotton shirt that marked him as a boucan hunter, Imogene sought to change the subject.

  “And what do you keep behind all those doors, Captain van Ryker?” she wondered, studying the built-in cupboards with sturdy wooden doors that adorned the great cabin. “Braces of pistols to subdue a mutinous crew? Or treasure to astound us?” Her tone was impudent and van Ryker quickly set down his glass and in two long strides crossed the room and threw open the doors of two of the cupboards to reveal rows of well-thumbed leather volumes. “This is the treasure I keep in my cupboards,” he remarked expressionlessly.

  “Then it is true that you are a great reader,” observed Verhulst, sounding surprised to see it proved.

  “I study navigation—and other things. I take it you are no great reader, mynheer?”

  Verhulst shook his head, “I prefer a game of chess.”

  “Aye,” agreed Captain Verbloom instantly. “I regard myself as a good player but the patroon has beaten me twice already—and we have only played three times.”

  “Indeed? And yet you are renowned for your mastery of the game. Captain Verbloom. All the world knows it.”

  The captain’s chest expanded at this praise and—being obviously regarded as a superchampion beating a world-renowned champion—so did Verhulst’s. Imogene watched them narrowly over her wine, wondering what game the buccaneer was playing with his carefully directed flattery. She doubted if it had anything to do with chess.

  “Well, you must give us a game, mynheer,” declared the buccaneer smoothly. “Raoul here accounts himself a good player.”

  “I will be glad to.” Verhulst seized on the opportunity to safely beat these pirates.

  “And perhaps Captain Verbloom will oblige Barnaby here.” Van Ryker indicated the ship’s master.

  Amusement sparkled in Imogene’s blue eyes. She saw where this was leading. But van Ryker’s gaze was innocent as he took from another cupboard two handsome ivory chess sets and placed them before the participants. He observed with concentration the first move and then said casually, “While you concentrate on your game, gentlemen, I will escort Mynheer van Rappard’s bride on a tour of the ship, for I am sure she is curious—as all women are—as to how buccaneers live.”

  Verhulst looked up from the board in angry surprise, but Imogene rose with a careless, “Why not? It will be cooler on deck and the wine has made me very warm.” Her level gaze reminded Verhulst that it was he who had insisted she wear this heavy velvet gown when she would readily have changed to something cooler and more elegant in silk.

  Verhulst subsided but his hand trembled slightly as he moved his queen on the chessboard, and watched his young wife sweep from the room in the company of a “damned pirate.”

  CHAPTER 9

  As the lean buccaneer captain courteously showed her around his handsome ship, Imogene could not but remark on the shining brass, the well-scoured floors, the fresh gilding and signs of care that were everywhere apparent.

  “She’s a beautiful ship—I can see you’re very proud of her.”

  “Aye, that I am.” His voice took on a rich caressing note. “She’s a formidable man-of-war but for all that she’s a lady....” The sudden intimacy of his smile told her he was speaking of more than just his ship, he was speaking of her. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed that the Sea Rover's crew were making themselves scarce and wondered grimly if they were following their captain’s instructions. Did he expect to overwhelm her with his charm on a stroll down the deck in broad daylight ?

  “You said she was a Spanish ship originally?”

  He nodded. “I’ve never found out her origin—she’s Portuguese-built, I think, although she sailed out of Barcelona. She’s fast, she’s seaworthy, she rides a gale the way a mare I once knew took stone fences—in stride.” His dark face was closer now, she could smell the faint scent of Virginia tobacco and another headier odor—the light fruity smell of the fine Canary they’d been drinking. “God took a hand in her design, I think.” he said softly, “for she’s the best I’ve ever seen of her class.” His hand brushed hers and she felt a rippling tingle race up her arm.

  Imogene snatched her hand away. Best of her class indeed! This impudent pirate was doubtless comparing her with a dozen captured wenches, wondering how she'd ride the gales! Conscious that her breast was heaving a trifle fast and that his gaze was resting pleasantly upon its white expanse, she tried to compose herself and considered this buccaneer captain curiously.

  She had not really looked at him in Amsterdam, she now realized, but here in the setting most familiar to him he seemed larger than life, as vivid as the sunshine that gilded his strong profile. The dark face that now leaned so tauntingly close was enough to give one pause: saturnine, with lean planes, and lit by unreadable gray eyes, features as eagle-strong and clean-cut as his sinewy body clad in a well-cut suit of French gray velvet, the doublet slashed and shot with silver with the gray silk of the lining peeking fashionably through. His lean legs were encased in boots of fine Spanish leather and over their wide tops cascaded a wealth of frosty Flemish lace. A great jewel—she guessed it to be a South American emerald—shone from the froth of lace at his throat. Save for the thick gleaming dark brown hair that fell to his broad shoulers and swung in response to his restless gait—hair that was patently his own in a day of fussy curled and pomaded wigs—he was elegant as any courtier. An amused smile curled her lips at the thought and the tall man beside her was quick to note it.

  “What makes ye smile, my lady?”

  Imogene hesitated. She felt curiously locked in time—locked in by this man’s absolute concentration. Around them lay an almost deserted deck. The sun hung steady in the sky; not a sail flapped. From the ship came the gentle moaning of great timbers lazily skimming the blue water.

  In that moment, as he hung intent on her answer, Verhulst might never have been—nor Captain Verbloom, nor the Hilletje. For the space of a sigh the golden woman and the buccaneer stood alone in eternity.

  Now in a softer voice, she gave him a frank answer. “That you’re a pirate, sir, and yet you look, you sound—” her voice was rueful, for neither her husband nor any of the wealthy passengers aboard the Hilletje were half so urbane—“as if ye’d just escaped from the side of the Queen of England! What were you—before you became a pirate?”

  It was his turn to look amused. “The side of the queen, ye say? Nay, I’ve never been there... nor yet to Court. And my past’s of no interest. It’s not where we’ve been, but where we’re going that counts. But you called me a pirate and that I’m not—I’m a buccaneer, my lady.”

  “There’s a difference?” she mocked him.

  “Aye, a world of difference.” He considered her gravely. “Were I a pirate, as you suggest, I’d seize yon ship—” he indicated the Hilletje with a careless nod of his dark head. “I�
�d toss your husband overboard—or ransom him, as pleased my fancy—but in either event I’d take you to my cabin for my pleasure.”

  Imogene’s color rose. Her breath came a little faster and she wielded her fan with unnecessary speed. “And as a buccaneer?” Her voice was a trifle frosty.

  “As a buccaneer, my lady, I protect all women—and prey only on the ships of Spain, which would deny us the right to sail these waters either in peace or war.”

  Imogene’s eyebrows elevated. “Then if I were a Spanish lady captured from some galleon or galleass?”

  The gray eyes looked calmly into hers. “Ye’d be safe from me and from my crew. I’d give ye safe conduct as far as Cuba or some other Spanish shore, set ye into a longboat manned by captured Spanish crewmen to row ye into Havana harbor—whose guns even such a ship as the Sea Rover has no wish to challenge.”

  “Indeed? And an English lady?” Imogene’s fan waved a trifle faster in the sudden calm. “Would you take her to Tortuga or Port Royal and ransom her there?”

  “No, I’d set her on the first England-bound ship we passed—or America-bound, as pleased her fancy.”

  Imogene digested that. Plainly, chivalry was not dead—it lived on in this tall fellow at her side who could, with a single deep-voiced command, turn his guests into captives and do with them as he would.... Now that she knew he would not do it, she was perversely sorry—danger appealed to her.

  “We are all glad to discover you take such a view,” she mocked. “Else we might be even more traveled before we finally reached American shores—we might have reached them by way of Tortuga or Port Royal.”

  “Are you saying you’d have liked that?” His voice was soft but his eyes took on a sudden keenness as his head bent down, the better to consider her.

  She was treading on dangerous ground now. Something throbbed painfully in Imogene’s chest, a hint of summer madness that had no place in the heart of a new bride.

  “No—of course not,” she said breathlessly.

  Still those bold eyes considered her. “I’m half of a mind not to believe you,” he said in a quiet voice. “For ’tis my belief that you yearn to go adventuring and that you’ve already discovered that the young pup you’ve married is too dull a man for you.”

  “You’re wrong!” She turned her head away from him lest he see the sudden hunger in her gaze—hunger for a life such as Verhulst could never give her, for a man such as Verhulst was not, would never be.

  Van Ryker gave a low disbelieving laugh that angered her. And along with that laugh the wind came back, filling the Sea Rover's sails with a crack like thunder.

  “I am surprised you have lived so long,’’ Imogene flashed, almost losing her footing on the suddenly rolling deck. “Pursuing married women as you do, surely some husband must have shot you by now.”

  “Grazed me only,” said van Ryker carelessly. He took her arm to steady her against the swaying deck, held it firmly when she would have wrested it away from him. He resumed his pacing with Imogene reluctantly in tow, shot her a sudden look. “Did you really yearn to see the crew’s quarters and the galley? You’ve missed those.”

  “No.”

  “I thought not.” Ironically.

  “And what do you mean by that?” Imogene’s fan fluttered furiously.

  “Just this.” He stopped and she, too, stopped perforce. “That a woman’s soul sometimes speaks through her eyes.”

  “And you think mine has?”

  “Can you deny it?” he challenged.

  ‘‘Captain van Ryker,” said Imogene, exasperated. “If you harry the Spanish half so diligently as you harry the ladies, I am not surprised at your success—you exhaust your victims!”

  He threw back his head and laughed; at that moment his saturnine face looked very young. “Forgive me, my lady, but you look very fresh and the chase has hardly yet begun."

  “Consider it ended.” Imogene froze him with a glance

  “I came on deck only because the fresh air was welcome.”

  “Aye,” he agreed half humorously. “In your company, more welcome than wine.”

  In spite of herself, a smile curved Imogene’s lips at this outrageous buccaneer, pursuing her as if he were a courtier and she a lady-in-waiting at Court. “You make a pretty compliment—for a pirate,” she admitted.

  He ignored the word “pirate,” continuing to smile down at her, and her eyes took on a wicked sparkle. “That was a beautiful lie, Captain van Ryker—about the Spaniards being sighted.”

  Her thrust went home. He gave a slight start and his smile deepened. “Ah, well,” he said equably. “Buccaneers are as other men, once they meet a beautiful woman.”

  Her voice was mocking. “You would lead me to believe that you pursued the Hilletje out of Amsterdam on my account?”

  He had led Imogene to the poop deck and now they were standing by the rail with the wind ruffling their hair and rattling the shrouds above them.

  “And would you believe it if I said I had?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” he said with a wry smile. “I see you are nobody’s fool. I had business that kept me in Amsterdam, but the Sea Rover is a fast ship and overtook the Hilletje. When I saw her there, I remembered you were aboard.”

  “And how did you know that? I do not remember that Verhulst told you in Amsterdam the name of our ship.”

  His smile was wary now. “I made inquiries,” he admitted. Imogene did not know why she should feel so perversely pleased. “And so you pursued a bride and groom into the Atlantic,” she murmured.

  He grimaced. “I would put it some other way, of course. ”

  “Of course. You know that you have made my husband furious by neatly trapping him into a game so you could spirit me away?”

  Van Ryker shrugged. “Such fury will throw him off his game. Barnaby will win—and then of course your husband will seek vengeance and will have to accept Barnaby’s challenge to another.”

  “You are wrong, he will postpone the next game to see where I have got to.”

  “Shall I wager you on that?”

  “Why not?” He was standing very close now, and the wind whipped her slate blue skirts against his gray velvet trousers. Suddenly Imogene found it hard to breathe. Her voice was not quite steady.

  “A kiss, then,” he murmured, “if I am right?”

  “A kiss with Verhulst watching? He would fling you a challenge no matter what the cost!”

  “A kiss at our next meeting,” he said inexorably. “I assure you that I will find the opportunity.”

  She caught her breath. So there was to be a next meeting.

  ... “And if you lose?”

  “Then I will pay a forfeit. What would you have me do?”

  “Admit you followed me from Amsterdam, admit that you have stalked us, stayed behind us until we were well out to sea, admit that yours was the ship whose topgallants the watch saw endlessly on the horizon.”

  “I admit it now,” he said softly, and his face brushed her bright hair. “What else would you have of me?”

  Her voice sharpened. “I would have you tell me how many women you have loved—and left.”

  He straightened up and grinned down at her. “Too many to count,” he said lazily. “But if I lose this wager, I promise I will try to tally them up. And now, before we drive your husband to desperate deeds, shall we return to my cabin?”

  He had timed their reentry well. Verhulst was losing badly. He gave Imogene an angry look when they entered, and was sulky as he finished his game, soundly beaten.

  “An off-day, mynheer,” consoled van Ryker, offering the seething patroon another glass of wine. “But Barnaby will be glad to give you another game, won’t you, Barnaby?”

  Barnaby nodded his yellow head and Verhulst, almost choking on his wine, said grimly, “And this time I will beat you, for now I have taken your measure!” He cast a menacing look at his young wife and the debonair buccaneer captain.

  Barnaby was setting up t
he board when van Ryker stopped him. “But not tonight. The wind is coming up and Captain Verbloom would not care to be absent from his ship if we should run into a gale.”

  “No indeed!” Captain Verbloom jumped to his feet in some alarm.

  “So we will postpone your game with Barnaby until tomorrow night when you will be my guests for dinner.”

  Verhulst looked trapped. Imogene felt vaguely sorry for him.

  “It seems calm enough,” observed Captain Verbloom in surprise when they came out on deck.

  “Ah, but the wind freshened strongly when the lady and I were on deck earlier. I felt you would not wish to take chances with your ship.”

  “Of course, you are right,” agreed the Hilletje's captain, but he gave the patroon’s English bride a sharp look.

  “What did that man say to you when you were alone?” stormed Verhulst when they had reached the relative privacy of the Hilletje's deck. All the passengers were crowded at the other end of the ship, watching a school of porpoises break the water in long, graceful leaps.

  Imogene, strolling dreamily beside him, thought of her wager—already won by the pirate captain. She owed him a kiss when next they met and the thought of it stormed through her mind like the prow of a ship, breaking white water. She looked out over the sunlit waters to where the golden Sea Rover ran lightly alongside them, giving them sea room, but keeping them ever in sight. “Nothing much,” she said. “He is an interesting man, Verhulst. I wonder why he became a buccaneer. I asked him, but he would not tell me.”

  “Doubtless he will tell you tomorrow evening!” Verhulst tripped over a coil of rope and cursed.

  “I doubt it,” she said ironically. “I do not think he tells people very much about himself. He reads his books and he seizes Spanish ships and their cargoes—a strange life for such a man.”