“I do not know what you mean by ‘such a man.’ ” Verhulst felt injured and was inclined to quarrel. “But it does you no honor to be speculating on the life story of a damned pirate!”
Imogene gave Verhulst a slanted look. “He is not received, then, in New Amsterdam?”
“Oh, yes, he is received in New Amsterdam. Half the women there are in love with him and there’ll no doubt be a ball in his honor when we come ashore. But we will not attend.”
Perhaps we will, thought Imogene rebelliously. Perhaps I will dance a measure or two with this “pirate captain.” She turned and gave her husband a straight look. “How is your health tonight, Verhulst?”
Verhulst was taken aback. “I feel well enough,” he stuttered. “But—” he saw with alarm where this was leading—“ ’tis only afternoon and the pains may yet return. I had best keep to my cabin tonight in case they do.”
“You might try Doctor de Rochemont,” she suggested in a level voice. “Perhaps he could help you.”
“A ship’s doctor on a pirate ship?” Verhulst was aghast at the idea. “I’d as soon consign myself to the devil!”
Imogene gave an impatient shrug. Her husband’s neglect of her was becoming legendary! At least she now had something to occupy her mind—the dangerous buccaneer captain whose ship was pacing them across the western sea.
It was with exceeding care that she dressed for dinner the next night.
Elise disapproved. “Consorting with pirates!” she muttered, offering her a simple gray petticoat.
“You sound like Verhulst,” reproved Imogene. “No, not that one—I’ll wear the yellow satin petticoat.”
“But it is one of your best petticoats!”
“So it is.” And perhaps this is the occasion for it.... Imogene held up her slender arms and let Elise slip the delicate petticoat down over her head. The material fell sensuously, sliding over her chemise, stroking her like the pressure of a man’s casually questing hand. Van Ryker’s dark intent face swam suddenly before her vision. She stood rapt, remembering what it had been like to walk beside him down the Sea Rover's sun-washed deck.
Elise expressed her disapproval by fastening the waistband with a jerk that made Imogene gasp, then bent to spread out the gleaming material so that it billowed in wide folds over the light chemise. Imogene fluffed out her big sheer chemise sleeves and gave the bodice a sharp tug downward.
“Any further down and you might as well not be wearing a chemise!” warned Elise tartly.
“Elise,” said Imogene, “you manage your own necklines and I will manage mine.”
“Your husband is taking you to a strange wild land full of savage Indians,” scowled Elise. “And you will have much to explain to him, when he is over his distemper and comes at last to your bed. It is not wise to anger him now—he may remember it!”
“My husband is neglectful.” Imogene’s voice became muffled as Elise slipped a heavy white lace overskirt down over her head, fastened it at the waist and began tucking it up artfully so that the yellow satin petticoat showed to best advantage. “Perhaps a little spirit of competition will wake him up!”
Elise considered Imogene with fear in her eyes. Competition! And her a bride! Still... the circumstances were unusual. She was silent as she helped Imogene into a separate bodice of heavy white lace backed by yellow satin. It was cut dangerously low. “Your breasts may pop out,” she sighed.
Imogene’s reckless chuckle frightened her. “I will take that chance.”
As she was combing Imogene’s long golden hair, Verhulst came into the cabin. He was dressed in somber unrelieved black and surveyed his wife with an unsmiling face. “You are very richly gowned for dinner with a pirate,” he growled.
“We must keep up appearances, Verhulst. Do you not consider yourself above Captain van Ryker in the social scale?”
Verhulst looked startled. “Of course, but—”
‘‘Then we must look the part, must we not, so all the world will be aware of it? I see you have removed your ruby ring.”
“ ’Tis a ship of thieves, Imogene!” he burst out.
‘‘But they will not steal from us,” she pointed out. “They steal only from the Spaniards, who would kill us all if they caught us daring to sail ‘their’ seas. I think you should put the ring back on and look as magnificent as you can and face down these—pirates.”
Verhulst studied her uncertainly for a moment, then abruptly he did as he was bid. But when he came back he pushed Elise aside. “I will fasten Imogene’s whisk,” he growled. “I will pin it securely. This time it will not blow away. Have you not one less sheer?”
“No.”
“I can see through this one,” he grumbled.
Over his head as he bent to pin the whisk to her bodice, Elise met Imogene’s mocking eyes. Imogene was wondering irrepressibly what Elise would say if she told her she had lost a kiss on a wager to the buccaneer captain who waited for them on board the Sea Rover. The thought kept her eyes sparkling all the way up on deck.
Captain Verbloom was thoughtful as they climbed into the longboat the buccaneer captain had sent over for them. It was easy to see which way the wind was blowing—Captain van Ryker’s conquests were legendary. He only hoped he could avert bloodshed between the lean buccaneer and the hotheaded young patroon while they were on the high seas. Once they were all in port in New Amsterdam, he’d wash his hands of the lot of them. This high-spirited beauty in her white lace and yellow satin could strip in public if she chose, or take a pirate lover to her bed—it was all the same to him. But.. . these potentially explosive trysts were costing him sea time.
Pursued by his grim thoughts, he watched the rippling bronzed muscles of his buccaneer escorts row him across the ocean to the waiting Sea Rover.
CHAPTER 10
Captain van Ryker was at the ship’s rail to greet his guests and hand them aboard. He was dressed in the same gray velvet trousers and silver-shot doublet he had worn yesterday, but Imogene noticed that his shirt was different. There was heavy point lace spilling over his cuffs today and matching point lace on the boot hose that spread out stylishly over the wide tops of his leather boots. Plainly, the captain was meticulous about his linens.
Imogene, as van Ryker sprang forward, edging out Verhulst to help her over the side, gave him a mischievous look. From the recklessness of his answering smile, she half expected her impetuous buccaneer to demand satisfaction on his wager then and there and for a heart-stopping moment she braced herself to be swept up into his arms, expecting him to grasp her to him under the pretext that she had missed her footing and he needs must save her.
But he did no such thing. Instead he assisted her over the side with courtly grace and no duchess could have been handed onto a ship with more respect.
Even Verhulst, scowling that he had been shouldered away, could not fault his performance and looked mollified.
The evening was well advanced when they all sat down to a sumptuous dinner served on such a dazzling array of plate that Captain van Ryker felt constrained to admit to the admiring captain of the Hilletje that it was “a part” of his share from the raid on Maracaibo.
That brought about an enthusiastic discussion of that famous raid, during which lmogene, toying with her food, studied that dark face with its strangely light eyes. In this light they looked silvery . .. like the sea on a moonlit night. She frowned at herself. These were dangerous thoughts she was thinking, but she was lulled by a kind of magic. Above her head a ship’s lamp swung to and fro and the sun had sunk rosily in the west. Soon stars would be shining through the bank of windows at the far end of the great cabin. Around her were maps and cutlasses and pistols, and behind the cupboard doors—books. Traitorously she wondered what it would be like to be a buccaneer’s woman and hear the roar of the guns and the shouts of the men on deck, and wonder if her lover was still alive ... or did one wait in safe harbor in Tortuga or Port Royal for him to sail back to one’s arms?
She roused hersel
f. Van Ryker had leaned across the table and was speaking to her. “I was wondering if you would accept a tortoise-shell comb for your hair?”
lmogene turned to Verhulst with a questioning look. “I do not see why not,” she said impulsively before he could say no.
Van Ryker rose and went to a heavy brass-trimmed sea chest, opened its high curved lid and lifted out an intricately wrought high-backed Spanish comb. “With my compliments.” He handed it to lmogene with a smile.
lmogene let his gaze hold hers. “Perhaps you will instruct me in how to wear it?”
He leaned forward. “If you will permit me?” He set the comb expertly into her elaborate coiffure. “It is to be worn like this.”
Verhulst made a strangled sound, which lmogene covered with a light laugh. She wondered idly if this gift of van Ryker’s would wreck Verhulst’s chess game.
“And is this too from the raid on Maracaibo?” she wondered.
“No,” he said soberly. “It was a gift to me from a lady who said she wished it were rubies.”
Captain Verbloom, deep in wine, gave a coarse laugh. “Faith, ye must have made a deep impression on her, van Ryker!”
“ ‘From a lady’?” said lmogene uncertainly. He had taken her by surprise.
“From a lady I rescued from a sinking boat and set ashore dangerously near Havana. She was grateful. She took this comb from her long black hair and insisted that I take it—and give it to someone who would wear it well.”
Someone who would wear it well.... lmogene felt the blood pound in her ears. “And was it your guns that sank her boat?” she wondered.
Van Ryker shook his head. “No, it was her husband who set her adrift alone in a leaky longboat. He was punishing her for taking a lover.”
Across the table Verhulst’s teeth closed with a snap. “He was right to do it!”
lmogene gave Verhulst a cold look. “And did you return the lady to her lover?”
Van Ryker shrugged. “There was no lover save in her husband’s overwrought imagination. I returned her to somewhere near the estate of her uncle, who would, with persuasion, return her to her family in Spain.”
Captain Verbloom gave the young patroon a droll look. That look said Verhulst would come off second best whether fencing with the buccaneer with tongue or sword. He settled back to serious drinking—at least this buccaneer captain was making a dull voyage interesting!
Imogene, who was sure van Ryker had invented the whole story and had actually bought the comb in the marketplace at Tortuga or Port Royal, tried to hide her amusement. She was playing with fire, but the game had her full attention.
To her surprise, after dinner as they sipped their wine and the chessmen were set out, Captain van Ryker did not try to hurry her on deck, but sat there drinking his wine and considering her from beneath shuttered lids. He is waiting for me to indicate that I will make good my wager, she realized, feeling the blood pound in her temples even as she admired his restraint. Wickedly, she was tempted to let him wait. But—that would not be fair. He had made her the wager in good faith and won. She had accepted the wager in a reckless moment because—now she admitted it—because she had wondered what the touch of his lips would be like, what it would be like to be held in the arms of such a dangerous man.
Across his glass he was regarding her a trifle sternly.
Imogene rose gracefully. “I feel a little faint,” she announced. “I think perhaps it is the smoke in this cabin. No—” as the gentlemen present made to put out their pipes—“do not do that. Nor do I need your services either. Doctor de Rochemont,” for the ship’s doctor had risen. “A turn around the deck, and I will be quite restored. Do not let me interrupt your game, Verhulst. Captain van Ryker can escort me on deck.”
“Well done,” van Ryker applauded her when they had reached the ship’s rail. “I had thought to arrange something myself if you did not.”
“A fire in the hold perhaps?” she taunted. “Something that would occupy Verhulst’s attention?”
“Nothing so dramatic. We are towing a log, which would have fouled the rudder a few moments from now and brought everyone’s attention to that part of the ship. As it is, I will give the order to cut the log loose.” He waved his handkerchief as a signal and Imogene heard feet slap along the deck.
She laughed. She felt lighthearted, young, a girl who had never met Stephen Linnington or married Verhulst van Rappard.
“And you are a terrible liar. Captain van Ryker,” she chided him. “Spanish lady indeed! Where did you get the comb—at the market in Tortuga?”
“ ’Twas a gift from a well-wishing friend,” he smiled. “I seem to remember trading a pair of gold bracelets for it. Of course, she offered something to boot....”
“I’ll wager she did!” Her saucy look challenged him. “What was it, van Ryker?”
He touched her bright hair yearningly. “Something better than gold.”
“Nonsense,” she scoffed. “What, to a pirate, is better than gold?”
“To a buccaneer—many things.”
“Name one!”
“The gold of your hair for one.” He kept his finger twined around the lock of hair he had appropriated and his voice was lazy. “Am I correct that you have come to pay your wager, Imogene?”
She did not even notice his use of her first name. “What wager was that?” she asked innocently. ‘‘Did I make you a wager? Faith, I cannot remember.”
His fingers tightened on the lock of hair and his voice deepened caressingly. “Dishonorable wench,” he grinned. “I’ll help you remember! A wager’s a wager!”
She turned her laughing face up to his and the moonlight struck down full upon her, deepening the lights in her blue eyes, silvering the gold of her hair, highlighting the wicked witchery of her smile. Her beauty struck him like a blow.
Very gently he bent his dark head and his lips brushed hers. Imogene felt her senses stir and her body stiffened.
“You could have been mine,” he murmured. “Would have been, had I not been such a fool as to let you go in Amsterdam.... I knew when I saw you that I had found my woman.”
His words—and the deep rich resonance of his voice as he said them—were more intoxicating than wine. Rocked by a bright surge of desire, Imogene set both hands against his chest and pushed him violently away from her. She was bewildered by the sudden strength of her own feelings for this buccaneer who meant nothing to her—nothing.
“ ’Twas but half a kiss,” he protested, amused.
“Perhaps I am but half a woman,” she said shakily. “Unworthy of the man I have married, that I would make such a wager with you. Come, van Ryker, ask of me something else—these ear bobs, perhaps. They should please a pirate.”
“But I would have the original wager—the sweet taste of your lips. And since ye persist in calling me a pirate, faith. I’ll just take it!”
Before Imogene could move to thwart him she was crushed against his silver-shot doublet, and her senses twanged like a bowstring when the arrow is loosed as she felt the deep, strong throb of his heart. She struggled and tried in vain to turn her head away from his dark face but his strength was inexorable. His strong right hand cradled her fair head, holding it firm that he might devour her lips at his leisure, and his sinewy left arm held her waist like a vise as he bent her pliant struggling form toward him. The pressure of his mouth was more insistent now and against her will she gave a violent start as van Ryker’s impudent tongue parted her panting lips and probed luxuriantly behind them.
There was a ringing in her ears that blotted out the creaking of the great ship’s timbers, and behind her closed eyes warning lights were flashing brighter than any ship’s lantern on the clearest night. Her knees felt as if they might give way at any minute. All her defenses were crumbling! Panic rose in her.
Suddenly the buccaneer let her go and as she staggered away from him he caught her by the shoulders and held her at arm’s length, studying her with a fierce intentness.
; “You do not belong with the young patroon,” he said quietly—and his complete command of himself in this moment when she felt all in disarray, panicked by the tumult of her own emotions, infuriated her.
“Who are you to say that?” she cried, half blinded by the magnificence of the figure he cut as he stood there, his leonine head bent, dark shining hair spilling over the broad wingspread of his shoulders, keen gray eyes ardent in concentration.
His words hammered at her softly, like blows delivered through a pillow and their meaning cut through to her heart.
“I am the man you should have had, Imogene. I say that you and the patroon are ill-mated—you, the sleek, long-haired cat, he, the thin, yapping terrier.”
Still trembling, Imogene blinked at this rude assessment.
Her combative spirit rose. “What right have you to judge me or my marriage? Do you know me so well, and this our third meeting?”
His arms fell away. “You are right,” he sighed. “I am in no position to judge you, Imogene.”
It was surely the moment to put him in his place, to question his use of her given name. But she could not do it. Not with the feel of his lips still burning her own. Not with her heart still fluttering strangely beneath the pressure of his hard hypnotic gaze.
“You speak of my marriage,” she said, feeling defensive. “But what do you know of it? Perhaps in my place—” she gave him a shadowed look through long lashes—“you would have done the same thing.”
“I might,” he agreed, “for we are very alike.”
His words startled her. Alike? Her gently bred self and this pirate captain raging across the seas? Why, they were nothing alike! He had—he had but seduced her for the moment into wild thoughts unbecoming to a married woman.
She stepped back. “I regret that I did not win my wager,” she said coldly. “For I would have enjoyed a tally of the women you have loved and left.”
Van Ryker reached out and caressed her hair, running his fingers through the gleaming locks at her throat, brushing the white column of her neck as he did so. She knew she should have pulled away, but she did not. Something held her there, immovable as stone while inside her blood coursed wildly through her veins, seeming to crash against a cliff at his every touch.
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