Bold Breathless Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  Upriver they traveled and Imogene grew used to the sturdy Dutch crew who manned the Danskammer and to the huge blond jovial schipper. Schroon spoke no English but his eyes twinkled appreciatively when she passed and he would take his long clay pipe from his mouth—for Schroon was passionately fond of tabac—and his big moon face would split into a smile, showing a set of big tobacco-stained teeth. He would bob his shock of yellow hair at her and whistle a merry tune as she walked away. Imogene liked Schroon better than his crew, for he was always good-natured and smiling, while they were sometimes surly— particularly after the patroon had said something sharp to them.

  “I wonder what the house will be like,” wondered Elise uneasily when Verhulst told them they would be arriving within the hour.

  “Large,” said lmogene dryly. “And filled with fine things—or at least about to be. For it seems to me that Verhulst has brought back half of Europe with him—and most of it is lashed onto this deck!” She nodded at the narrow walkway between boxes and barrels that was all that was left of the deck at one point.

  But Elise had voiced something that had been plaguing her as well and Imogene was silent as the sloop slid to its mooring at the long wooden pier that reached like a tongue out into the water.

  In New Amsterdam Imogene had grown accustomed to seeing the clusters of narrow Dutch rowhouses, and in its environs the squat picturesque Dutch farmhouses. She had half expected that the great array of goods piled upon the sloop would not fit into the house at all.

  Now she gazed upward in astonishment, for she was unprepared for the fortress that met her eyes. No wonder Vrouw Berghem had thought it might be defended! A lofty pile of stone, the mansion of Wey Gat rose austerely atop the bluff on the river’s eastern bank. Verhulst had a right to be proud of his “castle”! All that they had brought with them could fit into a corner of it, Imogene decided, and be lost. On both sides of the water’s edge was considerably undergrowth but near the pier it was clean-cut and afforded a fine view of sweeping lawns that sloped up to the frowning stone mansion.

  From somewhere came the sound of hammering and she could see men and horses urging along a wagonload of stone . .. so this vast edifice was not completed yet. And then from somewhere behind the house came the baying of dogs and she remembered what Vrouw Berghem had told her about the savage pack of man-hunting dogs Verhulst maintained, and shivered.

  “Welcome to Wey Gat!” Pride rang in Verhulst’s voice as he handed her down with a flourish onto the wooden pier.

  “It’s—beautiful,” said Imogene inadequately, looking up at the tall Gothic windows that sloped to a point at the top. She tried to count its many chimneys, but the intervening branches of the tall spreading trees made that difficult. “It’s so much larger and finer than I had expected.”

  Verhulst’s black velvet chest expanded and the heavy gold chain he wore around his neck swung and sparkled in the light—sparkled with a knowing twinkle, like the small panes of Wey Gat’s tall windows. “ ’Tis the finest on the river,” he said airily.

  “Come along, Elise.” Imogene picked up her skirts on one side so that she could walk the faster along the wooden planking of the pier. “Leave the luggage, it can be brought in later. We must come and view our new home.”

  Verhulst raised his eyebrows at this familiarity with a servant but Elise stepped forward gratefully and accompanied Imogene up the broad lawns, through the heavy oaken front doors. But just as Imogene had been struck into silence before the majesty of the looming Palisades, so Elise was struck dumb by the cold, echoing rooms through which they wandered one by one. If Verhulst had intended to build himself a castle on Henry Hudson’s river, he had certainly managed to do so, for Wey Gat’s steep pointed roofs and tall chimneys gave it the look of a castle against the red glow of sunset, but he had created a building that seemed dead, into which no life had been breathed. As Imogene accompanied Verhulst through barren rooms and down long corridors, murmuring politely, “It’s lovely,” as he showed her through the house that was to be her home, Elise padded after them jerking her head from right to left with staring eyes.

  “It’s a terrible place,” she told Imogene shakily, when they were alone at last in the big bedroom Verhulst had told her adjoined his own, and she was helping Imogene change to a fragile yellow silk dress for supper. “And that big chair in the patroon’s office looked like a throne.”

  “Nonsense.” Imogene shrugged the yellow silk over her shoulders and let Elise pat the dress down around her hips. “The house is just new and only partly furnished—that’s what gives it that unlived-in look. And you heard Verhulst say that big chair is where he sits to transact business with his tenants—I suppose he wants to impress them.” She frowned suddenly. She would have preferred a man who did not gain his prestige from lounging about in a thronelike chair while the men he dealt with fidgeted hat-in-hand on wooden benches. She tried to imagine van Ryker in a similar situation and failed—he would be striding about, shaking this one’s hand, clapping that one on the shoulder, greeting another heartily. And they would follow him because they respected him, man to man—not because they were browbeaten by a throne-backed chair and a house that had brought grandeur to the wilderness, not because they were intimidated by a pack of vicious dogs!

  She shook her head to clear it. She was being unfair to Verhulst. Anyway this was the life she had chosen and van Ryker cared nothing for her—he had proved that by sailing away. She looked about her at the big square bedroom with its plain walls and heavy square-built oaken furniture, doubtless fashioned right here in the colony.

  “This room will look different when the blue Chinese rug is laid and these barren walls covered with some of that wallpaper from France,” she told Elise.

  “Those hunting scenes? I’d think ye’d not like to wake up and see a stag’s belly ripped open and bleeding!”

  Imogene gave a small shudder. She had no love for blood sports. “Not the hunting scenes,” she replied. “They are for the great hall and the dining room.” Where I will cover up that dying stag with a sideboard or a cupboard, she promised herself. “But wait till these windows are draped with lawn curtains and caught back with blue ribands. Wait till the big armoire Verhulst bought in Holland is brought in to hold my gowns, and wait till I change the canopy on that cumbersome bed!” She indicated the heavy hangings of moldering green that gave the big carved four-poster a gloomy look. ‘‘Blue-figured calico should do nicely!”

  “ ’Twill not be fine enough to suit his patroonship,” sniffed Elise. “He’ll insist on heavy damask! Richer!”

  Imogene laughed. “This whole house will change its character once I start redecorating it,” she boasted.

  Elise rolled her eyes and quickly lit a candle against the deepening dusk. “ ’Tis not houselike at all,” she complained. “And listen to those dogs. Do they bay all night?”

  “Nonsense.”

  But as Imogene trailed down the echoing stairway where the candles in the brass chandelier cast long wavering shadows, she felt as Elise did, that this was not really a home at all, but a stage setting for some as yet unplayed drama. The feeling was very real and persisted through dinner and beyond.

  That night the old terrifying dream of her childhood returned to her and Imogene woke panting from a mad run across the sand toward a gray glimmer on which skimmed a boat with a big square sail.

  Something clutched her and she woke in terror. Elise was shaking her.

  “There, there,” Elise soothed. “Ye cried out in your sleep. I had to wake ye before ye roused the house.”

  Imogene was in a cold sweat. She clutched at Elise. “There has always been a noise in my dream,” she told Elise hoarsely. “Something—some sound coming closer, closer—but I never knew what it was. Tonight I heard it clearly. It was the baying of dogs.”

  “Ye heard the dogs baying in the kennels behind the house,” said Elise sensibly, but some of Imogene’s terror was communicated to her and she felt little fingers o
f fear play along her spine. “They’re making a terrible noise. A fox must have passed by, or a rabbit. Hear them now?”

  The baying and howling outside had indeed reached a crescendo.

  “Of course,” said Imogene uncertainly. “That must have been it.” She started as Verhulst burst through the door.

  “I heard you scream! Imogene, are you all right?”

  “Yes.” Imogene ran shaky fingers through her golden hair. She looked very fetching, sitting up in the big bed with her hair rumpled and the loosened top of her night rail spilling in soft lawn folds down over one white shoulder.

  “ ’Twas a nightmare,” supplied Elise. “My lady has them sometimes. The dogs disturbed her.”

  ‘‘The dogs are unruly sometimes, but Groot has them well under control. I will speak to him tomorrow about the noise.”

  “No, no,” sighed Imogene, pulling up her night rail to cover her bare shoulder. “It’s just that the house is strange to me and that howling seemed to merge with my dream.”

  “Oh—well, then...” Verhulst stood undecided in the doorway, still holding the quill pen he had been using on his account books when the noise from upstairs had disturbed him. “I’ll go back to my books, if you’re all right.”

  Imogene nodded wanly. The nightmare always left her pale and shaken. It left a pall over her, like a premonition of doom. “I’ll be fine,” she promised.

  Verhulst closed the door and departed. They could hear his footsteps echoing down the empty hall.

  Elise gave Imogene’s shoulder an encouraging pat and scurried back to the cubbyhole she occupied off Imogene’s room. She closed the door in case the patroon should choose to exercise his marital rights, but she might as well have stayed.

  Imogene lay awake staring out of the tall pointy windows until the dawn’s pale light filtered through them. Then she fell into a heavy sleep and stayed asleep until Elise shook her and told her it was time for breakfast.

  Just as in New Amsterdam and on the high seas, Verhulst van Rappard had avoided any nocturnal contact with his lady.

  She faced him at breakfast and wondered—letting her blue eyes drop before his curious gaze—if this was to be the pattern of their existence together: to eat together, chat together, travel together—but to sleep alone. Of course it was decent of him to let her alone now that she was pregnant but. .. she remembered how it had been on shipboard when he had not known about that, and asked herself silently if this was the way it was going to be for the rest of their lives? In Stephen’s arms she had learned what love could be like, in van Ryker’s arms she had known what it was to hunger for passion, and now, facing her husband across the long shining board laden with heavy silver, she wondered if she could stand it. Could she endure a whole lifetime of never being held in a man’s arms?

  “Do you work late on your books many nights?” she asked abruptly.

  He avoided her gaze. “Yes. Many nights.”

  “And the noise the dogs make does not bother you?”

  “No, I am used to them.”

  Imogene leaned forward. “Verhulst,” she asked desperately, “why do you need the dogs?”

  “To hunt men,” he answered brutally, his gaze shining on her suddenly fierce. “This is a raw new land, Imogene, and these are rough times. This is how I keep the peace at Wey Gat.” He studied her mutinous face. “Last night there were Indians prowling about. The dogs gave us notice of their presence.”

  “And did you—hunt them?”

  “There was no need, they backed off.”

  “And if they come again?”

  “Then we will deal with them as need be.”

  Imogene forced herself to remember that Verhulst had reason for his actions—his parents had been scalped by prowling Indians.

  “You will grow used to the life here,” Verhulst promised in a kinder voice.

  Imogene hoped he was right. But she doubted if she ever would.

  The Bahamas

  CHAPTER 16

  Before leaving Holland, Imogene had written Bess Deveen a terse note, telling her of her impending marriage and asking her to inform Lord Elston. It will come better from you, Bess, for he has always liked you and he is sure to disapprove of what he would call a “hasty marriage.’’

  Now at Wey Gat, she received an answer.

  You may not have heard because they wrote to you in Amsterdam and I doubt you were there to receive the letter, Bess wrote, but your guardian died after a short illness. The servants had presumed him better, for he had gotten up that morning and eaten a good breakfast, but later they found him face down among his books and could not revive him. I think it was the way he would have liked to go, Imogene, there among the things he treasured. He never knew you were married because he died the very day I went over to see him, and I arrived to find the whole place in disarray. At least, you need not blame yourself for having worried him—he did not know of it.

  Ah, but I worried him often enough, Imogene thought sadly. It was hard to realize Lord Elston was gone; he had been so crochety, so alive. She had clashed with him frequently, for they both had violent natures, but now her lip trembled and she fought back tears, for deep in her heart she had been truly fond of the old man. She scarcely took in Bess’s words of heartfelt sympathy.

  With blurred vision, she continued reading Bess’s letter:

  My uncle in Barbados has arranged a marriage for me. (Here Imogene started in surprise. Bess—married?) He says my betrothed is handsome and young and wealthy and has a large plantation on Barbados that adjoins his own. I care not for his wealth, Imogene, but I am uneasy to travel so far to meet an unknown suitor. Perhaps he will not care for me, or I for him—although my uncle says he is greatly in need of a wife. My uncle is sending me a picture of him, but / doubt it will reach me before I embark, for I am packing now. My brothers are overjoyed to be rid of me, for unless I marry, I will end up a burden on them. Imogene’s lips tightened. How could gentle Bess be a burden on anyone? So I embark on Thursday next and when you hear from me again I will doubtless be a married woman trying to adjust to life on a strange plantation. I suppose / could have said no, that I preferred to wait until some young man in the Scillies took my fancy, but now that Stephen is gone, it does not matter to me.

  Imogene stared down at the letter. Now that Stephen is gone. ... It was the first inkling she had had that Bess, too, was in love with Stephen. Ah, that explained so many things—sweet, self-sacrificing Bess, who had contrived to help them meet clandestinely—and all the time her heart must have been breaking. Why, she must have been blind not to see it! Imogene dashed the tears from her lashes and hoped, fervently and with all her heart, that Bess would be happy in Barbados, and that this stranger she was to marry would value her as she should be valued.

  But the letter had brought changes to her life, to her future, for Lord Elston and Bess Duveen were her only real tie to the Scillies. Even should the cloud that hung over her name be cleared, she now had no place in the Scillies to return to. Her guardian was gone and his heirs would have no use for her—they had shown scorn for her many times. And now that Bess—her only true friend—had departed England for Barbados, Imogene would hardly find herself welcomed at Ennor Castle by a family whose son she had jilted!

  Imogene put the letter in her jewel chest and closed the lid with gentle fingers. It seemed to her a voice from the past. England and its Scilly Isles were already receding in her memory. Even Stephen seemed to fade in the afterglow.

  Her future was here—at Wey Gat with a strange, cold husband who was remarkably gentle with her and with no one else, and with her unborn child who would, she promised herself fervently, grow up to be everything that she was not—virtuous, good.

  And suddenly, for no reason, her thoughts strayed to the dark buccaneer captain, van Ryker. She stared out the window at the sparkling river flowing by. His quick smile had flashed at her like sunlight on water—and how wickedly dangerous his saturnine face had looked in the moonlight ab
oard the Sea Rover and again at the Governor’s Ball when he had threatened to take her away with him! She wondered, with a treacherous leap of her heart, what her life would have been like if she had smiled instead of frowned, if she had not flung at him the lie that she loved Verhulst.... What would it have been like to sail away with him, a buccaneer’s woman, into the sunlit seas?

  She wrenched herself from the thought. Van Ryker had long forgotten her, she told herself firmly. Even now he was brawling in some dark hole of a tavern in the buccaneer stronghold of Tortuga, one sinewy arm around the waist of some captured but willing Spanish wench and the other holding aloft a glass to toast his lady’s ivory bosom.

  Imogene did not do van Ryker justice. He had not forgotten the golden English girl—although God knew he had tried. Time had raced by for him, and van Ryker, sweating on the Sea Rover's rolling deck in the bright West Indian sunlight as his ship pursued some ill-starred galleon, or begrimed by black powder from the fight as his guns spat a broadside and the grappling irons were thrown over and his lean form swung across the railing onto a Spanish deck, told himself as firmly as Imogene did,now, that he had forgotten the patroon’s winsome English bride who had beguiled him.

  Imogene would have been wickedly pleased, deep in her feminine heart, that van Ryker had not forgotten her. But she would have been stunned had she witnessed one of his encounters.

  Once in the Bahamas, after a wild night of carousing on shore, van Ryker brought one of his hard-drinking newfound friends—a drifter new to the Caribbean that he hoped to persuade to sign on with him—back to his great cabin to show him the collection of small arms he’d captured from a Spanish caravel that had roved too close to the Sea Rover's formidable guns. Having shown his newfound friend the braces of dueling pistols and other arms, he decided to take him back ashore where they could rejoin the drinking brawl they’d left at the tavern. But first a clean shirt, for some careless tavern maid had spilled rum upon his sleeve and van Ryker was always meticulous about his linens.