Bold Breathless Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  Frightened, holding on, keeping her head high no matter how Verhulst baited her, in these months she had learned to hate him and to wonder if he would let her live once the child was born. Or—white-faced in the night she had looked out at a cold moon shining down on wintry Wey Gat and asked herself, would he kill them both?

  She need not have feared for her life. Verhulst had no intention of killing his young wife whose beauty even now, late in her pregnancy, was a delight to his eyes. He meant—inflexible as any Puritan—to bring his erring lady to her knees, to make her repent and atone.

  If Imogene could have understood that, she might have come to understand Verhulst and thus made some kind of peace with him. But she did not understand. She would turn and see sudden burning fury in his gaze and she mistook his frustration that he could not break her spirit, quench her flame (and in his secret heart, make her love him)—for hatred.

  Even now, as Imogene lay racked with the pains of labor, Verhulst was wearing a path on the library rug. His dark eyes were wild with worry and he saw neither the expensive leather-bound volumes he had imported from Holland at such cost or the oaken library table piled with the estate account books that he kept so meticulously. His heart was thudding in his chest and he was oblivious to the evidences of wealth that were all about him. From upstairs he heard a muffled scream and with a convulsive reflex leaped for the door—and then stopped.

  He must not let Imogene know he was concerned about her. Indeed, he told himself hotly, in a sudden burst of shame that he should be so exercised, he was not. It was only her lustrous beauty that held him, her damnable haunting beauty. Just seeing her move about in Amsterdam had made him dream—and he had imagined her moving sensuously from room to room at Wey Gat. And when he had first brought her here, just seeing her stand outside with the wind blowing her bright hair had been enough to make him catch his breath. She was like a drug to his senses that he could not shake off. In months past he had felt she was like an addiction—he despised her, wished to rid himself of her—and yet he could not do without her.

  And then he had learned the terrible truth, that she was pregnant by another man, and every time he looked in her direction he was warmed by his newfound imagined hatred for her. He had never cared for her at all, he told himself roughly in those first evil days, she was merely another ornament he had bought in Holland for Wey Gat—bought for gold as he had bought his paintings, his furnishings, his plate.

  He told himself he did not want her—but he was reduced to panic at the thought that she might run away and escape him. Haggard, he had watched her covertly when she did not know he watched and thought jagged thoughts that tore at him.

  Those lovely eyes—they had looked into another man’s face with love. Those soft curving lips had been tasted, enjoyed by another. That slender form he had thought so virginal, so untried—at the thought his hands clenched and a tremor went through him—that lovely “virginal” body had been known in naked carnal passion by another man. Thinking it, his teeth closed down on his lips so that he tasted blood and before the pain subsided he struck the wall with his fist and ordered out his horse and rode the poor beast till it was lathered and foaming with sweat. But nothing he did could exorcise his devils. Imogene’s haunting beauty rode with him wherever he went. On the river, inspecting the bouweries, wherever his tormented spirit led him, he carried her picture in his heart. A haunting, tempting vision—of a wanton! A wanton! He would think of that and his thin face would empurple with rage. Imogene had taken all his gifts, his proud old name—and flung mud on them!

  But in other, softer, moods he saw her sentimentally, as she had been in Amsterdam, greeting the morning with a song. Pure, virginal she had seemed, lovely as the dawn, a woman made for love.

  She was neither extreme, of course, neither so pure nor yet so bad as his fancy made her. Imogene was a woman, with a woman’s frailties and a woman’s strengths. She had courage and now upstairs with the baby coming, she needed all of it.

  “The contractions are coming faster now,” muttered the doctor. He sounded cheered, for Imogene had been in labor many hours. And Elise, her fingers nearly crushed by Imogene’s agonized grip, murmured, “ ’Tis nearly over, nearly over,” to comfort the woman on the bed whose head turned frantically this way and that as her body strained to be delivered of the child, and whose long blond hair, soaked with perspiration, lay in a tumbled mass upon the damp pillows.

  Imogene heard neither of them. Her world had become a rending landscape of pain that crested in terrible jagged hills and careened into deep aching valleys. She was one continuous agony now and she had lost touch with reality, lost her identity, she had become one with the pain that dragged her along with it.

  And then it was over. Imogene gave a terrible hoarse scream that wavered and lingered on the air, and the baby slipped out and she fell back quivering and exhausted upon the damp bed.

  Downstairs, Verhulst heard that agonized scream and streaked for the stairs, thundered up them on wings of fear. God, was she dying? Had that cursed doctor killed her? By heaven, he would throttle the man! He burst through the door and Elise, who had taken the child from the doctor, froze to stillness as he plunged into the room.

  But the sight of the naked baby, red and giving out a tiny cry, the sight of Imogene’s fair head turning slightly on the pillow, reassured him. She was alive, she had got through it! Verhulst took in a great gulp of air and managed with an effort to control the trembling of his knees.

  “So my child is born,” he said lightly. His eyes now focused on the baby, which Elise had swiftly wrapped in a blanket against the drafty air. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

  “A girl.” Elise’s voice was hoarse. My child is born—The young patroon had decided to claim the baby as his own after all!

  “A boy would have been better. Ah, well, no matter.” Verhulst tried to sound jaunty. “We will doubtless have a dozen more.”

  “Not if you wish your wife to live,” said the doctor dryly. “I have brought her through this labor, but I doubt she would survive another.”

  “Oh?” Could that have been relief in van Rappard’s face, the doctor wondered ironically. He had of course heard the stories of the young patroon’s boyhood accident. “Then we must limit the size of our family, must we not, Imogene?”

  The woman on the bed, eyes closed in exhaustion, still living in that black world of pain, gave him no answer.

  “It is going to be all right,” Elise whispered to her, after the doctor and Verhulst had gone. “The patroon claims the child as his own!”

  Imogene came up out of the dark.

  “No.” She shook her head wearily and the pallor of her lovely face made Elise’s heart ache for her. “Nothing is all right. Pride made Verhulst claim my daughter, pride alone. Verhulst has not forgiven me, Elise—I don’t think he ever will.”

  “There, there,” said Elise helplessly. “What will you name your daughter? She is so lovely, will you name her for yourself?”

  “No.” Imogene cradled the tiny babe in her arms and looked down upon her lovingly, but her voice was sad. “I think my name is accursed, Elise, for what good have I ever brought to anyone? I would never name her Imogene. Indeed, I will name her Georgiana—for my mother.”

  Elise smiled and brought hot soup and exuded relief that Imogene had lived through her ordeal.

  But that night Elise, sleeping now in the small anteroom adjoining Imogene’s bedchamber, was wakened by ahoarse cry. Imogene had had the dream again, the dream that had haunted her since that long-ago day when she had seen her parents shot down in their Penzance garden.

  “'Tis all right, ’tis all right.” Elise tried to comfort her, holding the shuddering woman in her arms.

  "I felt—I felt as if the dream ... was my future,” whispered Imogene haltingly. “I felt I had seen death—my death. Elise.” Her voice was hushed. “I’ve seen the way I’m going to die.”

  Elise held her and rocked her and spoke soothingly
but her gaunt face was troubled. For who was to say that Imogene had not foreseen the future?

  Imogene did not come down to dinner for two weeks. But when she did the back of the winter had broken. The river ice had broken up. Great floes dotted rushing waters swollen by the snow melt. And eagles and crows alighted on those floes and floated past Wey Gat in stately fashion on their way downriver. Everywhere the snow was melting, running in bright dancing rivulets to swell the torrent. The promise of spring was in the air and across the long dining table, on that first night that she came downstairs to eat with him, Imogene and Verhulst declared a silent truce.

  For a time Imogene was almost happy at Wey Gat. For the most part she ignored Verhulst, spending all her time with the baby, delighting in her, loving her, holding that small warm body close to her heart. Preoccupied with the child, she no longer thought of escaping. Verhulst sensed this and withdrew the spying servants. For Imogene it was a welcome change and the thoughts that she confided to her journal were happy thoughts.

  Spring came suddenly, bursting out everywhere. Imogene walked out on the lawns and strolled about. Beneath azure skies she sat with her skirts spread out amid the fragrant junipers and sang soft lullabies to little Georgiana in her arms. She loved to sit beneath the great walnut and chestnut trees that dotted the yard, to stroll through the pleasant pastures carpeted with wild flowers or among the big trees that surrounded those pastures—tall pines and sycamores that rose among the sturdy oaks and hickories and hemlocks. The north side of these trees were moss-and lichen-covered. Once, walking among them, she paused to watch a long, irregular line of swans flying north—then caught her breath and marveled at a great cloud of passenger pigeons that darkened the sky as they flew over the newly spongy earth. Snowbirds were everywhere, Canada sparrows, thrushes. The air was filled with their silvery notes.

  With all of this to enchant her, Imogene no longer minded not receiving mail. Nor did she care to write any letters. She did not miss the social life of the river—she had never been part of it anyway. Her whole world was filled with the magic of spring—and baby Georgiana.

  In one of his mellower moods Verhulst told her the river-banks would soon be ablaze with luscious wild strawberries and at the base of the mountains there would be masses of northern green lilies and other wild flowers. He offered to bring her some and at this gesture of goodwill, Imogene’s gaze softened. She had never been one to bear a grudge. Now she felt a sudden bittersweet yearning for a complete family—not only a baby but husband who would truly love her—and wondered if they might not make a go of it after all.

  But Imogene’s body was a woman’s body. She had a woman's wants and a woman’s needs. As spring deepened into summer, as brilliant wild flowers painted the meadows with saffron and pink, she grew restless. When the air was redolent with honeysuckle and silvered with the flutelike call of the wood thrush and other mating birds, she looked up at the forest of hemlocks and spruce towering above her, heard the wild call of the loon and felt a stirring in her blood. The very meadows seemed to sing to her—a love song. And Imogene was weary again of her empty marriage. She looked toward the south—and dreamed.

  Verhulst, who had been satisfied enough to have a wife wrapped up in the care of an infant all believed to be his, felt this change in Imogene and was nettled by it. Shut out by her all-consuming attentions to the child, he became jealous of Georgiana, feeling the baby was somehow interfering with his life. Given to brooding, he brooded over this.

  And so one day in early June he confronted Imogene as she sat with her baby in her arms beside the sundial atop the bluff near the house. Her gaze was following an Indian canoe floating downriver, drifting lazily on the sparkling waters.

  “Your face is always turned toward the south,” he complained.

  Imogene had not heard him come up. Now she looked up and laughed. “There is more excitement there.”

  Verhulst frowned. “Think not on New Amsterdam,” he said bluntly. “You will not see it. I have no plans to take you there. It is time you left off mooning, turned the child over to a nurse, and learned to be a proper Dutch housewife and wife to a patroon.”

  Imogene sighed. “Perhaps Vrouw Berghem could come upriver and visit us? She was so kind to me in New Amsterdam, and I am sure she would be glad to teach me all that I should know.”

  Verhulst thought he perceived something devious in this. “Vrouw Berghem would decline your invitation. She is very busy closing her house. Next month she sets sail for Holland to visit her married daughters,” he told her, a note of triumph in his voice. “She will be gone a long time, perhaps as much as a year.” He shrugged. “I very much doubt she will ever return.”

  That was bad news. Imogene had hoped that the ebullient Dutch vrouw would inspire Verhulst to take them all downriver to New Amsterdam in turn to visit her. There at least they would see people—people who spoke English, people who laughed and danced. “I hope she finds her daughters well,” she said gravely.

  “You did not come down to dinner last night,” he observed.

  “I sent you word that I would not be down. Georgiana was feverish. I wanted to stay with her.”

  “In future you will dine with me whether the child is sick or well.”

  Imogene gave him a mutinous look. “It is not Georgiana’s fault, Verhulst, that I do not please you.”

  “No, but perhaps you would make more effort if she were not with us.”

  Fear tickled Imogene’s spine. “But she is with us,” she rejoined warily.

  “You spend too much time with her.”

  “That’s not true! And anyway, Elise takes care of her as much as I do.”

  “Then let Elise do it.”

  “Verhulst, I am her mother!”

  It seemed to Verhulst, looking at this indignant beauty in azure linen, that every problem in his life would be solved—if only they were rid of the ever-present Georgiana.

  “I have come to a decision,” he said rapidly, making the decision as he went along. “We will send the child to Holland, to my cousin. He and his wife are childless. They will take good care of her. Moreover, they will teach her Dutch—something I doubt you will be eager to do, since you have made no effort to earn it yourself.”

  Imogene ignored this jibe; her mind was on the main point. “Georgiana is too small to be sent to Holland, alone,” she said sharply. “If she goes, Elise and I must accompany her!”

  Verhulst leaned forward. A pulse throbbed in his forehead and his dark eyes seemed to bulge. He was trying to control his fractious lady and it was an effort he was really not up to. “You do not seem to hear me, Imogene,” he said, spacing his words, “When the child has been weaned, when I decide she is old enough, I will ship her forthwith to Holland to my cousin. A servant can escort her! And you, my lady, will remain at Wey Gat and learn to be a proper wife to a patroon! You may start by learning to play the virginal that I bought you. It arrived a fortnight ago and you have not touched it.”

  “I have been too busy!”

  “With Georgiana.”

  “Yes, with Georgiana!”

  “I have sent for a tutor and when he arrives you will begin your lessons on the virginal.”

  Imogene held Georgiana the tighter. She could see that Verhulst, for whatever spiteful reason, had made up his mind. He was determined to send the child away. Fury welled up in her, and indignation, but she held on to her temper, although the effort made her pale. Verhulst might well decree that Georgiana be put in the care of a wet nurse and sent downriver at once—he had the power to do it!

  “Time enough to think of the virginal when the tutor gets here,” she said distantly, and took her leave of him, gathering up her blue linen skirts and hurrying away, for she could not stand the sight of him just now.

  Now once again Imogene was determined to escape—and swiftly, before Verhulst, who now thought her cowed and quiescent, discerned her intentions.

  Her chance came the next morning and—impetuous as a
lways—without a second thought she took it.

  As she was coming down the stairs to breakfast she paused at the stair landing to tie a sleeve bow that had come untied. Through the window she saw that a river sloop, a “flyboat” as the Dutch called them, was tied up at the pier.

  Imogene’s heart began to pound as she drank in the sight of that large mainsail and small jib and the lee boards that were the mark of these swift craft that plied the North River. This sloop was not large as riverboats went and she stood studying the stout rugged figure of the captain as he stood at the tiller. What kind of man was he? Dared she hope that he would take her and Elise and the baby with him?

  Imogene drew a deep shivering breath. She had to chance it.

  Moments later Elise was hurrying down the sloping lawns to inquire as best she could when the sloop would be leaving. She came back to report to Imogene—who had somehow endured breakfast with Verhulst—that the sloop would leave in two hours’ time, for while the patroon had offered his hospitality, the patroon had chosen not to buy this particular trader’s goods.

  Ah, that was a good sign! There was obviously some coldness between Verhulst van Rappard and the captain of this particular river sloop. Encouraged that from animosity toward Verhulst the captain might agree to take them along, Imogene put on several petticoats and two overdresses—at least she would have a change of clothes!—and bade Elise to do likewise. Looking a little stouter than usual from their extra clothes, Imogene, with Elise carrying the baby, sauntered down the broad lawns toward the landing, apparently lost in the beauty of the big chestnut trees about them.

  Imogene would have done well to have observed her husband more closely at breakfast. Verhulst had been unusually silent, watching his wife through narrowed eyes as he sifted cinnamon from the handsome silver ooma upon his pancakes. He had noted the quick anxious glance she threw toward the river and a ghost of a bitter smile had lit his dark countenance.