Willem winced and ducked his head as if blows were raining on it, but he knew he was hearing the unvarnished truth. His sister’s straitlaced husband had never liked him, considered him a ne’er-do-well and worse. What he would do if he learned that the patroon of Wey Gat’s runaway wife was secreted in his house, Willem hated to think. With fright to spur him, he hurried back to the living room where Elise was bent over picking up something that had dropped on the floor beside Imogene. Why, it was Imogene’s journal—she must have brought it with her so that it would not fall into Verhulst’s hands. Swiftly Elise pocketed the journal and was bending over the baby when Willem reached her.
His sister followed him in with a tray of the hot oleykoeks she had been making and a jug of raisin wine and offered them to all present. Stephen waved her wanly away, but Elise, cuddling the baby, gratefully munched one of the steaming doughnuts fried in lard.
“Why, it’s a dear little thing!” cried Willem’s sister in Dutch, for babies—she had none of her own—always enchanted her. She rushed to heat some milk for the child as well as hot cider all around. “But—is the woman dead?” she demanded harshly of Willem. “You cannot let her die in my house!”
“She is not dead,” insisted Willem in Dutch. “And I will have her out, you may count on it.”
“But she lies so still!”
Willem frowned. “Is there a ship leaving harbor today? Anywhere will do—the farther the better!”
“I heard Vrouw Bergstede say the Wilhelmina was in harbor and would set out for Jamaica today—but I think you may be too late; she has probably already sailed.”
Willem turned to Elise. “There is no time to lose. I must go for a doctor and I must get rid of you separately, else the patroon of Wey Gat will be here in force and we will all hang.”
Elise blanched and clutched little Georgiana tighter.
“Have you money?” Willem’s face was grim.
Elise nodded.
“Enough for ship’s passage? There is a ship bound for Jamaica but she leaves at once.”
Elise cast a wild look at Stephen. “But we are bound for Barbados!”
Stephen, who was slipping in and out of consciousness, said weakly, “Go with him, Elise. Willem is right, we are conspicuous all together. We will send for you.”
“There is no time to argue!” Willem seized Elise’s arm and pulled her toward the door. “The ship is leaving! Be good enough to pull your hat down over your eyes. God in heaven, the woman is wearing men’s boots!” This as Elise hiked up her skirts preparatory to stepping out into the snow.
Elise gave Stephen a last desperate look as she jammed her hat down on her head. “Take care—of my lady,” she choked. “For it hurts my very heart to leave her here.”
“I will,” Stephen promised gallantly, “for she is also my lady.” For that, he told himself, was the way it must be now.
But he looks unable to take care of anyone, even himself, thought Elise in panic as Willem hurried her out.
They were barely in time to procure passage for “Mistress Eliza Smith” and her small niece “Anna Smith” on board the Wilhelmina, for her captain was just then casting off. He told her testily he had no time to wait for her luggage, she must come aboard now or they’d miss the tide. Both Willem and Elise were grateful for that—it spared questions.
“Go quickly,” urged Elise as she clambered aboard. She turned and gave Willem a push. “You must find a doctor if my lady is to live!”
The Wilhelmina’s captain thought he had seen some strange leave-takings in his time, but this departure with a shove was a new one. “Cast off!” he roared.
Willem, delighted to hear those words, turned his back upon the ship and scurried away. He hoped no one at dockside had noticed him with the woman. Now if he could only be rid of the other two—for he’d certainly no intention of bringing a curious doctor to his sister’s house to incriminate them all! Still, they were in no shape to move—suppose they died there?
He had put on fresh socks at his sister’s house. They belonged to his brother-in-law and they were too big for him. One of them had balled up around his heel and was wearing a blister. With a curse he paused to adjust it and when he looked up, hope flared in his eyes.
That ship over there, was she not the Sea Rover? A buccaneer’s vessel would have a doctor skilled in handling wounds—and one who’d ask no questions either. A doctor who’d patch up that battered pair and send them on their way!
With a sudden real sense that he might yet live to see tomorrow’s dawn, Willem limped on board the Sea Rover and asked a yellow-haired buccaneer at the ship’s rail if he could see the ship’s doctor.
“Who wants him?” demanded a crisp voice behind him.
Willem turned and found himself looking into a dark sardonic visage he recognized as Captain van Ryker’s—for the captain’s face was well known along the river. He gulped. "Could I speak to ye privately, sir?” he asked with a nervous look about. “The doctor is needed but—but I dare not talk where I can be overheard.”
Over Willem’s head, van Ryker and his ship’s master exchanged glances. Having left so many men in Carolina, the Sea Rover was shorthanded and could use another man. This fellow was sturdy—and wanting a buccaneer doctor instead of one from the town. He was limping, true, but even a man with a minor injury would be welcome to sign on under the circumstances.
He took Willem to his cabin. “So ye’re in need of a doctor? A musket ball in the leg perhaps?” he asked pleasantly, referring to the limp.
Willem looked startled. “Socks too big—wore a blister,” he mumbled.
Van Ryker stared. “And ye want a doctor for that?” he asked incredulously.
“I’ve two people in need of doctoring,” burst out Willem. Indeed I don’t know if they’ll live. But they’ve money,” he hastened to add. “The man paid me well to bring him downriver, and the woman wears a necklace of price.”
Van Ryker’s curiosity was aroused. “Who are they?”
It was the question Willem had been dreading. “I asked them no questions,” he said hoarsely. “I was only paid to bring them.”
“I cannot ask my ship’s doctor to go into a house of fever,” van Ryker told him tersely. “He might bring it aboard my vessel. Get a local doctor.”
“ ’Tis not fever that plagues them—’tis wounds.”
“ ‘Wounds’?”
“Aye. The woman got a bash on the head and the man’s been shot in the chest.”
Van Ryker’s dark brows elevated. Wounds... and doubtless acquired outside the law. Willem was becoming more interesting all the time. “Bring them in,” he said. “My ship’s doctor will treat them.”
“No, he’ll have to go to them. They’re neither of them in shape to walk here.”
The dark face broke into a cold smile. “Then ye will tell me who they are and what they’ve done or I’ll not raise a finger to help you. I may bend the law a bit, but I’ll not go into anything blind.”
Willem, desperate and sensing that whatever van Ryker might do, he would not forthwith turn him over to the schout as his brother-in-law certainly would, burst out, “The man’s an Englishman name of Linnington and the woman’s the wife of the patroon of Wey Gat. Now ye see why I cannot—”
But the tall fellow across from him was suddenly transformed. Willem gasped and staggered back as his collar was seized and twisted in a viselike grip and the captain’s menacing face was thrust into his. “The woman is hurt, you say?”
“Aye,” cried Willem, half strangled by that implacable grip on his collar. “ ’Twas an accident. She struck her head against my iceboat as she boarded—’twas after the man was shot.” His voice died away but the grip on his collar was already unloosed. It was replaced by a grip on his arm that threatened to cut off his circulation.
“Raoul!” roared van Ryker. “Where are ye, man?” He stormed on deck, dragging Willem with him. Raoul de Rochemont, clad in a shirt, stuck his head out on deck.
“Bring five men and your doctoring gear,” van Ryker shouted at him. “And follow me! We’re bringing a lady aboard. And bring a litter,” he called over his shoulder.
Willem was horrified—a company of eight and carrying a litter! Everyone they met would remark it! He could almost feel the hangman’s noose tightening around his neck. But as the tall buccaneer dragged him along New Amsterdam’s streets, a comforting thought occurred to Willem. It came to him abruptly that people could easily believe him to be but an innocent bystander in this affair. A buccaneer captain had stormed into town and carried off a runaway lady! Willem could later claim—if matters were such that he needed to claim it—that he had been forced into the iceboat at the point of a gun and fled Wey Gat because of the shooting! With alacrity now he led the long-striding buccaneer and his ship’s doctor and the others toward his sister’s small farmhouse. De Rochemont was shivering badly, having left without his doublet. Only a cloak was thrown over his light shirt in this gale. He bent his head against the wind and wondered what was happening. Van Ryker looked in no mood to be questioned.
At last they reached the farmhouse and without preamble burst through the oaken door. Willem’s sister sprang up with a cry.
Van Ryker brushed by her and knelt beside Imogene. Raoul—here. ” He gave only a curt nod to Stephen Linnington, whose wan face had lit up at sight of them.
The ship’s doctor pulled off his hastily donned gloves and massaged his half-frozen fingers. Then delicately he examined the wound, parting with care that tangled mass of golden hair that tumbled over Imogene’s still white face. “Concussion—perhaps shock,” he told van Ryker, looking up. “I do not know when she will regain consciousness.” He turned to examine Stephen, cutting away Stephen’s doublet and shirt, both stiff with blood. He approved Elise’s rude bandaging, and muttered to himself at the look of the wound.
“How come you to be here, Linnington?” van Ryker shot at the recumbent Englishman.
“I knew Imogene in England,” Stephen gasped, almost fainting, for the doctor was probing the wound.
The girl with the whisk! Van Ryker was taken aback.
“How well?” he asked steadily.
“What?” Stephen fought back a yell as the ship’s doctor continued his painful work.
“How well did you know her?”
Even through the pain, Stephen’s mind had not stopped working. That anguished look in van Ryker’s gray eyes—and he a “Dutch” buccaneer who came often no doubt to New Amsterdam. “Ye—have a whisk, too, I remember.” The words came out grimly, with another gasp of pain.
“And from the same lady, I take it?” Van Ryker was calm. Only his knuckles showed white.
“If ye had yours from this lady, then ’tis one and the same,” admitted Stephen, perspiration breaking out on his brow as the doctor probed further. His shoulders moved in agony.
“Hold him down,” Raoul tersely ordered the men. “I must find the bullet.”
Van Ryker stood looking down at his copper-haired rival. Well, Imogene had told him she’d had a lover in England—and now they were face to face. This was a man to whom Imogene had poured out her secrets, a man who had held her in his arms and tasted the wine of her lips, a man who had caressed her, loved her, perhaps through long, scented nights. A man she’d left her husband for.... For an aching moment, van Ryker would have given anything to have traded places with Linnington.
His jaws closed with a snap. “Hurry,” he growled at the ship’s doctor, “I must get Imogene aboard the Sea Rover. She must have care, hot food.”
“l can go no faster,” flashed Raoul. “Unless you want this man to die.”
It was on the tip of van Ryker’s tongue to say bitterly that he desired nothing more than for Linnington to be dead and gone and out of his way. He held himself back with an effort. “Take what time you need,” he said civilly.
“Ah!” Raoul gave a long sigh. He had the bullet now. Proudly he held it up. “Now he’s a chance of recovery!” There was no longer any need to hold his writhing patient. Stephen had lapsed into unconsciousness.
“He should not be moved,” cautioned Raoul, skillfully applying bandages. “Not until the wound has time to knit. If he starts bleeding again, he will die.”
Willem turned and said something sharply to his sister in Dutch.
“But,” she cried in panic, “he cannot stay here! My husband will be back soon!”
Van Ryker heard her and swung around. “Load Linnington onto the litter—carefully.” He pulled out some gold coins and dropped them into Willem’s eagerly outstretched palm. “Share these with her.” He nodded toward Willem’s sister. “Mevrouw,” he added soberly in Dutch, “we trust you will keep quiet about this matter?”
She fell back, relieved, and snatched three of the coins from Willem, hid them in her apron. Her house was out of sight of the neighbors, but these people could not clear her front door soon enough to suit her!
“What will ye do with the Englishman?” wondered Raoul as he helped the men place Stephen—still mercifully unconscious—on the litter. He watched van Ryker wrap Imogene carefully in blankets and sweep her up in his arms as if she were achild. He followed the litter and van Ryker out. “The Englishman needs to recover in a stationary place,” he said in an argumentative voice, for he was tired and doubted not that he would catch cold from this hike through New Amsterdam’s icy streets to the farmhouse. “A sail across choppy waters could well kill him.” It came to him suddenly that this might be just what his captain had in mind, and he gave van Ryker a suspicious look.
Van Ryker caught that look and turned and kicked the oaken door shut with his foot so that Willem and his sister could no longer hear their conversation. “Then we’ll leave him here in New Amsterdam,” he said calmly.
Raoul stared. “Where?”
“I think ye’re forgetting a certain Dutchman named Johann Culp that we liberated from unwilling service in a Spanish galley. Johann has a family here and his wife told me that when I struck off her husband’s chains I had put the whole family forever in my debt. I think they’ll be glad enough to take care of—a wounded member of my crew.” He turned to the men carrying the litter. “Take this man to the house of Johann Culp, and tell Culp this is the only favor I will ever ask of him.”
So van Ryker was going to pass Linnington off as a wounded member of his crew too badly hurt to move, and carry off the woman. . .. Raoul thought he would not like to be there when Linnington woke up.
“How will you explain Linnington’s wound?” he asked bluntly. “For Culp will know this man was not with us on board the Sea Rover—remember Culp sailed into New Amsterdam harbor with us!”
“He’ll keep his mouth shut in gratitude that he’s not now pulling a Spanish oar with a Spanish whip striping his naked back,” explained van Ryker with a grin. “Memories are short, but a man should remember a kindness done at least a week or two, don’t you think? As for the wound. I’ll say his gun exploded and caught him in the chest—no, you'll say it, for I intend to stay by Imogene in case she wakes up—she’d be frightened, coming to and finding herself alone.”
The ship’s doctor gave him a pitying look. “It may be a long time—before she wakes up,” he said gently.
“What d’ye mean ‘a long time’?”
“I mean, I’ve no way of knowing—” Raoul swallowed, but he felt he had to say it—“whether she will ever regain consciousness. Her head has sustained a solid blow—”
A pair of burning eyes bored suddenly into his. “Ye’re a doctor, aren’t ye?” van Ryker demanded crisply. “Ye’ll make my lady well!”
“If ’tis in my power,” mumbled Raoul, with a hunted look. “I’ll do all I can, ye can count on it.”
“I do count on it, Raoul.” Van Ryker gave his ship’s doctor a grim look.
“I’ll try.”
“And give Culp a purse of gold to pay for Linnington’s keep and to be discreet,” added van Ryker carelessly.
Th
e doctor’s head jerked.
“I know you always carry money on you, Raoul. ’Tis a habit from the time when you always thought to be leaving in a hurry. Make note of how much you give Culp—I’ll replace your coins for you when you get back to the ship.”
Raoul jammed his hat on his head irritably and trudged away through the snow, following the litter. He turned as van Ryker called to him, “And after you’ve delivered your parcel, buy all the freshest fruits and vegetables you can find—and some wild turkeys if any are to be had. We’ll have a feast aboard the Sea Rover this night!”
Raoul, watching his captain’s saturnine face gone suddenly boyish and lighthearted now that Imogene was in his arms again, shook his head in perplexity and turned away. A feast! The man was planning to celebrate—and doubtless intended for Imogene to sit beside him at the feast. The captain had not yet taken it in that it might be a very long time before his golden-haired lady would be eating anything more than broth and hot milk forced between her pale lips.
Raoul proceeded a few paces and stopped with a curse. In his fascination with van Ryker’s instructions, he’d left his gloves back at the farmhouse—no wonder his hands were freezing! He hesitated but a moment and then plunged back to the farmhouse, slipping and sliding over the icy surface.
Willem’s sister let him in. As the doctor picked up his gloves and eased them over his chilly fingers she said something sharp to Willem and gave him a shove toward the doctor, who didn’t speak Dutch.
“My sister reminds me of something,” Willem told the doctor reluctantly. “The maidservant and—” he swallowed—“her baby took passage aboard the Wilhelmina.” He was inwardly cursing his sister’s stupidity in insisting on this revelation—did the fool not realize that they might yet be implicated in this thing?
Bold Breathless Love Page 38