Rash Reckless Love, page 19
Darnwell Keating, standing by the rail, had turned at her scream and now he strode toward her. He looked very fit in the bright sunlight that poured down over his gleaming russet hair, turning it to the brilliance of a new copper penny.
“What’s this?” he asked softly, staring at the blanket she clutched in her hands. “Don’t tell me you’ve spent the night curled up in a pile of rope! I had thought you were sharing a cabin with Esme—with Madame Ribaud. Has she then turned you out?”
By now Imogene had stopped shaking and got hold of herself. “No, she has not turned me out—and after last night I think you might feel free to call her Esme.” She stretched her sleep-cramped arms.
He chuckled. “Touché,” he said pleasantly. “But consider it from another angle—I thought you might appreciate a little privacy in your cabin last night.”
Imogene gave him a slanted look as she shook out her blanket and folded it. “Very thoughtful of you. Of course, Esme would kill you if she heard you say that.”
Again that wicked chuckle. “So she would,” he agreed. “But somehow I think she will not hear it—not from you, Imogene.”
She had not given him leave to use her given name, but it sounded sweet rolling off his tongue like that. She decided not to chide him. After all, on this crowded vessel, they, the outcasts from this group of Puritans, must stick together if only for self-protection.
“No, Esme will not hear it from me,” she said lightly. “How she spends her time and in whose cabin is no concern of mine.”
“You are very liberal in your views of your sister-in-law’s behavior. Somehow I would not have expected that in one who so cherishes a narrow band of gold.”
Imogene yearned to tell him that Esme was her sworn enemy, but she bit back the words. Her foolish tongue, seeking to chastise Esme by letting her know that van Ryker had wed her lawfully in Jamaica as well as unlawfully in Tortuga, had already got her into enough trouble. “It is crowded with two piled into a cabin intended for one,” she said. “And Esme chose to chide me for leaving a candle standing against the door while she was out.”
“Lighted?” he asked softly.
“No,” said Imogene.
Did she read a flicker of understanding in his eyes? “You are welcome to nap in my cabin today,” he suggested. “If you fear to disturb Esme, who likes to sleep late?”
Imogene gave him a grateful look. “I believe I will do that,” she said, “if you do not mind.”
For answer he escorted her to his cabin, said quietly, “You may latch the door from within so that you will not be disturbed.” And left her.
Somehow she had not expected such gallantry from this hard-eyed London rake.
Alone in his cabin she looked about her. His clothes were strewn about—plainly Darnwell Keating was not tidy. Idly she picked them up, folding them one by one and putting them into one of two trunks—the one that was open. The other one, somewhat smaller, was locked, as she discovered when the first trunk would not hold all the clothing she had folded.
Oh, well—let them pile up with the trunk lid open. She was folding a pair of detached green velvet sleeves when she felt something sharp. Inspection showed her a cleverly concealed clip with a spring that would hold cards and release them into the player’s hand at a touch.
Imogene smiled grimly. Both Arne and de Rochemont had shown her such devices along with many others. She guessed that whatever story Darnwell Keating told about them would be false. He was a gamester, like many another, perhaps a dissolute son of the aristocracy, but long fallen from grace.
So that he might not know she had handled the big sleeves, she carefully replaced them on the chair where they had been hung and replaced the doublet that had been thrown across them. Keating had been kind to her. Let him daunt his stories of high-placed friends and powerful connections—no need to let him know that she did not believe him.
She latched the door and lay down across the bunk and slept until a light knock and Darnwell Keating’s voice told her it was time to sup. She came out refreshed to join him and met Esme’s sharp, “Where have you been all day?” as they came out on deck.
“I found a quiet corner and rested.”
“You might have come back to the cabin and rested!” Testily. “I half thought you’d gone overboard!”
“Be glad she did not disturb you,” smiled Keating. “And let you have your beauty sleep.”
Esme gave him the look of a caged animal, wary and untrusting. “Are you saying that you have spent the day together?”
Keating gave her a look of pure astonishment. “Would that we had,” he exclaimed ruefully. “For I have spent this entire day being instructed in the Puritan ethic by none other than”—he nodded toward Parson Smithers—“that sturdy old goat over there, whose name escapes me.” He gazed with distaste at Smithers’s black-hatted, homespun figure—even now haranguing a group of four who stood stolidly as he rained words upon them.
Esme looked mollified and was very merry at supper. That night Imogene used the same ploy, the candlestick. And again Esme, who had come in earlier this night, berated her for her carelessness,
This time Imogene did not rise but lay wakeful, listening to Esme’s steady breathing. As she lay there, she decided what her course of action must be.
She would put it into effect in the morning.
CHAPTER 13
There in that small cabin, with her dangerous cabin-mate, Imogene had determined what she must do. She would go to the captain. She had not dared approach him yesterday, for she had observed him to be both busy and short-tempered as he directed the repairs to his storm-mangled vessel—but tomorrow when at least part of the work had been done and the rest well under way, she would speak to him.
The crippled ship was making slow progress toward Jamaica. It could be that the captain would be willing to drop her off in Tortuga. She must persuade him because if Esme was met by her brothers at the dock in Port Royal, they would see Imogene and would never let her go.
After breakfast she sought an audience with the captain in his cabin, went in and shut the door behind her.
“Leave it open, mistress,” he sighed without looking up from his charts, which were spread out on the table before him. “ ’Tis stuffy in here and reeks of mildew. Faith, I thought we were bound for the bottom in that gale!”
“So did I,” said Imogene, reluctantly opening the door again. “Captain.” She dropped her voice, mindful that other passengers might be passing by that open door. “I’ve a matter of importance to speak to you about.”
“Speak up, mistress. I’ve so much water in my ears from that gale that I still can hear but the half of what’s said to me. Near deafened me, the storm did!”
Desperately Imogene raised her voice and leaned forward. “By now you know that I am wife to the buccaneer. Captain van Ryker.”
“Aye, I know it.” From behind the table the stocky seaman’s head came up to regard her with disfavor. “The passengers have apprised me of it.”
And heaped them both with calumny, she had no doubt! “Then you know that my husband is wealthy. He will pay you well to deliver me to Tortuga.”
The captain raised bushy eyebrows. “But I’m bound for Jamaica,” he said testily.
“I know, but—”
“And if I sail to Tortuga, there’ll be further delay.” He was thinking of the Spaniard he had taken aboard, sick of fever. “I might even encounter another storm.” His voice rose argumentatively. “Nay, mistress, I was glad enough to snatch ye from the sea, and ye’re welcome to accompany me where I go, but I’ll not deviate from my course for ye—not for a thousand buccaneers, each with a purse of gold outstretched!”
She saw she could not move him. “At least,” she asked desperately, “when we reach Port Royal, will you see me safe aboard a ship bound for Tortuga?”
The captain frowned. “And have ye gold to pay your passage on this ship ye would have me set ye on?”
“No.” Reluctantly. “All I had was lost on the Carolina.”
“I know.” He was gazing at her somewhat malevolently across the table now. “The ship was sinking so fast we had no time to bring anything off her save yourself. The miracle is that she had floated so long in the condition she was in. Nay, mistress, I cannot finance your voyage. There’s a rumor about among the passengers that ye must have quarreled with your buccaneer and that he set ye on a ship bound for London to be rid of you!”
“ ’Tis a lie! He wants me back.”
“Be that as it may, I will set you ashore in Port Royal with the other passengers and wash my hands of you, for I’ll have duties to keep me busy unloading the ship and the owners will be at me to take on a new cargo. Ye’ve a sister-in-law aboard—ask her to help you.”
Her cheeks burning, Imogene left the captain’s cabin—and met a pair of knowing green eyes that smiled into her own. Darnwell Keating was lounging against the wall near the cabin door.
“You were eavesdropping,” she accused.
“Correct,” he drawled. “And heard the interesting thought advanced that you are presently estranged from your husband. Could this be so?”
“Certainly not! I merely wished to be set ashore at Tortuga, where I have a house and servants waiting.”
“And the captain would not do it?”
“He would not.”
As she flung away, Darnwell fell into step with her. “You must not blame our captain too much,” he counseled easily. “He seeks to preserve his tranquility, our captain, and to that end he will whitewash over anything. You have just learnt his temper. He is not to be drawn in, no matter how noble the cause.”
Something in his voice made her suspect that he had sought to enlist the captain in some devious scheme of his own and been turned down as she had been. She gave him a sharp look but his expression was bland.
“I wish you would trust me,” he said pensively.
Imogene looked away. She could hardly trust her desperate secret to Esme’s lover!
“You are still welcome to use my cabin between breakfast and supper,” he said quietly.
Imogene threw him a grateful look. He did not understand—could not understand, of course, but he was trying to help her. That much was clear.
The reason why he was so willing to help her was not quite clear, even to him.
“Imogene is beautiful—but in a shallow way, don’t you think?” Esme had said enviously last night. She had been in his cabin then, posing seductively as she drew off her garters.
Darnwell had smiled an easy agreement as he lay propped up in bed, watching Esme undress. He was used to agreeing with women—it had paved his way to many delights. But in his heart he had thought the woman Esme sought to deprecate was anything but shallow. Imogene was lovely, she was— flawless. Her buoyant spirit, her rebellious, half-humorous moods... he was falling in love with Imogene and now on the deck, as she gave him a wry salute and retired to rest in his cabin to gain that sleep she could not gain by night, he admitted to himself that he was falling in love with her and envied the buccaneer, the very mention of whose name could make her blue eyes shine.
Darnwell Keating was a man who had mostly trod over women blithely, using them as suited his pleasure and flinging them away afterward. Close lasting relationships had never tempted him—until now.
Now his fertile, unprincipled, and very clever brain was intent on but one purpose—how to separate Imogene from her buccaneer lover and bring her thrilling to his arms.
It was not an easy task Darnwell had set for himself, for although Imogene was attracted to him—his masculine pride had assured him of that—and although he felt her pliant female body would respond to his overtures if he was allowed to make them, her heart, he knew, was elsewhere, sailing the Caribbean with her buccaneer.
Darnwell Keating, late of Surrey, envied van Ryker and most earnestly wished him dead.
Perhaps, he thought wistfully, the Spaniards would accomplish that purpose for him—it could not be too soon.
Imogene, unaware of the violence of feeling she had aroused in the rakehell’s masculine chest, remained intent upon her own pressing problems, for the Bristol was slowly limping south toward Jamaican waters.
Desperate, she decided to try the captain one more time. He did not own the Bristol, she knew from conversation with Darnwell. Suppose she were to offer—on behalf of van Ryker—to buy him a part ownership in the vessel if he would take her to Tortuga? Determined to chance it, she found him alone at the rail, staring out to sea with his shoulders hunched.
“Captain Bellows,” she began hesitantly.
He turned about, fixed his burning gaze on her. He was looking very stormy, she thought, but then when hadn’t he looked stormy? It was obvious he detested the passengers and he hadn’t had a civil word to say to her since she’d spoken to him in his cabin—still, she had to try.
“Captain Bellows,” she said more firmly. “If you would reconsider dropping me off at Tortuga—” Her voice trailed off, for the captain seemed to draw himself up. His cheeks were bulging.
She could not know that the captain had been standing here alone to collect himself. Indeed his head was still ringing with an incident of a moment before when able Seaman Starnes had come running up to him.
“I came to tell ye, Cap’n,” Starnes had muttered. “That Spaniard we picked up—he’s dead.”
A slight tremor had gone through Captain Bellows’s thick body. “Sew him in a sheet, Starnes,” he said heavily. “We’ll bury him at sea. There’s enough parsons aboard to say words over him,” he added in a bitter tone.
“But what’ll we tell the passengers, Cap’n, when they ask how he died?”
“Say a mizzenmast had cracked his ribs and he finally coughed his life out!”
For a moment, after Starnes left. Captain Bellows’s grizzled beard had sunk onto his chest. Fever... the man was dead of fever. And Starnes and half the crew had had access to the fellow before he knew what was wrong with him. They’d be lucky, at the pace the Bristol was going, if they arrived in Port Royal with half the passengers and crew alive.
It suddenly came to him that he, too, might die of it.
And that meant he would not live to see his Mary Ann again. Mere oaths would not serve to satisfy the sinking feeling that went through him at that thought.
He had to see her again! He had to make amends! He had to convince her that there was nothing between him and her friend Ernestine (What matter if there was, it was over now!), for he’d seen hatred and suspicion on Mary Ann’s face when he was leaving, and he’d gone stomping out of the house in a rage without even telling her good-bye. And dammit, his whole life was wrapped around Mary Ann!
He couldn’t die without seeing her again. Dear God, he had to make it home to Port Royal alive, if only to sweep her up in his arms and kiss her tears away and tell her she was the only woman he’d ever cared a shilling for—and now there was this damned fever aboard.
He was just rising up from his feeling of doom, determined to make the crew work twice as hard, for he knew it sometimes took time for fever to get its teeth into people and he meant to beat the fever to Port Royal. Just one night on shore to make amends—God, that was all he asked!
It was at this moment that Imogene, unaware of the crisis state of the captain’s mind, chose to put her question to him.
She was shocked by the captain’s wild accusing gaze and puffy face and how his sallow skin suddenly mottled.
“Take ye to Tortuga?” he roared. “I wish I’d left ye in the sea, woman—you and that Spaniard with you!” He brushed past her so furiously he almost knocked her down and left her staring after him open-mouthed.
It became clear to her then, if it had not before: she was going back—back to Port Royal, back no doubt to Gale Force.
Despondency settled over her—a despondency that was only heightened by the burial at sea that afternoon of the Spaniard, sewn tightly in canvas. “Had his chest caved in by a mizzenmast, poor fellow,” Emma Dick was heard to remark. “And his sufferings so terrible we was all kept away from him!”
Imogene turned away. Burial at sea was a nightmarish reminder of the dangers van Ryker faced.
Time passed listlessly on board the Bristol until the day when, as she was walking toward Darnwell’s cabin for her daily nap, she heard the captain announce proudly to one of the passengers that they would make landfall at Port Royal on the morrow.
She had only a few hours, then, to plot and plan.
And alone in Darnwell’s cabin she did just that, for she had determined on a last desperate move.
When he called for her at suppertime, knocking on the cabin door, he thought her eyes glittered overmuch and felt that she was watching him, cat-a-mouse. It intrigued him even while it made him vaguely uneasy. She was a complex woman, he had decided, neither so direct and simple as Esme made her out to be, nor so wily and witching as the female passengers whispered her to be. She was—Imogene. Exquisite. Unique.
“Darnwell.” Her lazy voice drew him to a halt before they reached the deck. '“Stop a minute. Darnwell, I believe you to be a man of honor.”
His russet brows shot up. It had been some time since anyone had called him that—his uncle but recently had said somewhat the opposite. He halted and waited.
“I believe that you would pay your debts of honor—your gambling debts,” she continued. “Scrupulously.”
“I have always done so.”
“Good.” Those delft blue eyes played over him brilliant as sapphires, like prisms almost, glittering, tempting. “I would play a game of chance with you tonight—in your cabin.”
“A game of chance, you say?” His eyes lit up.
“Yes, I would play at cards with you and dice with you. I am lucky at cards. We will see who is the better player.”
“And the stakes?” he asked softly, leaning nearer.
“We cannot play for coins, you and I, for I know all about you, Darnwell.” For a moment he stiffened, but relaxed as her lazy voice went on, challenging him. “You cannot play for gold, for you have none—nor can I who left a sinking ship with naught but the torn garments on my back.”
