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  His handsome face was very near, his concentration so intense it made her dizzy. “If I thought you could love me, I would make you a widow with this sword!” And as Georgiana recoiled, his brows elevated. “I have gone too fast for you?”

  “Nicolas.” She tried to steady her voice. “I cannot accept this necklace. Would you please get it off my neck?”

  “Perhaps you could hide it?” he suggested wickedly, “Under a ruffle of lace?”

  Georgiana stamped her satin slipper in frustration. “Get it off, Nicolas! What would Brett think?”

  “He is here to say what he thinks,” said a deep voice behind them and they both whirled.

  “Brett!” cried Georgiana. “I—I did not expect you so early.”

  “That”—Brett gave his young bride a wintry smile— “at least is obvious.”

  Also by Valerie Sherwood in Futura

  BOLD BREATHLESS LOVE

  RASH RECKLESS LOVE

  WILD WILLFUL LOVE

  Valerie Sherwood

  Rich Radiant Love

  Futura

  A futura Book

  First published in Great Britain in 1985 by Futura Publications, a Division of Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd London & Sydney

  This edition published by arrangement with Warner Books Inc., New York

  Copyright © 1983 by Valerie Sherwood

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN 0 7107 3051 9

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Hazell Watson & Viney Limited,

  Member of the BPCC Group,

  Aylesbury, Bucks

  Futura Publications A Division of Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd Maxwell House 74 Worship Street London EC2A 2EN

  A BPCC pic Company

  Dedication

  To beautiful Gold, my enormous and bewitching tomcat, son of Fancy and Spice; Gold, with his winning ways and his singing purr and his soft, amazingly thick fur of brilliant white and golden orange; affectionate, sensitive, intelligent, charming Gold whose huge lamplike golden eyes have such a melting gaze; dear gentle Gold, who loves everyone and who has won a special place in our hearts forever, this book is dedicated.

  WARNING

  The reader is hereby specifically warned against using any of the cosmetics or medications mentioned herein. They are included only to give the authentic flavor of the times. For example, ceruse, one of the most popular cosmetics of the day, contained white lead and could well be deadly. Although common sense would normally restrain the reader from using such unappealing items as slaked lime and lye to remove warts, readers are implored to seek the advice of a doctor before undertaking any “experiments” in their use.

  Table of Contents

  Rich Radiant Love Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  I

  II

  BOOK I Destiny’s Daughter

  Part One The Bride In Red Slippers

  Chapter 1

  Part Two The Man From Boston

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  BOOK II Georgiana

  Part One The Counterfeit Heiress

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Two The Carolina Lady

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  BOOK III Windgate’s Mistress

  Part One The Golden Dutchman

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Two The Gorgeous Rival

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  BOOK IV The Notorious Rake

  Part One:The Handsome Schemer

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part Two The Jealous Mistress

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  BOOK V The Seducer

  Part One The Innocent

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part Two The Naive

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  BOOK VI Masquerade on Ice

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  BOOK VII The Runaway Bride

  Part One The Flight Downriver

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Part Two The Fatal Mistake

  Chapter 37

  Book VIII The Landgrave’s Lady

  Chapter 38

  BOOK IX Hang Her High!

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  BOOK X Lady of Legend

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  BOOK XI The Wedding

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Fabulous seventeenth-century Bermuda and quaint New Netherland are tormentingly real, but my characters of course are not. Many “great marriages” of the day were strangely fashioned—but none was quite like Georgiana’s where unseen hands seemed to reach out across the years to drag her back to far Wey Gat. There was, of course, a “Scottish patroon” but just as Livingston Manor is not Windgate, my “English patroon,” Brett Danforth, with his burning desire for one piece of land, is my own invention. And as for Nicolas—there may never have been a rake like Nicolas anywhere.

  But that’s as may be, for while all the characters and events in this novel are truly fictional and products of my imagination, the backgrounds and fascinating life-styles presented herein are as real and as authentic as I could make them—from Bermuda’s wild shores and white cross-shaped houses with their “tray ceilings” and flaring “welcoming arms” from steps to the fascinating world of the patroons of Dutch New Netherland during the third Dutch War, when New York (renamed “New Orange”), although it had been English since Peter Stuyvesant surrendered it to the British in 1664 was briefly Dutch territory once again.

  But most important, I have tried to bring to you a world that is gone, yet still seems to flash jewellike in all its beauty and elegance and savagery, for the swashbuckling 1600s were a time of upward mobility, when a man could rise to heights undreamed of and a woman could reach out her arms and encompass the changing world. And since the seventeenth century was also an age of poets, perhaps I can best express in verse what is in my heart:

  I like to think that words of mine

  Will linger on, time out of mind,

  Though writers are like moths, I know—

  We rise, we shimmer—and we go.

  Valerie Sherwood

  Prologue

  Old New York, February 1672

  I

  The Adventuress

  The devious plan of a devious man

  Could sweep her world away

  But she’s a wily wench herself

  And yet may win the day!

  It had been snowing all day and now again big snowflakes were floating down through the wintry gray dusk. They festooned the weathervanes and hissed down the tall chimneys of the steep-gabled yellow brick houses and piled up on the clean-scoured front stoops, cleared only this
morning from yesterday’s heavy snowfall. The thickly falling flakes made it difficult for the driver of the lumbering red-painted coach to see ahead of him as his floundering bays struggled over a narrow snow-covered bridge and came to a halt in front of the cheerful candlelit windows of the Green Lion Inn.

  Framed in one of the Green Lion’s small-paned windows was a strongly built man attired in handsome honey-tan velvet of a cut almost startlingly fashionable in this New World colony. His saffron-plumed hat was worn rakishly clapped on his head indoors as fashion demanded. The long golden locks that fell to his velvet shoulders, the carefully clipped golden Van Dyke beard that gave his handsome face a slightly satanic look, and the enameled gold snuffbox from which he now delicately took a pinch of snuff all proclaimed him a gentleman. But the slightly aggressive hunch of his shoulders, the scarred basket hilt of his sword (and the nicks along its blade could one but see them) as much as his hard face and cynical expression proclaimed him the adventurer he was.

  Triumph lit his blue eyes as the coach’s red door was abruptly flung open and he saw that the coach’s single occupant, a lady attired in apricot velvets lavishly trimmed in red fox, was the one he had been waiting for.

  He had taken a chance that she would come, indeed that she would be at home to receive his note at all, for all New York, it seemed, had been attending the funeral of Peter Stuyvesant, and now that the old Dutch governor with the silver-studded wooden leg had been laid to rest, they had gone home to shovel snow and talk about the old days when New York had been New Amsterdam—before the English had taken over and changed everything.

  Erica Hulft, he thought with an inner grin, was not one to waste her time on the funerals of old men—she preferred hers in their prime and fully alive. As he watched, Erica threw her fox-edged hood over her own shining fox-hued hair and gathered the apricot velvet folds of her cloak about her. She stuck her head out and cast a quick surreptitious glance up and down the snowy street. Observing it to be empty, she scorned to await the driver’s aid and leaped lightly down from the coach, landing dangerously in the snow on her tall pattens, with a flash of lovely legs. From within, the golden Dutchman watched appreciatively even though the cold expression on the lady’s fetching countenance as she swept into the inn along with a blast of windblown snow boded him no good.

  “Erica,” he said in his warm, rich voice, and strode forward on booted feet to meet her. “I feared you might have gone upriver to Wey Gat—or to Peter Stuyvesant’s funeral—and missed receiving my message.”

  “I did not attend the funeral.” Erica’s voice, as she paused to shake the snow from her voluminous velvet skirts, held a hint of frost.

  Perhaps she had not been invited? he could not help wondering. For funeral invitations, according to Dutch custom, had certainly gone out and black-garbed aanspreeckers with their hats trailing long black crape ribbons had gone dolefully from house to house inviting people. Dutch funerals were invitation-only affairs. Erica would be understandably upset if the aanspreecker had passed her by.

  “Neither did I,” he said smoothly. “But then I had a better reason—I was not invited.”

  “I was, but I chose not to go.”

  “You probably missed a gift of black gloves,” he grinned. “And perhaps a black scarf as well.”

  “1 would not have attended if I had been promised an entire black mourning costume and a brace of jet mourning rings to boot!” Erica gave her skirts a ruthless shake that sent snowflakes flying. “Dead men do not interest me.”

  “No, I had imagined you would prefer the living.” So she had not received an invitation and was smarting from the snub. His smile deepened at her obvious irritation.

  “Be brief, Nicolas,” she said crisply, withdrawing her hand at last from the red fox muff with which she had been beating her skirts, and extending it with a bored gesture. “It’s very bad out there.” She cast a frowning look at the leaded windowpanes, where the snow was falling faster now.

  “So I can see.” Nicolas took the dainty peach-gloved hand she proffered him. It was very small in his large one, very delicate, and made him wonder what it would be like to strip away the glove, the cloak, the gown, and carry her in her chemise to the big square bed in his room upstairs. Would the skin of her round bare breasts be as creamy as her throat, glimpsed against the red fox? Or would it be milky white, delicately blue-veined? Would the nipples be petal pink or dusky rose? Would the silken triangle of hair at the base of her hips be the same fox-brush color as the thick shining locks that were now revealed as her fur-trimmed hood fell back? Or would it perhaps be a shade darker, testimony that Erica had aided nature to achieve the bright color of her tresses? And what would be her style... in bed, this woman whose escapades were renowned all along the river?

  He roused himself from these delightful but distracting thoughts, for Erica was speaking again.

  “The coach nearly got stuck coming over the Heere Graft,” she told him in annoyance. “And we are like not to make it back at all if I remain here, long.” Her purring voice was softly accented with French, for the lady was a Walloon of aristocratic manners and uncertain antecedents.

  Before answering, Nicholas pressed lightly to his lips the small peach-gloved hand she had extended with such indifference. He savored for a moment the glove’s faint inviting perfume. When he lifted his head and threw back the thick shock of golden hair that now curled attractively over his shoulders, his smile was ingenuous. He was telling himself that he had judged the wench well. The note he had slipped under her door earlier today had been calculated to bring even the most secure mistress out into deeper snow than this!

  I have come into possession of some information, the note had told her cryptically. It will affect your future—and Danforth’s. Perhaps you would care to hear it first, as it concerns a woman.

  He had known that would bring her! For Brett Danforth’s foxhaired mistress—even if rumor had it that she had left him again—was not one to trifle with where her own future was concerned.

  “Best you send your driver away,” he advised her coolly. “For you will have much to think about after you have heard my story.” And perhaps you will tumble into bed with me when you have heard it, was the thought unspoken. At least he would be a step closer to bedding her—and there was a future in that!

  “Why?” she challenged. “How can you influence my future one way or the other?” And as his smile broadened. “Aside from the obvious—if you ruin Brett.”

  It amused him to play with her, cat-a-mouse.

  “Erica,” he said gently. “Perhaps you should best sit down. You are in for a great shock.”

  “I prefer to stand.” Her foot was tapping restlessly; he perceived that she was eager to be gone, back into the snow—away from him.

  Very well, let her take the truth standing!

  “Verhulst’s daughter was not lost at sea after all, as we had all presumed. She lives.” He watched her face.

  The hand that had gone restlessly to pat the fox-colored hair of the slim apricot velvet figure before him was suddenly stilled like a bird in flight brought down by a hunter’s gun. Nothing about her moved for a moment, not even her amber eyes, fixed on the golden Dutchman before her. That tawny gaze had a wary look to it; it measured him, found him wanting.

  “I do not believe you, of course,” she said carelessly.

  The tall Dutchman shrugged. “As you like,” he agreed in a calm voice. His brows elevated a bit. “Perhaps you would like to meet her?”

  Erica looked startled. “You mean she is here?”

  The Dutchman shrugged. “We cannot talk here in the door,” he pointed out.

  Erica moistened her lips. Abruptly she summoned the innkeeper, who had been occupied across the room, supervising the stacking of wine barrels in a corner. She pulled some coins from a velvet purse. “Would you pay my driver and send him away?” she asked with her appealing smile. “1 cannot face struggling out to him through the snow.”

 
; The innkeeper gave her and the Dutchman a keen look but he nodded and went through the door into the snowy street.

  She does not want to risk being seen on the street outside this inn any more than is necessary, Nicolas realized, for he had sported with many a man’s mistress and knew all the signs.

  Now Erica turned that same melting smile on him.

  “Nicolas, dear, would you help me remove my pattens?” she asked. “I cannot enjoy walking on six-inch soles across the room. It makes me feel gigantic!”

  Hiding a smile that Erica with her delicate build could possibly feel gigantic, and noting with glee the sudden change in her manner toward him from glacial to melting, Nicolas bent to unbuckle her tall pattens, now dripping as the snow melted from them onto the scoured stone floor of the inn. With them off she came barely to his broad shoulder and he escorted her with a flourish to a corner table of the low-beamed common room. There she threw back her fox-trimmed cloak and revealed a gown of matching apricot velvet, surprisingly low cut considering the weather.

  The thought crossed Nicolas’s mind that a man with a mistress like this one traveled first class, and once again he envied Danforth—as he had so often these months past.

  “Some hot buttered rum might warm you,” he suggested, and beckoned to a little Dutch serving girl who came into the room wearing a white apron and carrying a big tray of shining pewter tankards. She set the tray down with a clatter and came toward them shyly on her Indian moccasins, for the big Dutchman was so masculine that he intimidated her. Erica watched with amusement how the girl flushed and bridled and pulled on her long fair braids as Nicolas gravely ordered the rum.

  When the innkeeper returned, stamping his feet to shake off the snow of the street, he saw facing each other across pewter tankards in one of the deserted common room’s darker corners what he considered a rare pair. Like tawny lions, both of them had an extraordinary physical beauty—the man with his golden beard and twinkling blue eyes, the woman with her delicious delicacy, her skin smooth and creamy and her hair the vivid hue of a fox’s brash.