Wild Willful Love by Valerie Sherwood

Author:Valerie Sherwood
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2016-12-08T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

At the governor’s house, the guests, most of them much the worse for wine, had departed one by one until only little Dr. Argyll was left. He was too unsteady on his feet to walk and Esthonie would have packed him off home in a wheelbarrow in care of a servant but that Gauthier stopped her. Dr. Argyll, he told her sentimentally, needed them on this—he waxed flowery, like the voluble Frenchman he was—“occasion of his bereavement.”

“Bereavement?” cried Esthonie, scandalized. “Why, he’s better off without her! The woman was nothing but a trollop—worked in one of those awful houses down by the quay.” She gave her husband a hard look. “I don’t see how a decent man could stomach such trash!”

Gauthier, who was well aware that his wife was speaking not of Dr. Argyll’s errant sweetheart but of his own light of love, Josie Dawes, cast about for a diversion, for he was well aware that he was about to be called on to endure one of Esthonie’s famous tongue-lashings.

“We owe it to him,” he insisted. “Don’t you remember when Virginie had the fever two years ago how kind he was to her?”

“And well paid for it!”

“Nevertheless, he got her through it. Come back, we must sit with him for a while until he is a condition to go home.”

“I wonder if I gave Virginie enough advice,” fretted Esthonie. “Jean Claude dawdled away and then he took her upstairs so quickly.”

“If you haven’t, it is too late,” said the governor firmly. “The time for advice is past, Estie. Jean Claude will take over from now on.” Even as he spoke he was urging her from the hall where they had been quarreling back to the drawing room, which the recent festivities had left in a shambles.

Muttering, Esthonie accompanied her husband back into the big empty room full of drooping flowers, guttering candles and a pervasive odor of fresh paint. There on a tall-backed chair sat Dr. Argyll, dignified and straight as a poker but leaning slightly to windward as if he might at any moment topple from his perch. There was a long smear of lavender paint down one of his sleeves and another on his white ruffled cuffs.

“Have some coffee made,” said the governor quietly and turned a cheerful face to his guest. “Well, well, Dr. Argyll, do you think that Layton fellow will be coming soon to pick up his sons?”

“I hope so, I hope so.” Dr. Argyll shook his muddled head. “Wouldn’t want them to go astray on Tortuga. Not under my care.”

Esthonie, having ordered the coffee, came back and sat down, settling her black and gold skirts about her. She was looking at Dr. Argyll, but her ear was cocked alertly toward the bridal chamber upstairs where Jean Claude had just escorted a blushing Virginie.

She hoped Virginie would heed all that she had told her, for just before Jean Claude held out his hand to escort his bride upstairs her mother had leaned forward and whispered a last admonition in her ear.

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