Pirates

by Linda Lael Miller

  Phoebe stood, stricken, watching as Major Stone conferred briefly with several of his men. When the conversation had ended, he came to her, as she had expected him to do.

  “When next you see your husband,” he began, not unkindly, not even disrespectfully, but with a sort of obdurate reason that turned Phoebe’s blood to splinters of ice, “I trust you will tell Mr. Rourke that the lives of his father and brother are now in his hands.”

  “I imagine he knows that,” Phoebe said. She, like Phillippa, had drawn strength from Margaret’s brief parting speech.

  “I imagine he does,” Stone agreed.

  Phillippa had recovered her composure, though her eyes were still puffy and red-rimmed and the skirts of her gown were rumpled where she had grasped and crushed them in her first. “Perhaps,” she said to the major, “you should take Mother and Phoebe and me as hostages, too. Surely chivalry cannot matter to you, not if you would betray men who have long been your friends.”

  Phoebe said nothing, made no attempt to stop her sister-in-law’s diatribe.

  Major Stone glared at them both for a long moment, then moved through the scattered remnants of the crowd and disappeared.

  Phoebe waited until she was certain no one was watching, then made her way slowly, casually, up the main staircase, Phillippa following. There was no sign of Duncan, but something of his essence lingered in the weighted summer air, and she knew he had been a witness to the arrest of his father and brother. She was thankful he had not attempted to intervene.

  Not yet, at least.

  Phoebe hurried along the upper hallway, holding her hem off the floor to keep from tripping over the rustling skirts of her ball gown, with Phillippa still close behind. She opened the door to her room and burst in, expecting to find her husband there, pacing, perhaps, while he laid plans to implement a rescue.

  The chamber was empty, though the curtains had been trust aside and the terrace doors gaped open, admitting mosquitoes, the rise and fall of human voices, and the night sounds from the stables and the dark, dense woods beyond the garden and the lawn.

  Phillippa cast a glance at the rumpled bed, which was clearly visible by the light of a lamp lit earlier, when Phoebe and Duncan had finished with their lovemaking, but she asked no question.

  “Is there another way out of this room?” Phoebe asked, keeping her voice down and hoping the state of the bedclothes didn’t tell too clear a tale. “Besides climbing the outside wall like Dracula, I mean?”

  “Dracula?”

  “I’ll explain another time,” Phoebe replied, exasperated with herself. She was going to have to stop mixing up her centuries if she wanted to live happily in this one. Not that she was likely to achieve that modest dream, given the war and the fact that she was married to one of America’s Most Wanted. “Sometimes these houses had—have—secret passages. How about this one?”

  Phillippa went to the terrace and looked out before closing the doors carefully against the night and turnings to face Phoebe. She hesitated, and Phoebe realized, with a slight pang, that the girl was making a final, down-to-brass-tacks decision—to trust or not trust.

  She waited in silence. If she had not proven her loyalty to the family by now, there was, in her opinion, no hope of ever doing so.

  “Yes,” Phillippa said at long last. “Come here, and I’ll show you.” Behind one of the floral tapestries flanking the fireplace on either side was an almost seamless panel. With a push of her hand, Phillippa opened it, revealing the cramped passage inside. Rather a full-sized hallway, this was a rabbit warren, one of many entrances, Phoebe later learned, to a maze covering most of the house. Anyone larger than a child of five or six would be forced to crawl through it on hands and knees.

  Phillippa knelt and peered inside. “I suppose he’s long gone,” she mused.

  “Duncan?” The name left Phoebe’s lips aboard a mocking tone. “He doesn’t have the sense to run away. He’ll get himself horsewhipped, and finally hanged, trying to save your father and Lucas from the evils of a British stockade.”

  Rising, Phillippa closed the Alice-in-Wonderland door, and the tapestry fell into place, as it was intended to do, with no help from anyone. “Now that I’ve had time to think about it,” she said, using a damask towel from Phoebe’s washstand to wipe her hands, “I understand that Major Stone means Father and Lucas no real harm. He is using them as bait, that’s all.”

  “To trap Duncan,” Phoebe agreed ruefully. Perhaps some of Phillippa’s fears had been erased, but Phoebe herself was still terrified. Trap or no trap, her husband would try to spring the prisoners. For him, the knowledge of their captivity would be unbearable, reason enough, in and of itself, to attempt their release. “Phillippa, if you have any idea where your brother would hide, you must tell me. It’s important that I speak with him.”

  “Why?” Phillippa asked, walking resolutely over to the bed and making it up, as she had probably seen the servants do many times. “You won’t be able to change his mind, you know.”

  Phoebe feared her sister-in-law was right. “No,” she said sorrowfully. “I don’t suppose I will.” She sat down on the edge of the bed she had shared so happily with Duncan such a short while before, and Phillippa took a seat beside her, frowning.

  “I want to go away with you and Duncan,” Phillippa finally proclaimed. “I’ve decided to join my lot with the rebels and do what I can to help throw off this miserable king.”

  Phoebe smiled sadly. “You have a great deal of confidence in your brother’s ability to escape,” she observed. “What makes you so certain he won’t be caught, tried, and hanged?”

  “He’s far too clever,” Phillippa said.

  Phoebe was skeptical, but for the sake of her sanity she chose to believe that Duncan would prevail, as the colonies themselves would prevail, shaping themselves into the beginnings of a great if often troubled nation. “I’m not sure Duncan will agree to take you away from troy,” she warned quietly, after a long and thoughtful silence. “He might not be willing to subject you to that kind of danger, Phillippa. After all, you are his only sister.”

  “And you are his only wife,” Phillippa pointed out, “but he’ll take you with him when he leaves.”

  Phoebe could only sigh and wait.

  And wait.

  Duncan’s father and brother were being held, predictably, in a cramped, musty corner of the cellar, a tiny room with a dirt floor and drapery of cobwebs overhead. They were provided with a single tallow candle for light; it smoked and wavered and sputtered in the fetid gloom of their dungeon.

  He watched them for a while, to make certain situation. Duncan could have told Stone, that pompous old maid of a soldier, that no amount of time or reflection would induce them to betray him. He was not a criminal in their eyes, but merely a misguided mischief-maker who would come to see reason, one the rebellion had been put donw and matters had been properly explained to him.

  Duncan smiled for his own benefit, raised the loose metal grafting hidden amongst the dust and spider-spinnings of the ceiling, and let himself down through the narrow opening.

  Lucas leaned forward, as if to rise, and simultaneously opened his mouth to speak. John, who sat beside his elder son on the cold floor, stayed both impulses by grasping Lucas’s arm.

  Duncan dropped to his haunches, took up the candle, and held it in such a away that its dim light fell over his father’s worn, kindly features. He saw anger in the set of John Rourke’s face, as well as exhaustion and an unsetting degree of sorrow. It was true, then, what Phillippa had written in her letter to Duncan so many weeks before: their sire was tired and ill. Perhaps even inclined to die.

  “My men wait in the woods,” Duncan said, taking care to keep his voice low. There were guards outside; he had seen them moving sluggishly through the heavy night air, their coats discarded, their shirts wet with sweat, their palms slick, no doubt, on the stocks of their muskets. “There is room for you, aboard the Francesca.” Lucas spoke at last, in a spitting whi
sper. “You are mad, coming here!”

  Duncan did not explain that he’d come to see their father; Lucas knew that had known it since their last encounter, in a distant cove. “The simplest things surprise you, Brother,” he said. “I have no time to cajole or convince. Will you leave with me, or allow yourselves to be hanged for depriving the good major of an opportunity to earn yet another medal?”

  John took the tallow from Duncan’s hand and set it aside. “You must know,” he said, “that I cannot leave your mother or Phillippa. Or Troy itself, for that matter.”

  Duncan felt a tightening in his throat. He too, loved the land, and hoped to live upon it again one day, as a free man, but there was no time to elaborate. “Mother and Phillippa are not in danger of being executed for treason,” he pointed out. “You are, and so is Lucas.”

  “No,” John said firmly.

  A vision of his father swinging from a length of rope on a scaffold flashed before Duncan’s eyes; he had seen other men die that way, for lesser crimes, and had come near to such an end himself, on several occasions. “God in heaven, Father, does your life mean nothing at all? And you.” He turned a blazing stare on Lucas. “You are a young man, with many fruitful years left to you. Will you never marry, never sire a child—never live unfettered, knowing that you won that liberty for yourself?”

  A pained expression contorted Lucas’s face for a moment, but he brought himself swiftly under control. “Major Stone will see his error and set us free,” he said, though the words lacked a certain conviction.

  Duncan started to pretest, but his father cut him off by taking his wrist in a grasp still strong enough to be mildly painful. “Tell me, Duncan,” he said, “what would you do in my place? If this were your land—and it will be someday, in part, by the grace of God—if it meant abandoning your wife and your young daughter, abandoning all the workers who depend on you for every bite of food that goes into their mouths, every scrap of cloth that covers their backs, what would you do?”

  Duncan was silent, defeated now, half-strangled by the frustration he felt, the rage, and the empathy.

  “Speak,” John pressed sternly. “I will not allow you to leave my question unanswered. What would you do in my place?”

  Duncan lowered his eyes. “I would stay,” he admitted.

  “Yes,” his father agreed and laid a hand to Duncan’s shoulder. “Take your wife, if you must, and put Troy behind you, now. Do not return until this bloody rebellion has ended.”

  A sound rose in Duncan’s throat and was aborted before it could find utterance. He had seen a phantom in his father’s eyes, the spirit that would live on after John Rourke was dead. And death, he knew, would not be long in coming.

  “Be gone,” John insisted, with a note of sad amusement in his voice. “I am that weary of looking at you, Duncan Rourke.” Having so spoken, the patriarch stood, raising Duncan with him, and embraced his son. “God be with you,” he said.

  Duncan did not turn from his father’s farewell, but returned it, as near to weeping as he could afford to be. Before him was the man who had loved him unequivocally, despite their difference, who had taught him to read, to hunt and shoot, to anticipate the weather by the signs the earth offered, the man who had cut him free of a British whipping post and carried him home, delirious and soaked in blood, on his own horse. John had taught him to be strong and stubborn, had shown him that he must learn to govern himself before he could dead others with any success.

  Lucas rose, too, and shook Duncan’s hand. “I’ll look for you to come back home,” he said, “when this fighting’s over.”

  Duncan nodded, not trusting himself to speak. After a last long look at John Rourke, he drew a cask out of the corner, climbed onto it, and hoisted himself through the hole in the ceiling. For some time afterward, he lay in the cramped filthy space above the wine cellar, listening, thinking, remembering. Imprinting his father’s image on his mind for all time.

  Eventually, he allowed himself to weep. His sobs, though silent, were deep, wrenching ones, rooted in some part of him he had never acknowledge before. When at last the worst of his grief had passed, he moved back through the bowels and walls of the great house, traveling routes he had learned in childhood.

  When he reached the chamber where Phoebe waited—it had been his room, once—he pushed the tapestry aside and found his wife lying on the bed, fully clothed and sound asleep. Her arms were thrown wide of her slender body, and she was snoring ever so slightly. She had exchanged her ball gown for a divided skirt made riding astride, a pair of boots, and a long-sleeved shirt that might have been his at one time.

  Duncan stood over Phoebe for a time, watching her sleep, coping in silence with a storm of poignant emotions, fully aware of other sounds—a light step in the hallway, guests in the rooms on their side of his one, settling in for the night, talking, making love. He never considered leaving Phoebe at Troy; with the events of that night, the plantation had, for all intents and purposes, fallen to the enemy. He bent and kissed her lips like the prince in a tale he’d heard once, long ago, beside the fire on a winter’s night, and she opened her eyes.

  Duncan did not speak; he merely gave her his hand. She was on her feet in a moment, and he led her out onto the terrace. The party had ended, the Chinese lanterns were extinguished, and the garden appeared empty. He whistled and heard the corresponding signal return to him on a balmy breeze.

  They descended from the terrace by means of a rope, Duncan going first, Phoebe following. She did not hesitate or utter a sound as they fled across the darkened lawn and into the night.

  Men waited deep in the woods, patient, silent, well versed in such tactics; with horses and muskets. Duncan mounted a gelding, bent to extend a hand to Phoebe, and swung her up behind him. They rode hard, a score of men, Duncan and Phoebe, and a small, cloaked figure he did not notice until nearly sunrise, when the sea was near enough to smell.

  Phillippa flung back the hood of her cape and beamed at her grim, exhausted brother. “I’ve decided,” she announced, “to participate in the revolution.”

  A glance back at Phoebe revealed that she’d known Phillippa was present all along. Perhaps she had even helped arrange the deception, and his men had participate, too. Duncan swept them up, one and all, in a single, scathing glare, warning them without words that they would suffer for their foolhardy audacity.

  Finally, he spat a curse, but secretly he was pleased that one member of his family, at least, had seen the light. “Mind you don’t get underfoot,” he told her sister, “or make a liability of yourself.”

  Phillippa laughed, though he could see that she had been weeping during their long flight from Troy. Perhaps she knew, as he did, that their father was sick unto dying, that she might never see her home again. “I will do my best to behave,” she promised.

  The Francesca awaited them on turquoise waters frosted with white foam, but it was nightfall before they dared to board her and set sail for friendlier waters. Phoebe had seen the anguish in her husband’s face and guessed at its cause, but she did not offer him comfort until they were alone in their cabin, long after midnight.

  Phillippa was sleeping soundly, just across the passageway; Phoebe knew that because she looked in on her sister-in-law only minutes before Duncan came belowdecks and let himself into their tiny chamber.

  Phoebe had given herself a sponge bath and donned one of Duncan’s shirts in place of a nightgown. She was certainly no expert on masculine emotions, but she knew how to console one particular man.

  Gently, she removed his shirt, which was stiff with dust and sweat, and began to wash his upper torso with tepid water from the basin on the washstand.

  Duncan submitted in silence, tilting his magnificent head back, closing his eyes. The muscles in his jawline, for all of that, were rock-hard, ridged, the muscles of an ancient warrior, caught forever in marble.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He did not open his eyes. “For what?” he asked, his voice
low and somehow broken, though he was trying hard not to let her see that he was suffering.

  “For not leaving me behind,” she replied. “Now …” Phoebe paused, sighed deeply. “If only you would talk to me.”

  He met her gaze at last, and she saw utter despair in his eyes, along with the conviction that he had failed. “There is nothing to say.”

  ’Isn’t there? You were forced to leave your family—most of it, anyway—in the hands of the British. You have no way of knowing what will happen to them. I’d say that was something to talk about.”

  Duncan pushed her hand away, when she would have continued to sponge his chest and belly with light, tantalizing strokes. “What do you want me to tell you?” he rasped. “That I’m a coward?”

  Phoebe dunked the sponge, squeezed it languidly, and moved around him to begin washing his back. It was a beautiful, well-muscled expanse of sun-browned flesh, even with the whip marks crisscrossing and rooted deep. “You, a coward? Good Lord, Duncan, sometimes I actually wish you were a little less darling—that way, you might live longer.”

  Something moved in him, some emotion he quickly suppressed. Phoebe’s heart ached.

  “My reasons are selfish, of course,” Phoebe prattled on, continuing the sensuous bath. “I love you very much. I want to be a wife for a good long time—so mind you don’t make me a widow.”

  He sighed, gazing straight ahead, pondering some scene Phoebe couldn’t see. She unbuttoned his breeches, freed him, and went on wielding the sponge. Duncan gasped before he could stop himself, and he had no control whatsoever over the response of his body. His member rose against his belly like the mast of a ship. Despite his state of mind, he was more than ready for further attention.