Pirates

by Linda Lael Miller

  Phoebe didn’t reply, but left Simone with her bundle and her dignity and took herself up onto the main deck, to watch the island recede into the glittering horizon.

  Duncan was busy, as were all his men, and Phoebe made a point of staying out of the way, trying to go unnoticed, as if she, too, were a stowaway.

  When the midday meal was served, below deck in the galley, Phoebe collected her share of food on a large wooden trencher, plus a little extra, telling the cook she preferred to eat in the captain’s cabin. She did go to the small chamber she would be sharing with Duncan during the voyage—the berth looked hardly wide enough for the two of them—in case someone was watching. She ate, then packed cheese, bread, dried meat, and a banana into a leather bag, along with a jar of water, and slipped down to the hold.

  Simone accepted the food with dignity and offered grudging thanks.

  Phoebe returned to the upper deck and the cabin, where she took off her dress, lay down on the berth in her chemise, and went to sleep. When she awakened, Duncan was beside her, his hair unbound, wearing only his breeches and an insufferable grin.

  “It was good of you to wake, Mistress Rourke,” he said. “I have business with you, as it happens.” With his right hand, he caressed her thigh, from knee to hip, displacing the wispy slip in the process.

  Phoebe gave a shivery croon and stretched contentedly. “What sort of business?” she asked, as he bared her breasts and prepared them for pleasure with light, brushing motions of his fingertips.

  “The most intimate kind,” he replied and put his tongue to her nipple.

  Phoebe arched her back and groaned. “You—know how much noise I make,” she managed to sputter, her fingers already deep in his hair, holding him close to her. “What will your men say?”

  Duncan raised his head just long enough to answer. “That I’m a lucky bastard,” he replied.

  10

  Now,” Duncan said, when he and Phoebe lay spent with lovemaking on the berth in his cabin, their arms and legs still entangled. “Tell me who you are hiding in the hold.”

  Phoebe drew breath to deny the accusation, then stopped herself. She could not begin this new and wonderful marriage by lying to her husband—to do so would weaken the whole foundation of their relationship, and that was most precious to her. “I promised I wouldn’t tell,” she said miserably. “Not that it’ll matter. When you go down there to look for yourself, she’s going to think I betrayed her.”

  “‘She,’” Duncan mused, tracing the line of Phoebe’s jaw with the tip of his index finger, caressing her lips, which were still pleasantly sensitive from his kisses. “It cannot be Old Woman, for she would not trouble herself to hide. Indeed, she would probably demand this cabin and take over my duties and those of the cook and navigator as well. So our traveler must be Simone.”

  Phoebe sighed, with sincerity. “Just when she was beginning to like me,” she lamented.

  Duncan’s expression was thoughtful. “Simone is not a slave or a prisoner,” he told his worried wife in his own good time. “If she wishes to leave the island and make her way in the world, she is free to do so, like anyone else in my household. Except for you, of course.” He chuckled and tasted her mouth as though he were sampling a vintage wine. “You, I cannot spare.”

  Phoebe fretted, her body already reawakening, blossoming again, under Duncan’s skillful attentions. There were things she wanted to ask him, important things, but her thoughts were unfocused, as though she’d had too much to drink. “Ummm … that feels very good. But if you make me cry out like last time, I’ll be too embarrassed to set foot outside this cabin …”

  “That would be fine with me,” Duncan said throatily, showing neither haste nor mercy as he proceeded to bring her, once again, to a fever pitch of arousal. “At least you can’t get into trouble here.”

  “That’s—oh, God, Duncan—that’s what you think …”

  He had her again soon after the fragments of her sentence fell away into insensible moans, and with meticulous thoroughness, kneeling between her thighs and grasping her hips to raise her to him, and pull her hard into each thrust. She bucked against him, making a sound that was at once a series of sobs and a single unbroken groan. When Duncan came, at last, she had long since been satisfied, and fallen still in exhaustion and utter contentment.

  She watched his marvelous face as he surrendered to pleasure, and she was filled with joy, for this was the one time he could not hide his emotions from her.

  “If we keep this up,” she said, stroking Duncan’s head after he’d collapsed beside her, his cheek resting upon her breast, “we’ll have more children than I really want to give birth to, without anesthetic and Lamaze classes.”

  “Speak English,” Duncan said, his voice muffled by her flesh.

  Phoebe laughed. “I’m trying, darling. I truly am.” She was solemn again, remembering Simone. “What are we going to do about our stowaway?”

  Duncan sighed. “What can we do?” he grumbled.

  “I could go down there and tell her that you saw me taking her food—that is how you knew, isn’t it?—and guessed that she was on board.”

  “She won’t believe you.”

  Phoebe’s frustration was mounting. “No. And Simone is fiercely proud, Duncan—I think she would rather ride out this whole trip in the hold than have you know her heart is broken.”

  Duncan raised his head and looked into Phoebe’s eyes. “Kindly do not romanticize the situation,” he said. “Simone is young and very beautiful. She is free. In time, she’ll get over her infatuation and wonder what she ever saw in me.”

  She slipped her fingers into his soft, glistening hair, loving the way it felt. Loving him. “Nope,” she said. “You were her first love, I think. There will always be a small bruise, somewhere in her heart, that will ache whenever she remembers you.”

  He uttered an exaggerated groan of misery and despair. “I see I can depend upon you, not only to prevail in every disagreement, but spare me absolutely nothing.”

  Phoebe lifted her head just far enough to kiss his chin, which was already stubbly even though he had shaved that morning, before they boarded the ship. “As an eighteenth-century wife, it is my duty to keep you on the straight-and-narrow path, and I’ll use a staff with a hook on the end if I must. Now, about Simone …”

  Duncan groaned again. More loudly than before.

  “I’ll continue to take her food and water, until we get to Queen’s Town and she can make good on her escape,” Phoebe decreed, undaunted. “You can turn a blind eye to her in the meantime and make sure she isn’t discovered before we make port.”

  “We’re not going to Queen’s Town,” Duncan said, with pained logic. “The place is festering with British soldiers, in case you’ve forgotten, any one of whom would like to hang me from a sturdy branch and use my carcass for bayonet practice.”

  “Well, we can’t take her to the States—the colonies, I mean,” Phoebe protested, her face warm because, incredibly, she had forgotten that Queen’s Town wasn’t a port Duncan could sail into with flags flying and trumpets sounding. But then, neither was Charles Town, and he certainly meant to go there.

  Something else tugged at the edge of her mind, a vague but urgent concern, but it eluded her in her intoxicated state.

  She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Simone is black.”

  “Yes,” Duncan replied dryly, “I had ascertained that much.”

  Phoebe slugged him in the shoulder, though just hard enough to indicate irritation. “Duncan, you cannot take that woman—that girl—to a place where she might well be made into a slave!”

  “No,” he said. “But it was her choice to make this journey, not mine. I will not risk the lives of my wife and my crew—”

  She laid a finger to his lips. “You needn’t do that,” she pointed out reasonably. “Just send Simone ashore in a skiff, when we’re close enough to Queen’s Town. She will make her own way after that.”

  Duncan had that i
ntractable look on his face again. “That will destroy the illusion that I didn’t know she was traveling in the hold, won’t it? God in heaven, Phoebe, this is all so complicated, so female. It would be far simpler to simply tell the chit that I’ve found her out, and that she needn’t hide in the hold like a bilge rat, living on scraps. We could put her off the ship tomorrow night—I have friends who would see her to the big island.”

  Phoebe waited patiently for him to finish. “That’s a good idea,” she allowed. “The second part, I mean, about letting your friends take Simone to Queen’s Town. But until tomorrow night, husband, you must leave her be. When the time comes for her to go ashore, tell me, and I will handle it.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know, but I have twenty-four hours to figure it out.”

  Duncan muttered a curse and flung himself off the berth to wash and put his clothes back on. He still had a ship to captain, after all, and could not while away the daylight hours in his cabin, making love to his wife. More’s the pity, Phoebe thought. He really was a spectacular creature, in body as well as mind, with his well-defined muscles, tanned skin, and longish, somewhat shaggy hair—even the whip marks on his back didn’t detract from the physical wonder that was Duncan Rourke.

  Pirate. Patriot.

  Father-to-be.

  Phoebe smiled, cherishing her secret. She would not tell Duncan about their child until she was sure she was pregnant. And since her periods had never been regular, it might take a while to be certain.

  When Duncan had made himself presentable again, bent over the berth to kiss Phoebe’s forehead, and left the cabin, she got up, took a sponge bath of her own, and donned another of the shipwrecked woman’s dresses.

  “He knows,” Simone accused, the moment Phoebe stepped into the hold at suppertime, carrying a plate of hot food, a fork, and a ewer filled with fresh coffee, the latter being a luxury only smugglers and pirates possessed. “You went and told Duncan about me.”

  Phoebe put the plate and ewer down carefully on top of a crate and laid the fork in perfect alignment with the other things, as though setting the table for a fancy dinner party. “I didn’t tell him,” she declared in a thin but earnest tone of voice. “Not exactly.”

  “ ‘Not exactly’?” Simone echoed pointedly, but she took up the fork and began to eat.

  “You must be dying to take a walk,” Phoebe said. “And how do you go to the bathroom? Is there a chamber pot?”

  Simone refused to answer; she just glared at her unwilling jailor, chewing.

  The confession erupted from Phoebe. “All right, yes, Duncan knows you’re here. He asked me who I was hiding in the hold, and I said I couldn’t tell because I’d promised.” Simone’s glare intensified, the whites of her beautiful eyes glittering in the dimness. “Well, I couldn’t lie to him!” cried the captain’s bride. “I happen to love the man, and love and lies don’t mix.”

  Simone was silent for so long that Phoebe was turning to leave when she finally spoke. “I can’t face him,” she said. “Nor the crew.”

  “You don’t have to,” Phoebe replied gently. “Tomorrow night, Duncan will send you ashore in a skiff. He says someone will escort you safely to Queen’s Town from there.”

  Simone’s eyes glistened with tears, but Phoebe knew better than to show pity. Here was a woman every bit as proud as Phoebe herself, and she understood what it was to hurt the way Simone was hurting, and want to hold fast to your dignity because you believed, at the moment, that you had nothing else left.

  Phoebe went to the doorway and paused there, without looking back at the woman who might have been her friend, if circumstances had been different. At last, it had come to the surface of her mind, the question she needed to ask. “Will you betray Duncan, and all of us, to the British, when you reach Queen’s Town?”

  Duncan must have thought of that possibility, but had not troubled himself to mention it. Simone, out of spite or for some other less obvious reason, could guide the enemy to Paradise Island.

  “There is something you forget, Mistress Rourke,” Simone said, with bitter sorrow and with weariness, but now no rancor. “I love your husband as much as you do, maybe more, because I’ve known him longer. I’ve seen the scars Duncan bears and heard him cry out in the night because his dreams had carried him back to that whipping post and to that pain. I couldn’t bear to draw another breath if I was the cause of that happening again, but there’s a difference this time. Before, they just whipped him, those redcoats. Now, they’d hang him, too.”

  Phoebe felt her stomach roil, and bile scalded the back of her throat. She couldn’t speak.

  Simone went ruthlessly on. “You remember, mistress, what I said, and you be careful. Otherwise, you might find yourself watching your man pay the price for something you said or did.”

  Phoebe closed the door to the hold and fled back to the captain’s cabin. She had, of course, known about Duncan’s involvement with Simone from the beginning. All the same, Simone had struck her mark, referring to the scars on Duncan’s back and the nightmares that must have haunted him for half his life, and perhaps tormented him still. She was not jealous, exactly, but sorely wounded by the knowledge that Simone, and probably many other women, had been so close to him.

  It wasn’t reasonable, she knew that, but knowing did nothing to change the way she felt.

  An even heavier burden was the knowledge that she herself might so easily be the cause of his downfall, his suffering, and his death.

  Phoebe stayed in the cabin until Duncan appeared, wanting to know why she’d missed dinner. She was surprised, and just a little flattered, that he’d noticed, considering all he had to do on deck. She told him she had a headache, which was perfectly true, though she made it sound much worse than it was, and he soaked a cloth in tepid water and laid it on her forehead before leaving the room again.

  Guilt compounded her other agonies.

  Presently, Duncan returned with a bowl of stew and some bread and sat on the edge of the berth, kicking off his boots, while she stared at her food, and then at him, and did not take a bite.

  “It would appear,” he ventured, “that the interview with Simone did not go well.”

  Phoebe wanted to cry, or throw up, or both. In the end, she just sat there, holding the stew bowl and feeling wretched. “It hurts,” she said.

  “What does?” Duncan asked tenderly, turning to look directly into her face.

  “Knowing someone else touched you, slept beside you, felt the same things I feel when you made love to them.”

  “Ah,” Duncan said. “Yes.”

  “It’s unreasonable,” Phoebe declared, “and I’m sorry.”

  He smiled, took the spoon, and prodded her mouth with it until she accepted a taste of stew. “Unreasonable, yes—and also human,” he agreed. “Do you imagine, Phoebe, that I never think of the man you were married to before me, and wonder if he made you laugh, and cry out in pleasure, and if you caused him no end of trouble, as you do me?”

  Phoebe uttered a little sobbing chuckle, her mouth still full. After chewing and swallowing and refusing a second spoonful, she said, “Don’t loose any sleep over Jeffrey, my love—he isn’t—wasn’t—won’t be, ever, even remotely comparable to you.” At Duncan’s arched eyebrow, she rushed to explain further. “Jeffrey is still a boy, playing games, at thirty-five. You have been a man since your teens. And he’ll never be more than a child, really, because he’s complacent and hasn’t even guessed that he should be anything more than he is.”

  Duncan stretched out on the berth beside Phoebe, having taken off his boots but still fully clad otherwise, and cupped his hands behind his head. “The way you talk baffles me sorely,” he said quietly. “I’ve never heard anything like it.” He reached over, took the spoon from the bowl of stew, which she was still holding, and nudged her hand with his until she took the utensil. “Tell me about that other world of yours. Phoebe—while you’re having your dinner.”

  The emphasis on
the part about continuing to eat was subtle, but Phoebe could tell he intended to press the matter if she didn’t cooperate. She wasn’t hungry, but there was the baby to think about, and a body needed fuel to function, like any engine, so she began to nibble stoically at the food.

  Between bites, Phoebe related the story of her life. She told Duncan about her childhood, and about Jeffrey, and how she’d truly believed she loved him, only to find out very recently that she’d merely been infatuated. Also, because her mother and stepfather had been killed in an accident during her last year of high school, and her half brother, Eliott, had paid almost no attention to her, she’d wanted to start a family of her own and belong to someone. She described Murphy, that ungrateful dog, and how it had felt, being out of work in a culture where a large part of a person’s value is determined by what that person does for a living, and how much money they earn.

  Duncan frowned. “It will come to that, then? Such superficiality, after all we’re suffering here in the hope of laying the foundations of a great civilization?” He sounded disappointed, and it was little wonder, given the very real sacrifices he and other men and women were making every day, in their desperate struggle for liberty.

  Phoebe didn’t have the heart to tell him about income tax and the national debt, AIDS and the rising crime rate, or the ongoing tensions in the Middle East. She could see no reason to burden Duncan with things he had no need to know; he was playing his part, in his time, and that was more than enough.

  Maybe it was true, what Shakespeare had written, she concluded—perhaps all the world truly was a stage, and men and women merely players, with roles assigned before they ever stepped out of the wings.

  “Yes,” she admitted. “But it’s a great country, Duncan. There isn’t another like it on the face of the earth.”

  “Tell me something you like about this nation,” he said with touching eagerness. “Something simple.”