Pirates

by Linda Lael Miller

  Phoebe hopped out of bed and yanked on a wrapper. They’d already knocked out the terrace, whoever “they” were, and being a sensible woman, she wasn’t about to stay around until the outside wall went, too. All of the sudden she knew, as she dashed for the door, what it was in Simone’s manner that had bothered her so much.

  Guilt.

  “What do you want me to do?” Phoebe asked, as Duncan hustled her through the doorway and then gripped both her upper arms and wrenched her onto her toes in a highly successful effort to get her attention.

  “Find my mother and Phillippa. Old Woman will hide you. That’s all I have time to say, except this: if you disobey me now and bring harm to yourself or our child, I will never forgive you.”

  The words gave Phoebe a chill; she knew he meant them.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  Duncan didn’t answer; he planted a hasty kiss on her forehead and vanished.

  Phillippa and Margaret had been roused, with the rest of the household, by the cannon fire, and the assault continued unabated as they all raced downstairs in their nightclothes, carrying whatever other garments they’d been able to snatch up before fleeing. Old Woman was waiting in the entryway, looking serene and serious, ready to usher them into the cellars, along with the female servants.

  There was no sign, Phoebe noticed, of Simone.

  “Is it the British, come to hang Duncan?” Phillippa asked when they were all huddled in a dank room, with a single candle for light, clad in their mismatched, hodgepodge clothes.

  “It is the pirate,” Old Woman said. “Jacques Mornault.”

  Phoebe, seated on a crate, drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. Her gown was of rough, colorless cloth, lent to her by one of the maids. “He got past the watch,” she mused aloud, “and took over the cannon on the ridge above the house.”

  “Yes,” Old Woman answered, reflected candlelight flickering in her eyes as she looked at Phoebe. Simone’s name wavered between them like a specter, but neither of them mentioned it.

  “Are we going to die?” one of the younger servants asked, lip trembling.

  “No, child,” Margaret Rourke said confidently. She moved to sit beside the girl and put a motherly arm around her. “There’s no reason to think matters will come to that.”

  Phoebe was not concerned with her own safety, just yet, but she was only too aware that Duncan was in mortal danger. All the worse, she thought miserably, that the damn fool didn’t have the sense to be afraid and take precautions to protect himself.

  “Where do you suppose Alex is?” Phillippa asked, in a small voice. “I didn’t see him.”

  Phoebe and Margaret exchanged glances, but neither of them spoke.

  Another round of cannon fire shook the house, and Phoebe bit back a terrified sob. Was this how it was going to end? she wondered. Had she traveled through time and fallen in love with Duncan Rourke only to end up dead, at the bottom of a pile of rubble?

  Phillippa stood up and began to pace.

  Phoebe rested her chin on her knees and waited, in a daze, and time became irrelevant. Above their heads and outside, the battle raged on, endless, earsplitting, and for all the hoopla, oddly monotonous. Some of the servants actually went to sleep, and Old Woman murmured low, wordless chants, prayers to some ancient island goddess. Margaret seemed lost in a private reverie; perhaps, despite her brave assurances that they were not about to die, she expected to join John in some better, brighter world.

  The candle burned out, and Old Woman replaced it with another.

  As the new light spread, stronger and brighter, Phoebe looked around for Phillippa—and found no sign of her.

  Phillippa groped her way up the cellar steps, which were littered with fragments of the walls and ceiling. The light was dim, and the air was so filled with smoke and dust that she could barely breathe. She heard men talking, somewhere in the distance, but the shooting had stopped, at least temporarily.

  At the top of the stairs, she waited, and listened.

  The voices were far away and dearly familiar. She heard Lucas, and Duncan, and thanked God, with tears blurring her vision, that they were still alive and whole enough to argue with each other. No doubt Alex was with them, safe and sound.

  Phillippa would not return to the cellar until she knew for sure.

  She made her way through the wreckage of Duncan’s beautiful house, stepping over books and fallen statues and shattered pieces of furniture. She did not call out, lest she attract her brothers’ attention and be sent, or more likely dragged, back to the assigned hiding place. She must see Alex for herself, and then she would return to the cellars of her own accord.

  Another volley struck as she was crossing the main parlor, with a violence so swift and stunning that Phillippa was hurled to the floor as forcefully as if someone had grabbed her arm and thrust her down. She lay still for a few moments, the breath knocked out of her, collecting herself and coping with the brutal surprise of what had happened. She must have cried out at some point—the soreness in her throat indicated that—but she had no memory of making the smallest sound.

  Phillippa raised herself to a sitting position just as another round shook the house on its sturdy foundations. Part of the ceiling came down, and she screamed in fear, curled on the floor, her arms covering her head.

  She heard a stumping sound and raised her head just in time to see Alex coming toward her, moving quickly on his crutch, carrying a pistol in his hand. He was dirty, and his clothes were torn and sweat-stained, but he was standing under his own power, and there were no visible wounds.

  It was all Phillippa had wanted to know. She smiled and got to her feet, albeit awkwardly, dusting her hands together.

  Alex scowled at her, flushed beneath the layers of soot and marble dust. “Go back to the cellars,” he ordered furiously. “Now!” Phillippa started a little and laid one hand to her breast. “You dare to shout at me?” she asked, though of course the question was superfluous, since he was already shouting.

  “Yes!” Alex bellowed, drawing a step nearer. “And I’ll do more than that if I catch you up here again!”

  Something moved in the pit of Phillippa’s stomach, and it was not, she was chagrined to realize, an entirely unpleasant sensation. Before he could clarify the obvious—that he was threatening her—another devastating round of cannon fire struck the nearest wall. A huge chandelier, probably Austrian, swayed over their heads, then came loose from its moorings with an ominous cracking sound. Alex abandoned both crutch and pistol to leap upon Phillippa like a panther, sending them both sprawling.

  The chandelier came to a musical landing only inches from their feet.

  “I’d better stay with you,” Phillippa said, making her eyes big and biting the inside of her lip to keep from smiling. “I don’t think I’d be quite safe anywhere else.”

  Alex looked at her with something very like disgust, but she forgave him because she knew he didn’t mean it. He wanted to marry her, and when the war was over, take her home to his family’s plantation, which was conveniently near Troy, where she would bear his children, see that he ate properly, and advise him in important matters.

  “Count yourself fortunate, Miss Rourke,” he said coldly, hauling himself painfully to his feet, “that I am completely occupied with the task of keeping you alive. Had I so much as five minutes to spare, I would paddle you within an inch of your life!”

  Phillippa fluttered her eyelashes at him. “But you don’t have time,” she reminded him, bold in the knowledge that she was safe. From that ignoble fate, anyway.

  “Come with me,” he rasped, clasping her hand. Both his crutch and pistol were under the mountain of shattered glass that had once been a magnificent work of art as well as an instrument of light. After one rueful glance, during which he must have concluded, as Phillippa did, that there would be no recovering either item without a great deal of effort, he pulled her after him across the ruined parlor. His steps, though slow and measured,
were not those of a man with any permanent need for a crutch.

  He located a closet, one used to store linens for the dining room, and thrust Phillippa inside it. “I will be back for you,” he told her grimly. “If I were you, however, I would not look forward to the encounter.”

  With those unromantic words, he slammed the door in Phillippa’s face, and before her eyes had adjusted to the dark so that she could see and grasp the handle, he’d wedged her in, probably by bracing a chair under the latch.

  Phillippa flung herself against the heavy panel and shrieked in fury, but it did her no good. She was stuck, maybe for eternity, maybe until the pirates found her and did unspeakable things to her. And if perchance they spared her, Alex would probably murder her himself.

  “I want to marry your sister,” Alex told Duncan and Lucas furiously, when he rejoined them in what remained of the garden. They had a line of small cannon, guns Duncan kept for emergencies, and had been giving Mornault a steady dose of grapeshot for the past hour. Their faces were black with gunpowder, like Alex’s own, and their clothes hung in shreds. The rest of the crew had taken up different posts all around the outside perimeters of the yard.

  “Fine with me,” Lucas said generously, “if you give your word not to beat her.”

  “From the look of him,” Duncan remarked to his brother, “I’d say our Alex isn’t quite prepared to make that promise. You’ve seen Phillippa?”

  “I’ve locked her in the linen closet,” Alex explained. It was an odd conversation, and he supposed he might see some humor in it one day, provided any of them lived long enough to put matters into their proper perspective. “I had to do something to keep her out of trouble.”

  Duncan and Lucas looked at each other, and Alex thought he saw a smile pass between them.

  “The poor, naive bastard actually thinks that’s possible,” Duncan said, marveling. His grin was a slash of white in his filthy face.

  Lucas laughed at Alex’s look of consternation and gestured toward his brother. “Heed the wisdom of a married man,” he advised.

  “I still want to marry her,” Alex insisted.

  Duncan arched one brow, his arms folded. He’d discarded his sling, and blood was beginning to seep through the filthy fabric of his shirt, but he didn’t seem to be in pain. “We’ve yet to hear your promise not to beat her,” he pointed out. There was a vague twinkle in his eyes, for despite the seriousness of their situation, Duncan reveled in matching wits with the likes of Jacques Mornault.

  Alex sighed. He had always been an honest man, and he saw no point in changing at this late date. “When this is over,” he said evenly, “I plan to go back to that closet, free Phillippa, take her across my knee, and raise blisters on her backside. Are you satisfied?”

  Duncan and Lucas exchanged another look.

  “Sure,” said Lucas.

  “If you are,” agreed Duncan with a shrug.

  There was no moon that night, and Duncan thanked the gods for that. If there had been, he and his men would not have been able to come up behind Mornault and his crew and put an end to the siege.

  It was too easy, after all the waiting and enduring. For one primitive, telling moment, as he stood clasping the hair of Mornault’s head, his dagger resting against the pirate’s throat, Duncan wished things had been different. Perhaps his mother was right, he thought, lowering the knife, as the fierce desire to sever his enemy’s jugular seeped out of him. Perhaps it was not the love of liberty that drove him, but a passion for just such encounters as this one.

  He wrenched Mornault to his feet and sheathed the knife.

  The pirate faced him, grinning, his halved nose all the more grotesque for being in shadow. “It will be the death of you,” Mornault said. “This honorable nature of yours.”

  Duncan suspected his old enemy might be right, though of course he did not say so. “Who led you to these cannons?” he demanded.

  “The wench,” Mornault said. He was as crazy as Duncan himself, was the pirate, for he was laughing now. “You know what they say, old friend, about a woman scorned. Give me a knife, and I will give you what you want—a fight to the death.”

  The prospect raised Duncan’s blood in a way that troubled him. He still wanted, God help him, to cut Mornault’s liver out. He was accomplished at self-denial, however, and revealed none of what he felt. Instead, Duncan folded his arms and frowned.

  He could blame the attack of Paradise Island on a woman scorned, Mornault had said. Duncan had no memory of scorning anyone; at least, he hadn’t done so recently. In fact, before Phoebe had come into his life, he’d had a run of bad luck where females were concerned and gotten himself thrown out of some pretty impressive places.

  Then Simone entered the circle of light from the lanterns Mornault had so thoughtfully provided, her eyes downcast, her shoulders slumped, and suddenly Duncan understood.

  It was as if he’d been kicked in the stomach.

  “You,” he breathed.

  Simone raised her face to Duncan; he saw her tears but hardened his heart. Phoebe might have perished during the day-long siege and taken their unborn child with her. The rest of his family had been in danger of the same fate, and his house, as far as he could tell, was little more than a ruin, creaking on its foundations.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” he asked.

  Lucas put a restraining hand on his arm. “Duncan …”

  Duncan shook off his brother’s grasp. He was weak with anger and the loss of blood. “Damn you,” he told the girl, who was trembling now. There was no fear in her, he knew; only spite and anger and pride. Her eyes—he’d once thought them beautiful—glittered in the night like those of some wild, stalking creature deprived of its prey.

  She spat at his feet.

  He turned from her, back to Mornault, who was still spoiling for a fight, even though his hands had been bound by then, as had those of his men.

  The pirate laughed. “Are you a coward after all, Rourke?”

  Duncan’s hand rested for a moment on the hilt of his dagger. It was a sore temptation to cut the other man’s bonds and tear into him with his bare hands, but there was no time for such an indulgence.

  “It would seem,” Duncan said, ignoring the challenge and looking the other man up and down coolly, “that I’ve found myself a ship after all. Pity it was so bloody easy, though.”

  There was a stockade of sorts, well back from the main house and hidden from general view. Duncan gave orders for Mornault and his men to be taken there. Then he turned his back on his captives and started down the darkened hillside.

  “What will you do with them?” Lucas demanded, keeping pace. Duncan supposed he was concerned about the girl and the pirates. “After this, I mean?”

  “I haven’t decided,” Duncan answered with wry, quiet fury, gritting his teeth because his wounded shoulder was beginning to feel as though someone had filled it with molten lead. “Maybe I’ll burn them all at the stake. Or feed them to the sharks, one digit at a time.”

  “Damn it all to hell, Duncan,” Lucas barked, “I’m serious. You can’t turn Mornault over to the British, though God knows they probably want him as badly as they want you, because he’ll tell them where to find you. And you can’t simply release these bastards—they’ll only come back for you later, with more guns and another ship. As for burning them at the stake or feeding them to the sharks—well, I can only assume you were making a jest.”

  “Assume what you like,” Duncan replied, supporting his weak arm with his other hand and hoping Lucas wouldn’t notice and put up more of a fuss than he already had. In the meanwhile, he was enjoying himself; he’d forgotten how diverting it was to bait his brother. “What do you think Mornault and his band of merry men would have done to me, had Fortune favored their efforts over ours?”

  Lucas made a sputtering sound, which meant he didn’t have a response at the ready.

  Duncan stumbled, caught himself. For now, he only wanted Phoebe, washing his wound, p
rattling in her strange English, perhaps allowing him a sip or two of whiskey for the pains he’d taken in saving her from the proverbial fate worse than death.

  “Are you all right?” Lucas demanded. Sometimes, he could be quite observant, and unfortunately, this appeared to be one of those instances.

  Duncan quickened his pace, hoping to reach Phoebe, and what remained of his house, before he passed out. “Splendid,” he answered. “Today was an interesting exercise, wasn’t it? Perhaps we should keep Mornault just long enough to really piss him off, then send him on his way with our thanks. We could always invite him back another day, to stir things up again.” He went down as far as one knee, and Lucas hauled him back up again. Duncan couldn’t see clearly, and his stomach, fortuitously empty, was doing slow rolls, like a drowned seal drifting in an ocean current.

  “You are talking nonsense,” Lucas said. He touched Duncan’s forehead with the back of his hand, for mixed in with his other relatively innocuous faults was a tendency to be something of a mother hen. “Great Zeus and Apollo, I could fry an egg on your forehead!”

  “I would advise you not to try,” Duncan replied. And then he laughed at the sheer insanity of the exchange.

  The house was before them, luminous in the gloom, like some Grecian temple. Duncan supposed the damage could be repaired, but the task would take months, if not years, and craftsmen were in short supply, given his occupation and the stringencies of war. He might have wept, if he hadn’t known Phoebe was waiting for him somewhere.

  Lucas left him after they passed through the garden doorway, ordering him to sit down and wait while he, Lucas, sought out the physician Mars. Duncan ignored his brother’s command and proceeded to the cellar, making his way carefully down the stairs, which were littered with rubble. Just the effort of keeping himself upright brought out a cold sweat, soaking his ruined clothes and making his hands slippery.

  “Phoebe!” he shouted into the darkness, and for one truly unbearable moment, he thought she wasn’t going to answer, that Mornault had managed to kill her after all.