Pirates

by Linda Lael Miller

  Then she appeared at the foot of the stairs, holding a lantern aloft. Seeing him, she shoved the light into someone else’s hands and hurried to his side, tucking herself under his arm.

  “Idiot,” she fussed. “What are you thinking of, wandering about like this, when you can barely stand …”

  “Are you hurt?” he asked, allowing himself to lean on her just a little.

  She led him the rest of the way downstairs, since the trip back up would be too difficult for both of them. “No,” she answered. “Have you seen Phillippa? I wanted to go looking for her, but Old Woman wouldn’t let me …”

  “Phillippa is probably bent over Alex’s knee at this very moment, getting her backside blistered,” Duncan replied. “I think it will do them both good.”

  “Don’t get any ideas, Mr. Rourke,” Phoebe warned briskly, leading him along the passageway where he’d found her wandering that first night of their acquaintance. It all seemed so recent and, conversely, so very long ago. “If you ever try to do such a thing, I’ll shoot you.”

  He laughed again. “Another of your poetic promises,” he said. “Where the devil are you taking me?”

  “Back to the room where we women have been hiding all day,” she answered. “We’ll try for the first floor later, when you’re a bit stronger.”

  Duncan staggered a little. His head was as light as if he’d guzzled a kegful of rum all by himself, and just as he thought he would collapse, the gloomy passage was filled with a blinding dazzle.

  It was as if the doorway to heaven itself had opened before them.

  “Oh, my God,” Phoebe whispered. “It’s the elevator!”

  “What?” While Duncan was still trying to make sense of what must be an illusion, a product of his fever and his wound, Phoebe pulled him deeper into the glare. “Where …?” His knees buckled and he folded, knocking his head against the wall in spite of the small, strong hands that attempted to steer him safely to the floor. “Phoebe …”

  “I’m here,” she said gently.

  The pain was all-consuming, like a voracious fire. Duncan said her name again, as a prayer, and then slipped into the enfolding darkness.

  Phoebe knelt beside Duncan on the elevator floor, holding him close. He was unconscious and bleeding and covered with dirt, and she hadn’t the first idea how she was going to explain him to the hotel staff, the police, and/or anyone else in the twentieth century. Her decision had been instinctive; he needed medical help, of the modern variety.

  The elevator stopped, and the doors glided open, revealing the lobby she remembered. Phoebe felt a dizzying sense of relief. On some level, she’d been afraid of finding herself in some other period of history, rather than her own, but she heard familiar sounds. Somewhere, a telephone was ringing, and the theme music of a popular sitcom blared from the speakers of an unseen television set.

  Phoebe dragged Duncan out of the elevator and looked around.

  The desk clerk appeared, a blond Adonis, wearing the obligatory T-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. He snapped his chewing gum as he came toward Phoebe and her prone husband. “Hey, who’s that, and what happened to him?”

  Phoebe was not inclined to explain, with Duncan lying on the floor, losing blood and burning up with fever. “Never mind who he is,” she said. “Is there a hospital on this island?”

  “Sure.” said Adonis. His real name, according to the plastic tag on his T-shirt, was Rodney. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

  “Thank you,” Phoebe replied. One of the maids appeared with a blanket, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw the woman with the light-up hat and varicose veins—the one who’d been on the same charter flight to Paradise Island as Phoebe had.

  “Now I see why you missed the party tonight,” the woman said. “What happened to your date? He looks like he fell down a flight of stairs.”

  Phoebe frowned up at her, distracted and a little impatient. “Tonight?”

  “Yeah, you know. It’s part of the deal—we come here and look at the condos, and we get a party.”

  Realization struck Phoebe with the impact of a city bus. She’d been in 1780 long enough to fall in love, marry, get pregnant, and have more adventures than any sensible woman would ever wish for, but here, in 1995, the clock must have virtually stood still.

  “What time is it?” Phoebe asked, staying close to Duncan, who was beginning to stir. He was going to get a shock when he came around, and she wanted to be close by, so she could lend moral support. A few pointers on adjusting to the twentieth century probably wouldn’t hurt either.

  The woman consulted her watch. “Ten after nine,” she said. She studied Duncan, eyes narrowed in speculation, then raised her gaze to Phoebe’s face. “You play rough, honey. I wouldn’t have figured you for the type, which just goes to show that life is full of surprises.”

  “Isn’t it?” Phoebe agreed, looking down at Duncan, who was still cradled in her arms. Then she kissed his forehead and simply waited.

  18

  The island hospital was a small, unhurried place. The staff wore loose cotton shirts in bright prints, sandals or sneakers, and white slacks or shorts. The elderly woman at the admittance desk was unruffled when Phoebe acknowledged there was no health insurance and, for the moment, no money to pay the bill. (A fact that raised the possibility that they weren’t in the real world at all, but on another planet or at least in a different dimension.) Duncan was examined, bathed, and put into bed, with an IV dripping glucose and various antibiotics into his veins.

  He was disoriented and confused, and considering the circumstances, Phoebe thought that was preferable to full alertness. If he’d been aware of what was really happening to him, needles and blood tests and the application of antiseptics aside, he might have had to be restrained.

  When she was sure he was comfortable, Phoebe called information and got the number of her bank in Seattle. The number, fortunately, was toll-free, and there were operators on duty twenty-four hours per day.

  She explained that she’d lost her ATM card—leaving out the fact that it had been missing, technically, for well over two hundred years—and gave them the information required to verify her identity. The new card, she was assured, would be on its way to Paradise Island the next day, via an express service. She was to have the same personal identification number.

  A slender black woman, wearing the hospital’s tropical, freestyle uniform, appeared in the doorway just as Phoebe was hanging up the telephone receiver. She bore a striking resemblance to Simone, but without the hostility and angst.

  “Mrs. Rourke? Maybe you’d best go back to the hotel and get yourself some rest. We’ll take good care of your husband while you’re gone.”

  “I can’t leave him,” Phoebe said.

  “He isn’t critically ill—you do understand that?”

  Phoebe nodded—the antibiotics and a few days of enforced leisure were just what Duncan needed. God only knew, however, what would go through that eighteenth-century mind, sharp as it was, when he found himself in a future he couldn’t possibly have imagined, with tubes running into his flesh and strange machines blinking and bleeping all around him.

  “Yes,” Phoebe answered belatedly. The nurse’s name tag read “Sharon.” “I just want to be here when he comes around, that’s all.”

  Sharon’s smile was gentle and reassuring. “Okay, no problem. How about if we send somebody over to the hotel for some of your things, though? If you had a shower and something to eat, you might feel lots better, don’t you think?”

  Phoebe was grateful for Sharon’s kindness. Although she wasn’t about to leave Duncan, she was dirty and tired and still wearing the dress she’d borrowed—that morning or two hundred years ago, she didn’t know which—from a servant. And while her appetite was virtually nonexistent, she hadn’t forgotten her unborn child. To protect her son—or daughter, if Old Woman had guessed wrong—she would eat and try to sleep.

  The staff set up a cot in Duncan’s room, and Phoebe l
eft him long enough to take a shower. A makeshift supper, consisting of a wilted BLT, a glass of milk, and a bowl of cream of tomato soup, awaited her on a tray. She ate, clad in a hospital robe, and went to sleep well after midnight.

  Her husband’s voice awakened her bright and early the next morning, and even though Duncan spoke calmly, Phoebe sat bolt upright on her cot, braced for an explosion of questions.

  “What is this place?” he asked, in an understandably incredulous tone.

  Phoebe nearly tripped over her suitcase, which someone had apparently brought over from the hotel during the night, reaching his bedside. She took his hand, the one with no IV needle taped to it, and gave him a wavering, watery smile. “Just don’t get excited,” she said. “I can explain everything. Sort of.”

  “I am not excited,” Duncan ground out. There were other indications, besides his clenched teeth, that his self-control was slipping.

  “We’ve left your century,” Phoebe said, “and now we’re in mine. The year is 1995, and you are in a hospital …” When his eyes widened in growing horror, and he started to sit up, Phoebe pressed him gently back onto his pillows. “It’s all right, darling. Hospitals aren’t like they were in your time. They’ve given you medicine, and by tomorrow or the next day, you’ll be your old self again.”

  Duncan was still agitated, that was obvious, but he did a good job of keeping his composure. He looked around, taking in the television set affixed to the wall, the phone, the transparent bag of liquid suspended above the bed, the machines that had monitored his vital signs during the night.

  “Is the whole world like this?” he whispered, clearly dreading the answer.

  Phoebe smiled, touched to the heart, and kissed him. “No, of course not. As soon as you’re ready to leave the hospital, we’ll travel to the mainland and I’ll show you something utterly, completely American.”

  “What?”

  “I’m keeping it for a surprise,” Phoebe said, as a nurse entered with breakfast trays for both of them.

  Duncan stared at the staffer’s short skirt and tank top. “Great Zeus and Apollo,” he muttered, when they were alone again. “That was indecent!”

  Phoebe dipped his spoon into something that might have been either pudding or cereal and stuck it into his mouth. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” she teased.

  After they’d eaten, she turned the TV on, and Duncan’s education in modern American life began—with a syndicated episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He was amazed by the moving figures, the colors, and disembodied voices of television, but Phoebe hardly glanced at the screen. Watching Duncan’s reactions was more entertaining than any program could ever have been.

  Phoebe spent most of that day preparing Duncan for what was ahead, using dog-eared magazines from the waiting room to show him how men and women dressed, what houses looked like, and what kinds of foods people ate. Automobiles and airplanes, pictured in the advertisements, fascinated him, and after lunch he drifted off to sleep. Phoebe’s diagnosis was a case of information overload.

  She sat in a chair near his bed, too keyed up to nap, wondering when the police would come and ask her how Duncan came to be on Paradise Island, out of his head with fever, wearing clothes that were a little too authentic, even for a costume party, and sporting a neatly stitched sword wound on one shoulder. It was a good thing the law didn’t show up, because no viable story presented itself.

  The next day was eventful; Phoebe’s new ATM card came, and Duncan was released from the hospital. Even wearing white chinos and a flowered shirt, loaned to him by one of the orderlies, there was something of the pirate about him.

  They returned to the hotel in a taxi, and Duncan found the reality of an automobile somewhat more disconcerting than a four-color picture in a magazine. When he saw his beautiful house, reduced by time and neglect to a shabby, second-rate inn, his mood went into retrograde.

  There was a cash machine in the lobby, and Phoebe made the first foray into her savings account. Duncan watched with a thoughtful frown, but said nothing. “This will give us a start,” she said, “but there’s still the hospital bill to pay.”

  “We have debts?” Duncan asked. He’d probably never owed anyone a cent in his life, unless you counted the cost of all the weapons and supplies he’d filched from the British government during the Revolution.

  “Come on,” Phoebe said gently, taking his hand. “We’ll talk about it in the piano bar, over a pina colada and a glass of ice tea.”

  The bar had once been Duncan’s study, and he plainly disapproved of the changes. While he stood glowering at the jukebox, as though it were some mesmerizing tool of the devil, Phoebe ordered drinks at the bar and carried them to a secluded table. The pina colada met with his approval, unlike most of the things he’d seen since leaving the hospital.

  “Tell me about our debts,” he insisted, after consuming his drink.

  “We have to pay the hospital for taking care of you,” Phoebe said. “Don’t worry about it, okay?”

  “What of this currency that you took out of the wall?”

  Phoebe smiled at the quaint, if apt, description. “Not enough,” she said. “The twentieth century is frightfully expensive.” They were going to need airline tickets to Orlando, too, since the charter had already gone back to the States for another batch of prospective condo buyers. Then there was food, and the hotel bill …

  “I have gold,” Duncan said.

  Phoebe sighed. “No, you don’t,” she said. “Trust me, I checked your pockets after they’d stripped you down at the hospital. And even though this place may look like home, it isn’t. Two hundred and fifteen years have passed, for all intents and purposes, since the day Mornault practically blasted us off the planet with your cannon.”

  The expression on her husband’s face indicated that it hadn’t been a good time to mention his old enemy and the damage that had been done to the house. He leaned toward her and spoke in a low, impatient voice. “I have gold,” he repeated, measuring the words out slowly, as if he thought Phoebe might have trouble comprehending them. “Shall I prove it?”

  “Please do,” Phoebe said, with a sigh. “My savings account won’t keep us going for long.”

  Duncan glanced suspiciously at the bartender. “Later,” he replied.

  They spent the hottest part of the day in their room—Phoebe was sure Duncan wouldn’t enjoy a tour of the condominiums or a look at what modern business acumen had done to the cove where the Francesca had once bobbed at anchor—alternately napping and watching television. Her husband, the pirate, was withdrawn and grim, and although Phoebe would have welcomed his lovemaking, he made no attempt to touch her. And even though she ached, if only to be held, Phoebe kept her hands to herself.

  After dark, and a room-service meal that Duncan pronounced unpalatable and would have hurled into the hallway, cart and all, if Phoebe hadn’t stopped him, they went downstairs. The hotel, not exactly a mecca for tourists, was all but deserted, and it was easy to find the cellar steps and sneak down them.

  Phoebe felt a pang of loneliness for the eighteenth century as Duncan pulled her along behind him. What must Margaret and Lucas and Alex and Phillippa be thinking? The servants, if any had still been close enough to witness the strange disappearance of the master and mistress, would have seen the wall open onto a cubicle of light, and then close again, leaving no trace.

  The modern cellar was well lit, and Duncan had no trouble finding what he was looking for—a small storage closet of some type, with a brick floor and rotting rafters. He knelt, pulling the butter knife he’d swiped from the room-service cart out of his belt, and began prying an ordinary-looking stone out of the wall. When it finally gave way, he reached into the chasm and drew out a small metal box.

  “We’ll open this in our room,” he told her, tucking the dusty little chest under his flowered shirt with a pirate’s deftness. “If the new tenants get wind of it, they’ll probably use it to wreak still more havoc on my house
.”

  Phoebe let the possessive pronoun pass unchallenged. Duncan was an intelligent man, and he knew the mansion no longer belonged to him. He had probably already figured out, too, that he was a ghost of sorts; technically, he didn’t exist because there was a grave somewhere with his name on it. For that matter, Phoebe hadn’t legally lived in 1780, either, because she hadn’t been born until 1969.

  It was all so damn confusing.

  “You’re the boss,” she agreed wearily. It wasn’t entirely true, of course; in Phoebe’s mind, she and Duncan were equals, but, after all he’d been through, she figured she could forego semantics for a little while.

  When, behind the locked door of Room 73, he opened the box, wielding the same butter knife he’d used to dislodge the stone in the cellar wall, Phoebe drew in a sharp breath. The thing was brimming with thick gold coins, their glow undimmed by the passage of time.

  “Duncan,” Phoebe whispered, “that’s a small fortune!”

  He smiled. “A wise man,” he replied, “is prepared for the unexpected.”

  Phoebe lifted a gold piece from the box and held it up for a closer look. The coin was large and heavy and stamped with the image of a lion. The average collector would probably pay far more than face value for specimens like diese, she reasoned, but there was no sense in being greedy. “We’ll have to be discreet,” she said. “There aren’t a lot of these floating around, and there’ll be questions if we try to pass them at McDonald’s or the supermarket.”

  A glance at Duncan’s puzzled face reminded Phoebe that they hadn’t gotten to American Consumerism 101.

  “Leave everything to me,” she said.

  Duncan rolled his eyes.

  The next day, Phoebe and Duncan left the island on a small propeller-driven aircraft. Fortunately, passports would not be required, since Paradise Island was an American possession, rather like Puerto Rico, and money was no longer a problem.

  Soon, they landed at an airfield outside Orlando.