Annie sighed in a long-suffering fashion and fondly patted her flat stomach. “That this child—our daughter—is only the first of six healthy children.”
They had reached the threshold of the kitchen door, and Rafael paused there to lean forward and touch Annie’s mouth with his own. “That’s a prediction I can well believe,” he said. “How shall our fairy tale end, Princess Annie?”
She laughed. “It doesn’t take a gypsy to answer that question,” she replied. “We’ll live happily ever after.”
Pocket Books
Proudly Announces
PIRATES
LINDA LAEL MILLER
Coming from
Pocket Books Hardcover
mid-June 1995
The following is a preview of
Pirates …
When the dog deserted her and moved in with Jeffrey and his new bride, it was, for Phoebe Turlow, the proverbial last straw.
She had weathered the divorce well enough, considering how many of her dreams had come crashing down in the process. She’d even been philosophical about losing her job as a research assistant to Professor Benning, knowing that finding a comparable position would be virtually impossible given recent government budget cuts. The professor had been writing and lecturing at Seattle College for forty-five fruitful and illustrious years; he was ready, by his own admission, to spend his days reading, fishing and playing chess.
Phoebe had held herself together through it all. And now, even her dog, Murphy, whom she’d rescued from the pound as a mangy, slat-ribbed mongrel, and carefully nursed back to health, had turned on her.
She lowered the telephone receiver slowly back to its cradle, gazing through narrowed blue eyes at the dismal Seattle rain sheeting the window of her rented house. Heather, the light of Jeffrey’s life, hadn’t been able—she probably hadn’t even tried—to suppress the smug note in her voice when she called to tell Phoebe that Murphy was “safe and sound” in their kitchen. To hear Heather tell it, that furry ingrate had crossed a continent, fording icy rivers and surmounting insurmountable obstacles, enduring desperate privations of all sorts. Phoebe could almost hear the theme music of a new movie, rated G, of course.
Murphy, Come Home.
Muttering, she crossed the worn linoleum floor, picked up the dog’s red plastic bowl and dumped it into the trash, kibbles and all. She emptied the water dish and tossed that away as well. Then, running her hands down the worn legs of her blue jeans and feeling more alone than she had since her grandmother’s death, Phoebe wandered into her small, uncarpeted living room and stared despondently out the front window.
Mel, the postman, was just pulling up to her mailbox in his blue and white jeep. He tooted the horn and waved. Phoebe waved back with a dispirited smile. Her unemployment check was due, but the prospect didn’t cheer her up. If it hadn’t been for her savings and the small amount of money Gran had left when she passed away, Phoebe figured she would have been sitting on a rain-slickened sidewalk, down by the Pike Place Market, with a cigar box in front of her to catch coins.
Okay, she thought, so that was a bit of an exaggeration. She could last for about six months, if she didn’t get a new job soon, and then she would join the ranks of Seattle’s panhandlers.
Snatching her blue hooded rain slicker from the peg beside the door and tossing it over her shoulders, Phoebe dashed out into the chilly drizzle to fetch her mail. She’d sent out over fifty resumes since losing her job with Professor Benning—maybe there would be a positive response, or one of the rare, brightly colored postcards her half brother, Eliott, sometimes sent from Europe or South America or Africa, or wherever he happened to be. Or a letter from a friend …
Except that all their friends were really Jeffrey’s, not hers.
And Eliott didn’t give a damn about her, and never had.
Phoebe brought herself up short; she was feeling sorry for herself, and that was against her personal code. Resolutely, she wrenched open the door of her rural mailbox, which was affixed to a rusted metal post by the front gate, and reached inside. There was nothing but a sales circular, and although she was tempted to crumple it up and toss it into the nearest mud puddle, she couldn’t bring herself to litter.
She walked slowly back up the cracked walk to her sagging porch and the open door beyond it. The bright yellow envelope, now sodden and limp from the rain, was addressed to “Occupant,” and the street numbers were off by two blocks. Damn, she thought, with a wry grimace. Even her junk mail belonged to somebody else.
The letter was about to join Murphy’s kibbles and tooth-marked food and water bowls when an impulse—maybe it was desperation, maybe it was some kind of weird premonition—made Phoebe stop. She carried the envelope to her kitchen table and sat down, wondering all the while why she hadn’t just chucked the thing. Instead, she opened it and smoothed the single page inside with as much care as if it were an ancient scroll, unearthed only moments before.
SUNSHINE! screamed the cheaply printed block letters at the top of the paper, which had been designed to resemble a telegram. SPARKLING, CRYSTALBLUE SEAS! VISIT PARADISE ISLAND ABSOLUTELY FREE! WALK IN THE FABLED FOOTSTEPS OF DUNCAN ROURKE, THE PIRATE PATRIOT!
Phoebe was twenty-eight years old and intelligent. She’d put herself through college, worked at a responsible job from the day she graduated until two months ago and voted in every major election. She was by no means stupid—even if she had married Jeffrey Brewster with her eyes wide open—and she knew a tacky advertising scheme when she saw one.
All the same, the prospects of “sunshine” and “crystalblue seas” prodded at something slumbering deep in her heart behind a bruise and a stack of dusty, broken hopes.
She frowned. That name—Duncan Rourke. She’d seen it somewhere before—probably while doing research for Professor Benning.
Phoebe rose from the table, leaving the sales flier spread out on its shiny surface, and took herself to the stove to brew a cup of herbal tea. Knowing that the promise of a free trip to Paradise Island—wherever that might be—was a scam of some kind did nothing to lessen the odd, excited sense of impending adventure tingling in the pit of her stomach.
The kettle gave a shrill whistle, and Phoebe poured boiling water over a tea bag and carried her cup back to the table. She read the flier again, this time very slowly and carefully, one eyebrow raised in skepticism, the fingers of her right hand buried in her short, chestnut-brown hair.
To take advantage of the “vacation all her friends would envy,” Phoebe had only to inspect a “glamorous beachfront condominium guaranteed to increase in value” and listen to a sales pitch. In return, her generous benefactors would fly her to the small Caribbean island “justly named Paradise,” put her up in the “distinctive Eden Hotel for two fun-filled days and nights,” and provide one “gala affair, followed by a truly festive dinner.”
The whole thing was one big rip-off, Phoebe insisted to herself, and yet she was intrigued, and perhaps just a little frantic. So what if she had to look at a condo made of ticky-tacky, watch a few promotional slides and listen to a spiel from a schmaltzy, fast-talking salesman or two? She needed to get away, if only for a weekend, and here was her chance to soak up some tropical sunshine without doing damage to her rapidly dwindling bank account.
Phoebe’s conscience, always overactive, pricked a little. Okay, suppose she did call the toll-free number and book herself on the next flight to Paradise. She’d be making the trip under false pretenses, since she had no intention of buying a condominium. Her credit was fine, but she was divorced, female and unemployed, and there was no way she’d ever get a mortgage.
Still, there was nothing in the flier specifying that buyers had to be qualified. It was an invitation, pure and simple.
Phoebe closed her eyes and imagined the warmth of the sun on her face, in her hair, settling deep into her muscles and veins and organs, nourishing her spirit. The yearning she felt was almost mystical, and wholly irresistible.
She
told herself that she who hesitates is lost, and that it couldn’t hurt to call. So, she went to the wall phone next to the sink and punched in the number.
Four hectic days later, Phoebe found herself on a small chartered airplane, aimed in the general direction of the Caribbean, with her one bag tucked neatly under the seat. The man across the aisle wore plaid polyester pants and a sweater emblazoned with tiny golf clubs, and the woman sitting behind her sported white pedal pushers, copious varicose veins, a T-shirt showing two silhouettes engaged in either mortal combat or coitus, and a baseball cap adorned with tiny Christmas tree lights—all flashing. The seven other passengers were equally eccentric.
Phoebe settled against the back of her seat with a sigh and closed her eyes, feeling like a freak in her brown loafers, jeans and blue cashmere turtleneck, all purchased with a credit card and a great deal of optimism. She might have been on a cut-rate night flight to Reno, she thought, with rueful humor, judging by the costumes of her fellow travelers.
The plane lifted off at seven o’clock in the morning, rising into the foggy skies over Seattle, and presently a flight attendant appeared. Since the aisle was too narrow for a cart, the slender young man carried a yellow plastic basket in one hand, dispensing peanuts and cola and other refreshments as he moved through the cabin.
The woman in the battery-powered hat ordered a Bloody Mary, and received a look of disapproval from the steward and a generic beer for her trouble.
Phoebe, who had planned to ask for mineral water, merely shook her head and smiled. She was making the trip under false pretenses, after all, and the less she accepted from these people in the way of amenities, the better she would feel about it afterward.
She tried to sleep and failed, even though she’d lain awake worrying the night before. So, she pulled a thin volume, borrowed from Professor Benning’s extensive personal library, from her bag. The book, published by an obscure press, was entitled, “Duncan Rourke—Traitor or Patriot?”
Phoebe opened it to the first page, frowning a little, and began to read.
Mr. Rourke, according to the biographer, had been born in Charlotte, in the colony of North Carolina, to gentle and aristocratic parents. His education was impeccable—he spoke French, Italian and Spanish fluently, and was well versed in the work of the poets, those of his own time, and those of antiquity. He was also known to be proficient with the harpsichord and the mandolin, as well as the sword and musket, and he’d been no slouch in the boudoir, either, the writer hinted.
Phoebe yawned. Duncan Rourke, it seemed, qualified as a true Renaissance man. She read on.
Until the very day of his death, no one had known for certain whether Rourke had been a cutthroat or a hero. Speculation abounded, of course.
For her part, Phoebe wondered why he couldn’t have been both rascal and paragon? No one, after all, was entirely good or bad—a human being, particularly a complex one, as Rourke must have been, could hardly be reduced to one dimension.
Presently, Phoebe closed her eyes—and the musty pages of the old book—and a faint smile trembled on her lips. Pondering Mr. Rourke’s morality, or lack of same, she slept at long last.
1780
Paradise Island, the Caribbean
The precious letter, penned by Duncan’s sister, Phillippa, and sent to him by devious and complex means, lay slightly crumpled on the desk before him.
Come home … the diabolical angel had written, in her ornate and flowing script.
Please, Duncan, I implore you to act for our sakes, Mama’s and Papa’s and Lucas’s and mine, if not for your own. You must return to Charlotte, and the bosom of your family. Surely nothing more would be required to prove your loyalty to His Majesty than this. Papa might then cease his endless pacing—he traverses the length of his study, over and over again, night after night, from moonrise until the sun’s awakening—if only he knew you could be counted among the king’s men, like himself and our esteemed elder brother, Lucas … Papa fears, dear Duncan, as we all do, that your escapes in those southerly seas you so love will be misunderstood, that you will be arrested or even hanged….
Duncan sighed and reached for the glass of port a serving girl had set within his reach only moments before.
“Troublesome news?” inquired his friend and first mate, Alex Maxwell, from his post before the terrace doors. A cool, faintly salty breeze ruffled the gauzy curtains and eased the otherwise relentless heat of a summer afternoon in the Caribbean.
“Only the usual rhetoric and prattle,” Duncan replied, after taking a sip of his wine. “My sister pleads with me to return to the fold and take up my place among His Majesty’s devoted adherents. Her implication is that, should I fail to heed this warning, our sorrowing and much-tormented sire shall wear out either the soles of his boots or my mother’s rugs, in his eternal and evidently ambulatory ruminations.”
Alex grimaced. “Good God, man,” he said, with some impatience, turning at last from his vigil at the window overlooking the sultry blue and gold waters of a sunsplashed, temperamental sea. “Would it do you injury to speak in simple English for once in your bloody life?”
Duncan arched one dark eyebrow. Language was, to him, a toy as well as a tool. He loved to explore its every nuance and corner, to exercise various words and combinations of words, to savor them upon his tongue as he would a fine brandy or an exquisite wine. Although he liked and even admired Maxwell—indeed, Duncan had entrusted Alex with his very life on more than one occasion—he would not have foresworn linguistic indulgence even for him. “Tell me, my friend—are you liverish today, or simply obstreperous in the extreme?”
Alex shoved the fingers of both hands into his butternut hair in a dramatic show of frustration. Like Duncan, Alex was thirty years old; they had been tutored together from the time they could toddle out of their separate nurseries. Both loved fast horses, witty women with sinful inclinations and good bourbon, and their political views were, in the opinion of the Crown, at least, equally subversive. Physically and emotionally, however, the two men were quite different—Alex being small and delicately built, with the ingenuous brown eyes of a fawn and all the subtlety, when vexed, of a bear batting at a swarm of wasps with both paws. Duncan’s temperament was cool and somewhat detached, and he stood tall enough, as his father said, to be hanged from a high branch without a scaffold. He prided himself on his self-control, and his enemies, no less than his friends, credited him with the tenacity and cunning of a winter-starved wolf. His hair was dark as jet, and he wore it tied back at his nape with a narrow ribbon, and his eyes a deep and, so he’d been told by grand ladies and whores alike, patently disturbing blue. His features, aristocratic from birth, had been hardened by the injustices he had both witnessed and suffered.
“I’m sorry,” Alex said, with a weariness that troubled Duncan greatly, turning at last to face his friend. “I don’t deny that I’ve been in a foul temper in recent days.”
“I trust there is a reason,” Duncan ventured, in a quiet voice, folding Phillippa’s letter and placing it, with more tenderness than he would have confessed to, in the top drawer of his desk. “Or are your moods, like those of the delicate gender, governed by the waxing and waning of the moon?”
“Oh, Christ,” Alex moaned. “Sometimes you drive me mad.”
“Be that as it may,” Duncan replied moderately, “I should still like to know what troubles you. We are yet friends, are we not? Besides, a distracted man makes a poor leader, prone to grave errors of judgment.” He paused to utter a philosophical sigh. “If some comely wench has addled your wits, the only prudent course of action, in my view, would be to relieve you of your duties straightaway, before someone in your command suffers the consequences of your preoccupation.”
Alex’s fine-boned face seemed strained and shadowed as he met Duncan’s searching gaze, and his eyes reflected annoyance and something very like despair. “How long?” he asked, in a rasping whisper. “How long must we endure this interminable war?”
Duncan stood, but did not round the desk to approach Alex. There were times, he knew too well, when an ill-chosen word, intended to comfort, could be a man’s undoing instead. “Until it has been won,” he said tautly.
The vast, sprawling house, dating back to the middle of the seventeenth century, seemed to breathe like a living creature, drawing in the first cool breezes since dawn and then expelling them in soft sighs. A goddess of white stone, with the sapphire sea writhing in unceasing worship at her feet, the palatial structure was a haven to Duncan, like the welcoming embrace of a tenderhearted woman. And it gave him solace, that place, as well as shelter.
Alas, he was wedded to his ship, the Francesca, a swift and agile vessel brazenly named for his first lover, the disenchanted wife of a British infantry officer named Sheffield. While the lady had been spurned and sent back to England, years ago, where she languished yet, according to the gossips, in a state of seedy disgrace, her husband remained in the Colonies, waiting, taking each opportunity for revenge as it presented itself.
Duncan tightened his jaw, remembering even though he had schooled himself, through the years, to forget. He rotated his shoulders once, twice, as the tangle of old scars came alive on the flesh of his back, a searing tracery mapping another man’s hatred. He’d been fifteen when Sheffield had ordered him bound to a post in a public square and whipped into unconsciousness.
“Sometimes I wonder,” Alex said, startling Duncan out of his bitter reverie, “whether it’s Mother England you’re at war with, or the lovely Francesca’s jealous husband.”
It was by no means new, Alex’s propensity for mind reading, and neither was Duncan’s reaction. “If you will be so kind,” he said curtly, “as to keep your fatuous and sentimental attempts at mystical wisdom to yourself, I shall be most appreciative.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “I have it,” he said, in the next instant, feigning a rapture of revelation. “We’ll capture Major Sheffield, truss him up like a Christmas goose so he can’t cover his ears, and force him to endure the full range of your vocabulary! He’ll be screaming for mercy inside half an hour.”
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