Pirates (12 page)

Fiercely angry and, at the same time, wildly relieved to learn that that exasperating woman was still alive and making
trouble, Duncan crushed the missive in one hand and then held it to the candle in the middle of the table until it blazed between his fingers. When it had been consumed, he glared at the ashes, as if to ignite them, too, by the heat of his gaze.

“What is it?” asked Alex, who had been moved downstairs to the drawing room, where he had a view of the sea. Physically he was mending, but there was no light in his eyes, and his state of mind worried Duncan deeply, though he was careful to hide the fact. “From the look of you, that dispatch might have been penned by the devil himself.”

Duncan deliberately stilled a muscle leaping in his jaw. He did not believe in striking women, children, dogs, or horses, but at that moment, if he could have gotten his hands on Phoebe Turlow, he’d have throttled her with a smile on his face and a melody in his heart.

“I must go to Queen’s Town,” he said. “Immediately.”

Alex, already pale, turned a grayish white. “
Queen’s Town
? Good God, Duncan, why don’t you just sail to London and present yourself at Court? The effect will be the same, either way—they’ll hang you, and put your head on a pike!”

Duncan left the table, where he had taken a light meal before the message had arrived, hand-delivered by one of Old Woman’s native lads. “I have no choice,” he said. “Phoebe is there.”

Alex cursed roundly. “Well, if she’s a blasted British spy, she’s told them about Paradise Island, and we’re all about to be fitted for the noose!”

“They’d have been here by now, if she’d told them anything,” Duncan said. His instincts, on which his life and those of his men so often depended, assured him that Phoebe was as loyal to the rebel cause as General Washington himself. But she was also a creature of impulse, with a degree of courage unwarranted by her survival skills, and she could easily trust the wrong person. “Don’t worry, my friend—I’ll see to Phoebe.”

By the time the tides changed, a little after ten o’clock that night, Duncan had assembled a minimal crew and was sailing steadily toward the settlement of Queen’s Town,
where there was a price on his head. At dawn, they dropped anchor, a few miles south of the harbor, and Duncan and two of his men rowed for shore.

Phoebe was still in Mistress Bell’s bad graces more than a week after her failure to buy eggs, but at least she hadn’t been fired and sent from the Crown and Lily in disgrace. If that happened, she would be left with only two choices—turning tricks or starving. No one else would hire her—word had gotten around about her propensity for causing grief—and she couldn’t have found her way back to Paradise Island even if she had the faintest idea where it was. So she kept her opinions to herself and steered clear of Major Lawrence whenever he came into the tavern, which he did on a regular basis, and resigned herself to emptying spittoons and slop jars and washing all the mugs and pitchers every night. One day soon, if there was a God in heaven, Mistress Bell would get over being miffed and stop assigning all the nasty jobs to Phoebe.

She was comforting herself with this thought and making her way along the moonlit path to the privy, when a shape loomed suddenly before her like a demon’s shadow. She tried to scream and was wrenched against a hard chest for her trouble. It was little consolation that the chest in question, like the hand over her mouth, was Duncan’s. This was not a friendly visit.

Phoebe struggled, on principle, though a part of her wanted to be captured and carried off to the eighteenth-century equivalent of the Casbah, whatever it might be.

“Silence,” he breathed, close to her ear, stilling her with the sheer power of his grasp. “If we’re caught, I won’t be the only one dangling from a high branch. You’ll be right beside me.”

He had a point. No one would believe Duncan had taken her by surprise; instead, they’d say it was a tryst, that she was his lover and his accomplice, every bit as guilty of treason as he was.

Because she didn’t want to die—and for a few less urgent reasons, too—Phoebe stopped fighting.

I
could lose my job over this,” Phoebe complained, when Duncan had dragged her through shadowy alleyways and down some worn wooden steps into what smelled like a cellar. “I’m still in trouble for visiting Mr. Billington when I should have been buying eggs.”

He struck a flame, using a flint and steel taken from a small tinderbox, and the glow of a single squat candle smoked and wavered in the gloom. “You have already lost your position at the Crown and Lily,” Duncan said flatly, his face craggy in a shifting pattern of darkness and light. “And Sally Bell won’t miss you overmuch, I’ll wager.”

Phoebe hugged herself, because the cramped, musty space was chilly and dank, and because a large, lonely, and very unpredictable world lay beyond those cellar doors slanting at the top of the steps. A person could be riding peacefully in an elevator one moment, and find herself flung into another century in the next. Having read about Mr. Einstein’s theories concerning parallel dimensions was one thing, but experiencing them firsthand was something else. She felt like a cosmic guinea pig.

“You should have left me alone,” she said, as Duncan
removed his dark, tailored waistcoat and laid it gently round her shoulders. “I was doing fine.”

“Oh, wonderfully well,” Duncan responded. His expression was unreadable in that wretched light, but his tone was wry. “So well that you’ve already gotten one man beaten half to death.”

Phoebe stiffened. Whether she spent the rest of her life in this century or returned to her own, she would never forget what had happened to Sergeant Billington, nor ever completely forgive herself for it. “It was an accident,” she said, after taking a moment to swallow the lump in her throat. “What should I have done? Let Major Lawrence have his way with me? I struggled, and the sergeant came to my rescue, and I’m very grateful that he did. However, I didn’t ask him to do it, and I’ll thank you to keep that in mind.”

Duncan rose from the overturned crate on which he’d been sitting—Phoebe’s seat seemed to be a three-legged milking stool—and plundered a cabinet, stirring a cloud of dust. Phoebe sneezed loudly.

“Do be quiet,” Duncan enjoined, returning with a corked bottle and two wooden cups. “We’re supposed to be hiding, in case you haven’t deduced that. But perhaps you wish to signal some British compatriot?”

Phoebe sniffled. “Are we back to that? I’m no spy, Duncan Rourke.”

“Then why did you leave Paradise Island without my permission?”

“Because …” She paused, watching him pour wine into the cups, which he had wiped out hastily with the tail of his finely stitched linen shirt, and accepted one when he held it out to her. “Because I was developing codependent behavior patterns. Toward you.”

“ ’Codependent’?”

“I wanted to take care of you.”

He hesitated, taking a long, elegant swallow from his own cup before replying. “And that is wrong?”

“Not in its purest sense, no,” she said, blushing and, for a moment, dodging his gaze. “But some problems can—and should—only be solved by the person who has them.”
When she looked at Duncan again, she saw that he had arched one dark brow, and he was watching her intently over the rim of his cup.

“And what, by your lights, is this problem I must solve?” he asked.

Phoebe sighed, exasperated. “How should I know?” she countered. “Whatever it is, it makes you play the harpsichord as if you were trying to batter down the gates of heaven itself with a torrent of sound.”

“Or of hell,” Duncan muttered lightly, refilling her wine cup and his own. “You are right,” he allowed after a few moments. And a few thoughtful sips. “It is a private torment, one you can do nothing about. You will only harm yourself by trying.”

Phoebe leaned forward slightly on the milking stool, earnest and probably a bit drunk. Instead of guilt, however, she took a defiant and somewhat reckless pleasure in her inebriation, because in point of fact, after all she’d been through lately, it felt good. Time enough for regrets in the morning, when she would have a headache and a queasy stomach and wonder if it was okay to start the first 12-Step group, even though nobody was supposed to do that until 1935. She made a mental note to leave a journal for her descendants, should she be lucky enough to have any, to buy stock in Xerox, IBM, and Microsoft.

She blinked, hiccoughed, and held out her cup.

Duncan shook his head and took the humble chalice from her, setting it aside on the barrel top, where the greasy candle struggled to sustain light. “Thank you,” he said, with the merest hint of a smile.

“For what?” Phoebe asked, frowning.

“For caring,” he said. “You’re safe with me, Phoebe. I’ll make you a bed, and we’ll set off for safer places as soon as possible.”

She peered, squinting into the darkness that pressed close around them. “Lie down in this place? With rats and mice and spiders everywhere? No way, José.”

Duncan sighed. “I sleep here myself on occasion,” he
said in a reasonable tone. “And I have been unmolested by such vermin.”

Phoebe giggled. Either she’d had an even larger share of the wine than she’d thought, or the stuff had been considerably more potent than the brand she usually bought at the supermarket. “You sleep in a cellar? The illustrious Duncan Rourke?
Why
, for heaven’s sake?”

“Precisely because I am the illustrious—and more than a little notorious—Duncan Rourke. Now, cease your chatter and take rest. Escaping from Queen’s Town might prove quite a challenge, and you’ll need all your strength for it.”

“I’m afraid,” Phoebe confessed.

“That is wise of you,” Duncan retorted, holding up the candle so that it spilled its murky glimmer over a cot with a netting of rope for a mattress, one moth-eaten blanket, and a pillow that looked as if it already provided housing for a family of mice. “I think, in you, a little wholesome fear would be an attribute. It might keep you from doing stupid things—though I confess that’s a rash hope.”

“I’m not lying down on that thing,” Phoebe said. But she was tired, from the wine and a hard day’s work in Mistress Bell’s tavern.

“Here,” Duncan replied, taking her shoulders in gentle hands. “I’ll lie with you. If there’s a rat, I’ll scare him off.”

“Who’s going to scare you off?” Phoebe asked, stifling a yawn even as her loins tightened pleasantly at the thought of sharing a bed, narrow or otherwise, with Duncan.

He chuckled. “The Queen’s Town detachment of His Majesty’s army, if we don’t snuff out this candle and you go on talking.” The flicker of light died, leaving them in utter blackness, but he lowered her expertly onto the cot, and joined her there, tucking her into the curve of his chest, groin, and thighs.

A fierce arousal overtook Phoebe in those moments of intimacy, but something even more primitive was happening to her heart. Tears filled her eyes, because the emotion was too huge to contain, and she was grateful that her back was to Duncan, and that it was dark.

He found her chin with his hand and turned her face
toward him, though, and her traitorous body followed. He kissed her, not eagerly, but as though dragged to her and forced into touching his mouth to hers. A groan—of protest, of loneliness, of need—rumbled up from somewhere deep in his chest, and Phoebe felt the heat and hardness of him against her thigh.

At first, the kiss was a skirmish, but soon it deepened into something more elemental, and their tongues did battle and then mated. Phoebe was lost, though she sensed that Duncan was still struggling, still trying to hold himself back.

“I promised you would be safe with me,” he gasped, when at last the kiss ended.

Phoebe loved Duncan. She realized that fully now, and if she couldn’t say so in plain words, she would tell him with her body. She pulled his shirt up, and slid her hands beneath it, to caress the warm, granitelike flesh of his back and his ribs, the downy wall of his chest. He felt sleek and muscular and very dangerous.

He moaned and lowered his head to conquer her mouth, once more, with his. Phoebe gave a little sob, of desperation and pleasure, and thought if he didn’t take her completely, and soon, she would surely die.

Duncan, though he plainly desired her as much as she did him, would not be hurried. He stripped her expertly, kissing and caressing each curve and hollow of flesh as he uncovered it, and the reverence in his touch made Phoebe feel like a goddess being worshipped. When he took one waiting nipple between his lips, he simultaneously covered her mouth with his palm, anticipating the long, low cry that trembled against the flesh of his hand.

Phoebe arched her back, whimpering softly now, aware of nothing but the sensations Duncan stirred in her as he stroked and suckled and cherished her. She had not known—had never even imagined, even in her hottest fantasies—that lovemaking could be like this.

When he had nourished himself at both her breasts, and she was soaked with perspiration from the hard, sweet work of wanting him, seeking him, straining instinctively to capture him, Duncan removed his own clothing, and then poised
himself over her. She felt his erection at the moist juncture of her thighs and uttered another sob, full of yearning, muffled by his hand.

He kissed her forehead, where tendrils of hair clung to her skin, and whispered to her. “Your body reaches for me,” he said. “But what says your mind, Phoebe Turlow? I’ll have no woman who does not want taking.”

She nodded her head, like someone delirious with fever, and laid her hands to his buttocks, splaying her fingers and urging him to enter her. And she kissed his palm, where it pressed lightly against her lips so that her cries of pleasure would not be heard beyond the walls of the cellar.

Duncan did not torment her further by delaying their joining; he knew she was ripe for him and claimed her in one shattering, explosive stroke.

It was a good thing he’d thought to put his hand over her mouth, for she could not have forestalled the primitive, growling shriek of welcome that seemed to have its beginning in the tips of her toes.