Pirates (8 page)

“I am not a wife,” she said. “Or a mother. I’m simply a wayfarer, thought to be a spy or a pirate’s mistress.”

Old Woman smiled complacently. “You not a wife yet, neither a mother. But you will be. No telling, though, which will come first.”

T
here seemed to be no point in questioning her fate, or resisting it—Phoebe had already concluded that this new life she’d been thrust into was more interesting, if more dangerous, than the one she’d left behind. Then Old Woman took her to the laundry room, which occupied a vast and mildewy chamber in the cellar—Phoebe glanced about furtively for any sign of the vanished elevator—and pointed to a vat of steaming water and a pile of cotton shirts.

“If you going to manage this house,” she told Phoebe, “you got to know its ways. Mr. Duncan, he like to be clean all the time, and his clothes has to be washed and pressed real regular-like.”

Half a dozen other women were working in that unbearably hot place: Three were old, greeting Phoebe with toothless smiles, but the others were closer to her own age or younger, and they looked at her with curiosity but no visible trace of friendliness. One, a tall, lithe creature with the sandalwood skin and black hair of a native, contrasted by wide hazel eyes, tossed the pair of breeches she’d been scrubbing into a tub of soapy water and crossed the room to face the new arrival. She smiled, obviously aware that she
was beautiful, but her expression was hostile as she took in Phoebe’s short hair and ill-fitting, borrowed clothes.

“You go on back to your washing, Simone,” Old Woman said.

Simone didn’t move, except to put her hands on her hips. She was exotic in her bright yellow sarong, and Phoebe felt somehow fraudulent, like an insecure actress ad-libbing a part, or a little girl dressed up in her mother’s clothes.

“This be the witch-woman,” Simone said, in a speculative drawl. “The one that came out of nowhere.”

Phoebe opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Old Woman gave Phoebe a subtle shove toward the washtubs, though her words, like before, were directed to Simone. “No more than you are,” she retorted. “Don’t you be devilin’ this child, either, girl. I hear of such a thing, I’ll take off some of your hide with a switch.”

How to win friends and influence people
, Phoebe thought, and offered a faltering smile before stealing a swift glance at the other women in the laundry. They were all concentrating pointedly on their various tasks—pressing, sorting, scrubbing, and mending—but most likely every ear was tuned to the unfolding drama in the center of the room.

Simone curled her lip, turned with a flourish, and went back to her tub, where she snatched another pair of breeches out of the water and pounded it against the washboard with a vengeance.

Old Woman ignored the girl and whispered to Phoebe, “You can keep me company in the kitchen if you’d rather.”

Phoebe shuddered. She was not a cook. “I’ll earn my keep like everyone else,” she said, with some bravado, and approached the untended tub. There was a small mound of dirty stockings on the floor beside it.

Moments later, Old Woman was gone, and Phoebe was alone with the others. Biting her lower lip, she turned and saw that except for Simone, they were all watching her, some with wary interest, some with indifference. It didn’t take a nuclear physicist to guess that Simone cared for Duncan, and that she probably saw the mysterious newcomer as a rival for his attentions. He, as lord of the manor in particular
and no doubt of all he surveyed in general, might well have given the beautiful laundress reason to believe he returned her devotion.

Maybe he did.

Phoebe’s shoulders slumped a little at the thought. With a sigh, she gathered up the small mountain of stockings and dumped them into the assigned tub. She owed a debt to Old Woman and, indirectly, to Duncan, and if she could offset it by washing socks, that was fine with her.

She did not wish to be obliged to either of them. Besides, if Simone could do this work, so could she.

Scrubbing, rinsing, and wringing, Phoebe occupied her hands with menial labor while her mind reeled from one wild, unworkable plan to another. The past had become her future, while she wasn’t looking, and until further notice, she had to make her way in a strange, antiquated environment. Whatever Old Woman’s fancies might be, and Simone’s suspicions, Phoebe had no intention of living out her days as a prisoner on Paradise Island, laundering the master’s socks.

As much as she wanted to be near Duncan, she was neither his mistress nor his servant, and she would not be at his beck and call. Furthermore, being a history buff, she wanted a look at the outside world. It wasn’t every day that a person stumbled into another century.

Phoebe racked her brain for a plan to get off the island. After twenty minutes or so, she was soaked with steam and sweat, her hair plastered to her cheeks and neck and forehead, and no closer to a sensible escape scheme than before. Then something cold and wet struck her across the back.

Even before she turned to face her adversary, Phoebe knew who it was, and she armed herself with a sodden stocking. Furious, she swung it at Simone, who was still holding the drenched shirt she’d just wielded; striking the other woman’s right cheek, it made a satisfying
thwack
sound.

Simone retaliated, and Phoebe, her pride stinging, snatched another piece of laundry from a tub and hurled it with all her strength.

Both Simone and Phoebe were in deadly earnest, but the others shrieked with laughter as they joined the skirmish, and soon shirts and sheets and stockings and breeches were flying in every direction. Pandemonium reigned for a time—washtubs were overturned, and the combatants slipped in spilled water and tangled their feet in spent ammunition, and finally everyone was breathless, and there was nothing left to throw.

Simone was wet to the skin, and so was Phoebe. They stood staring at each other for a long moment, gasping in the midst of soapy carnage, and then, at one and the same time, they began to laugh.

Old Woman swept in, drawn by the shrieking ruckus, and was plainly not amused. Phoebe was ordered from the room in disgrace—“What will Mr. Duncan say if you catch a chill and die? You just tell me that!”—while Simone and the others were roundly scolded in the swift, musical dialect of the island.

In her room, Phoebe stripped to her skimpy chemise—recovered from the same shipwreck as the dress, no doubt—and dried her hair with a rough towel taken from the washstand. Presently, there was a light knock at the door and, at Phoebe’s invitation, Old Woman entered.

“Simone loves Duncan, doesn’t she?” Phoebe asked, before her fairy godmother could tell her what she already knew—that she’d behaved like an adolescent in the laundry room.

“Yes,” came the succinct reply. A somber black skirt, plain cotton blouse, and the accompanying antique undergarments were produced from the armoire and extended to Phoebe.

Obediently she accepted the dry clothes and stepped behind the changing screen to put them on. “Is she his mistress?” The answer was ridiculously important to Phoebe, though she intended to go away, and she would have given anything not to feel the way she did.

“You’d best ask Mr. Duncan about that.”

Phoebe was glad she was out of sight, because the mere suggestion of bringing up such a topic turned her cheeks
scarlet. “It would be simpler to ask Simone,” she ventured, wriggling into lace-trimmed drawers and a petticoat, then reaching for a camisole.

“You won’t get the truth from that one,” Old Woman said flatly. “She’s like you—she don’t have the first idea what’s inside her own heart.”

Phoebe peered around the edge of the screen, fastening the tiny buttons of her blouse as she spoke. “You’re not fooling me, you know. By the way you talk, I mean. It’s colorful, and all that, but I can tell when somebody is putting me on.”

Amusement sparkled in Old Woman’s liquid eyes, along with the keen and kindly intelligence she couldn’t hide. “Reckon I’ll set you to hoeing and weeding, since you’re not good at washing clothes.”

“You changed the subject,” Phoebe pointed out.

“So did you,” Old Woman replied.

Phoebe spent the remainder of the day in the vegetable garden, wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat given her by Old Woman, and when she was finally called to supper, she was so tired that she couldn’t eat. She climbed the stairs laboriously, every muscle aching in concert, stripped off her skirt and blouse, and collapsed onto the bed with a piteous groan. Even her eyelids throbbed, and she lowered them, wanting to lose herself in the painless oblivion of sleep.

“Everything hurts,” Phoebe said when she heard the door of her room open and then close again. She wanted Old Woman to know she was suffering and feel guilty for it. “Has horse liniment been invented yet?”

Silence.

Phoebe opened her eyes. Simone, not Old Woman, was standing beside the bed, and she was frowning. This time, however, her expression was one of puzzlement, rather than poisonous dislike.

“Let me see your hand,” she said.

Phoebe sat up, but made no move to comply with Simone’s request. “I’d appreciate it if you’d knock, next time you stop by,” she remarked.

Simone reached out and closed strong brown fingers
around Phoebe’s callused ones, bent, and peered into her palm. She murmured something, and tears brimmed in her strange, pale eyes.

Phoebe pulled free, but not because she was afraid. Instead of fear, she felt sympathy. And the beginnings of friendship. “Short lifeline, huh?”

Simone covered her mouth with one hand and turned away. She did not leave the room, but instead went to stand gazing out the windows, toward the sea. Phoebe knew without asking that the other woman was watching for Duncan and wondering if he was safe; she wondered, too, and missed him, though she had no right.

She stood, but did not approach Simone. “He’ll be back,” she said.

“Yes,” Simone responded after a pause, without turning to face Phoebe. “And you will be here, waiting for him.”

Phoebe’s heart was soft, had always been so, and it ached just then. Not for herself, but for this woman who was, by tacit agreement, no longer an enemy. “Duncan doesn’t even like me,” she felt compelled to say. “He thinks I’m a spy.” At last, Simone left the windows, and though she kept her distance, she looked Phoebe in the face. “He will take you for a wife,” Simone said, with dignity and pride, but no rancor. “Many children wait to be born. But he’ll come to my bed, too, and I shall give him sons and daughters as well—as many as you.”

Phoebe was a misplaced person, on a cosmic scale. She had no reason to think she would stay in the eighteenth century, or in her delusion, if that was what it was. She was attracted to Duncan, but she did not love him, and she had no claim on his loyalties. In fact, it seemed he could barely tolerate her.

The sensible thing to do was leave.

But for all that, Phoebe was certain of one thing: If she ever married again, no husband of hers, be he Duncan Rourke or anyone else, would ever go to another woman’s bed. She’d had enough of that kind of humiliation and hurt with Jeffrey.

“No,” she replied with a shake of her head, and though
she did not elaborate, it was plain that Simone understood and saw the assertion as a challenge. With a smile and a shrug of one elegant shoulder, Phoebe’s guest left the room.

In the morning, Phoebe returned to the garden.

By noon, she was hoping to make a quantum leap back to the future, just so she could escape the hot sun and that wretched hoe, but nothing happened. Weeds grew and flourished before her very eyes, it seemed, and Old Woman assigned her the same task the next day, and the next, and the one after that.

And Phoebe worked, because anything was better than sitting around, waiting. Wondering what would happen.

Two full weeks passed, during which Phoebe hoed and watered and weeded and, for purposes of personal entertainment as much as anything else, plotted her escape from Paradise. At night, she waited to be beamed up—
there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home
, she repeated over and over again like a litany—but evidently, the time wizard wasn’t paying attention. She awakened each morning in 1780, and mingled with her disappointment, always, was a touch of relief.

One day, she was bent double, pulling quack grass out of the turnip patch, when her heart gave a sudden flutter of warning. She rose, holding her bonnet in place with one hand, and saw Duncan standing at the edge of the garden, watching her. A smile crooked the corner of his mouth and flickered in his eyes.

Phoebe felt a tug, deep down in a part of herself she’d never explored, never been conscious of before, and barely kept from running across the rows of carrots and potatoes and string beans to fling her arms around his neck and sob for joy merely because he was alive. On some level, she realized, she’d feared that he would not return.

“I started in the laundry room,” she said, knowing the words were ridiculous even as she uttered them and speaking anyway because she couldn’t endure the silence. “That didn’t work out, so I was transferred to the veggie detail.”

Duncan laughed and shook his head. He was impossibly attractive, tall and sun-bronzed, with broad shoulders and
the clean, briny smell of the sea about him. “I have yet to discern which language you speak,” he said. “Not the King’s English, to be sure.”

Phoebe smiled, but she was already counting the nights Duncan had been at sea, and picturing him in Simone’s arms, making up for lost time. The image turned the pit of her stomach ice-cold, and her heartbeat outran itself and skittered painfully. “No,” she said. “I speak the American version, circa 1995.”

Duncan looked solemn, all of the sudden, and boneweary. Certainly her presence was as much a mystery to him as it was to her, and he plainly did not like unsolvable riddles. It was a pity he couldn’t simply write her off as crazy and go on about his business, but of course her watch and driver’s license and other wondrous possessions complicated matters.

“You are well?” he asked, at last. It meant something, she supposed, that he lingered, but she couldn’t guess what. Maybe he was still trying to come up with a rational explanation.