Princess Annie (43 page)

The gallows loomed overhead, and Rafael put one foot in front of the other. He recalled snatches of a ditty he’d learned from his nurse as a child, something about climbing Jacob’s ladder.

At the top of the gallows, a priest waited, but he wasn’t the same man who had married Rafael and Annie. Indeed, Rafael didn’t recall seeing this burly fellow before. He frowned and started to ask his name, but was silenced by a warning look.

Rafael shrugged and began to hum.
We are climbing … Jacob’s ladder …

A clatter on the wooden steps behind him distracted his attention. Rafael turned, along with the hangman and the priest, to see Annie hurtling toward him, covered in dirt from her head to her feet.

He told himself it was a hallucination, but she flung herself into his arms, sobbing, and then he knew she was real. Believing Annie to be safe had been his only consolation, and now even that was gone.

Rafael heard a shot and sank instantly to his knees, thinking he’d been hit. Before he could scream at Annie to run, however, he realized the rope had been severed. There was a scuffle of some sort, and the new wood of the scaffold whined as more bullets struck it.

He screamed Annie’s name and then pitched forward onto his face, knocked insensible by a blow to the back of his head.

“Run, you little idiot!” the priest bellowed, bending to hoist Rafael’s inert frame over one beefy shoulder.

Recognizing her father’s first mate, at long last, Annie obeyed and dashed down the steps of the scaffold. At the bottom, she encountered Josiah Vaughn. He stepped into her path, jaw set, sword in hand.

Chaos was everywhere, for some of Rafael’s defeated soldiers had taken up arms to aid in the rescue, and Annie was well aware that they had only minutes to escape.

“Go ahead, Josiah,” she said, “run me through.”

He glared at her for a long, tense moment, while the priest stood behind her, powerless to help because of his burden. Finally, reluctantly, Josiah stepped aside.

Suddenly, there were horses all around, and Annie was pulled roughly onto an animal’s back. She was too dazed to see much, but she noticed Mr. Barrett nearby, and she heard her father’s voice rasp past her ear.

“You’ll give an accounting for this, Annie Trevarren.”

She didn’t care. “Rafael!” she screamed, struggling to look for him.

Patrick’s arm tightened around her, and the horse bolted toward the main gate, where the portcullis had been raised. “He’s behind us, love,” he said, and then the wind was rushing into her face and the hooves of the horses made a deafening clatter on the drawbridge. There were more shots, too, but the loudest noise of all was the thudding of Annie’s own heart.

Six small boats awaited them near the shore. Patrick rode straight into the surf and lowered Annie into one of the vessels before dismounting and scrambling in himself. She saw Rafael flung, dead or unconscious, into a nearby craft, where Mr. Barrett sat, clasping the oar handles, and she tried in vain to go to her husband. The experienced crew of the
Enchantress
pushed off in speedy unison, and the bullets of the pursuing rebels splashed in their wake.

Only when they’d reached the waiting ship, and rope ladders were being flung over the side, did Annie tear her gaze from Rafael to look up at St. James Keep.

It rose against the sky like a majestic tombstone, a fitting marker for the old ways, and Annie cried tears of mourning and of relief.

“Time to go now,” Patrick said gently, lifting her onto the first rung of one of the ladders.

Annie looked for Rafael, saw that he was safe, and began to climb.

Southern France, Six Weeks Later …

Rafael stood, mostly mended now but still a bit gaunt from his ordeal in Bavia, watching the sunset splash the vineyard with a spectacle of color. Annie was at his side, her arm linked with his, and behind them loomed the huge brick farmhouse that would be their home from then on. The place had belonged to Rafael for years, although he had never actually visited it before bringing his bride there a month before.

“Will you be happy,” Annie asked, knowing the answer, “as a wine-maker?”

He smiled down at her, pressing her arm close against his side, closing his fingers over hers. “Will you be happy as a wine-maker’s wife?”

“Yes,” Annie answered. “All I need is the winemaker.”

Rafael laughed and kissed her forehead, but some sorrow still lingered in his eyes. Beyond the vineyards and the low stone winery, where the great vats and presses, long-abandoned, were being prepared for production, beyond the horizon, lay Bavia, bruised and bleeding. It would be a long time before the wounds were healed—generations, perhaps—and Rafael grieved for all that his people had suffered, and must suffer still. He was thinking of his lost country at that moment, Annie sensed, and she brought his hand to her lips and kissed the knuckles.

“Perhaps someday we’ll be able to go back, Rafael,” she said, hoping to comfort him.

He shook his head, and when his gaze met hers again, his eyes were clear. “No, love. We can only go forward—you know that. The Bavia I loved is gone, if it ever existed at all.”

They turned, making their way over the rough, newly cultivated ground together, through a twilight streaked with crimson and purple and gold. Annie looked forward to the night, which would bring lovemaking, and the morning, and the great tapestry of tomorrows to be woven by their love.

“I had my palm read in the village today,” Annie said, as they neared the house. “By the gypsy woman, Rifka. The butcher claims she’s three hundred years old.”

Rafael pretended fascination. “What did she say?”

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
…

W
hen 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, CRYSTAL-BLUE 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.