Pirates (14 page)

Lawrence laughed politely and fled.

“Keep your mouth shut and your head down and listen,” said the blacksmith, the moment the officer was gone. “Duncan is waiting in back, with the horses. If anyone speaks to you, pray be silent, reflecting upon the fact that you are a mute. Should you be stopped, he’ll say he’s escorting you to my brother’s house at the cove. Now, be gone, before you bring me the same kind of trouble you got for that wretch Billington.”

“Thank you,” Phoebe said in a whisper, without raising her eyes. She did not know the smithy’s name, nor did she get a glimpse of his face. A diplomat he was not, but she would always remember his courage.

“Be gone,” he repeated.

Phoebe found Duncan waiting behind the stables and bit her lower lip to keep from blurting out that she was terrified, that she didn’t think she could pull this off, that she was going to be sick all over his boots and that damnable cloak he’d rigged her up in.

He must have felt her trembling when he closed his hands on her waist and lifted her easily onto the horse’s back, where she sat sidesaddle, as a modest lady would. “Everything will be all right,” he said in an undertone. “I promise.”

Phoebe did not point out that he had no way of knowing that—since she was supposed to be a mute. That didn’t stop her from giving him a subtle kick in the shoulder with the toe of one dainty shoe.

He chuckled, under his breath, and handed her the reins. Then he mounted his own horse and rode off, leading the way down the middle of one street and then the other, touching the brim of his tricorne whenever they met a cart or a wagon or another rider. When they encountered a British officer, flanked by seven mounted soldiers armed with muskets and wearing swords, Phoebe’s heart squeezed into her throat and cut off her breath. Duncan rendered a crisp salute, which was returned by the other men, and rode calmly on, making sure Phoebe’s mare stayed just a stride behind his borrowed gelding.

By some miracle, they got out of Queen’s Town proper without being challenged, and several men with fresh horses were waiting just beyond the first bend in the road. Duncan was off the gelding and out of his British uniform in a matter of seconds, quickly pulling on the breeches and shirt that had been brought for him.

“See that the horses get back to the smithy after the sun sets,” he said, and one of the men nodded and rode over to collect the dangling reins of the gelding.

Phoebe did not move or speak, but simply sat there, clinging to the pommel of her saddle, fighting off memories spawned by Duncan’s blithe shedding of his clothes.

“What about the lady, here?” asked another man, and
something familiar in his voice made Phoebe turn her head to look closely at him.

It was Billington, the man who’d been whipped for defending her against Major Lawrence in the tavern that first day. She felt like a character in one of Shakespeare’s plays, doomed to be haunted forever by the ghost of someone she’d brought to an untimely end.

“She stays with me,” Duncan said. “She’s mute, you know, and ashamed of her complexion. Cobb, the smithy, thinks we ought to find her a husband.”

Billington crossed himself and mouthed a prayer that probably included the words “saints preserve us,” but there was a smile in his eyes as he drew nearer Phoebe’s horse and looked up into her face. “Don’t look so surprised, lass,” he said. “I told you I was a traitor. Told you Duncan Rourke would come for you, too, didn’t I?”

“You’re better now?” Phoebe asked in a soft voice. They were the first words she’d uttered since she’d thanked the smithy for his help.

The small but sturdy man rotated his shoulders and made a grimace. “Still a bit sore, I must confess. But I’ll get over it.”

Duncan had mounted another horse. Drawing up alongside Phoebe, he curved an arm around her waist and lifted her on in front of him, so that she was squeezed between the saddle horn and something equally solid. “If you don’t get yourself out of here, one of the good major’s patrols will come along, and you’ll find your belly pressed to the post all over again,” he said to Billington.

“Always a word of inspiration and encouragement for the lesser folk,” Billington retorted, grinning and tossing Duncan a mocking salute. “Whatever would we do without you, Rourke?”

“Probably live long,” Duncan replied, and then he spurred the horse, and he and Phoebe were galloping off the main road and into the trees. She clung to the saddle horn with both hands and uttered a cry of protest when the horse took a low stone fence in a graceful leap.

Duncan did not slow down, let alone apologize. They
rode deeper and deeper into the dense island foliage, and Phoebe was sweating under her clothes and the velvet cape, which was now something the worse for wear. Finally, after more than an hour of hard riding, the beach came into view, so white against the sparkling aquamarine sea that it dazzled the eyes. Phoebe had been expecting a ship—although Duncan hadn’t said so, she was sure he meant to take her back to Paradise Island and leave her in Old Woman’s keeping—but the only vessel in sight was a canoe resting on the sand.

“We’re not going all the way back in
that
?” she asked, as Duncan eased her gently to the ground before dismounting himself.

Duncan shrugged and pulled the bridle off over the horse’s head. “She’s seaworthy,” he said. “It was she, after all, who brought you here.”

“Now I really am going to be sick,” Phoebe said. And she was.

D
uncan paddled the canoe expertly along the shoreline, while Phoebe huddled in the bottom, gazing over the side. The water was clear, and exotic yellow and black fish darted beneath the surface, sometimes mingling with blue ones that looked as though they’d swallowed strips of neon. Once in a while a jellyfish would waft by, like a dancer in pale chiffon, its vital organs clearly visible through its transparent skin.

Phoebe identified with that vulnerable creature, for whenever she risked a glance at Duncan, she caught him studying her, as if he could watch her heart beating, see her lungs filling with air and then deflating. As if he could look upon that deep and secret place inside her, still thrumming in response to his lovemaking, even though hours had passed.

“How is Alex?” she asked, mildly ashamed because she hadn’t thought to ask until now.

Duncan watched the tip of one paddle rise from the water, shedding sparkling droplets of water, and then plunge in again, never slackening his smooth, even pace. “His body is mending,” he said without looking at her. “Alex is there, physically, but it’s as if his spirit has already gone on. He
might have dug a grave and crawled into it, for all the interest he shows in anything or anyone around him.”

Phoebe started to trail her hand in the water, remembered a graphic scene from a shark movie, and wrenched it back. She’d rolled the elegant cloak, now dusty and snagged, into a cushion, and it was all that kept her bottom from forming a wedge between the tapering sides of the canoe. “Alex needs time,” she said gently. “He’s grieving for what he’s lost—for his leg and for the man he’ll never be again, and for all the things he won’t be able to do anymore—but that’s perfectly natural. You can’t expect him to shrug and say, ‘Oh, well, I’ve still got one good leg, haven’t I, so why make a fuss about the other?’ He’s sorting through his feelings, Duncan, and that’s a lengthy, complicated process.”

At last Duncan met her gaze, and she saw a terrible sorrow in his eyes, but something else, too. The beginning of hope, perhaps.

“How is that you can be so wise. Mistress Phoebe, and still get yourself into such difficulties?”

She lowered her head, to hide the glow of pleasure his words had caused. Her self-esteem had taken a beating, because of the divorce and the job she’d lost in the twentieth century, and the suffering she’d brought to Mr. Billington in that one. Duncan’s compliment, backhanded though it was, had restored some of Phoebe’s faith in herself.

“It’s just that I believe in taking risks,” she answered, after some thought, because she wanted to hold onto her new reputation for being astute. “And when you do that, you make a lot of mistakes. Still, I wouldn’t want to live any other way.” She paused and smiled broadly, confident, at least, of her philosophy. “A certain amount of caution is appropriate, of course, but that can so easily turn to cowardice.”

Duncan said nothing. He just smiled in that slanted way that made Phoebe’s heart pound and kept paddling, his eyes scanning the horizon and then the shore, one after the other.

Some of Phoebe’s delight faded. “But then, things happen that make you wish you’d stayed in bed and never troubled yourself to attempt anything.”

“What things?” Duncan asked.

“I’ll never get over what happened to Mr. Billington,” she confessed.

“As you said, that wasn’t your fault. Besides, he’d do it all over again, would Jessup, and so would you, so why torment yourself with the whys and wherefores of the matter?”

Phoebe considered. “You’re right. There’s no point in stewing over it. Still, if you could have seen his back—”

“I did,” Duncan interrupted, his tone quiet, clipped, unemotional. “There can be no denying that the work of the lash is ugly to look upon. Feeling it, of course, is even worse.”

She stared at him. “Are you telling me that you’ve been whipped yourself?”

“I’m not telling you anything,” Duncan responded. “Except that I wish you’d rest your tongue for half an hour. I have some thinking to do.”

How brief, Phoebe thought, is glory. Five minutes before, she’d been wise. Now she felt like a child who’d been misbehaving in church.

She turned her attention back to the fish.

Presently, a dolphin flashed beneath the boat and surfaced on the starboard side, nodding and chattering, its smooth gray flesh gleaming in the sunshine.

Phoebe laughed, delighted, and the animal seemed to know it had pleased her and it began to caper and cavort, for all the world as if it were showing off. When she applauded, the creature redoubled its efforts, and once it swam within touching distance. Its flesh felt hard and smooth under Phoebe’s palm, like the outer rind of a watermelon.

The dolphin dove, sounded with breathtaking grace, and then vanished.

Duncan didn’t speak, but when Phoebe glanced at him, she saw that he was smiling. There was no need for him to explain his love of the sea and all its creatures; suddenly, it shone in his eyes like sunlight reflected off the water.

He must have noticed the changes in the weather long before Phoebe did. By the time clouds had gathered, marring
the aquamarine sky with smudges of glowering black, and the waves supporting the canoe began to play rough, the sleek craft was already gliding swiftly toward the nearest beach.

Phoebe didn’t ask whether they were putting in on the same island, south of Queen’s Town, or another. She simply clasped the sides of the boat with both hands and watched Duncan’s face, which was grim with concentration.

The first warm, pattering drops of tropical rain drenched them and made pockmarks on the unsettled water, plastering their hair flat against their heads and drenching their clothes in a matter of moments. The canoe was filling up by the time it rammed onto the sand, and Duncan shouted at Phoebe to get out and take cover.

She leaped out and ran scrambling up the beach, to watch from under a fragrant, dripping tree while he dragged the boat out of the angry surf, over the sand, and into the shelter of Phoebe’s tree. The rain made a deafening roar, thundering upon the sea, the land, and every broad leaf in that island jungle.

Duncan pulled Phoebe farther into the foliage, and she noticed for the first time that he was carrying her cloak, still rolled into a bundle and, miraculously, quite dry.

“Wrap this around you!” he shouted, to be heard over the rising storm.

Phoebe complied without comment. The foliage was thick in the small grotto they found, and the trees made a canopy over their heads, keeping out most of the rain.

Duncan found some dried twigs and leaves and drew his tinderbox from the pocket of his sodden breeches. After a few tries, he had a small fire going and fed it with what bits of wood he could find.

Phoebe, who hadn’t realized that her teeth were chattering until she saw the first flames, drew close to the blaze.

“I’m going to find some fresh water,” Duncan told her in a raised voice, and she saw that he carried a canteen on a strap over his shoulder and a cap-and-ball pistol in his belt. She hadn’t noticed any such gear in the boat, which only
meant, she concluded, that she ought to pay closer attention. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She nodded and, when he was gone, stood up and peeled off her wet clothes and wrapped herself in her trusty cloak. The fire was hungry, and she fed it old, crumbling pieces of driftwood, carried inland by some earlier storm, no doubt, and the flames crackled with happy greed.

Duncan had been gone an hour, at the very least, before she started to get worried. Suppose he’d fallen into a pit and broken a leg? Or been captured by cannibals? She was just about to put her wet clothes back on and go looking for him when he appeared, looking pleased with himself.

He’d found an ancient tin bucket somewhere, and there were two large crabs scrabbling around inside it.

Phoebe wrinkled her nose. She’d grown up in Seattle, so she liked seafood, but she was generally opposed to eating things that tried to climb out of the cooking pot. “Didn’t you see any fruit or berries?”

Duncan rolled his eyes. “There is no pleasing a woman. If you want to graze like a deer, then suit yourself. I have other intentions.”

He left the crabs in Phoebe’s care—they blundered and crawled over one another inside a shallow pit surrounded by stones—and she considered setting them free. In the end, however, she decided it was a risk she didn’t care to take.

Duncan returned, made sure his captives hadn’t escaped, and set the pail, now filled with water, in the edge of the fire. That done, he untied the tail of his shirt and allowed half a quart of gooey red berries to splatter into Phoebe’s lap.

She looked at them for a few moments, then glumly popped one into her mouth. “Thanks,” she said.