Pirates (2 page)

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 toothmarked bowls when an impulse—maybe it was desperation, maybe it was some kind of weird premonition—made Phoebe stop. She carried it to her kitchen table, sat down—wondering all the while why she hadn’t just chucked the thing—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 an intelligent adult. She’d gone through college with zero emotional support from her family and had worked at a responsible job from the day she graduated until
two months ago, when the academic roof had fallen in. She had voted in every election, and she was by no means naive—even if she had married Jeffrey Brewster with her eyes wide open. She knew a tacky advertising scheme when she saw one.

All the same, the prospects of “sunshine” and “crystal blue seas” prodded at something slumbering deep in her heart, behind a bruise and a stack of dusty, broken hopes.

She frowned. And there was that name, too—Duncan Rourke. She’d seen it before—probably while doing research for Professor Benning.

Phoebe rose from the table, leaving the sales flyer spread out on the shiny surface, and took herself to the stove to make 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 quell 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 flyer again, this time very slowly and carefully, one eyebrow raised in skepticism, the fingers of her right hand buried in her short, tousled 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 qualify for a mortgage.

Still, there was nothing in the flyer specifying that buyers had to be preapproved for a loan. 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 very 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, and then she walked over to the phone and punched in the number.

Four hectic days later, Phoebe found herself on board 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 flashing Christmas tree lights. 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 at Nordstrom 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 censuring stare 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 less guilt she would feel afterward.

She tried to sleep and failed, even though she’d lain awake all night worrying, then pulled an ancient thin volume, purloined from Professor Benning’s extensive personal book collection, from her bag. The book, published years and years ago, was entitled
Duncan Rourke, Pirate 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 Charles Town, in the colony of Carolina, to gentle and aristocratic people. His education was impeccable—he spoke French, Italian, and Spanish fluently and had a penchant for the work of 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, the writer hinted, he’d been no slouch in the boudoir, either.

Phoebe yawned. Duncan Rourke, it seemed, had qualified as a 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.

Duncan Rourke sat at the table in his study, full of consternation, affection, and a vast, roiling uneasiness.

The precious letter, penned by Duncan’s sister, Phillippa, and dispatched to him months before by devious and complex means, lay before him, slightly crumpled.

“
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 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 escapades 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 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, swallowing a good many contradictory feelings along with it. “My sister pleads with me to return to the fold and take up my place among His Majesty’s devoted adherents. She implies 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. “Can’t you 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 admired Maxwell—indeed, Duncan had entrusted Alex with his very life on more than one occasion—he would not have forsworn 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 had lived one score and ten years; 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 rum, 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 slightly built, with the ingenuous brown eyes of a fawn and, when vexed, all the subtlety 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, whereas 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, tied back at the nape of his neck 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.

These, given the troubled nature of the times, were many.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said with a weariness that disturbed Duncan greatly, turning at last to face his friend. “I don’t deny that I’ve been foul-tempered 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 aloud, 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, good Christ,” Alex bit out. “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 wrench 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 illchosen 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 mid sixteen hundreds, 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 in a state of seedy disgrace, the gossips would have it, 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 blessed unconsciousness.

“Sometimes I wonder,” Alex said, startling Duncan out of his bitter reverie, “whether’s 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 divining the thoughts of others, 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.”