Pirates (31 page)

Phoebe’s assessment of the situation was, like Duncan’s, considerably less optimistic than Phillippa’s. Basil Stone was not a monster; his fondness for the Rourke family, with the exception of Duncan, of course, had been plain to see. But he was first and foremost a soldier of the King, and he had done his duty as he saw it. Duncan’s escape from Troy would probably make matters worse for those left behind, not better.

“I hope you’re right,” Phoebe said. She felt sick, despondent, and weak and wanted to return to the captain’s cabin, climb into bed, and curl up in a fetal position, but she denied herself that questionable luxury. For the sake of her
child, for her own good and Duncan’s, she would keep putting one foot in front of the other, go on moving and hoping and believing. Eventually, things would get better.

Please God.

Phoebe and Phillippa went below to the galley, where they ate a modest breakfast and talked. Phoebe told her sister-in-law about Paradise Island, spoke of Old Woman and the wonderful, sprawling house overlooking the sea, and even mentioned the child she would bear Duncan in the early spring.

That afternoon, a gathering storm darkened the sky and turned calm blue waters to churning charcoal. Phillippa went green as clover, but she remained on deck, doing what she could to help as the sailors scrambled to secure the ship. In the long days that followed, Phoebe felt a new respect for Phillippa. The girl was naive, but she was as innately courageous as any other member of her family, and her intellect was formidable.

At last, they reached Paradise Island and dropped anchor in the natural harbor well down the shore from the house. Phoebe recalled, with no small sorrow, that a cluster of condominiums would be built here, late in the twentieth century, replacing the dense tropical foliage that grew on the hillsides, driving away the colorful, raucous birds rising now like a living rainbow against the sky. The coral reef would be destroyed, to make swimming and boating easier, forcing the gaudy neon fish to go elsewhere.

Phoebe wished she could hold back the future and keep Paradise Island a secret from the outside world forever.

Duncan was silent as he rowed his sister and wife ashore, leaving the crew to attend to the
Francesca
. Phoebe simply watched him, pondering the mysteries of marriage. Each night, when they were alone at last, and the cabin was immersed in darkness, Duncan had turned to Phoebe, had given and taken comfort in her embrace, and their lovemaking had been as explosive as ever before.

Except that there was no true intimacy, no fusion of souls. Although he was obviously in pain, he took care not to share
his emotions with Phoebe, not to let down his guard again and show her the inner passages of his heart.

She was desolate, but she also felt the angry sting of betrayal. Duncan had trusted her the first night, but then, for some reason she had not been able to discern, he had closed her out.

If Phillippa noticed the strain between her brother and her sister-in-law, and she must have, for she was a bright girl, she gave no sign of it. She chattered incessantly, and when they were near the shore, took off her slippers and stepped over the side to wade happily onto the beach.

Phoebe couldn’t help smiling at Phillippa’s happiness, despite her own bruised feelings. Duncan, on the other hand, sent the rowboat skimming onto the dry white sand, jumped out, and went into the surf after his sister, grabbing her hand and practically dragging her ashore.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he growled, towering over the girl, his hands resting on his hips. “There are sharks in these waters, and venomous eels!”

Phoebe climbed carefully out of the boat, grateful for the feel of solid earth beneath her feet and at the same time furious with her husband. “Duncan …” she began, in protest.

But Phillippa needed no defending, as it happened; she took care of herself in true Rourke fashion. She raised both her small hands and thrust them, palms first, at Duncan’s chest, nearly knocking him off his feet with the unexpectedness of the blow. “I will not be dragged about and shouted at!” she yelled. “Furthermore, I cannot see how a shark or a water snake could possibly be worse company than you are!”

Phoebe applauded and earned herself a furious glance from her husband.

“You stay out of this,” he snapped. Then he turned back to Phillippa, prepared to shake a finger at her and go on with his lecture.

Phillippa was having none of that; she simply walked away, holding her skirts high, moving on swift, bare feet over the hot, sugar-fine sand. “Are you going to let him
treat you like that?” she demanded, looking back at Phoebe and squinting against the dazzling tropical sun.

“Like what?” Duncan demanded, before Phoebe had a chance to respond one way or the other. “Pray, bestow upon me the benefit of your worldly wisdom, little sister, and tell me how I am mistreating my wife!”

Phoebe stepped between them, hoping to put an end to the argument before it could escalate into something that would scare away all the wildlife. “Duncan,” she said calmly, “you are making a fool of yourself. Phillippa, you are the sister I have wished for all my life, but you
will not
interfere in my marriage. Do you both understand, or must I knock your heads together?”

There was a short silence, full of dire portent, but then Duncan scowled and stormed off up the beach, and Phillippa subsided, her shoulders slumping a little, her eyes downcast. After one apologetic glance at Phoebe, she fetched her slippers from the bottom of the rowboat and pulled them on, hopping comically from one sandy foot to the other as she did so.

“I’m sorry, Phoebe,” she said, somewhat breathlessly, as they watched Duncan disappear into the foliage. “I was only trying to help.”

Phoebe linked her arm through Phillippa’s and smiled. “I know,” she said gently. “Duncan is going through something that will one day be referred to as a dark night of the soul,” she went on, ushering Phillippa up the path that would eventually bring them to the great house. “He’ll get over it, I’m sure, being a resilient type. In the meantime, we must simply leave him to work things through on his own.”

Phillippa looked very young and very vulnerable, with her wet skirts, sunburned nose, and teary eyes. “That’s going to be hard,” she said.

“Yes,” Phoebe agreed with a sigh. “I know.”

With that, the two women proceeded to the house, where they were met by a gleeful Old Woman, who embraced them both and led them inside to be fed, provided with baths and fresh clothes, and generally fussed over.

“You seem delighted that Phillippa is here,” Phoebe
remarked to Old Woman hours after their return, when she was in the master bedchamber, newly awakened from a long and much-needed nap. Old Woman had brought cold lemonade, made from springwater and lemons and sugar raised on the island, along with a tray of small sandwiches and pretty cookies. “I suppose you foresaw our arrival in your crystal ball?”

Old Woman took Phoebe’s teasing in her usual good-natured way. “This is a good place for Miss Phillippa,” she said. “She is needed here.”

Phoebe sighed. She was sitting in a chair near the terrace doors, looking out at the sea as she nibbled and sipped the refreshments Old Woman had prepared for her. “You’ve noticed Duncan’s black mood, I expect,” she said. She always put on a front when he was around, never letting him see how much his attitude troubled her, but with her friend she could relax a little.

Old Woman was unfolding and shaking out the contents of Phoebe’s trunk, which had been brought from the
Francesca
while she was sleeping. “There’s a feeling in the air,” she admitted, “like before the sea and the wind get angry. Trouble’s coming.”

Phoebe took a sip of her lemonade. She had no appetite and wouldn’t have touched the food if it hadn’t been for the baby. “Yes,” she agreed. “Trouble is definitely coming. How is Alex doing, by the way?”

Old Woman examined a gown, frowned, and tossed it to one side. “He’s feeling sorry for himself mostly,” she sniffed. “What that boy needs is a good thrashing.”

Phoebe was shocked. “You can’t be serious,” she said. She’d never have dreamed Old Woman, with her gentle tones and mystical ways, was an advocate of violence. “You think someone should strike Alex?”

“He’s got to be straightened out, that one. He wants a talking-to.” Old Woman stopped her sorting for a moment and stood very still, gazing out the window at the water, wearing its sequined mantle of sunlight. “Might go either way, Mr. Alex.”

Phoebe shuddered in the aftermath of a quick, icy chill.
“What do you mean?” she asked, setting her glass on the small table beside her chair and rising quickly to cross the room and stand facing the other woman. “Did you foresee something?” she demanded in an anxious whisper. “Something about Alex, I mean?”

Old Woman was slow in meeting Phoebe’s eyes. When she did, there was compassion in her face, and sorrow. “There’s a chance he’ll come around,” she said. “There’s always hope of that, long as a body can draw breath. But he’s in deep waters, Mr. Alex is, and he’s got to a place where even Mr. Duncan can’t reach him.”

“Isn’t there something we can do?” Phoebe pleaded.

Old Woman smiled sadly and patted Phoebe’s cheek. “You might ask that God of yours to send an angel,” she said. “That’s what Mr. Alex needs now. An angel with a stubborn mind and a hot temper.”

Phoebe was reminded of Phillippa, who certainly had a stubborn mind, as well as a hot temper. It was the angel part that came into question.

Phillippa found Alex Maxwell on one of the downstairs terraces, a crutch leaning against the wall near his chair, one foot propped on a wicker hassock. He didn’t see her at first, which gave her a few moments to admire him, to remember the long-ago days when he had come often to Troy. Alex and her brothers had been great friends, and Phillippa, a child then, had adored Alex and dreamed of marrying him someday. She’d thought he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen, and now, as her heart turned itself inside out, she realized that she still cared for him. In a new and very troubling way.

She almost lost her courage—she, Phillippa Rourke, the most inveterate tomboy in the colony of South Carolina, the despair of a score of English and French governesses—but in the end she forced herself to step over the threshold and speak.

“Alex?” she said, pretending she hadn’t instantly recognized him. Pretending her soul hadn’t twisted itself into a painful knot at the first glimpse.

He turned, and she saw shadows under his eyes, an unnerving gauntness in his face. But if he knew her, he did not reveal the fact.

“It’s Phillippa,” she said gently, noticing his maimed leg, really noticing, for the first time. “Don’t you remember?”

A tattered vestige of the old smile spread across the familiar mouth. She knew those lips from a thousand girlish daydreams. Alex started to rise, grappling for his crutch, then gave up the effort, as if a new and somehow deeper awareness of his disability had just struck him. “Phillippa,” he said, and she saw something broken in his eyes and grieved. “I wouldn’t have recognized you.”

Phillippa ventured out onto the terrace and took a chair near his without waiting for an invitation. Far from feeling confident, she wanted to bolt, to go somewhere and sob because Alex—beautiful, comical, dashing Alex—had been destroyed. Clearly, the injuries to his body were nothing at all compared with those to his soul. “Am I so different?” she asked. “That you wouldn’t know me, I mean?”

Alex stared deeply into her eyes for a long moment, alert for pity, ready to brace himself against it. Then he looked away. “You were an imp,” he reflected, “with grubby hands and skinned knees and pigtails. Yes, Phillippa, you’ve changed—from a freckled little monkey to a very beautiful woman.”

Something surged into Phillippa’s heart; for a second, she thought it would actually burst. She put a hand to her chest and took several deep breaths to steady herself. “You’ve changed, too,” she said when she could speak.

Alex avoided her gaze, but she saw him stiffen and knew her words, meant in the kindest way, had pierced him like a spear. “Yes,” he said at length. “I’m different, too. Tell me, how does my family fare? And yours?”

Phillippa wanted to weep and at the same time to dance along the stone railings of the terrace. She had half expected to see Alex when she reached Paradise Island; where Duncan was, Alex could usually be found as well. What she had
not
anticipated was this agonizing renewal of old feelings,
this awakening of dreams she’d carefully tucked away, long ago, with her dolls and storybooks. She felt a sudden, swift anger because no one had warned her that loving a man could hurt the way it did.

She schooled herself to answer in dignified tones, void of emotion. “My father and Lucas have been arrested by the British,” she said. “I imagine my mother is attempting to secure their release, through official channels, of course.”

Alex gave her his full attention. Evidently, he had not yet seen Duncan, else he would have heard the tale from him. “And Duncan left them?”

“He had to,” Phillippa pointed out. “They wouldn’t be saved. Father and Lucas believe that British rule is best for the colonies, that all the current problems can be worked out. Which brings me to your family. They are well—I saw your mother and father at our party.”

Alex was silent for a long time, gazing through Phillippa, as though she were transparent. That, she found, was even worse than before, when he’d refused to look at her at all and fixed his attention on the sea.

“Duncan must be in a state,” he murmured at last.

“He’s utterly impossible,” Phillippa agreed. Phoebe had warned her not to interfere, which meant she had to keep her opinions to herself, or at least make the effort to do so when her brother and sister-in-law were around. Surely, though, she could confide in Alex, her secret prince, who had saved her from so many dragons and witches and hairy trolls in her musings.

“He will be more so as time passes,” Alex predicted. There was a certain gruff affection in his tone; part of his anger, Phillippa suddenly realized, stemmed from his inability to fight at Duncan’s side, to help his friend through a difficult time. “What of the lovely Phoebe, then? Is she safe and well?”