Pirates (32 page)

Phillippa had that much good news to offer, at least. She smiled. “Phoebe is going to be a mother,” she confided, blushing. It was unseemly to speak of such things in mixed company, according to her long line of vanquished governesses,
but this was Alex. She could say anything to him. “I think she’s very happy about it.”

Another pause, full of meanings Phillippa could not quite grasp. “And Duncan?” He spoke gruffly, almost abruptly. “How is he taking this momentous news?”

Phillippa hesitated. “I think he’s afraid to be too pleased,” she said. “Besides, he has a lot on his mind.”

Alex merely nodded, and Phillippa was not to know if the conversation would ever have gone further, because Duncan spoiled everything, in that way elder brothers have. All he had to do was appear in the terrace doorway, looming there like a stormcloud sculpted to the shape of a man.

“Go and eat your supper, Phillippa,” he said.

For Phoebe’s sake, Phillippa held her tongue and marched into the house. She consoled herself with the theory that she wasn’t really obeying her officious brother’s command, she was having supper because she was hungry, and for no other earthly reason. Duncan had his share of gall, she reflected furiously, calling the
King
a tyrant.

Alex looked thinner, weaker, a man of sorrows caving in upon himself. Duncan’s discouragement deepened immeasurably at the sight of his friend, and he had been harsh with Phillippa because of it. He promised himself that he would find her later and apologize.

“I hear you are to be a father,” Alex said, without looking at Duncan. At Phillippa’s departure, he had taken a glass from the table next to his chair and filled it from a decanter. “Rum,” he explained unnecessarily. “The scourge of all pirates.”

“I’ll take some of that,” Duncan replied, and Alex accommodated him by pouring a second glassful and extending it to his friend.

“Are we celebrating,” Alex inquired, after taking a deep draft, “or commiserating?”

“Time will tell,” Duncan said. He raised his glass, even though Alex wasn’t looking, and tossed the rum back in a single swallow. His eyes watered and his throat burned and he wondered, briefly, when he’d turned into an old maid who couldn’t handle a simple shot of good contraband liquor.
“How have you been feeling, my friend? As if I didn’t know.”

“I’m rotting, from the soul out, like a piece of fruit fallen from the branch,” Alex answered. The lack of emotion in his voice indicated that he believed the grim analogy.

Duncan refilled his glass and went to stand at the marble railing, looking out at the sea. Usually, the sight renewed him, lent him strength, but that night it was merely a meaningless mass of water, just something that was there. “Perhaps it might help the situation,” he said presently, “if you would rise off your self-pitying ass and make yourself useful in some way.”

“Harsh words,” Alex commented tonelessly.

Duncan would have preferred for his friend to fling his glass at him, to bellow insults or throw a punch, as he would have done in the old days. Of course none of those things happened, because all the fight had gone out of Alex Maxwell. He had died, Alex had, the day a British musket ball had shattered his knee; what Duncan saw, what they all saw, was merely his corpse. Moving by reflex, carried about by the memories of his nerves, like a beheaded chicken dashing around the chopping block.

“Christ, Alex,” Duncan muttered, “you picked a hell of a time to give up.”

“I know,” Alex said. The shame in his voice struck Duncan between the shoulder blades like a mace. “I’m in pieces.” Duncan heard the clink of glass against glass as Alex took another dose of rum. “Can’t seem to gather myself back into the old shape.”

Duncan finished his drink. He would have another, he supposed, and another after that. But alone, in the privacy of his study, with nothing but the harpsichord for company. He’d have preferred to go to Phoebe, to tell her he didn’t know what to do, to weep in her arms and spend himself in her exquisitely receptive body, but like Alex, he was ashamed. He’d allowed her to see his weaknesses once before—what blessed solace that had been—but he couldn’t afford to do it again. For all their gentle philosophies, women wanted strength in a man, not fragility. If he showed
that side of himself to Phoebe again, she might stop loving him, and if that happened, he would be utterly lost.

What a hypocrite he was, Duncan reflected bitterly. He could not admit to Phoebe that he loved her, even now, and yet he feared the loss of her affection for him above all things. The whip, the hangman’s noose, the judgment all men must one day face, none of that frightened him overmuch. But one small woman held his heart, his very being, in her hands, and had the power to crush him like a clod of dry dirt.

“We are a sorry pair, you and I,” he said to Alex. “Perhaps the world would be better if we simply crawled into our graves and pulled the sod over our heads like a blanket.”

“The idea appeals to me,” Alex replied, his words somewhat slurred now, as he got down to serious drinking. “You, on the other hand”—he paused to belch ignobly—“have a child on the way. Nothing for it, old friend—you’ll have to grow up now, and stop dashing about, playing at being a pirate.”

“What about you, Alex?” Duncan asked, turning around, setting his empty glass on the chair-side table with a resounding crash. “When will you pull your thumb out of your mouth and comport yourself like a man?”

Alex offered no reply.

Phoebe lay awake and alone in the master bedchamber, long after full darkness had fallen and a deep silence had settled over the house. When the music shattered that uneasy peace, she did not know whether to be relieved or heartbroken. She listened to her husband play his furious, terrible music, and concluded that she was a little of both. Duncan had found an outlet for his grief, and it was a comfort to know that, but she despaired, too, because he had not come to her.

She was awake, many hours later, when Duncan entered their room. Although he had left the harpsichord some time before, it was plain that he’d been attempting to drown his demons in alcohol.

He stripped and stretched out beside her on the bed, but did not reach for her. Although Phoebe would have refused him—making love to a drunk was not on her list of wifely duties—she was still aggrieved that he didn’t even try to touch her.

She supposed that made her as crazy as he was.

Sunny and uneventful days passed, rapidly turning to sunny and uneventful weeks, and Phoebe began to gain weight and to throw up promptly at eight o’clock every morning. If she’d ever had any doubts that she was pregnant, those misgivings were gone with her waistline. Duncan was as uncommunicative as ever, gone all day and hammering at the harpsichord half the night, like Zeus flinging thunderbolts from his fingertips. Sometimes, he tried to drink himself into unconsciousness, and succeeded admirably, but on other occasions, he came sober to Phoebe’s bed and asked her to take him inside her, and she did not refuse him. Their lovemaking was as tempestuous, as fiercely satisfying, from a physical standpoint at least, as it had ever been. Emotionally, however, Phoebe felt abandoned, untouched, and most especially, unloved.

Alex grew worse with every passing day, despite regular visits from both Phoebe and Phillippa. Phoebe could not reach him, and neither could Duncan, but Phillippa often succeeded in making the patient so angry that he flung things and shouted injunctions to “leave him the bloody hell alone.” These outbursts only seemed to encourage Phillippa to torment him further.

Then some of Duncan’s men, spies he had left behind in South Carolina, arrived on Paradise Island, and they brought Margaret Rourke with them.

She was the picture of dignity and grace as she approached the front entrance of Duncan’s house. Margaret’s younger son awaited her on the veranda—Phoebe and Phillippa were watching from a ground-floor window—as she made her way up the curving walk and then the glistening white marble steps to face Duncan.

Duncan made no move to embrace her—as far as Phoebe
could tell, from her admittedly awkward vantage point—he didn’t even smile. She knew, and hoped Margaret did as well, that it was shame that kept him from greeting her properly, and not a lack of affection.

“What news do you bring?” he asked. Phillippa and Phoebe strained to catch the words.

Margaret stood straight and tall. Despite the sultry island heat, she was wearing a hooded cloak over her traveling clothes. “I have borne my journey well,” she said, when he failed to inquire. “But I am weary, and in need of hospitality.”

Duncan descended the steps very slowly, and something in the set of his broad shoulders made Phoebe’s heart ache. She and Phillippa dashed for the front door, which stood open, lest they miss whatever might come next.

When they reached their destination, however, Duncan had drawn Margaret into a brief embrace and was just releasing her.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said, as he turned to lead her into the house. He scowled to find his wife and sister filling the doorway, eavesdropping without compunction. “The seas are dangerous these days.”

Phoebe hovered, grasping the door frame, while Phillippa rushed to hurl herself into her mother’s arms.

“Mama,” the woman-child cried. “It’s terrible! Alex is here, and he’s been shot, and he won’t let himself get well …”

Margaret held her daughter, there on the veranda of Duncan’s grand house, her gaze moving from Phoebe’s face to Duncan’s in silent question. Duncan started to speak, then expelled an exasperated breath and went inside, favoring Phoebe with a scathing glance as he passed. Margaret came next and paused to kiss her daughter-in-law lightly on the cheek, her arm linked with Phillippa’s.

“My dear, strong Phoebe,” Margaret said. “You’re as much a Rourke as any of us, and suffering for it, I’ll wager.”

Phoebe smiled sadly and cast one brief, sorrowful glance after her departing husband. Then she focused her full attention
on their weary guest, who had traveled far and braved many perils to be with them. “Come inside and rest,” she said. “Phillippa, do go and ask Old Woman to please prepare a room and something to eat.”

“Knowing her,” Phillippa sniffled, regaining her composure now that she’d given vent to her frustration over Alex, “she’s already done all that and more.” But she hurried off to do Phoebe’s bidding, after squeezing Margaret’s hand once in parting.

Phoebe escorted her mother-in-law into Duncan’s study, usually the coolest room in the house. He was there, as she had thought he would be, leaning against the edge of his desk, arms folded, expression unreadable, waiting.

He nodded formally to his mother and wife as they took seats, Phoebe settling on the leather settee after Margaret had dropped gracefully into a wing-backed chair. It was, Phoebe supposed, an acknowledgment of sorts, but she was left with a bereft feeling, as though Duncan had grasped her shoulders and set her out of his path. Both literally and figuratively.

He invited Margaret to speak with a gesture some would have considered insolent, probably without being able to say why.

Margaret flinched slightly, as if he’d struck her, then raised her chin and folded her aristocratic hands, longfingered and graceful ones, disposed, like Duncan’s, toward the making of music, in her lap. “Troy has been confiscated by the Crown,” she said, and the faintly defiant note in her voice was the only indication of her anger, which must have been profound. “Your father and Lucas are being transported to London, there to be tried and no doubt cast into prison. I have attempted to secure justice through the magistrates, and I have failed. Therefore, I mean to go to England and seek audience with the King himself. Is that direct enough for you, Duncan?”

He was reeling inwardly, though there was no outward sign of it. Phoebe was aware of his true reaction only because she knew him so well, and she suspected that Margaret did, too.

“My God,” Duncan rasped at long last. “You expect to reason with that pox-ridden madman? As for Father and Lucas, they’ll rot in Newgate or some other filthy hole before they get a fair trial from that lot!”

“I do not think your father will survive long enough to be imprisoned,” Margaret said quietly. Phillippa had just entered with a tray, which she promptly dropped, sending glassware and silver crashing to the floor. She uttered a strangled scream and then started to swoon, though Duncan caught her and lifted her into his arms before she reached the floor.

Phoebe was off the settee in an instant. “Put her here,” she said.

Margaret rose from her chair and went to stand over her daughter, laying a gentle hand on Phillippa’s forehead. “Ask yourself, child,” she commanded softly, “how your father would want you to behave in this crisis. And then act accordingly, for his sake as well as your own.”

Phillippa opened her eyes, which were brimming with tears. “Oh. Mama, I cannot bear it—I cannot.”

“You must,” Margaret said. She spoke with unshakable firmness, but there was no cruelty in her manner or her tone. She loved her daughter, as she obviously loved her husband and sons, and she was determined to see things through, whatever fate might hold. In the meantime, she would maintain her composure, and she expected each member of her family to do the same.

“What ship carries them to England?” Duncan asked, the sharpness of his voice puncturing the moment.

Margaret turned and met his gaze stalwartly. “They are aboard the
Northumberland
,” she said. “You must not try to intercept this vessel, Duncan. I came here to ask your help in reaching the King, not to inspire a fool’s errand.”

Duncan did not reply. He simply strode out of the room, and minutes later, the clamorous peals of a brass bell shattered the serenity of the island. It was the signal for his crew to man the
Francesca
and fit her out to sail.

T
he
Northumberland
proved easy to track, but then, her captain had intended it so. What the British had not anticipated, or so Duncan hoped, was finding a disabled Dutch trading ship in their sea-lane, listing to starboard and taking on water. Everything—the
Francesca
, his own life, the lives of his crew—depended on the success of this deception, flimsy as it was. To board the
Northumberland
, they must lure her alongside. If her officers guessed that a trap yawned before them, they would simply turn their cannon on the already foundering ship and finish her with a few rounds of grapeshot.