Pirates (21 page)

When Duncan had made himself presentable again, bent over the berth to kiss Phoebe’s forehead, and left the cabin, she got up, took a sponge bath of her own, and donned another of the shipwrecked woman’s dresses.

“He knows,” Simone accused, the moment Phoebe stepped into the hold at suppertime, carrying a plate of hot food, a fork, and a ewer filled with fresh coffee, the latter being a luxury only smugglers and pirates possessed. “You went and told Duncan about me.”

Phoebe put the plate and ewer down carefully on top of a crate and laid the fork in perfect alignment with the other things, as though setting the table for a fancy dinner party. “I didn’t tell him,” she declared in a thin but earnest tone of voice. “Not exactly.”

“ ‘Not exactly’?” Simone echoed pointedly, but she took up the fork and began to eat.

“You must be dying to take a walk,” Phoebe said. “And how do you go to the bathroom? Is there a chamber pot?”

Simone refused to answer; she just glared at her unwilling jailor, chewing.

The confession erupted from Phoebe. “All right, yes, Duncan knows you’re here. He asked me who I was hiding in the hold, and I said I couldn’t tell because I’d promised.” Simone’s glare intensified, the whites of her beautiful eyes glittering in the dimness. “Well, I couldn’t lie to him!”
cried the captain’s bride. “I happen to love the man, and love and lies don’t mix.”

Simone was silent for so long that Phoebe was turning to leave when she finally spoke. “I can’t face him,” she said. “Nor the crew.”

“You don’t have to,” Phoebe replied gently. “Tomorrow night, Duncan will send you ashore in a skiff. He says someone will escort you safely to Queen’s Town from there.”

Simone’s eyes glistened with tears, but Phoebe knew better than to show pity. Here was a woman every bit as proud as Phoebe herself, and she understood what it was to hurt the way Simone was hurting, and want to hold fast to your dignity because you believed, at the moment, that you had nothing else left.

Phoebe went to the doorway and paused there, without looking back at the woman who might have been her friend, if circumstances had been different. At last, it had come to the surface of her mind, the question she needed to ask. “Will you betray Duncan, and all of us, to the British, when you reach Queen’s Town?”

Duncan must have thought of that possibility, but had not troubled himself to mention it. Simone, out of spite or for some other less obvious reason, could guide the enemy to Paradise Island.

“There is something you forget, Mistress Rourke,” Simone said, with bitter sorrow and with weariness, but now no rancor. “I love your husband as much as you do, maybe more, because I’ve known him longer. I’ve seen the scars Duncan bears and heard him cry out in the night because his dreams had carried him back to that whipping post and to that pain. I couldn’t bear to draw another breath if I was the cause of that happening again, but there’s a difference this time. Before, they just whipped him, those redcoats. Now, they’d hang him, too.”

Phoebe felt her stomach roil, and bile scalded the back of her throat. She couldn’t speak.

Simone went ruthlessly on. “You remember, mistress, what I said, and you be careful. Otherwise, you might find
yourself watching your man pay the price for something you said or did.”

Phoebe closed the door to the hold and fled back to the captain’s cabin. She had, of course, known about Duncan’s involvement with Simone from the beginning. All the same, Simone had struck her mark, referring to the scars on Duncan’s back and the nightmares that must have haunted him for half his life, and perhaps tormented him still. She was not jealous, exactly, but sorely wounded by the knowledge that Simone, and probably many other women, had been so close to him.

It wasn’t reasonable, she knew that, but knowing did nothing to change the way she felt.

An even heavier burden was the knowledge that she herself might so easily be the cause of his downfall, his suffering, and his death.

Phoebe stayed in the cabin until Duncan appeared, wanting to know why she’d missed dinner. She was surprised, and just a little flattered, that he’d noticed, considering all he had to do on deck. She told him she had a headache, which was perfectly true, though she made it sound much worse than it was, and he soaked a cloth in tepid water and laid it on her forehead before leaving the room again.

Guilt compounded her other agonies.

Presently, Duncan returned with a bowl of stew and some bread and sat on the edge of the berth, kicking off his boots, while she stared at her food, and then at him, and did not take a bite.

“It would appear,” he ventured, “that the interview with Simone did not go well.”

Phoebe wanted to cry, or throw up, or both. In the end, she just sat there, holding the stew bowl and feeling wretched. “It hurts,” she said.

“What does?” Duncan asked tenderly, turning to look directly into her face.

“Knowing someone else touched you, slept beside you, felt the same things I feel when you made love to them.”

“Ah,” Duncan said. “Yes.”

“It’s unreasonable,” Phoebe declared, “and I’m sorry.”

He smiled, took the spoon, and prodded her mouth with it until she accepted a taste of stew. “Unreasonable, yes—and also human,” he agreed. “Do you imagine, Phoebe, that I never think of the man you were married to before me, and wonder if he made you laugh, and cry out in pleasure, and if you caused him no end of trouble, as you do me?”

Phoebe uttered a little sobbing chuckle, her mouth still full. After chewing and swallowing and refusing a second spoonful, she said, “Don’t loose any sleep over Jeffrey, my love—he isn’t—wasn’t—
won’t be
, ever, even remotely comparable to you.” At Duncan’s arched eyebrow, she rushed to explain further. “Jeffrey is still a boy, playing games, at thirty-five. You have been a man since your teens. And he’ll never be more than a child, really, because he’s complacent and hasn’t even guessed that he should be anything more than he is.”

Duncan stretched out on the berth beside Phoebe, having taken off his boots but still fully clad otherwise, and cupped his hands behind his head. “The way you talk baffles me sorely,” he said quietly. “I’ve never heard anything like it.” He reached over, took the spoon from the bowl of stew, which she was still holding, and nudged her hand with his until she took the utensil. “Tell me about that other world of yours. Phoebe—while you’re having your dinner.”

The emphasis on the part about continuing to eat was subtle, but Phoebe could tell he intended to press the matter if she didn’t cooperate. She wasn’t hungry, but there was the baby to think about, and a body needed fuel to function, like any engine, so she began to nibble stoically at the food.

Between bites, Phoebe related the story of her life. She told Duncan about her childhood, and about Jeffrey, and how she’d truly believed she loved him, only to find out very recently that she’d merely been infatuated. Also, because her mother and stepfather had been killed in an accident during her last year of high school, and her half brother, Eliott, had paid almost no attention to her, she’d wanted to start a family of her own and belong to someone. She described Murphy, that ungrateful dog, and how it had felt, being out of work in a culture where a large part of a
person’s value is determined by what that person does for a living, and how much money they earn.

Duncan frowned. “It will come to that, then? Such superficiality, after all we’re suffering here in the hope of laying the foundations of a great civilization?” He sounded disappointed, and it was little wonder, given the very real sacrifices he and other men and women were making every day, in their desperate struggle for liberty.

Phoebe didn’t have the heart to tell him about income tax and the national debt, AIDS and the rising crime rate, or the ongoing tensions in the Middle East. She could see no reason to burden Duncan with things he had no need to know; he was playing his part, in his time, and that was more than enough.

Maybe it was true, what Shakespeare had written, she concluded—perhaps all the world truly was a stage, and men and women merely players, with roles assigned before they ever stepped out of the wings.

“Yes,” she admitted. “But it’s a great country, Duncan. There isn’t another like it on the face of the earth.”

“Tell me something you like about this nation,” he said with touching eagerness. “Something simple.”

She smiled. “Well, there’s the Fourth of July—we call it Independence Day. People celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence by cooking outdoors—hot dogs, corn on the cob, steaks and hamburgers, that sort of thing, and at night, there are always fireworks—beautiful explosions of colored light.”

Duncan’s eyes twinkled. Phoebe didn’t know if he believed what she was saying or was merely humoring her, and at the moment, she didn’t care. He was
listening
. “You eat dogs?” he asked. He sounded amused, but at the same time, Phoebe could see that he was worried.

She explained the term.

“Ah,” he said. “Sounds dreadful. For all of it, Ben Franklin and that lot would like knowing the people take the trouble to remember after so long. It was hard-won, that consensus in Philadelphia.”

“Oh, they remember, all right,” she assured him, touching
his hand. “When I left, we’d been celebrating every year for well over two centuries. And a lot of other Americans have died to preserve what you and Mr. Franklin and all the others began.” Phoebe could almost hear a fife and drum, but she didn’t care if she sounded sentimental; she was a patriot at heart and always had been. “There are problems ahead, Duncan—big ones. And the country is far from perfect. But it’s by striving toward the ideals the nation holds that progress is made.”

“Yes,” Duncan agreed. “Truly, men shall tread upon the moon?”

“Only the beginning,” Phoebe said. But she was frowning, thinking again of Simone and all the harm she might do, despite her angry assertion that she loved Duncan too well to sell him to the British. Judas had loved Christ, too, at one time.

“What troubles you?” Duncan asked, for he had learned to read her expressions rather more easily than she would have liked.

“Simone vowed she wouldn’t tell the British how to find Paradise Island—and you. But I’m still afraid. That old saying about hell having no fury like a woman scorned should not be taken lightly.”

Duncan smiled. “No,” he agreed. “A man ignores that element of the female nature at his peril. Still, we cannot hold the islanders as hostages lest they betray us. There are others who could do so as well, of course—a seaman with a grudge, for example. We’ve had two or three men jump ship in the past months. Or one of the native lads, with ambitions to see the broader world, and the need for gold to carry out his plans …”

“If you’re trying to reassure me,” Phoebe advised, “it isn’t working.”

“Reality is almost never reassuring,” Duncan countered. “But it is what it is, nonetheless, and only the imprudent allow themselves to forget that. “Now,” he said, rising from the bed to remove his clothes and extinguish the lamp, “we must have our sleep, Mistress Rourke. The new day will make many demands.”

It was sound advice, but more than an hour passed before either of them closed their eyes.

In the morning, Phoebe awakened to find that Duncan had already left the cabin, as usual. She washed, as best as she could—Kathie Lee Gifford wouldn’t be singing and dancing on
this
ship—and donned a gown from the trunk Old Woman had packed for her. Dressed and groomed, she took herself to the galley, there to consume a hasty breakfast of porridge and wonderful, thick slices of bacon.

There was no need to be secretive, and yet Simone remained stubbornly in the hold. She accepted the food that Phoebe brought and ate it with a hunger she could not hide. Phoebe sat on the same crate as before and watched her in silence, until she’d finished.

“Have you been for a walk on deck, at least?” Phoebe asked when Simone had devoured the last crumb.

“Of course I have,” Simone answered testily, but with a note of grudging appreciation in her voice. “I go out when it’s late, and there are fewer men on watch. They pretend not to see me.”

“You pay a high price for your pride,” Phoebe pointed out. “You might have had the first mate’s berth, and all the fresh air and exercise and food and water you could want. Instead, you insist on sitting here in this dark hole, like Joseph at the bottom of the well. And the worst part is, you’re proving nothing, punishing yourself this way, except that hurt feelings have made you foolish.”

Simone lowered her head for a moment, and Phoebe felt a pang, for she had never sought to wound the girl. Beyond wanting to scratch her eyes out on a few occasions, of course, for lusting after Duncan with such stubborn devotion, and that had only been a figurative desire.

“At least,” Simone said softly, “I am foolish where he cannot see me and laugh at my foolishness. Or worse, feel pity for me.”

“He,” of course, was Duncan. “The captain”—out of simple kindness, Phoebe did not say, “my husband”—“does not pity you, Simone. Nor does he find the situation amusing. Won’t you come up on deck with me and stand in
the sunlight? It’s glorious today, and there’s a fresh breeze, too.”

But Simone did not rise from her seat between the boxes, her bundle of possessions resting on her lap. “No,” she said. “Please—just go and leave me be.”

Phoebe left, feeling depressed. If you want to make a situation worse, she thought, just send me as an emissary. With the very best of intentions, I’ll botch things up so badly that a team of diplomats couldn’t mend the damage.

“Perhaps I should talk to her,” Duncan said. He was waiting on the deck, arms folded, when Phoebe emerged from below. “From your expression, I might conclude that you made little or no progress with the recalcitrant Simone.”

“Progress?” Phoebe echoed forlornly. “Thanks to me, she’ll probably hurl herself overboard at the first sign of circling sharks. Still, the very worst thing you could do, Duncan, would be to go down there and confront her now. Let Simone meet you another time, when she’s stronger and in charge of her life again.”