Pirates by Miller Linda Lael

Author:Miller, Linda Lael [Miller, Linda Lael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Published: 1996-03-31T12:00:00+00:00

11

Phoebe considered carefully before responding to Duncan’s edict. He was indeed being arbitrary, decreeing that she would have no say in her own immediate destiny, insisting that she was to be removed from the ship before any encounter with the unmarked vessel tagging after them. On the other hand, his intentions were unquestionably good; he was trying to protect her. If his methods were slightly highhanded, well, he could not be blamed overmuch. After all, he was a man of his times.

“Everyone has choices,” she countered moderately, her hands folded in her lap.

Duncan had abandoned his supper and was busy plundering a battered but ornately carved oaken chest, ferreting out various woolly-looking garments and tossing them into a pile on the floor. “Yes,” he agreed, almost as an aside, “and here are yours: You may leave the ship with dignity, comporting yourself like a lady, or you may leave it kicking and screaming. In either case, you shall be put ashore.”

Phoebe sighed. She must control her impulses, all of which favored open rebellion. A rash action on her part could seal Duncan’s fate, and that was a prospect she couldn’t live with.

“Stand up,” he commanded, crossing the small cabin with an unwieldy garment in his hands.

“Listen to me,” Phoebe said, just a shade of impatience creeping into her tone. All the same, she stood.

Duncan held the top to a set of woolen underwear against her, frowning as he measured its fit with his gaze. “What?”

“I’ll be safer if I stay with you,” she told him, her voice trembling slightly—with conviction, though, and not trepidation. “Think about it, Duncan. I could be eaten by sharks before I ever reached the shore. Or drowned. And let’s just suppose I was lucky enough to reach dry land. I might be captured by natives, or another band of pirates. At least if I’m with you, you’ll be able to keep me safe.”

He lowered the undershirt, and his frown gave way to an expression of beleaguered exasperation. “I suppose you’re right,” he conceded at long last. In a breath, his conciliatory manner was gone. “You’ll keep yourself belowdecks the whole while, Mistress Duncan,” he warned, “or I swear you’ll never make another voyage aboard this ship.”

Phoebe smiled tentatively and took the scratchy shirt from his hand. “It would have been a poor disguise anyway,” she said.

“It wasn’t meant for deception,” Duncan countered impatiently, just as an urgent bell began to sound somewhere up on deck. He was already moving toward the door as he finished speaking. “But for warmth. People do perish from the chill, you know, even in these southerly islands.”

Phoebe nodded, still standing beside the table. “Take care,” she whispered.

He opened the door with a kind of hasty grace. “Stay here,” he said. A moment later, the heavy wooden panel had closed between them, and she heard a key grate in the lock.

A wild, totally instinctive desire rose within Phoebe, urging her to fling herself against the door, screaming like a cat crammed into a fishing creel, and then subsided again.

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