Free Pirates by Linda Lael Miller Page A

her hair plastered to her cheeks and neck and forehead, and no closer to a sensible escape scheme than before. Then something cold and wet struck her across the back.
    Even before she turned to face her adversary, Phoebe knew who it was, and she armed herself with a sodden stocking. Furious, she swung it at Simone, who was still holding the drenched shirt she’d just wielded; striking the other woman’s right cheek, it made a satisfying
thwack
sound.
    Simone retaliated, and Phoebe, her pride stinging, snatched another piece of laundry from a tub and hurled it with all her strength.
    Both Simone and Phoebe were in deadly earnest, but the others shrieked with laughter as they joined the skirmish, and soon shirts and sheets and stockings and breeches were flying in every direction. Pandemonium reigned for a time—washtubs were overturned, and the combatants slipped in spilled water and tangled their feet in spent ammunition, and finally everyone was breathless, and there was nothing left to throw.
    Simone was wet to the skin, and so was Phoebe. They stood staring at each other for a long moment, gasping in the midst of soapy carnage, and then, at one and the same time, they began to laugh.
    Old Woman swept in, drawn by the shrieking ruckus, and was plainly not amused. Phoebe was ordered from the room in disgrace—“What will Mr. Duncan say if you catch a chill and die? You just tell me that!”—while Simone and the others were roundly scolded in the swift, musical dialect of the island.
    In her room, Phoebe stripped to her skimpy chemise—recovered from the same shipwreck as the dress, no doubt—and dried her hair with a rough towel taken from the washstand. Presently, there was a light knock at the door and, at Phoebe’s invitation, Old Woman entered.
    “Simone loves Duncan, doesn’t she?” Phoebe asked, before her fairy godmother could tell her what she already knew—that she’d behaved like an adolescent in the laundry room.
    “Yes,” came the succinct reply. A somber black skirt, plain cotton blouse, and the accompanying antique undergarments were produced from the armoire and extended to Phoebe.
    Obediently she accepted the dry clothes and stepped behind the changing screen to put them on. “Is she his mistress?” The answer was ridiculously important to Phoebe, though she intended to go away, and she would have given anything not to feel the way she did.
    “You’d best ask Mr. Duncan about that.”
    Phoebe was glad she was out of sight, because the mere suggestion of bringing up such a topic turned her cheeksscarlet. “It would be simpler to ask Simone,” she ventured, wriggling into lace-trimmed drawers and a petticoat, then reaching for a camisole.
    “You won’t get the truth from that one,” Old Woman said flatly. “She’s like you—she don’t have the first idea what’s inside her own heart.”
    Phoebe peered around the edge of the screen, fastening the tiny buttons of her blouse as she spoke. “You’re not fooling me, you know. By the way you talk, I mean. It’s colorful, and all that, but I can tell when somebody is putting me on.”
    Amusement sparkled in Old Woman’s liquid eyes, along with the keen and kindly intelligence she couldn’t hide. “Reckon I’ll set you to hoeing and weeding, since you’re not good at washing clothes.”
    “You changed the subject,” Phoebe pointed out.
    “So did you,” Old Woman replied.
    Phoebe spent the remainder of the day in the vegetable garden, wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat given her by Old Woman, and when she was finally called to supper, she was so tired that she couldn’t eat. She climbed the stairs laboriously, every muscle aching in concert, stripped off her skirt and blouse, and collapsed onto the bed with a piteous groan. Even her eyelids throbbed, and she lowered them, wanting to lose herself in the painless oblivion of sleep.
    “Everything hurts,” Phoebe said when she heard the door of her room open and then close again.