Pirates Read Online Free PDF Page B

taken by a fever? Or perhaps you’ve fallen upon hard times and sold your hair to a wigmaker?”
    “A
wigmaker?
” Phoebe retreated a step. The man was obviously eccentric, or even crazy. There was little harm in his wanting to dress up like a pirate, she supposed, but it was just plain irresponsible to let him wander through the bowels of the hotel, carrying a kerosene lantern and armed with a knife. Someone should have a word with whoever was supposed to watch him. “I like my hair short,” she added, patting it self-consciously, only too aware that she sounded hysterical and still unable to help herself. “I have good bone structure, and this style accentuates it.”
    “Speak plain, wench,” commanded the handsome maniac. “Who are you, and what are you doing prowling about my house in the dead of night?”
    Careful
, Phoebe told herself, easing her way backward along the very wall that had swallowed the elevator. She summoned up a shaky and, she hoped, reassuring smile. “Have you taken your medication today?” she countered.
    “God’s blood,” the pirate muttered. “You are a lunatic.”
    Phoebe wasn’t foolish enough to point up the irony of a full-grown man in a pirate suit calling
her crazy
. By then, all she wanted was to escape before he decided to shiver her timbers, or hoist her on her own petard, or whatever it was people suffering from pirate delusions liked to do to their victims.
    She turned and ran wildly into the darkness, wondering what the hell had happened to the lights, not to mention the elevator and the ballroom and the people who had been trying to sell her a condominium all day. Just then, she would have been glad to see them, even if it meant sitting through another sales pitch.
    Fate, alas, is not always kind. Phoebe tripped over the hem of her wench’s costume and plunged headfirst onto the cold stone floor of the passageway. She was dazed, but when a powerful arm encircled her waist and wrenched heronto her feet, she struggled like a wildcat, clawing and kicking and, when she could find a place to sink her teeth, biting.
    Her captor cursed roundly, but his grip did not slacken. He hauled her easily through the dark labyrinth beneath the hotel and up a set of stairs lighted on either side by candles in wall sconces. Phoebe stopped fighting for a few moments, saving her breath to scream for help as soon as she thought the lobby might be within earshot.
    A second man loomed at the top of the steps, dressed for the eighteenth century in breeches, a tailored shirt, and a bottle-green waistcoat. There were large, shining buckles on his shoes.
    Wonderful
, Phoebe thought from that calm place in the center of the storm of delirium swirling around her. The pirate has a friend who likes to play dress-up, too.
    “Great Apollo, Duncan,” growled said companion, “what in
hell
are you doing?”
    No sense in calling for help, Phoebe reasoned prosaically in her state of shock. Then her eyes widened as the name struck home, and she turned to stare into the hard, ruthless face of the man who carried her as easily as if she weighed no more than his pocket watch.
    “Did he just call you Duncan?”
    “Yes,” he replied, pushing past his friend, who looked sane, in spite of his odd clothes, and very concerned.
    “Why?”
    “Most likely because that is my name.” He flung her onto a settee in a billow of cheap muslin, and Phoebe, always a quick thinker, came up with a new theory. This was a part of the hotel she had never been in before, reserved, perhaps, for the bizarre and decadent pleasures of the rich. She should probably be grateful that the theme for the evening was pirates and not the Arabian Nights—in which case she might have been issued a veil and harem pants and ordered to dance for the sultan’s entertainment.
    Phoebe folded her hands in her lap and smiled winningly, first at one man and then the other. “I’m afraid there’s been some kind of mix-up, fellas. You’ve