Pirates by Miller, Linda Lael

of the place in Professor Henning’s book about Duncan Rourke; that explained her complicated and overwrought reactions. The odd sensations lingered, though—Phoebe felt certain that she had known every nook and corner of this house once, had loved it when it was grand and elegant, and taken refuge within its walls when storms swept in from the sea. She had come home to a place she had never seen before, and she had arrived too late. 1780 Like the foul brew in a witch’s cauldron, the storm roiled and grumbled on the horizon, shrouding the rolling waves of the deep and blotting out the light of the moon and stars. Duncan stood on the balcony outside his room, the wild wind playing in his hair and catching at the loose fabric of his shirt. The Francesca , always his first concern, was safe at anchor, in a sheltered cove some two miles down the shore. He would go to her all the same, and had no explanation to offer for delaying even this long, save the eerie certainty, imprinted in the marrow of his bones like a seal pressed into warm wax, that his life was about to change for all of time and eternity. Behind him, in the shadows, stood Old Woman. If she had any other name, Duncan had never heard it, though he considered her a friend of sorts and had heeded her advice on more than one occasion. The servants and other islanders feared and revered her, believing she had magical powers, a notion Duncan privately scorned. “Come inside, Mr. Duncan,” she said. Although she spoke in a tra