He was just a pirate.
Elizabeth swept her hair behind her shoulder, tilting her head as the candlelight reflected off the hefty ruby she held, scattering across her face. She met her reflection's eyes in the mirror, imagining a crooked smile and dark eyes smouldering into her own instead.
The home had been purchased with the last loot he'd delivered to her, that and the gifts she finds on the sea shore from Will. The collection of rubies had been significantly bigger when he'd found it, but he was a pirate, after all. In the nursery her son sleeps soundly, four years old now and her most precious possession. The nurse would take good care of him, and she'd explained she must travel to the child the day before. Her invention of a sick relative had been vague, and she'd felt a little guilt lying to his innocent face.
Her fingers splayed over the contents of the false-bottom drawer, caressing the mementos of her life as an outlaw. Her fingers linger on a short, simple knife with a blunt and still-dirty blade. Somewhere in the house she swears she hears a muffled thumping. Despite this and the resulting pang in her chest, the next thing she picks up is a compass.
Brambles grabbed at her skirts, tugging and urging her to return to the big empty house on the coast, to return to the solid ground and lonely road a widow must walk. Before she can turn back, however, the sea air hits her in a rush of yearning and brine. Nothing could drag her back now, freedom beckoned her, whispered promises on the wind.
Her sturdy leather boots sunk into the sand upon meeting it, and she fought the urge to run. The compass lead her through the dunes, and the sea got louder through the darkness, until finally she rounded a dune to see the orange light of a grimy lantern hanging from the stern of a small row boat. The man beside the boat held two bottles that glowed amber with the lantern light shining through them.
"Lizzie." He grinned at her angelic face, handing her a bottle and touching his freed hand to her cheek.
"Don't you mean "your majesty", Captain?" She said, knocking back a swig of the burning stuff as if she'd never been away.
"Where to, your majesty?" He says, pulling her close enough to brush their lips together and start a fire in her belly.
"Anywhere," she took in a deep breath of ocean air, "take me to sea, Captain." She hitches her skirt up, nothing like a Lady of her breeding, and clambers into the little dingy. Jack shoved the boat down the sand, and hopped in to grab the oars when the water hit his thighs.
Elizabeth smiles at the inky sky, scattered with more stars than she could count in her lifetime. The entire ocean is her own, she is the King of all this great wildness. For a moment she is not a widow, nor a mother, nor a lady; she is just a pirate, after all.