A/N: This chapter brought to you by the letter C for my shameful overuse of the word 'cards'. Also, this was supposed to be 2K words.
There is no light when she wakes, no sound. Odd. Laurent once complained that she would wake for nothing less than god, the devil, or fire claxons.
She rolls onto her side, eyes already slipping closed again. The slow rumble of thunder, distant, hardly loud enough t –
Sidonie starts, half flying, half falling out of her hammock. Not thunder. Cannons. And close enough that she feels the impact and hears the crunch of splintering wood. There are bruises on her knees, but she'll care about those later. By design (she assumes) the two ladies have never been on the side of the ship facing battle. And the crew doesn't attack at night (except on land). This was not planned. She scrambles the short distance across the floor and gives Lizzie's shoulder a rough shake. No time to be gentle.
Another volley, closer this time – far too close – and Lizzie screams.
"Your shoes! Now!" Sidonie is already groping blindly for her own. No time to be gentle, no time for light.
It is dark as pitch in the narrow hallway outside their cabin, but one blessing of having spent 'a week short of two months' (a bit more than that now) aboard the Walrus is that she is confident enough to feel her way around. She can also feel and hear the near constant vibration of cannon fire hitting the ship. Lizzie's hand grips hers like a vise, and Sidonie realizes that for all her hopes of rescue, she has never before had to consider what it might mean if a ship attacked without that intent.
She feels her way along the wall, pulling Lizzie with her until they see light.
It only occurs to her when they are already to close and can smell the smoke that it is now too bright below decks.
"Oh God." Lizzie's eyes are white and large as dinner plates, and her hold on Sidonie's hand becomes painful. She can see the path up, but it hardly matters. They'll sink. The thought is paralyzing but only for as long as it takes Lizzie to yank her towards the stairs.
The deck is utter chaos. No clash of swords or small puffs of pistol smoke. Instead the smoke hangs over them in a solid, dark cloud, a roiling shadow above the flames. They aren't moving, she realizes. Sidonie coughs, eyes tearing. She hasn't so much as a handkerchief to put over her mouth. The whole of the stern looks to be afire, great streams reaching into the sky along the rigging, and there is nowhere to go, nothing she can do. Que Dieu nous sauve, she prays without hope.
There are yells – some unintelligible screams of pain, some shouted orders of fire! – they are still fighting, though the number of cannons that fire from their side are too few. Another volley hits, tearing through the already tattered rails. Another soon after – too soon, she realizes. They are flanked on both sides, trapped, penned in for the slaughter.
"Sid!" Lizzie is pulling her elbow, and she turns. The fire is behind them now as well. Men come rushing out from below at a full tilt.
"Abandon ship!" They do not stop. "Abandon ship!" If she'd had her head, Sidonie would have run with them, but reason is the first casualty of chaos.
I should have had Lizzie pack a bag, she thinks idly, huddled against the mast. They've only the clothes on their backs and the shoes on their feet.
The cry goes up, Abandon ship! Men dive over the sides, scrambling over rails or through the gaps.
"Sid!" Her tears are not only from the smoke.
Lizzie cannot swim.
Sidonie looks around. There is broken wood everywhere; they only need large enough pieces.
"Come on –"
A violent, thunderous explosion rips through the back end of the ship, and Sidonie realizes too late why the men ran without stopping, why the rest listened without question. The magazine and all its powder. She and Lizzie had stayed away from the edges, fearful of being hit, but when the deck tilts suddenly under them there is nothing to grab onto. Lizzie shrieks.
She could not have stopped it if she'd tried. And she does. One hand scrabbling for purchase against the rough deck, splinters gouging under her nails and the other outstretched and grasping at air. Sidonie slams into a barrel, and Lizzie slips through a gap in the rails, quiet and quick as a waterdrop. Gone.
If her heart beat in those seconds she never felt it. She must have breathed because she screams.
Sidonie had Julien for a big brother. She knows exactly what it's like to be thrown in the sea, petticoats, stays, and all, and has, on many occasion, floundered her way back to shore, bedraggled but otherwise unharmed. The first time though…she'd sunk straight down, panicked and thrashing against the weight and bulk of her skirts. She'd thrown a rock at his head for it after.
Sidonie claws her way to the rail, leaning far enough out that she nearly goes over the edge herself. She can't see anything in the darkness. There is a rope. It's fastened to…another rope. Good enough. Her heart pounding, Sidonie wraps one end thrice around her wrist and clambers up onto the railing. She is just bending her knees, ready to jump, when arms like iron lock around her middle, and she is not just lifted, but flung, backwards with enough force to wind her.
"Get her on a fucking boat!" The rope around her wrist is yanked free, burning savagely as it goes. Nonono, je t'en prie, Dieu –
More hands grab at her, pulling her arms, but Sidonie scrambles back, turning just in time to see a blond head disappear over the side and into the dark water below.
o.O.o
She is alone.
They wrestled her into a jolly boat, meant to hold ten men but now crammed with at least twice that, and all she can do is pray as they float in the dark. The Spanish (or so they told her), destruction complete, have departed, leaving them to swim or die. It is a long way to shore.
The jolly boat went into the water on the starboard side, Lizzie on the port. There had been an argument, short but harsh, about whether to row around the ship and search or to wait where Mr. Manderly would have to swim past on the way to land. For a few tense seconds, Sidonie is afraid it will come to blows. Nothing is said about Lizzie, but it is obvious not a one of these men would leave Mr. Manderly behind. Their loyalty is surprising, but she is glad for it insofar as it provides a shred of hope of recovering Lizzie. That hope dwindles by the minute.
They wait, and that is worse because it is doing nothing, and all she can do is continue to stare into the too-bright night. The water is all dazzling reflections and dark silhouettes; there is no middle ground with which to easily make out a person from the floating wreckage.
A few stragglers – not Mr. Manderly or Lizzie – find the boat. There is no more room to sit, so they float in the water, clinging to the sides. Her heart leaps painfully when another boat rounds the flames, but neither Lizzie nor Mr. Manderly are passengers or hangers-on.
There are bodies in the water, and it is a mercy when they are all both too masculine and too short. She begins to shiver.
After an interminable amount of time there is a rustling to her right, and a man with close cropped hair and beads that don't quite cover the scars on his neck calls out "Billy!" over the water, and for a for a moment Sidonie forgets her fury with these men, that they are at fault for everything that's happened tonight. She plants one hand on each shoulder to either side and shoves upright, straining to see where they all look.
A single blond head bobs above the water.
No.
Sidonie sways. Breathing would be easier with a knife in her ribs.
"Ma'am." Someone grabs her forearm, pulls her back up. "Wait."
Sidonie has not cried once since they were taken, not for a long time before that either; in fact she can't recall the last occasion. Worse has befallen her, and she dealt with it as she always did – with the good sense her mother and god gave her. Finding a way was more important than finding time to mourn. But the sight of a second blond head breaking above the waves rips a sob from her throat as uncontrollable as any storm. Mr. Manderly lies half on his back, one arm wrapped around Lizzie and the other making wide strokes behind him. Her huge mass of sodden skirts slows them no doubt, but he swims steadily closer. Sidonie nearly trips over the side of the boat in her haste to pull Lizzie aboard.
The girl – because at this moment she is a girl, not a young woman – shivers violently in Sidonie's embrace. A hand grasps her shoulder, and Sidonie jumps. The evening has scraped her nerves raw. When she turns, one arm still tightly around Lizzie, it is to find one of the pirates holding out a blanket.
"Prennez-le, madame." Take this.
Sidonie blinks, startled. He is French. Toulouse, perhaps, from the way he rolls his r's. She'd had no idea there were any Frenchmen among the crew. Belatedly, Sidonie takes the blanket – musty from long storage – and throws it around Lizzie's shoulders.
"Merci, Monsieur…"
"DuBois."
He is already turning his back to her, taking up his oar when she feels another light touch on her elbow. She faces a man with almond eyes and a blood red sash. She knows his face but has no name to put to it. He passes her a flask, nodding at Lizzie. The smell is immediately identifiable as rum. Someday, god willing, she will have proper wine again. Lizzie sputters down a gulp and then another. After the fourth, Sidonie takes it and, after steadying draft herself, hands it back to its owner with her thanks. Joji, she's heard him called.
They are crowded in close, hip to thigh with these men, yet she cannot bring herself to care. Her dress is a sodden wreck, Lizzie's is still dripping too, and she is tired and hungry and cold, and none of it matters because Lizzie's hand is in hers. They both shiver, less from the cold than from nerves and relief.
The little boats sit low in the water, each with a fan of men clutching at her sides. The captain sits in the prow of one. A bald man in front of her offers Mr. Manderly his place on a bench, but he refuses, choosing instead to swim at the side.
Sidonie wants to know when – if – they will hit land, but the men row with purpose and without discussion. All there is to do is wait.
o.O.o
He wakes with eyes dryer than ash and a throat raw from breathing too much smoke. It's not quite dawn – the sky is just turning pink – but without the darkness of the ship's hold the light rouses him too early. If they still had a ship his watch would start in two hours.
A day. They'd been a day from leaving the Cuban coast. Whether that was a blessing or a curse, he'll never know. Maybe the Spanish wouldn't have pursued them. Or maybe they'd all have drowned instead; one guess is as good as the next.
Billy rolls to his feet and brushes the sand out of his collar. There's no use speculating about what could have been. That's a sure path to madness, and for him it's a path lined with too many things he'd change if he could, too many ghosts. You do the only thing you can do, and that don't include looking to the past. Gates' words, just after he joined up, and they make more sense the longer he lives.
Billy relieves himself and drinks a few cupped handfuls of water from a rock depression. It's stale, but at least it's not seawater and it hasn't given anyone the shits. He'd taken a few men and rowed back out to the wreckage of the Walrus, but aside from a few floating barrels of brined beef and beer they were able to tow back there hadn't been much else left. Some lengths of unburnt rope, a bit of wood and canvas. Joji and Dobbs brought down a boar, so they're not on rations yet, but if they don't find fresh water they'll be in just as much trouble as when they were standing on a burning ship.
Billy isn't the first one up. Breakfast is only reheated boar from dinner (not that he's complaining when he's alive to eat it), and he cuts off a few chunks and takes a seat in the sand next to Silver.
"Flint thinks we should steal another Spanish ship," Silver says without preamble.
Billy considers that. "Between Vane and this we've lost almost fifteen men and ten are too injured to fight. How does he propose we do it?"
A wry shrug. "We did it before." He doesn't sound entirely convinced himself, and Billy hears Flint's voice behind the words.
"And look how that worked out. No one died and we all came back rich men."
Silver holds out a hand. "If you have a better idea, by all means."
Short of stumbling upon another ship… "Not yet, no. Fuck." He sighs, scrubs a hand down his face. "We're not gonna two chances at this."
"Then I guess we'll have to make sure we do it right the first time." They have the same dogged determination to win, he and Flint do, but Silver isn't tainted by Flint's reckless narcissism. And they really don't have another way off this island.
"We should send scouts."
"None of them know Spanish. It won't go well, a couple of ragged Englishmen wandering around Baracoa."
"They can row around the coast, get a look at the harbor. Lot of trees on these beaches, so they'll have cover. Send Beauclerc and Paxton. They're not idiots and they know what to look for."
"Paxton was on the late watch. I'll send them in the smaller jolly when he's up."
Billy notes with satisfaction that Silver makes no mention of clearing the plan with Flint first.
o.O.o
"It's cold," Lizzie complains again. She stands at the edge, arms crossed stubbornly across her middle. Her toes have not even touched the water.
"You wouldn't know," Sidonie replies unsympathetically. She is already hip-deep, shift floating like a cloud about her waist. The sand is soft between her toes and the water far warmer than the channel. "Come on. In you go."
"I could refuse." She liked to say the same sort of nonsense when she was ten and didn't want to finish her dinner. Sidonie answers as she always has.
"You're welcome to try." She waits. Lizzie takes a small step forward. A wave just brushes her toes.
"It is cold!"
"You'll get used to it."
"We are on land now. I don't have to."
Sidonie fixes her with a look. "And when we aren't? How do you plan on getting to Nassau?" Because they can't stay in the Spanish colonies, and the only way off is by boat, and Lizzie will learn to swim by the time they find one.
She holds out her hand. "Just to where I am. Try. For me."
~.~
"I haven't seen you speak to Billy." Lizzie flicks a few drops of water in her face. Sidonie has coaxed her in far enough to float on her back. It is the best way to soothe a fear of water – proving you can remain near motionless and still breathe.
"It is Mr. Manderly, Lizzie," Sidonie reprimands gently. "And that is because I haven't."
"You should be kinder, Sid. He did save my life you know." Oh…Dieu.
There is…a tone, and Sidonie's stomach plummets to her feet. This is not… Oh she has been remiss in her duty. She is not – Lizzie had only been out in society a handful of months before leaving England, and this is not a complication Sidonie had expected to confront here of all places.
"Lizzie," she begins carefully. Addressing the romantic sensibilities of a sixteen-year-old girl requires delicacy, and she –
"He asked after you."
The beginnings of her speech evaporate. "He what?"
Lizzie grins, a cat with her paw in the canary's cage. "He asked after you." Her expression is identical to the one Laurent wore when he informed her that one of his captains had spent the whole of supper staring at her. I think he admires you, cherie.
"I'm sure he did not," Sidonie replies, rolling her eyes at this new silliness. But oh, what a profound relief though, and far easier to dismiss too.
"I was there. You were not," Lizzie says, as if that settles the matter.
"Mr. Manderly was kind to ask then, and that is the extent of it I'm sure. And should he ask again, you may inform him that we are perfectly fine." Other than being marooned with an English admiral's daughter on a Spanish island and still the captives of pirates.
"I don't think he was inquiring after us, Sid." Merde alors, like a dog with a bone.
Sidonie splashes a bit of water in her face before tipping her back onto her feet. "They need us, Lizzie," she says more seriously, "That is all. Do not forget it."
"I know, Sid." It is clear she doesn't, not entirely.
"You've had too much sun, Miss Lizzie. It's addled your brains." Sidonie pushes herself through the water towards shore. "And your father will be quite cross with me if I return you to him looking like old shoe-leather."
"Oh I don't know." Lizzie spashes loudly along next to her. "Maybe it will make me look dashing, well-traveled. Don't you think?" More splashing. "Like Captain Flint."
Sidonie chokes.
o.O.o
No gambling and no fighting. Those are the laws on the sea. But now that they're ashore and restless there's little else to keep the crew entertained. But the first inevitably begets the latter, and land is where grievances are meant to be settled, and tempers are already short, and Billy has spent too much of his day settling brawls, so when Miss Lizzie hands him two plates instead of one and says sweetly, "Could you please?" he's only too happy to trudge away from the fires and the noise to the quiet part of the beach. Billy's tired and not from work.
Madame Lauxenne sits atop a fallen tree trunk, dark skirts fanned out over the sun-bleached wood. He makes sure to cough when he gets close, but she startles anyways.
Billy holds out the plate in his left hand, a buffer. "Miss Lizzie said you hadn't eaten."
Her brow furrows, twisting from surprise to suspicion and then smoothing out again in the space of a moment, and Billy steels himself, wondering what the fuck is it now – but she only looks down, and he follows her gaze to the empty plate at her side.
"Ah. My mistake." He turns to go. "I'll, um, leave you to it then."
"Mr. Manderly." She jumps down off the log.
The meat nearly slides off the plates when he changes direction mid-turn to face her.
Madame Lauxenne wipes her fingers thoroughly on a square of cloth and pockets it. "I never thanked you."
After three days he hadn't expected her to. "You don't –"
"I do," she interrupts briskly, treading through the sand to meet him. She takes both plates and balances them carefully on the tree trunk before returning to face him, hand outstretched. He blinks.
Billy remembers her in the doorway to the galley, ready to flee, how she turned up her nose when he offered his arm for balance. He takes her hand – she does not present it palm-down, as ladies do, for him to bow over – and shakes it. Her grip is firm, unexpected.
"Thank you. I should have said it earlier," she adds quietly.
Billy isn't naïve. It's not absolution nor even acceptance. But this – her hand clasping his – it's not nothing either.
He nods. "You're welcome." Her fingers slip from his, and he looks for an excuse to stay. Billy clears his throat and motions to the plates of roast boar. "It's not fried or salted, but there's still plenty to go round. If you're still hungry that is."
A smile touches one corner of her lips, brief enough he could've imagined it. The evening is full of surprises.
"Thank you, Mr. Manderly, but," she gathers her skirts and her empty plate, "I really must go have a word with my cousin." She pauses, looking behind him. "And I daresay you've another scuffle to attend to."
o.O.o
It's quiet when Billy wakes, unusual enough these days to shake the sleep from his eyes and put him on his feet in short order.
He's even more startled to see Madame Lauxenne sitting amongst the crew. She's perched on a low rock, facing James across a half-rotted tree stump. Billy's hand drops from the hilt of his cutlass. They're playing cards.
He pulls on his boots, dusts off the seat of his breeches, and, after a moment of consideration, tucks in his shirt too.
"Billy!" Miss Lizzie waves enthusiastically at him, and Billy swipes a few strips of meat from a roasting stick on the way over (he never thought he could miss porridge). He gives her a piece, which she accepts with a smile and passes him a tin cup of beer. It's cool to the touch, as if she'd kept it in the water, an unexpected kindness that warms him as much as the morning sun on his back. Billy takes a seat next to her and notices the large pile of swords and knives at her feet. He frowns. Most of the crew, all gathered in a semi-circle behind James, have bare belts except for their pistols.
"Sid is winning them for me," Miss Lizzie informs him brightly.
He looks at Sid – Madame Lauxenne, who is sweeping together the cards. James gives up his seat to Vincent, but not before handing over his cutlass and two daggers. "I didn't know you gambled," he says.
Madame Lauxenne does not look up. "I do not gamble, Mr. Manderly." She shuffles, flipping the cards together with a swift, practiced hand and begins dealing. "Do you know what I woke up to? Do you know when I woke up?"
"Don't pay her any mind, Billy. She's always cross before breakfast. And I'm gambling." Billy raises an eyebrow. Miss Lizzie's not holding any cards. "I'm betting on Sid."
"I woke up to the Battle of the Boyne just outside my tent," Madame Lauxenne continues irritably. She reminds him of a cat who's been forced to get its paws wet.
"It was a bit…spirited," Miss Lizzie admits. Joji is the only one who will meet his eye. And one of the few still in possession of a sword, Billy notes.
"The Battle of the Boyne." She gathers her cards up in a fan and begins sorting them by suit and rank. "That is what I woke up to, Mr. Manderly. At barely past dawn."
She manages to sound exactly like De Groot when he finds someone coiled the ropes wrong, and somehow it's relaxing.
"And so they must all earn their weapons back." She rests her hands momentarily in her lap, and from his position, Billy sees that a few cards have changed when she raises them again. Madame Lauxenne is cheating. His eyes flick again to the pile. Masterfully. Miss Lizzie catches his eye and smirks.
"I hear in France the king never loses at cards because anyone arrogant enough to beat him loses a finger." DuBois was drunker than an Irishman at a wake when he'd said that, but Miss Lizzie giggles.
"What sort of ignorant backwater England must be," Madame Lauxenne replies testily, "if you all believe in old wives' tales."
"Miss Lindon is English," Billy points out, glancing to the lady in question for support, but she appears entirely unperturbed by the aspersion.
"And she should thank her lucky stars a Frenchwoman sees to her education."
"It's terribly unpatriotic, isn't it?" Miss Lizzie adds.
"That include letting her scuttle around the deck of a pirate ship fleecing the crew at cards?" Billy asks.
"Fleecing implies there were bets, Mr. Manderly," Miss Lindon interjects primly from beside him.
"And lucky for us, else you'd have won our ship out from under us I'm told."
"But you have no ship. Hardly lucky." Billy tips his head in acknowledgement. "But if you ever get your hands on another one, it's Sid you'll want to keep your men away from. She's tricky."
"I can see that," he says pointedly, and Madame Lauxenne shoots them both a look. "I wasn't aware a French gentlewoman's education included gambling."
"I'm not gambling, sir." He wonders at her reticence.
"What do they get if they win?"
"They won't," the two ladies answer together. "But," Madame Lauxenne lays out her hand on the stump – a straight flush, "I shall have peace."
Vincent hands his sword to Miss Lizzie.
o.O.o
"What is it?"
"Just try it."
"Not if you won't tell me what it is."
"I'm not trying to poison you, Sid," she huffs.
"I know, but," Sidonie eyes the glistening chunks of white in Lizzie's hand, "what is it?" It looks like raw potatoes.
"Just try it!"
Sidonie throws up her hands in defeat. "Fine." But she takes the smallest piece, no larger than her thumbnail. "Now. What is it?" At least it doesn't taste like raw potato.
Lizzie ignores her, all but bouncing forward on the balls of her feet. Her bare feet. Sidonie cannot fault the practicality, but if Lord Lindon ever finds out he'll have her flayed. A thought that crosses her mind all too frequently lately.
"Do you like it?" she asks.
"If I say yes will you tell me what it is?"
Her answering sigh is worthy of theater. "You are absolutely determined to be dull, aren't you? It's called a coconut."
Sidonie takes another piece, larger this time. "I do like it," she admits. "Sweet but not overly so."
Lizzie grins, watching her chew. "He thought you might." And she is off down the beach before Sidonie can swallow.
o.O.o
Billy thumbs idly through the deck of cards, his attention more on the beach than what's in his hands. He's never had a drink before battle, plenty after, sure, but never before. Sharp as a well-kept sword edge, always. Tonight he's had more than one, and he realizes what he already knew – that courage isn't something found at the bottom of a bottle. James gave him a sly look the moment Billy picked up the cards, and where James walks so goes Malley, and since subtlety comes about as naturally to that pair as breathing water Billy knows that if he wants to avoid what's coming next he's going to have to head to his tent for the night or down to the beach.
Anchovies and books. That's all he knows. And cards. And Miss Lizzie. DuBois had said something the other day, made her laugh, but it was in French, so he didn't understand.
"So Billy –" Malley begins with a glint in his eye, and it sends him to his feet just as fast as if the sand had turned to hot coals.
"Hunt starts early tomorrow, boys," Billy says loudly. "Don't lollygag and maybe we'll finally have something besides boar for dinner."
For an instant his feet carry him towards the beach and the tree trunk and the woman who sits there, but he turns them around just as quickly – taking his own advice, he tells himself, to turn in early. Someone calls after him, and Billy stumbles once – not entirely a ruse – and pretends not to hear.
He lays his head down in the sand, and when the world stops spinning there's light in his face, cotton in his mouth, a hammer in his head, and Froom telling him to wake up and stop lollygagging about because there's a hunt to be getting on with, and they're all waiting on him.
o.O.o
"Lizzie."
His lordship would drop dead of a palsy, and truth be told Sidonie is well on her way to it now.
"Flowers and trees are so dull, Sid. I would rather draw people. Movement. Didn't Mr. Bryce say that the great challenge of the masters was to capture movement?"
Sidonie grimaces. "I'm sure this is not at all what he meant." A gaggle of bare-chested pirates hacking at each other with swords is hardly art. Nor is charcoal on rough bark.
"This is so much more exciting though." Sidonie is also sure more of them were covered before Lizzie came to watch. And not that she's a swordsman, but she had never imagined duels required so many flourishes.
Her eye picks out, all too easily, the close-cropped blond head above the fray. The same dirty green shirt and tangle of necklaces. At least he has the decency to remain clothed.
She sees him smack the flat of his blade against Malone's thigh (Or is it Malley? She is trying to learn their names). "You're not cutting down a tree. Here." A prod. "Any idiot can swing a sword, but if you don't put your feet in the right place you're fucked."
Malone's (O'Malley perhaps? No, not the right accent…) partner steps aside, and Mr. Manderly raises his blade. "Again."
Sidonie had a tutor once, stuffy old pisse-froid with a fanatical dedication to grammar and a curious love of obscure Prussian literature. Madame Heloise Desmarais would make Sidonie stand, book on head, while she spoke her declensions, and god help her if she made a single mistake. The punishment for that was to start at the beginning. It's not a punishment; it's practice Madame Desmarais was fond of saying. She wonders what Mr. Manderly would think if she told him that he reminds her exactly of an old widow from Paris who smelled perpetually of nutmeg.
No other young lady will speak as well as you she'd say with a soft rap of her knuckles on Sidonie's shoulder. Sidonie had done the exact same thing to Lizzie one day, proud the girl had made it through a whole chapter of Cyrano de Bergerac without mangling a single 'r'. If Laurent had been present he'd have choked laughing at her.
"Good." His blade taps the sand in a gesture of on my mark. "Again." And again and again and again. This… He is soft on them, she realizes, and it occurs to her to wonder if Mr. Manderly left brothers or sisters behind in London as well.
Sidonie starts at a hand on her elbow and comes face to face with Lizzie's bemused smirk. "I said your name twice, Sid. I asked if you wanted to go swimming."
"That," Sidonie says, relieved, "is the most sense you've shown all week."
o.O.o
In the end it requires no courage, bottled or otherwise. Madame Lauxenne sits down beside him in a puff of sand and petticoats and before he can say a single word explains, "Lizzie is asleep and none of your men have the nerve for a game."
It still takes him a moment to realize the deck in her hands is an invitation. Billy looks around to make sure no one can hear them and ducks his head a little closer to ask, "Have you considered playing fair?"
"No." He doesn't know her well enough to discern if she's being dry or serious. Maybe both.
Billy holds out his hand. "If you let me deal."
Madame Lauxenne hands him the cards.
He dares to press his luck. "And if I win I get to ask where you learned to cheat at cards."
"Very well."
"I thought you didn't bet," he says. Billy doesn't have the same deft hand as she at dealing, and some of the cards stick.
"I'm not betting. I agreed that you may ask me a question if you win a hand. I never agreed to answer." She never said she wouldn't.
"Where does a proper Frenchwoman learn to cheat at poker?"
She cocks an eyebrow, scooping up her cards. "We haven't even begun playing."
"I didn't say I would only ask if I won."
"Fair enough," she concedes, and though her attention is on her cards, he can see the small crinkle around her eyes. "In Calais."
Billy waits for the rest, but nothing else is forthcoming. "Who then?" He looks at his hand. He's got fuck all and a sudden strong suspicion that Madame Lauxenne only agreed to let him deal because she'd already put the good cards up her sleeve.
"My husband taught me. Well, no. He taught me to gamble; my brother taught me to cheat. Though he insisted he was 'teaching me to win.'"
"My Uncle was a gambler," he ventures. "Black jack mostly. I hope your husband's better than him."
"He was. They both were. Terrible trouble, the both of them." It's hard to ignore the way her voice turns fond.
"Were?" Mother threatened Uncle Jack with all but death if she ever heard of him near the tables again, and it's no stretch to imagine Madame Lauxenne doing the same.
"They're dead now." She says it quickly, lightly, eyes flitting away from his. An old pain, deep and rarely spoken of.
"You don't wear a ring." It falls out of his mouth to quickly to stop, another curiosity lurking at the back of his mind.
The feigned lightness drops from her face like stone, and Billy immediately regrets the observation. He's still learning her moods, a study on unpredictable terrain and as changeable as the weather in spring, but poorly concealed rage is nothing new.
"You took it," she replies flatly, and her tone implies he is being simple.
Their pearls and jewels had fetched a pretty price, and he doesn't feel any particular guilt that his men are better fed and armed because of it. A single plain ring on the other hand, that's a drop in the bucket, and he'd've let her keep it if he'd known. Probably wouldn't make a lick of difference to tell her though.
"I'm sorry," he says simply.
Her face contorts and smooths, and Billy thinks she must have had to learn to cheat at cards only because she's terrible at keeping her thoughts from her face. "That." A violent flush spreads down the length of her neck. "Of all the things to be sorry for – that's it?"
The last time she spoke with such naked disapproval she'd bolted. Madame Lauxenne holds his gaze, and after an uncomfortable stretch Billy realizes she is waiting for an answer. Stubborn thing, when she's not afraid. And she isn't, he realizes.
"If I could return it, I would." He pauses. "There are things I wish I still had but don't." People too.
"Like what? The tobacco you stole last month?"
He sighs. "Like my grandfather's pocket watch. An officer in Devonport took a shine to it." Pity the fucking bastard wasn't on the Gloucester when the Walrus took it otherwise he'd have gotten it back too.
Another long moment of silent regard. "Hm," is all she says at last, and he's not sure what that means, but she's still in her seat, and so is he, so Billy holds onto his cards and waits for her to take her turn.
It's a long wait. She stares at her hand, thumb worrying at the corner of her rightmost card, and if it were anyone else he'd have told them to make a play or toss in, but Billy bites his tongue and watches her dither. At length, she plucks out a card – finally – but his relief is short-lived when she wrinkles her brow and pushes it back into place. Then she does it again, and Billy is just opening his mouth to suggest that perhaps he could take the first turn instead when she drops her whole hand face up on the sand between them.
"How do you do it?" she blurts out. "How do you reconcile all your rhetoric about freedom with being a pirate?"
Billy crosses his arms. "It's not rhetoric." He will keep his temper this time, he will. "You believe we should bow to tyranny?"
"You think others should bow to yours?"
"Why do you brand us tyrants? Because I escaped impressment? Because James escaped slavery?" She begins to argue, but he presses forward. "The English and Spanish and French have privateers, but you object to us because we sail under the black. The only difference is we divide it amongst ourselves instead of giving it to a king."
"You assume I do not object to privateering," she says icily.
He gives her a look. "And you've already accused Admiral Lindon of tyranny as well have you?"
Her lips purse. "It's not my place."
"And it's your place here?"
She inhales, another argument ready on her tongue, but in the end all that comes out is breath. "Can we not have a conversation?"
Billy blinks, shakes his head. Cheats at cards, cheats in a fight. "Is this what counts for conversation in France?" He tries to picture her at one of his mother's dinner parties and fails.
"You English," she smiles, small but real, with her whole face, and it stops thought. "such delicate constitutions." As changeable as the weather in spring.
Billy clears his throat. "If you're trying to change my mind," he begins, "I should warn you it's already made up. Been that way for a long time and not likely to change. It won't change," he hastens to amend lest she continue to try. Hume had taken every opportunity during Billy's long captivity to moralize, but he'd held fast, his father's son. Easy to remember what you stand for when you're in chains and the man preaching put you in them.
"No," she says quickly, "I didn't expect to. I just…an explanation seemed warranted."
He considers that, considers the uncertainty in her eyes. "We will see that you both reach Nassau."
"It's been months. You've heard from Admiral Lindon by now, you must have."
"Yes, I know. We are –"
"Oy, Billy!" Vincent's waving furiously at him, and the crew clustered together around one of the jollyboats. The second jolly boat. Billy tosses his cards in the sand. "Get over here!"
"I'm sorry, please excuse me."
She looks about to ask more – she wants to – but all she says is, "Of course," and gathers up the cards.
He gets an elbow in the side when he reaches them. "Scaring her off again?" James asks with a smirk. There's enough bait in that question to bring in a whale, but this time it's easy to brush off.
"What's going on?" Paxton and Beauclerc are back, both standing in front of the captain.
"We," he claps Billy on the back, "are going to steal ourselves another Spanish ship."
