Thank you again to everyone who has read this story! And thank you for sticking with me! Again I apologize for the delay in updating; I'm trying to finish the whole story before I begin posting again and can now say that it is almost complete. Rest assured it will not stay a WIP forever. I plan on posting at least one chapter per week with possibly more to follow. Again I LOVE reading what you all think of the development and the characters and as always appreciate reviews!

Fuck.

He had done it again. She had won. It was always a game between them. One winning and one losing, more often than not he, not she, was the loser.

When she had finally come into his arms, all soft words and supplications his anger had fled, washed away on the evening tide. Usually, they crashed together, like a storm beating upon the sand. Relentlessly pounding, pushing, punishing until there was nothing left. But this time, like the few before had been different.

He knew she didn't need him, Eleanor Guthrie would be Eleanor Guthrie with or without Charles Vane, but she needed him now, and that was enough. Had to be enough. She had shared her vision with him, her dream, her desire to make more of this godforsaken spit of sand. She didn't trust him, she had said so herself. But she needed him, didn't she? She needed what he could give her, what he could make her feel. And at this moment she needed him to stand with her, to help her, to make her dreams a reality. That was enough.

Later, much later, after the candles had burned low and the tavern had grown quiet she lay nestled against him, her arm around his waist, and her soft breath tickling the hair on his chest. Absent-mindedly he began to stroke her back, light, languid strokes without thought or purpose.

After a few moment, the light breathing halted.

He didn't move. Waiting to see if she would push him away.

Slowly her arm wound tighter around him, pulling him closer. He didn't say anything, and neither did she.

But she was awake.

He knew that she was.

Vane curled his arm around her and tangled his fingers in her hair.

She didn't open her eyes.

Vane knew that nothing positive came from excessive drink. He'd suffered enough over the years to have known better. Like so many, many vices the rewards of the immediate moment overpowered any distant negatives. He glanced around the room, struggling to shake off the memory's lingering daze. He sighed. It seemed there was to be no escaping her, even with an ocean between them.

"Kati, you barely touched your supper. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine pet, you go ahead and finish it." But Kati knew she couldn't fool Lizzy, who always strove to see beneath the surface of things.

"You've been awfully quiet the last few days. Did…did something happen?"

Did something happen? In the strictly Christian sense no. Captain Vane had done no more than threaten her and hint towards the unspeakable. But there was no denying that their conversation had shaken her.

Lizzy scooted closer. "Maybe just some soup?"

Kati forced a smile, "Alright, alright."

Grabbing the tin cup, she bit back a hiss as the hot metal stung her palm. Releasing the offending object she turned her hands over, examining the neat little Red Crescent moon shapes dug into her flesh.

"There are things worse than death, things that will make you beg for such a luxury."

Captain Vane's humorless timbre rushed back to her making her squirm uncomfortably.

"Kati, what's the matter?" Try as the might Katriona could not avoid her sisters questioning gaze.

"Captain Vane can be a very unsettling man."

Lizzy nodded, accepting the simple explanation without further comment.

Silence filled the air between the two for a stretch of moments before Lizzy spoke again. "You know, this isn't quite so terrible."

Kati bit back an un-lady like snort. "Not so terrible? A few days ago you had a decidedly different opinion."

"Yes…well a few days ago I was alone in a dark cellar with only my own nose to keep me company."

Kati sent her sister a bemused glance.

Taking a bite of the hard bread before her Lizzy chewed thoughtfully. "Now, I have you."

"We're still in a dark cellar pet."

"There was also Miss. Bonny."

"What?" Kati exclaimed.

"The woman, with the red hair. She would bring me food…and talk to me."

Kati tried picturing the small, red-haired woman she had seen on a few occasions. Somehow she didn't seem like the talkative type.

"What did you speak of?"

Lizzy nestled herself against her sister, "she was awfully quiet at first and only glared at me. But, when I wouldn't stop crying she told me that I only cried because I let them make me."

"That's a curious thing to say."

"I thought so too," Lizzy said suppressing a yawn. "So I asked her what she meant."

"What did she say?"

"Well, she told me that I could only feel what I let others make me feel. That it was my choice whether or not I gave them power over me."

Katriona said nothing, pondering the woman's words. A curious thing for a pirate to say, and a female pirate at that. She drew her legs up under her and settled back against the scratchy old grain sack that acted as their mutual bed. Lizzy was soon curled up against her, with her head tucked snuggly under Kati's chin, lulled to sleep by the gentle swaying of the old vessel. Yet like it so often had over the last few weeks, sleep continued to evade her. While Elizabeth took their situation in stride each day, she secretly struggled to make heads or tails it. This particular evening she found it exceedingly difficult.

Katriona Annesley had always been level headed. Yet when trapped aboard a pirate ship somewhere in the Atlantic with only her sister and fraying night dress she found it exceedingly difficult. Truth be told she had never been one for foolish adventures, because as her father had once admonished, "each adventure had a price."

The full cost of this one, she did not yet know.

She was no fool, she knew that if word of their abduction were known her reputation would be ruined, no matter her father's title or money. No suitable man would have a woman who had spent weeks aboard a pirate ship unsupervised and unchaperoned. Such was the place for a woman. Yet, a nagging voice in the back of her mind quietly whispered that not all women were subjected to such a fate. The image of the red-haired Miss Bonny came unbidden to her mind, and so too did her words to Lizzy.

"'She told me that it was my choice whether or not I gave them power over me.'"

She had never questioned her role as a woman in society because there was nothing else open to her. It was her duty to fulfill to her father and to her family. She would make a good match, get married, eventually have children, and God willing, someday love would grow on a foundation of mutual trust and respect. Her parents had found it and someday she would too.

Her parents.

Her mother.

Kati closed her eyes and took a deep breath, surprising herself at the sudden emotional wave that ripped through her at the thought of her mother. It had been years, yet she clearly remembered the look on her father's face when he'd been told of the accident. She remembered her proud father, crumbling to the floor under the weight of his sobs and grief. Then she remembered her own tears, not long afterward. The way that he had looked at her as her mother was lowered into the ground that cold December day would haunt her until the day she died.

It was her fault. He never said it. But she knew. Even at that age, she knew that he blamed her.

She swallowed hard, burying the emotion deep inside. In that place that she never revealed and never discussed. Tomorrow was another day. Another day with Lizzy, another day that would bring them closer to a future that was uncertain, yet was coming as surely as the dawn.

And so the days continued. Each morning they were visited by either Jack Rackham or Miss Bonny. The chamber pot would be disposed of, and they would each receive a ration for breakfast. Sometimes one or the other would stay for a stretch, though more often than not it was Jack. The hours would stretch on interrupted only by the second arrival for dinner. Shortly after that if the weather was decent they were allowed on the quarter deck for a quarter of an hour. Such an allowance had surprised Kati, as they had not been permitted to see another soul save for the Captain, Jack Rackham or Miss Bonny, but once out of the hold she quickly realized that the area was deserted at that time of night, the mizzenmast shielding them from the glance of any curious crewmen.

Kati relished those few moments.

The sea air stung her raw eyes. The buffeting wind snatching her breath away and whipping her hair across her cheeks, yet a strange exhilaration would seize her whenever she looked out across the vast expanse of ocean. In the dark of the night with nothing but the moon for light, and sometimes not even that, the inky black appeared to go on forever, melting the heavens and the earth into one endless churning expanse. The world they lived in now was so different from their home. The great emerald sea of clipped lawns and hedges would have begun to trade its billows of green for the golds and russets of autumn by now.

How long had they been gone? One month? Two? Surely not three?

Lord Richard Annesley, third Marquess of Dorset, was a proud man. He would never let such an affront to his honor stand unchecked. He would act, but then so would the pirates. Kati knew that they wanted money, yet just how and why remained to be seen.

For now, they waited.