Almost But Not Entirely Quite Unlike Fan Fiction
The True Story of the Beautiful Mad Pirate Woman Angélique
Chapter Seven
Memory is a strange and fallible thing. Sometimes people hear a story so often that they come to believe they were there when the events in the story took place—even though they weren't. Other times we dream and wake up believing that the dream was real. It became difficult for me to distinguish reality from my thoughts, dreams and imaginings. My tenuous grasp on reality was anchored only by the cat, the water, the pot, the sunbeam and the slops. The rest of the time I lay curled up upon myself shivering, seeking sanctuary in the crow's nest of my mind. Mostly I slept.
Then I died. I wasn't sure exactly when it happened, only that I knew it must have. A clergyman came to collect my mortal remains. The gravediggers were lifting me off the ground, placing me inside a wooden box. I thought I could hear them weeping. I saw the scene as if I were looking down on it like the sunbeam, except that the sun had yet to clear the horizon that day. I was naught but a foul, reeking lump of blood and dirt by then, a small bundle of rags with bare feet at one end and hair at the other. My soul was fluttering in panic, but God was holding my hand, assuring me that all would be well.
I crossed the river Styx. It was salt water and it was very cold. I know that for a fact because the boat capsized. I hoped that the ferryman had taken his wages before we'd been tossed overboard. Perhaps he was a better pirate than he was a sailor. The Nereids came to the rescue. This had to be some kind of Underworld disaster. Hadn't Thetis dipped her son in the river Styx to make him immortal? I'd been completely dunked before reaching the other side! No wonder the Nereids had been summoned to clear up this mess. I might have laughed if it weren't for the salt water burning into the wounds on my back.
The Nereids tore away what was left of my filthy shift and then they were scrubbing the immortality out of me with what felt like handfuls of soft, wet sand. The water was not so cold after the initial shock, and the Nereids were very careful not to touch the wounds on my back. I think they must have known that the salt water was painful enough. I floated along in the river Styx feeling wonderfully free.
And then I woke up again. The cat was nudging my hand. I could feel its wet nose brushing against my fingers, urging me to pet it. I curled my fingers through its soft fur, felt it rub the velvet of its ear against my hand.
I shrugged off the blankets and furs that were bundled around me. I was suffocating in this heat. There was a pillow beneath my head. A white sheet. Was I in the hospital, I wondered? The cool air outside the blankets chilled me immediately. My back seared with pain as I tugged the blanket over my shoulder again.
A new, piercing pain brought me back to consciousness. A nurse clapped her hands to my shoulders and pressed my body into the mattress, urging me to lie still as she wedged a stick of wood between my teeth.
"Bite down, lass, be a man," she barked.
I recognized the sensation of a needle jabbing into my torn skin. Someone was sewing up the wounds on my back. I screamed in agony and bit down hard on the branch. Merciful oblivion claimed me again.
One of the nurses woke me sometime later, waving smelling salts under my nose to bring me back to consciousness. I was lying on my stomach, my head at the very edge of the bed. My back was a dull ache. The nurse gently swept the hair from my eyes and placed a small pillow under my head. She was frightfully ugly.
"We have some nice warm soup for you," she spooned a little of it into my mouth. "Raven made it up for you just special. You have to eat it all up."
I was struggling to keep my eyes open, allowing her to spoon the soup into my mouth. It tasted like ambrosia after the slops at the gaol. Sometimes she dipped a crust of bread into the soup and fed that to me too. Somehow she reminded me of Sully, except that her eyes were leaking while she fed me and she kept dashing the tears from her cheek with her big, mannish wrist. I wondered if I was reliving my infancy. Had I ever had such a strange nurse in my childhood?
One of the other nurses looked uncannily like Josie, but not quite like Molly. She was always the one who helped me to the commode. I was so weak and unsteady it almost felt like I was back aboard a ship. She always urged me to drink a little tea, water or broth while I was upright. Then she would help me back to bed and brush my hair the way Josie used to do and feed me bits of fruit or sugar until I fell asleep again. The nurses were all being so kind to me but I could never find the words to thank them.
There were times I knew I must be back in my cell because I could hear the cat purring close to my ear. I stretched out my hand, hoping the cat would draw near enough to let me touch it again. Other times I opened my eyes and saw naught but white sheets and knew I must still be in the hospital. One time I opened my eyes and imagined that I saw the Captain lying beside me holding my hand. "Remind me to keelhaul you for being such a bloody hothead," he scowled.
There were so many of these strange hallucinations that I really had no idea where I was anymore. The cat was sometimes tangled in my hair like a kitten playing with a ball of yarn. Other times it batted my fingers or pounced on my feet when I moved them. I had to be back in my cell. But then there were sheets and blankets and a bed with pillows. I had to be back in the hospital. Only that the bed was as soft as a cloud, and I was feeling so snug and warm. Perhaps I was in heaven after all. I wished I could fly back to earth and laugh in that preacher's face. God laughed along with me too.
The pain in my back seemed to rise and fall like the tides. Sometimes there was almost no pain and I felt I was sailing heavenward on my wonderful, soft cloud. Other times the pain consumed me and I could hardly move because of it. I thought I must be back in the stocks or maybe on the rack, digging my nails into the palms of my hands or my scalp, trying to fight the pain. Kind Mrs Millerton-Davies fed me sugar cubes again.
One day I pulled myself over to the edge of the bed and managed to sit up on my own. My skin was clean and I was completely naked like a newborn soul. How wonderful! Except that I needed to go to the pot and my back was screaming in pain. Perhaps I was obliged to bear the scars of my mortal misdeeds in the afterlife. The tattoo was still on my arm too. A pirate in the afterlife as well. Fair enough, I mused. Judging by my surroundings, I had been made a ship's captain. I had become the beautiful, mad pirate woman Angélique! I must be aboard the valiant Pink Pony! There was even a pretty plate of fruit near my bed. What a wonderful crew I had! Thank you God!
I was back lying in my cloud sometime later when I opened my eyes to find the dark swashbuckling pirate Jack bending over me, sweeping the locks of hair from my face.
"What are you doing aboard the Pink Pony?" I asked.
"You're not making any sense at all," he frowned.
Another time I awoke and spotted the cat right there on the pillow. It was crouched on its haunches exactly the way the cat in the gaol had always crouched, except that this was definitely not the same cat. This one was considerably smaller and striped like a small tiger. How could there be a cat in the hospital? The nurses materialized. The cat vanished. The nurses forgot to put the shackle around my ankle. I dozed off and dreamed of escaping.
Other times I found myself in a void of pure darkness and pain. There was not a speck of light to be seen and my back was aching, but somewhere the cat purred and a guardian angel was holding my hand. I slipped my fingers out from beneath the angel's hand and touched it. It was a big hand, rough in places, with large rings on its fingers and soft hair around the wrist and forearms. Like a man's hand. I moved my knee, stretched my foot, felt the blankets around me and the mattress beneath me, but there was no other body on this bed. Only a hand. How curious. I slipped my hand beneath the angel's hand again and let it enfold mine.
One day I awoke and found both the cat and the Captain staring at me. I groaned and closed my eyes again. This was all too confusing. The cat was in the gaol. Except that there had also been a cat at the hospital, which was impossible. And the Captain could be in neither of those places, so that was impossible as well. But this cloud-like bed was most definitely aboard the Pink Pony. I knew that for a fact.
I opened my eyes again. The cat was gone now, but the Captain was still there. He looked so real to me.
"Is this heaven?" I asked.
"It's the Pearl, darling," he smiled. "And you're in my bed. So the answer is yes."
I closed my eyes and smiled. "That's just what Cap'n Jack would say."
I drifted off to sleep again and had the most marvellous dream. I dreamt that I was back aboard the Pearl, except that I was standing naked in Cap'n Jack's cabin. I scrambled to find some clothes before someone walked in. The oversized shirt tumbled all the way to my knees like an angel's gown and then I spotted a pair of boots. The most marvellous pair of boots I had ever seen! Velvety soft suede the rich colour of claret. And they fit me perfectly! I wanted to walk about in these boots, hear them thunk on the floorboards. I headed for the door.
A gust of wind hit me as soon as I stepped outside the Captain's cabin. The sun was shining and there was the sea! The magnificent sea all around, and we were sailing headlong and free towards the horizon. I burst into sobs and clapped my hands over my mouth to contain my emotions when I felt the pain tugging at my back.
"Angélique?"
It was Dirk. I reached up to touch his face. He felt so real. And there was Raven and he felt real too. The Captain came clattering down the steps brandishing his sword, demanding that I get back to bed.
"But I just want to see it! I just want to see!" I pushed past them all and leaned over the starboard side. The sea!
My strength failed me then. Dirk heaved me across his shoulders and plopped me back onto the bed. The Captain was pulling the boots off my feet.
"My boots!" I protested.
"Aye, but they were supposed to be a surprise," he snarled.
I collapsed onto the bed but the shirt was rubbing against my skin, hurting my back.
"Go away so I can take this shirt off."
The Captain arched his brows. "Now that's not much incentive for me to leave, is it?"
Josie came bustling in and shooed the Captain out.
"This is all seems so real," I told her as she helped me into bed again.
"How's the pain?" she swept the hair away from my face.
"It comes and goes. At the moment, it's coming." I lay down gingerly on my side, trying to make myself as comfortable as possible before the pain consumed me again.
"Here," she pushed a sugar cube into my mouth. "It will help you relax."
It was dawn when I awoke. The room was filled with pink light. I was back in that cloud-like bed and the Captain-like angel was sleeping on a narrow cot beside the bed, holding my hand in his. My back was screaming in pain again and my hand was tightening unconsciously around his fingers. Would that I could hold on to this vision before it disappeared again. His eyes fluttered open.
"Is it bad?"
"Aye," I grimaced.
The Captain was getting to his feet but I could still see him. A minute later he was pushing another sugar cube between my lips. I frowned at him and let the sugar cube melt on my tongue.
"You're not Mrs Millerton-Davies."
"Am I not?" he stretched out on his cot again and kissed my hand.
"She fed me sugar cubes and sweets. I told her I felt like a mare."
"Was this aboard the Pink Pony?"
"No, in the stocks. Hector wanted to find the Pink Pony."
"Hector?" he arched his brows. "Perhaps someone's had enough laudanum for one day."
"No, not Hector from..."
"Of course it wasn't Hector," he cooed. "Hector would never say such a silly thing, would he? It's those Greeks you should beware of! Especially that pirate Odysseus. Did he happen to mention anything about a horse?"
"Only the Pink Pony. And he sang me such a lovely song: Never shall we die!" I sang.
The Captain's brows shot up with surprise. "Hector sang that?"
"Aye," I nodded. "You look so much like Cap'n Jack," I reached over to touch his lips. "Have you really been sleeping beside me all this time?"
He said nothing, only smiled and kissed my hand again in reply.
"I can hear purring. Is that you or me?"
The Captain laughed.
"Up you go, Angélique."
It was that Josie nurse again. I was so befuddled with sugar cubes that the cat was back, winding itself around my feet as they dangled over the side of the bed. Josie was examining my back.
"This is going to be a difficult day for you," she sighed. "How's the pain?"
"I don't feel very much at the moment," I told her. Except that I could feel the cat nuzzling my toes, but I couldn't tell her about the cat. She would think I was mad.
"Just as well," she forced a smile.
She helped me put on a shirt and a pair of trousers. I could have sworn they looked exactly like clothing I used to own.
"My weapons?"
"Your weapons are gone," she shook her head.
There was a growing sense of dread inside me, but then she was helping me put on those marvellous boots I had dreamt about.
"Where are we going?"
"You don't want to know."
"These boots are too nice for the hangman," I murmured and dropped back into the cloud, desperately wanting to feel comfortable again one last time. The Captain materialized.
"And how is our lovely lotus-eating lassie?" he helped me to my feet.
"Don't let them take me to the gallows, Jack," I begged him.
"I promise," he nodded earnestly.
He made a move to put his arm around me and I grimaced instinctively at the thought of anything pressing against my back, so he proffered his arm instead for support. I clung to him for dear life. The sky was cloudy when we stepped outside. I so wished that I could see the sun again. He was helping me across the deck and then we were leaving the ship, walking across a dock.
"It's the Pearl!" I looked up at her figurehead.
"Aye, take a good last look at her," he answered grimly. "I can't bear it."
I wanted to reach out and touch the ship—it was my home!—but the Captain wouldn't turn back and marched me forward instead.
"Where are we?"
"Never mind that."
"This isn't Tortuga," I shook my head.
"No, it isn't," he answered.
It was a bustling little market town much like Tortuga, except cleaner and prettier with so many more colours and flowerboxes in some of the windows.
"Flowers, they have flowers!"
Someone was asking me if I thought I could ride in a coach.
"So many flowers," I murmured.
"Up you go, my addled angel," the Captain was helping me climb into a cart. There was a mound of hay in the cart and I dropped into it immediately. The cloud-like bed was ever so much nicer, but I'd had quite enough of being vertical.
The cart was trundling along when I awoke again. My back was aching and somewhere the cat was mewing plaintively like a frightened kitten. If it hadn't been for the sound of the Captain's voice, I'm not sure I would have been able to trust that they were taking me somewhere safe.
"Don't cry, cat," I murmured. "The Captain's here. He won't let anybody hurt us. I know he won't."
Then I was in a candle-lit room, lying on a broad wooden bench. I could hear the Captain's voice somewhere, but there were new voices too, two women speaking Creole French. There in the middle of the room was a large copper tub filled with steaming warm water. The new brown angel nurses were helping me undress, helping me into the bath. There were flowers nearby—I was sure that I could smell them. The nurses lathered up my hair the way Josie used to do and they were ever so gentle about rinsing the soap from my body and towelling me dry. Then I was lying in the cloud-like bed again. The nurses were dabbing some kind of salve or ointment into my wounds. My back hardly hurt at all anymore. Then they were brushing my hair, singing their lovely songs. I dozed off again almost immediately.
I have no idea how long I slept, but I think it was only one good, long night. I awoke feeling perfectly lucid for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, but there were so many wonders to behold that I truly began thinking I must have died and gone to heaven.
I was in a very large room but I definitely wasn't aboard a ship anymore. This looked to be some type of Caribbean hut, except that there were silk carpets on the floor and gossamer hangings around the bed, shutters on the windows and brass sconces on the walls. Here too the bed was like a cloud, with sheets as light as silk and soft as velvet, except that this bed was much larger than my bed aboard the Pink Pony. Or wherever I had been. And there at the very other end of the bed slept Cap'n Jack, his hand stretching across the distance between us to hold mine.
I reached over my shoulder to touch my back. It felt a little dewy, but the ointment had relieved the chronic itching and tightness in my skin, making it easier to move again.
The Captain was yawning, his eyes fluttering open.
"There's hardly any pain," I told him.
"Good," he answered sleepily.
"What happens when I get better?"
"Whatever you want, darling. You're a pirate."
"Come closer."
He gave me a roguish grin. "I'm not wearing anything, lass."
I lifted the sheet for a peek and he immediately clapped it down again, bundling the sheet around himself like a bashful maiden.
"All right, I won't peek," I laughed. "But come closer anyway. I want to kiss you."
"Only if it will make you happy," he scooted over promptly.
"It will," I kissed him. His lips were soft and warm. I though I could be quite happy spending a lifetime kissing them. "Thank you," I touched his cheek and kissed him again. "Hector asked me if you had stolen the single black pearl I wore close to my heart every day of my life," I kissed him again. "I told him that I would have given it to you—and my heart—if only you had asked."
"There's no time like the present," he kissed me.
Cap'n Jack ordered me to cover my eyes when he got out of bed. Minutes later, my new nurses came into the room to attend to me, have another look at my back and dab more of their magic ointment on my scars and stitches. I donned one of the Captain's shirts and walked across the soft carpets in my bare feet as I made my way to the bedroom door. He'd left the door slightly ajar and I blinked at the bright sunshine as I stepped outside to join him. It was like stepping into paradise.
There was a large veranda just outside the bedroom door. Flowering shrubs and trees bursting with red, white, yellow and pink blooms were crowded close to the veranda. Flowering vines trailed along the edge of the thatched roof, dandling enormous purple blossoms. I couldn't resist reaching up to touch one of them.
The hut was perched high above the quaint little town I had seen the day before, and the town itself was nestled in the crook of a small bay that provided a natural harbour for the handful of ships that were docked there. Here and there below us were clusters of dwellings amid a patchwork of gardens flourishing with crops. A small group of brown children were running between the gardens, and I could hear them laughing. I could hear the sounds of a waterfall somewhere nearby too. All around us were mountains of tropical forest, their countless shades of green blending into unbroken verdure. Beyond all this lay the glittering expanse of the sea stretching all the way to the horizon. It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen.
The Captain was standing a few feet away from me, dressed in a shirt and breeches, sipping tea from a dainty china cup as he took in the view. I drew close and stood behind him, unable to resist slipping my arms around his waist so I could perch my chin on his shoulder.
"O Arcadia," I whispered with awe.
"Tis," he laughed.
"What is this place?"
"Fiddler's Green," he smirked. "Or my Fiddler's Green, at any rate. Pirate's heaven."
"Pirate's heaven is on land?"
"Do you not know the legend?" he turned his head to glance at me. "Tis said that when a pirate decides to leave the sea and seek his heaven on earth, he must go ashore and walk inland carrying an oar upon his shoulder until someone asks him what he is carrying."
"That's in the Odyssey."
"Odysseus being a pirate himself," the Captain nodded. "Of course, the trick is to find a very friendly place. Otherwise you could just keep walking until you reached the other side of the island, then have to walk all the way back and hope to find your ship again."
"So you came ashore here, picked up an oar and walked inland?"
"I did. The Pearl was lost. I took my boodle and decided to retire. You would have been naught but a child at the time. We came here. The crew stayed on but I eventually went back to Tortuga. Got the Pearl back. Lost the Pearl again," he grimaced. "Got her back. Lost her again. Back and forth, forth and back, came and went, went and came, bought more land, went back to sea, second verse, same chorus. Till one day I heard the most marvellous tale of an angel who had thrown herself from the parapets into the sea."
"You did not," I laughed.
"All the same, I found the angel."
"Or, rather, she found you."
"Same story, different version," he waved dismissively.
"I always thought you were like me," I hunched my shoulders, "that the Pearl was your home."
"Peas in a pod, darling," he kissed my cheek. "This place..."
"Is breathtakingly beautiful, I'll grant you that," I murmured.
"There are many beautiful places in the Spanish Main, love. Some are probably more beautiful than this. Many beautiful places, many beautiful women, many wonderful ships. But a place is only a place, and a woman is only a woman, and a ship is only a ship..."
"Until you love her with your whole heart."
"Aye," he smirked, but he was still staring straight ahead at the harbour and the ocean. "Mayhap I could love the place as much as I love the ship if only I had the woman."
"Can I ask you something? I want you to be perfectly honest."
"A tall order for a pirate."
"Consider it an order from a pirate," I turned my back to him and gingerly began to gather up the shirt over my shoulders until I knew that my back was completely exposed. "How bad does it look?"
"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he caressed my bottom.
"Not that, my back!" I laughed.
"Apologies, madam, but that is very distracting. I'd much rather look at that, quite frankly."
"That bad?" I pulled the shirt down to cover myself again.
"There's a reason you've not seen me without a shirt," he began tugging his own shirt over his head. I had seen the brand on his arm before, and some of the scars on the other arm, but I'd never known how gruesome and extensive they were. It pained me to see them. There was a pair of gunshot wounds near one shoulder, a half dozen knife wounds across his belly, a chunk of flesh missing from his side that looked as if a beast with a great many teeth had taken a bite out of him, and a number of deep excoriations across his back from the lash. "If I must be perfectly honest, however," he pulled his shirt on again, "my back is a fair sight prettier than yours."
"My front is not as bad as yours."
"Well, having yet to ascertain the condition of your front, I must reserve judgement until I am in full possession of the facts."
"You never peeked?"
"How dare you impugn my honour, madam!" he harrumphed.
"Not your honour, sir. Merely your curiosity."
"Again the sigh of disappointment."
"I did not sigh," I laughed. "Where's the Pearl?"
"Ah, my poor old girl," he groaned mournfully. "It very much grieves me to report that our beloved Pearl is in dry dock at the moment and is no doubt cursing us loudly in Shippish. Or Pearlish. Most likely both. The poor dear is having her hull scraped. I thought I might have her painted pink for you as well."
"You did not."
"No, I did not," he reined in a grin. "But I thought the idea might amuse you while you were so charmingly confounded."
"Or perhaps said confoundedness is not entirely in the past tense," I murmured. The cat was back, trotting across the veranda, hopping up onto an ottoman. "Tell me something else—and please don't laugh. Can you see that cat?"
"Why, is there an invisible one too?"
"You can see it?"
"Can't you?"
I rolled my eyes. "This is definitely not the cat from the gaol."
"Cats in gaol?" he batted his eyes.
"This cat was aboard the Pink Pony."
"I thought Hector was going after the Pink Pony. Let's ask him, shall we? Oh, hello Hector, how lovely to see you," he spoke to thin air.
"Hector is as real as this cat," I pointed to it.
"So it is a real cat!"
"Jack," I snarled at him.
"It was your idea," he scooped up the cat. "Maybe we should have a cat aboard the Pearl," he mimicked my voice.
"I read a story about a cat aboard a ship and thought..."
"Have you ever tried catching a cat? The blasted things scramble up trees, trip you up, hiss, claw and scratch the bejesus out of you once you do manage to catch them. Completely impossible to hold onto if they don't wish to be held."
"So how did you catch it?"
"Took it from its mother as a kitten."
"Pirate," I chided him, whisking the cat from his hands so I could press its soft fur to my throat. "There was a cat at the gaol, though. It brought me a mouse, once. Sometimes we kept each other warm at night," I cuddled the little thing. "I think even the wildest cat will let you befriend it if you can persuade it that you mean it no harm. Cats do everything on their own terms. I think, by and large, we're more interested in getting close to them than they are in getting close to us. They don't need us at all—except maybe to scratch them behind the ears and make them purr."
"And keep them warm at night?" he suggested.
The analogy wasn't lost on me. I couldn't help but smile.
"Am I to surmise, then, that our dashing and fearsome pirate captain took it upon himself to brave all and hasten to the rescue of one bloodied and broken wretch of a pirate lass—in flagrant defiance of the Code, I might add..."
"There's not a single word about broken wretches in the Code."
"Nevertheless, I see no profit in it."
"Not all treasure is silver and gold, love."
"Oh," I set the cat down and wrapped my arms around him again. "So if our beloved Pearl is in dry dock at the moment..."
"And alas she is."
"Then it seems that we're marooned here for a time."
"Marooned by choice," he pointed out, "but essentially correct."
"With a sufficiency of food, water and—no doubt—rum?"
"Guaranteed," he answered. "Not to mention a cat. Most everything of any value that was aboard the Pearl has been carted up here."
"Where?"
"There's more than one room to this château, darling," he laughed.
"Wonderful! So we have weapons!"
"Who knew you had so many knives?" he rolled his eyes.
"Swords, pistols and crossbows too?" I asked hopefully.
"A fair few."
"Don't even think about asking me to wear those dresses from Kingston."
"Perish the thought," he grinned. "No dress would be preferable."
"What of Dirk and Josie? Sully and Raven?"
"They're around here somewhere," he shrugged.
"And where exactly is this somewhere?"
"Did I happen to mention I ran into Lex?"
"Where? Here?"
"No, not here," the Captain arched his brows disdainfully. "Tracked him down, in a manner of speaking. There were only so many places he could go, and he was none too welcome in any of them. Seems those pesky rumours preceded him wherever he went."
"Did you think that I had left with him?" I wondered.
"With a lowly, ignorant coward of a Royal Navy bootlicker? Not for a moment!" he blurted. "But he was the only one who could set the record straight. Rumour had it that he'd betrayed you and handed you over to Barton."
"And did he set the record straight?"
"Straight enough," he shrugged. "Mostly he wept."
"Did you kill him?"
"Kill him? No. I decided to take a leaf out of your book," he answered archly. "I told him that I would leave him to his fate, grim though it may be."
I chuckled in spite of myself. "And my fate seems to have landed me here, marooned I know not where."
"Details, darling, details."
"Pray, if I wanted to find the Atlantic?"
"My advice would be to sail straight that away and keep going," he pointed into the distance. "You're sure to stumble across it at some point."
"And the Spanish Main?"
"All around and back there somewhere."
"And if I wanted to find my way back here?"
"That you never would."
"But those ships have managed to find their way here," I pointed to them.
"Aye, but those ships know where they are. Those ships have a rudder of their own. You were essentially brought here by force in a state of utter unawareness, unenlightenment—and, usually, unconsciousness."
"With the cat."
"The cat spoke more sense than you did! Nevertheless, I very much doubt that the cat can commandeer one of these ships and sail away."
"But I can."
"You excel at it," he groused.
"Hector knew that you would come," I kissed his cheek.
"In the bloody nick of time too," he glanced at me. "We weren't sure you would make it."
"And yet, here I stand, scarred and barefooted, gazing upon this breathtakingly beautiful and possibly never-to-be-seen-again pirate heaven, sincerely and heartily wondering if I might also be standing on the threshold of some far-flung, distant and entirely hypothetical future."
The Captain laughed. "You could be standing at the threshold of anything you like, my darling pirate. The question is: do you have the courage and fortitude to decide what it is you want, rather than sail away?"
"Well, I do think I would like to stay here for a time and get well again."
"Very wise," he nodded.
"And I should like it if you were to stay here with me too."
"Given the fact that the company is infinitely more delightful that it ever was during any of my previous sojourns, I might indeed be persuaded to agree to your terms."
"And it would be good to hone my skills again with a peerless swordsman, crack shot and someone who was almost as good with a knife as myself."
"Quite pragmatic, yes."
"And since the nights are likely to be cool, it would be good if we could keep each other warm."
"You have a cat for that," he answered tonelessly. "Angélique, the question isn't what might be good and what might not be good. The question is: what do you want?"
"Is that a sigh of disappointment?"
"I'm asking the questions."
"Well," I hunched my shoulders, "having lately and probably not-so-lately given my heart to said dashing and fearsome pirate captain, I should very much like it if he were to love me with his whole heart too."
"Done," the Captain nodded. "What else?"
I had to clap a hand to my mouth to contain a sob of wild joy. "Then I think I should very much like to spend every single night making mad, passionate love to him from this day forth."
"Better and better," he grinned. "Go on."
"And since all options now seem possible," I wiped the tears from my eyes, "I think I might like to get back aboard the Pearl one day. Maybe not to go pirating, but certainly to sail free again and see all the grand cities of Europe with you some day. Maybe even find Troy."
"All entirely feasible, provided that you agree to share the Captain's bed."
"A thoroughly enchanting option," I kissed his cheek. "And I should very much like to see Izzy again, wherever she is."
"Yes, she owes us a book."
"And possibly a third book, about a young boy named Hector who helped the dark swashbuckling pirate Jack free the beautiful mad pirate woman Angélique from the evil commodore Barton," I smiled at the thought. "I think Hector would like that."
"Yes, enough about Hector."
"And I think..." I bit my lip, "I think I want to go see my mother," the tears spilled onto my cheeks again.
"Funny you should mention that…" his eyes lit up.
"Because we just happen to be in Martinique?" I scowled at him.
"Merely the farthest-flungest, distantest, most remotest edge..."
"Why did it have to be Martinique?" I groaned.
"But I love the French!"
"Still..."
"You just said you wanted to go back!"
"Back, as in not there yet!"
"But you're not there yet," he pointed out. "It would take days and weeks of scaling mountains and trudging through impenetrable jungle never before trudged by any man, woman or child of the non-Maroon persuasion to get anywhere near there."
"So we'd need a ship."
"Unless you're inclined to trudge, yes."
"But seeing as we don't have a ship at the moment..." I slipped my hand inside his shirt to run my fingers through the hair on his chest.
"Yes?"
"I think this might be a most opportune time to instruct you on what the French expect from their lovers."
"I shall be the most ardent, tireless and devoted pupil you can imagine," he laughed.
"None of that horrid, priggish business of no touching and no laughing and no..."
"Angélique, believe me, you would already be on your back if I didn't think I would have you screaming in agony rather than ecstasy."
"I could have you on yours," I suggested.
"In broad daylight, my angel?" he grinned.
"Are you a pirate or not?"
18 April 2009
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