Chapter Seven ~*~
--
"You can't be serious," she said, staring aghast at the pirate pacing back and forth next to her in agitation.
"Have ye known me yet to be prone to frivolity?" he asked, stopping his pacing and eyeing her intently.
"No," she said in a small voice.
"Then ye can bet with a fair amount of certainty that I'm serious," Barbossa replied, resuming his trek back and forth across the small, dimly lit space they shared.
"You're making this up," she accused him after a moment's pause, with a slightly hysterical laugh. It's a joke...that's it. You're-"
"Yes, that sounds so much like me," Barbossa sneered at her sarcastically.
Elizabeth was quiet for a moment and then tried again. "Are you quite sure about this?"
"If ye'd sailed fer ten years with Morgan like I did, then ye'd know I'm dead certain," Barbossa replied. "There be a fair bit that I know about the precise terms of the Code."
"But you said they were more like guidelines," she said, with equal measures of anger and frustration creeping into her voice.
"I lied," he retorted on the next circuit past her.
"I thought you said you never lied!" she snapped at him.
He fastened her with a piercing stare. "I said I rarely lie –there's a difference, Miss Swann."
"So, you're saying that because I-"
"Keep yer voice down," he snarled at her in a hushed fashion, and she quickly complied, knowing that sailing ships had many ears.
"So, you're saying that because I openly declared that I owe you a debt for what you did, that now my first night being intimate with a man will not be my wedding night?" she asked unsteadily.
"Unless ye plan on marryin' me, Miss Swann, then yes, that's pretty much the long and the short of it," he replied flippantly, while her mouth dropped open again in horror. Before she could summon up an appropriate reply, Barbossa continued on. "Speakin' of marryin'...'twould be best to keep this just among ourselves fer the time, aye?"
Any sharp retort she'd been preparing was let go as she realized what the pirate captain was saying. "Oh my, yes, I...I suppose it would be best that Will not find out –he'd probably have your head if he did."
"It be parts further south that I'm more concerned about," Barbossa answered dryly.
"That would make two of us," she said, causing him to roll his eyes a little at her. She watched him pace for a few more moments before asking the question that had finally formed in her mind. "If someone is indebted to a Pirate Lord, what happens if they don't pay their debt?"
"That Pirate Lord would be within his rights to kill the reneging bastard," Barbossa answered absently.
"I see," she said quietly, returning to her thoughts again. "What about a trade?"
"A trade?" he asked, halting and turning to look at her.
"Yes, what if the Pirate Lord could be persuaded to take something else in exchange for what was originally established?" she asked.
"Aye, somethin' of equal value might well be agreed upon to satisfy the debt," Barbossa said after a moment, and then he approached her where she stood. "I'm curious, Miss Swann, what it is that ye think yer virtue might be worth."
The way his steel blue gaze studied her expression made her uncomfortable, and she faltered a little as she answered. "I have a dowry...it...it's quite substantial..."
"I don't doubt that it is, now that I know ye'd be the governor's daughter," Barbossa chided her gently, taking a step closer.
"Or...or a pardon –my father could arrange it, I'm sure of it. You wouldn't have to remain an outlaw –you could go back to a normal life," she blurted out.
"There be three things wrong with what ye propose to exchange, Miss Swann, the first bein' that I have more gold than I'd know what to do with already, hidden away in a location known only to meself." He issued a short bark of laughter when he saw the look on her face. "Did ye really think I was senseless enough to keep all me hard earned swag at Isla de Muerta?
"The second thing," he continued on, not waiting for an answer from her, "is that even yer father cannot pardon a Pirate Lord. Were I a common scallywag, yer offer might well tempt me, but alas, I be one of the Nine."
"And what is the third thing?" she asked, not meeting his gaze.
He reached out and tipped up her chin, bringing her eyes up to meet his as he leaned closer and spoke in a dark whisper. "I want what it is you owe me."
--
Barbossa watched her go from the dimly lit space in the hold they'd been speaking in. For the space of a heartbeat or two she'd been afraid – of him as he loomed over her in that shadowy corner, and of the dark desire he'd openly confessed to her.
But then the lioness had replaced the lamb again, and her eyes had hardened, taking on that look of steely defiance she had at times, and she'd swatted his hand away from her face and snarled back. "Never," she'd declared haughtily, and then she'd thrown the same cloth she'd used to tend his injury in his face and stormed past him. He began to pace again, slower this time in thoughtful contemplation.
Complicated she was, as well as spirited and lovely, and Barbossa had admired her from the first moment he'd seen her, holding her head up high and making demands of him despite the fact that she was surrounded by pirates of the worst kind. A lady she'd been, and Barbossa had done his very best to treat her in gentlemanly fashion, having a table fit for a princess set for her, and providing her with that red dress, so that she wouldn't have to remain in naught but her night attire.
True, he admitted the thoughts he'd had about her as she sat across from him, enthralled by the macabre tale he had told, were less than gentlemanly, but who could blame him? She'd had that same look of dread a moment ago as she had when she'd questioned him about the blood to be repaid, and then the same ferocity when she'd swatted his hand away as when she'd plunged that knife into his chest.
Both he found intriguing, then and now, and he wondered when the time came whether it would be the demure lamb trembling underneath him as she finally acquiesced, or the lioness, fighting him tooth and nail until the last. Both versions appealed to him on some level, but one thing he knew was true: he would have her. He'd planned on it anyway, already harrowing the ground and planting the tiniest seed that he'd hoped to cultivate in time, reaping the sweet fruit of what a skillful seduction might bring him, but then she'd spoken those words, making things all the more interesting.
Of course, he'd told her before, the Code didn't apply to those outside the realm of piracy, but she'd bent the rules to her will anyway. And then had come that night in the swamps of Pelegosto when she'd sealed her own fate –the night she had declared herself pirate, as he'd demanded of any who would sail in his company. The rules now applied to her in full, whether she wanted them to or not.
~*~
