Chapter 7

A/N: I know that a lot of you are probably annoyed at how short my chapters are, but I love writing short things, and a long chapter is just too frustrating. I never know when to stop and when to go on, so my motto is, "when it doubt, stop". So that's how I wind up with short chapters. Please bear with me on this.

Jack sailed away again and Elizabeth found that there was only a year left until Will's return. She was suddenly alarmed, because Jacky still knew nothing of his real father. But she kept putting off telling him, day by day, telling herself that she would tell him tomorrow. Yet when she woke in the silver sunshine of a new, perfect morning, she knew that she could not tell him, not yet, not today, and she thought, "Just one more day. One more day can't make a difference."

But the one day because a week, then two, then a month, and then Elizabeth fell ill.

She was weak and tired and faint all day, and she was grateful when Jack returned once again.

"Elizabeth?" he asked, cautiously, peering around the door half-playfully. "Any more bullets coming in my direction?"

"Jack, I'm so happy you came," she greeted him, standing up and feeling suddenly light-headed, seeing darkness momentarily. "I'm a little ill."

"What's wrong?" Jack asked.

"I have no idea, I have no fever, I'm just weak. But how are you?" she asked, mainly to start Jack talking, because she felt faint. As he talked, she did not hear a word, and saw the darkness at the corners of her eyes beginning to close in, like walls trapping her in her own mind.

The last sensation she had was one of falling. Jack caught her before she hit the floor.

---------------------------------------------

"How are you, love?" Jack asked, looking at her anxiously.

"Fine, now," Elizabeth said, sitting up in bed.

"Well, I'm sorry you're so ill, Lizzie, because, you know, you can almost make up from the whole of Tortuga on a good day."

Elizabeth grinned at his joke, then suddenly, all the color drained from her face.

"What's the matter?" Jack asked, looking at her intently.

"I'm not ill after all," she whispered, falling back against the pillows.

"What do you mean, love?" Jack asked.

She looked up at him. She had to tell him the truth, because he was part of it. "I'm with child," she said, looking him in the face.

Jack stared at her for a few seconds, and Elizabeth's impatient, angry brain cried, "Why doesn't he say something?" But she didn't say anything either, just looked away. Was he horrified? Surely he should have expected that their nights together would have a result.

"Oh, Lizzie," he whispered, his voice so low and tender that she was shocked. She looked at him and saw that there were lights shining in his dark, suddenly vulnerable, usually so impenetrable eyes. He lifted her hand fro the bed and brought it to his lips, caressing her palm with his lips, almost reverently.

She thought, suddenly, that she heard him murmur something under his breath, something that sounded wonderful and beautiful and too marvelous to be true, did he really whisper 'I love you' against her hand?

"Aren't you upset?" she asked.

"Why should I be?" he questioned.

Suddenly, a cold, dreadful thought occurred to her. She pulled her hand out of his sharply.

"I suppose it doesn't matter to you. You can just get up and walk away and leave me with the child."

There was a silence, so heave, that Elizabeth was frightened. She looked at Jack. His eyes were hard and dull, his face dark with anger and… horror.

"Is that what you think of me, Elizabeth?" he asked, his voice forcefully level.

"You haven't given me reason to think differently," she said. "You keep coming and going, coming and going…" her voice trailed off. "How many women have you gotten with child and then left them?" she asked, looking him directly in the face.

He turned away from her and stood up, walking towards the window.

"You're right," he said, in a hard, unrecognizable voice. "Why should you think differently of me?"

Please review!