Author's Note: Hello and welcome to chapter twelve of "Delicacy". I would like to thank everyone who read the last chapter and those that reviewed Pirate fan, cazonetta, Scarlet Snidget, and Ladybug21. I have no beta for this fic (although it has been thoroughly proofread) so any grammatical or spelling errors that appear are my fault and my fault alone. I hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Pirates of the Caribbean. However, I do own Mrs. Prior and all OCs mentioned herein.
Chapter Twelve
Elizabeth did not expect another evening invitation form Lord Beckett and was quite shocked when the guard came and knocked on her door. She rose and called through the keyhole.
"Come in."
The guard unlocked the door and stuck his head in, his flesh looking pasty in the yellow light that shone forth from the single candle in her chamber.
"Good evening, miss."
Elizabeth only nodded.
"Lord Beckett requests your presence." The guard licked his lips. "Will you join him for dinner?"
Elizabeth raised a brow. Apparently, his lordship was eager for another encounter and not the least bit cowed by her rage. Well, she certainly would not deny him another chance to join battle.
"Very well. Give me a moment."
The guard shut the door and Elizabeth dressed quickly. Her fingers trembled as she laced up the front of her short gown.
Why?
She certainly wasn't impatient to meet with Lord Beckett. No, rather she wished to test her ability, to see if she had impressed her charms upon him and thus would win her freedom or at the very least, have her revenge.
Elizabeth extinguished the candle and left the cooling wax dripping upon the bronze holder. The door to her chamber had been left unlocked.
The corridor was dark as it had been the night before, a deadly dark that toyed with memories and fantasies and conjured remote horrors from shadows. Elizabeth smoothed the front of her skirt and tried to make out the head of the staircase to her left. Where was the guard?
The candles had not yet been lit and sconces sat as silver ghosts on the walls. Sweat moistened her brow and palms and Elizabeth suddenly felt unnerved…and alone.
"Hello?" Her voice was but an echo, leaking timidly past her lips. "Is anyone there?" She felt like a child, a lost little girl with no notion of herself. "Hello?"
Silence mocked her, teased her. And then she heard it, an equally meek whisper that froze her blood.
"Run."
Elizabeth gripped the doorjamb. Her knuckles whitened.
"Run."
She dare not move, did not breathe, lest the predator should spot her and sink jagged teeth into her neck. Spill blood and stain the corridor a darker shade of black.
"Run."
"Mrs. Prior?" The name erupted from within her. Feet shuffled, cloth rippled.
"Run away, child."
"Where is the guard?" Elizabeth began to retreat inside her chamber but then remembered herself. She had battled greater horrors than this, had stood face-to-face with the undead. Why should a mere mortal woman frighten her?
"Never mind that." A harried note jumped into Mrs. Prior's voice and she stepped forward, revealing the outline of her pale, pointed face. "No time for questions. Run, run away child."
She was panting, her entire frame rising and falling beneath short, tortured gasps. Elizabeth realized she had the advantage and ventured back out into the corridor.
"Run where?" she asked.
Mrs. Prior snorted like an agitated horse. "Away, get away from here. Don't you understand, girl? I'm telling you to run!" One arm reached out and skeletal fingers pointed to the descending stairs.
Elizabeth stared at the wraith of a woman and felt a good deal braver. Mrs. Prior didn't look strong, really, now that she was ill and more of a corpse than anything else.
"Did Lord Beckett tell you such?"
Mrs. Prior hissed and recoiled. Her arms wrapped about her waist. "No, no, no." And she moaned softly.
Elizabeth wondered if the creature was a ghost, an unearthly herald sent to warn her. The Romans had made much of dreams and omens, after all. She recalled her father's tales of Caesar, a man who had conquered the world and did not listen to his wife's pleas as he headed for the Senate one March morning. But Elizabeth was sensible, a rational girl with a quick mind that had been tutored with scholarly works, not superstition. And to settle her suspicions, she reached forward and brushed Mrs. Prior's chin with her hand. The flesh was warm, sweaty, not claylike or dead.
"Why am I to run?" she asked and her voice stiffened with determination.
Mrs. Prior coughed and her head whipped about on her neck, bulging eyes glancing down the long corridor that lay before them. "Him, it's him. Understand this, girl. He'll be the death of you, the end. He's killed me you see, cut off my head and laid it at my feet and I am forsaken. Run now, girl. Save yourself and for God's sake, save me, please."
"Save you?" Elizabeth had no desire to keep Mrs. Prior in conversation, but she did enjoy taunting her. The woman was responsible for her father's death and if any person under God deserved such torment, it was her. "How can I save you?"
"Maybe you can't." Mrs. Prior lifted her shoulders in a hopeless shrug. "But still, you can run, be free, go home to your handsome lad."
Elizabeth felt venom thaw her blood. Did Mrs. Prior dare to speak of Will? No, that was her one right, her one and only right.
"I can never go home, Mrs. Prior," she said. "And I will not save you. In fact, I have half a mind to call Lord Beckett and tell him that you are vexing me. What do you think he will say, Mrs. Prior? Will he put you out again? I suspect you are not welcome here anymore."
And she made to walk her way, lifting her skirts with the same haughty air she had enjoyed whilst still a governor's daughter, a lady.
"No!"
Two cold hands, things of ice and frozen flesh closed around Elizabeth's arm, captured her and dragged back into the dark.
"No! You must run, you must leave him, please, he is all I have." Mrs. Prior was shivering and crying all at once, her hair falling across Elizabeth's face like a lash. But Elizabeth would not stand for hysterics nor did she wish to be dragged and jerked and pulled about like some mindless creature. She was not Mrs. Prior, after all.
"Release me at once," she growled. "Or I shall surely send for Lord Beckett and then no one will save you."
Mrs. Prior gasped as Elizabeth's hand shot out and pummeled her gut. She doubled over, grabbing at her stomach and falling against the wall with a thud that the darkness repressed.
"Please," she wept. "I am giving you a chance. Run. Do it for your father."
Something shattered within Elizabeth. Her restraint vanished, fluttering away on black wings into the night that would surely smother them all. A great weight fell from her shoulders and she stood straight, tall.
"How dare you?" she demanded in a voice that was not her own, but the pulse of some pagan sea goddess reborn. "Do you not shudder to bring down such destruction, such violence upon yourself by mentioning my father? I am not a madwoman, Camilla. I am not you. But if you speak his name again, if you even think to sully his honor with your unworthy lips, I will extract my revenge and I will not be sorry. No, once I thought to pity you, but no more. You deserve nothing."
Elizabeth expected her to fight, to miraculously regain her strength and join the battle once more. But Mrs. Prior was defeated and she sank down to the floor, arms reaching over her knees, head bowed in submission.
"I tried," she whispered. "Do not say I did not try, Miss Swann, for I did. It is over now."
And she said no more, but at length picked herself up and retreated. Elizabeth watched her go but was not relieved at her departure. Mrs. Prior would have killed her had she tried to run from the house and it was undoubtedly a trap set to catch in her in an inescapable web. Freedom had tempted her and she had fought it. Perhaps she still had her wits about her. But something remained, something indefinable yet undeniable. She could not help but think that Mrs. Prior was right.
The corridor sat silent about her and a storm-sent wind clawed at the house. Down the hall Lord Beckett sat and yet he seemed so very far away. Elizabeth walked to the head of the stairs, one hand grazing the banister and caressing the carved wood.
Should she run? Should she take such a great chance and flee?
Temptation warred with logic and either way, she was damned. Mrs. Prior might be standing at the foot of the stairs, hands ready to throttle the life out of her. And yet Lord Beckett sat awash in his arrogance, his opulence, awaiting her. Elizabeth could trust neither and she found now that she could not trust herself.
She shut her eyes for an instant. With a strangled sigh, she turned and walked down the corridor.
Freedom could not be risked just now, especially when it was borne to her by Mrs. Prior.
Her footsteps were jerky as she walked and panic bloomed between her ribs, sending waves of horror careening against her heart. Elizabeth hated to have her back exposed and more than once, she glanced over her shoulder. Keen, cat-like eyes studied the waves of the ebony but found naught but cold air. It was not warm where the sun failed to shine and she felt she was no longer in the Caribbean, that same bright place that had birthed her love for Will and so many other happy things.
But she could see the sun again, see the dawn rise on it's blushing throne…if only she listened to Mrs. Prior.
Run. Run. Run.
Her fingers ached and she flexed them. Another unhappy wind fell against the house.
Run. Run. Run.
She could not trust her instincts, could not trust what would lead her to ruin, to death. James Norrington had wed her to logic and Will had taught her to abandon it. But Elizabeth did not remember her lessons, not when she was a prisoner of Lord Beckett.
"Mrs. Prior?" Hesitation made her voice thin.
There was no answer.
"Mrs. Prior?" She called again, hoping that if she met with silence alone, perhaps she could abandon reason and run, run down to the sea.
A mournful creak shredded her ears and Elizabeth leapt into the air, her silken skirts settling about her like light wings. Lord Beckett was standing in the amber shadow of his study and eager firelight dripped into the corridor. And then Elizabeth knew that she had forsaken her one opportunity, her one chance.
Mrs. Prior had been right.
"I thought you intended to join me for dinner." Beckett reached out a pale, languid hand and grasped her wrist. She shuddered.
"I did, my lord."
"Then why do you linger? Where is the guard?" He glanced over her shoulder, eyes shrewd and narrow.
"I do not know, my lord." Elizabeth swallowed away the tremor in her voice. "He knocked upon my door and was gone."
"Did he now?" Concern aged Lord Beckett's face and stole away his boyish bearing. "How very peculiar."
Elizabeth felt the pressure of his thumb against her wrist and her blood pulsed against it. She expected him to question her further or to ask after things she had no notion of. But instead, he pulled her closer, wrestled her into a tight embrace that left her breathless.
"You ought to come inside," he said. "Come with me."
"No!" She revolted against him, freeing one arm and half her torso.
And to her utter shock, Beckett loosened his grip. "Very well," he muttered, an arm still draped about her waist. "But you must tell me, why not?"
Her mind was clogged with fear and now Elizabeth lamented her squandered chance. She could have dashed down the stairs to safety and even if death lay in wait, it was certainly better than sin.
"I don't know," she babbled, panic barring her from reason. She flailed and fought against him. But Lord Beckett only laughed.
"What's happened to your bravery, Miss Swann?"
"I…let me go!"
"Are you frightened?"
"Leave me go!"
"There is nothing to be frightened of." He dipped his face closer, nestled his chin against her neck and sent tingling tremors down her spine with every breath he took. "You won't be harmed."
Elizabeth twisted her head in vain, struggled to pull away from him. "But you hurt Mrs. Prior."
His grip tightened and long fingers nestled in the flesh about her hips. "She deserved to be hurt, Miss Swann," he said in a soft voice. "Certainly you cannot disagree with me on that."
And then he kissed her and she could not escape his blood red lips that burned like brands. Thoughts of Will fluttered past her wide eyes, Will alone on some silver sand bar with only the cold company of the moon.
"I will not leave you go, Miss Swann," Lord Beckett said as soon as he had broken the kiss. "Not when you are all that is left to me."
Elizabeth would have renewed her fight, but she was too drained. She leaned against Lord Beckett and remembered only faintly her attempts at seduction. How wrong she had been, how very wrong.
He had been seducing her.
"Will you join me, Miss Swann?" It was not a question. Lord Beckett held open the study door for her and the light blinded her eyes. She could not see.
"I suppose," she muttered and let bewilderment carry her away. The door was locked behind them.
It is said that Julius Caesar's wife dreamed of his death the night before his assassination and begged him not to go to the Senate. Caesar, of course, ignored her warnings.
