If the fact that Elizabeth had never returned to her bed the night before had not made the previous evening's events obvious enough, Millie found a rather incriminating tableau spread across the parlor. Governor Norrington's wig sat upon the settee cushion like a forgotten little pet, his neck cloth draped over the back of the settee, his pin stabbed into the upholstery like a pin cushion. A single pink satin ribbon from Miss Swann's stockings lay discarded on the floor.
No, there was no question of what was going on in the Governor's house between Sir James and the Pirate King, but no one amongst the help really minded, or even was terribly surprised after watching them circle for so long. Millie wished them happy, and reckoned it would only be a matter of time before the King signed the pardon and married the Governor once and for all. At the very least, it would mean a generous Boxing Day that year.
Sheridan too had his suspicions upon entering the breakfast room, finding James and Elizabeth already at table, mooning at each other with silly little grins over their teacups. Something had certainly changed between them; a tension that had always been present before now seemed evaporated from the air. He waited to see if they would share some news that congratulations was due, but in the way of adults who think children do not see what is right before their eyes, they pretended as though nothing had changed.
Sheridan barely suppressed an eye-roll for every little gesture that passed between them with an extra measure of sweetness, a sigh or a lingering brush of fingers when passing the jam or the sugar or anything else on the table to make the excuse.
But secretly, he was very pleased.
Their affair went on for what felt like could be an endless series of halcyon days. The Governor would come home early for lunch and everyone in the house would pretend they did not notice the couple gone missing for an hour or more, or the occasional sounds of wanton passion that drifted down the hall.
Some days they would disappear on the horses to go ride the beach and who knows where else. Sometimes they returned separately, but sometimes riding together, Elizabeth tucked neatly on the saddle in front of James, his arm around her waist.
One day Sheridan watched from the window as the love-struck pair danced a set in the garden, smiling like fools, their feet moving to some tune only they could hear. The kiss they shared at its conclusion would have caused a society ballroom to erupt in scandalized whispers.
Elizabeth would slip into his room at night after the rest of the house had gone to bed. She would spend most of the night there, though sometimes she would disappear in the early morning hours. James reckoned she still needed some alone time, and thought nothing of it. She always came back to him, and that was all that mattered.
One evening while wrapped in his arms after a particularly vigorous session of lovemaking she asked him, "What did you imagine our lives would be like, back in Port Royal? What did you dream?"
He laughed at himself and tried to put her off the scent with a self-deprecating remark about a doddering sea captain's silly hopes, but she would not let him off the hook. He wondered why she wanted to know so badly, for she was constantly telling him to live in the now, and to not dwell on the past. He'd thought he was doing a rather good job of it, restraining himself from mourning what had gone wrong in the past or pressing her too hard for a decision about the future.
Of course, he thought about it.
Every day. Every hour.
But he knew if he dogged her with demands it could spoil everything, so he held himself back with every ounce of patience he had.
"I suppose I dreamed of the usual things," he admitted. "A home for my beautiful wife, and eventually children too. I confess I never thought much about the wedding itself, only that it would take place. I did think quite a bit about our wedding night." This last was punctuated with a blush. Elizabeth could not see it in the dark, but she could feel the heat on his skin and she knew.
So many things she simply knew about James Norrington now. She saw him like she never had before.
"What about our wedding night?" she pressed.
"It was so long ago," he attempted to evade, but she knew it was rubbish and she pounced, perching on his chest.
"I know you remember. You remember everything."
James sighed, and finally smiled. He stroked her hair as he said, "I thought of what it would be like to touch you for the first time. I thought of ways…to make it more pleasant for you. I wanted to please you, and I wanted you to trust me, to trust in me.."
Elizabeth pressed her lips, thinking about her first time with Will Turner. It had been rubbish, pure and simple. They were so young and stupid. At that time, also very drunk, which she supposed she could blame on Jack, if blame needed laying. "It would have been nice if it had been you," she sighed, laying her head back down on his chest. "My first time was awful."
"Jack?" asked James hopefully, though still dubious of the prospect of discussing this with her.
A small laugh escaped Elizabeth at the thought, as if. "No. It was Will."
A long silence drew out between them, and finally James got up the pluck to ask, "Where is Will Turner now? What is the Dutchman?"
Elizabeth sighed, tracing a pattern upon his pectoral. "He's the Ferryman now," she said quietly. "The Charon for those who die at sea. He takes them across. He stabbed the heart of Davy Jones, so he had to take Davy's place. Ten years at sea, one year ashore, forever."
None of this made any sense to James, and so he lay there dumbly. A chill seemed to have taken over Elizabeth, and so he pulled up the sheets, kissing her forehead. "I'm sorry," he offered. It was almost true.
"I'm sorry for him," she admitted. They had fallen out with each other before Will had sealed his fate, and she'd had Jack to lessen the blow of losing her childhood sweetheart to the sea. "What else?" she prompted, causing James to raise his eyebrow.
"What else, what?"
"What else did you think of? The first time you wanted to marry me."
James wondered if he was helping his case now, or pounding more nails in his coffin with these admissions. And yet it was easy now to tell her these things. At long last, she felt like a safe place to lay his head. At that thought he shifted them so that he could rest upon her chest. "Not much cushion there, sorry," she teased, but he scoffed.
"Hush. You're perfect." Her heartbeat against his ear was strong and true; it was a soothing sound. "I thought about coming home early from a cruise. I wanted to send the maids away while you were in your bath, and surprise you when you realized it was me washing your shoulders with the sponge. I thought about what it might be like to reach down into the water to touch you, and find your belly swollen with our child. I thought about being greeted at the door by the sound of little trampling feet and hugs around the neck. And we would go for walks on the beach with our children and hold hands and scandalized passers-by be damned."
Raptly she listened to several more similar scenarios like this. He'd thought that loving her could set him free, it seemed. In so many ways James Norrington had longed for freedom from the stifling rules of society in the same way she had. She knew a pang of bitterness that clearly he imagined he would be off having his adventures on the sea while she stayed at home, raising the children and keeping the house. But she still could not help but be moved. She'd been the Bearer of his Dreams, like some Greek tale of old, spinning these wondrous things for him to come home to. A woman of near mythical power in his estimation, even if a goddess of hearth and home.
Would she have been so unhappy? Perhaps at first. She'd been so restless in her youth. It was hard to imagine leading the life that had been intended for her, compared to the life that she'd stolen for herself. But now, everything had changed. There were questions that needed answers, urgently.
"And now?" she pressed on, sliding fingers through his thick hair. "What life could we lead together, now?"
Now James could hear her heart and his own pounding in his ears. This was a far more dangerous question than musing on the past. Like any good military man it left him with a sense of premonition for a great battle to come. "If you take the pardon," he began cautiously, "We can marry and do anything that you want."
There was a long pause in which the only sound in the room was their breathing. "You would resign your post?" she asked with some disbelief.
James shrugged. In the face of keeping her, being the Governor of a colonial backwater didn't really seem so important to him. "If there was somewhere else you wished to go."
Her voice came so hushed that it was nearly inaudible in the darkness, yet it was filled with such pregnant hope. "Home?"
"Jamaica? Of course, if you want. That could be very pleasant."
"No. I mean the Cove."
He'd been afraid that was what she meant, really. A heavy sigh escaped him. "No. Anywhere but there, Elizabeth."
"It is my home."
"Not anymore."
She stiffened beneath him, and he felt a tremor run through her before she extricated herself from his arms, vacating the bed. "I am afraid, James Norrington," she said as she snatched up her dressing gown. "That you do not get to tell me where my home is." She covered herself and paced, suddenly edgy as a caged tiger.
"Elizabeth…" James was at a loss, for he'd somehow thought this was all but obvious. "You cannot return to Shipwreck Cove."
"I could," she argued. "We could."
"And live on an island filled with pirates and villains?"
Suddenly she stopped her pacing, standing still as a statue as she hugged herself by the window. She could not have looked more hurt had he slapped her. "We dined with a villain just the other night. You entertained him at your table like you were the best of friends!"
"Are you referring to Mr. Dover?"
"Yes. Yes I am referring to Mr. Dover. That fat fuck who owns hundreds of slaves and thinks nothing of using them like cattle! Worse than cattle; no farmer burns his beasts alive in punishment when they jump the fence for greener pasture."
James felt more than a little dumbfounded, but he'd learned it would be a damned mistake to say to her that's just the way things are.
She spared him the need to further put his foot in his mouth, going on, "Have you listened to anything I have said about what the Cove is like now? It is a place where men and women are free and equal. And people of all colors are equal. A place of opportunity and ideas..."
"A place where it would be safe to raise children?" James dared ask, and Elizabeth's frown only darkened.
"All children are safe in the Cove. We cherish our young ones, and all are educated regardless of their parents' finances. It's more than you can say for England and her backward ways. James, I would be your property if we stay here. I cannot…I cannot!"
James sighed. "It is just…a formality. Words on a piece of paper. You know I would never treat you in such a way."
"Words have great power, as I think you well know." Her voice was suddenly eerily calm. This was not the firestorm he'd expected, when the time came for this inevitable conversation. Somehow though, this quiet was worse than her fury.
"Elizabeth, I love you. You are my equal and I would always treat you as such."
"But you would not live in the one place where we could actually be as such."
"Would I be your equal, in a place where you are King?" he asked, unable to resist playing the devil's advocate.
She turned to him then, a sad smile curling the corner of her mouth. "I promise I would treat you as such. Is that not enough? King is just a word, after all. Like wife. Like property."
"What is it you think I would do to you? Why do you trust me so little?"
"Is it the principle of the matter. I would be at your mercy. I have been a woman at the mercy of men before, and I did not like it one bit. Forgive me if I am not eager to do it again."
"You have been at my mercy all this time! And see how cruelly I have treated you?" James held his arms wide, gesturing to the bed where they had just laid exhausted from their lovemaking. The bed where he trusted her so implicitly that he not only slept beside her, but that he could not sleep without her. He wondered if her experiences with Jack did not color her perception of their own relationship. "Elizabeth, I will never stop loving you. If my love did not fade before, why do you think it would when I finally have you?"
She paid him a small sad smile. "Just so, James. You don't know what it's like to live with me. Not really."
James huffed, incredulous that they were even having this conversation. "Oh, I think I know, very well by now." He held out his hands to her, at a loss for what else to say. "Elizabeth," he pleaded. "Please…" His heart was making a slow plummet to his stomach. With every second that ticked by he could feel her drifting farther and farther away from him, and he didn't know what to do to stop it.
She looked down at her feet, saying quietly, "I know you have the best of intentions, James. You always do."
"I love you."
"I know. But…what do you need to be happy? Once upon a time I would have sworn the answer to that question was a Navy ship and a commission to command her. But you left that life, only to take on another type of command. Is it power you need?"
James shook his head. For though most of his adult life he'd held positions of authority, it was not power he craved. It was duty, and honor, and those other intangible things that got him out of bed early in the morning and drove him every day to strive for perfection in what he did. "I have always wanted to do my part to make the world a better place. Perhaps we are alike in that way, if not in wildly different practice. But I have given England my life. My blood, sweat, and tears. I have done my duty, Elizabeth, and in my heart of hearts I know I came here to find you. What I need to be happy now is you."
"Me?" He prayed he saw some hope, some light in her impossibly dark eyes in that moment. Some possibility that their cause was not lost so soon.
"Yes." He'd never been more certain of anything in his life. What more could he say to convince her? How did she not know? Exasperated, James sighed, rubbing his face in his hands. "You will need to make a decision soon, you know. As much as I would like to, we cannot go on in this idyllic existence forever. People have already begun to talk."
"I'm sure they have," she scoffed, turning her face away, and though he could not see her eye roll he knew it occurred.
James' patience began to grow thin. "I mean it, Elizabeth. You have put this off long enough."
"Is that an ultimatum?" She sounded tired in that moment, and James felt cold all over, afraid of what that meant.
"If it is?" he dared. If she would not respond to sweetness perhaps a firmer hand would serve.
She turned to him then, lifting her chin defiantly. In that moment, even in a flowery silk dressing gown, she looked every part the regal Pirate King. "Then you will have my decision tomorrow morning."
Before he could say anything more she stalked from the room, and James found he was shaking in his own bed. He narrowly resisted the urge to lie down and cry, for he was so certain that in the end she would not chose him.
After all, she never did.