A/N: Thanks to Asqueeinthedistance for the review back at 5 and all the great feedback you guys are all leaving me! :D

You know how two chapters ago things got messy, and how last chapter things got messier? Well, this chapter, things just couldn't get any worse…

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Chapter Twenty-Five

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Chevalle, after doing his share of trying to make a dent in the supply of wine that the Fancy had stolen, broke off from the story he'd been telling me and spoke more quietly.

"You are not enjoying much of zis fine wine," he said. "Is it not to your liking, Cherie?"

I gave him a faint smile. "No, it's lovely. Really." I turned to stare out over the ocean nearby, watching the last sunlight disappear below the horizon.

"Zen perhaps you prefer a different dinner companion?" he asked.

I turned back quickly, afraid that I had offended the man, but the knowing look he gave me said that was not the case.

"Zair is a bit of, 'ow you say, 'cool air' between you and ze capitaine, tonight, no?" he asked, prying a little.

I shrugged, and he smiled, knowing that he was right.

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While a month prior I would have found the idea of sitting around a bonfire drinking with two shiploads of pirates absurd, and a week before I probably would have had enjoyed the evening to a fair extent, the way things were that night, I could barely manage to keep up a conversation in French with Chevalle, as defeated as I had been feeling.

Even though I knew that I wasn't inclined to seek out his company, I did make it a point during the evening to note where Bellamy was, and I guess I was just a tad envious that he was managing to enjoy himself. He'd had enough to drink by that point, that despite the wounds that had not yet healed on his back, he still managed to shuck his clothes and go swimming with a large handful of his drunken companions.

I debated polishing off enough rum at that point to drown my own sorrows, but although I had done some foolish things so far in my time spent with the pirates, getting drunk and passing out on a beach full of nearly a hundred of them was still quite clearly not going to be one of them.

Finally realizing after having sat there sipping wine all evening, that a hundred pirates or not, I was going to have to deal with a pressing matter, I excused myself from Chevalle's company, and headed for the trees.

Although it was dark, and I worried about encountering another scorpion, I used the moonlight to guide me as I picked through the vegetation. I didn't want to venture too far away, but I was determined to put at least some distance between all the men on the beach and myself if I was going to have to answer a call of nature. What I didn't know at that moment, was that there were more than one pair of eyes watching where I went.

While answering such a call in a long dress, in dense tropical vegetation is not an experience I'd like to have often, I managed to settle with the matter in short order, and had begun picking my way back toward the beach, where I could hear the crews launching once again into a French sea shanty that they were butchering.

I was trying my best to watch where I was walking, not wanting to mistakenly step upon any living thing that might take unkindly to having been trod upon, and I didn't pay much attention to the snap of a small branch off to my left at first.

When a second snap followed closely on the heels of the first, I realized that there was probably some manner of creature in the bushes with me, and I began to worry about the story I'd heard from Barbossa about the aggressive wild pigs that lived on many of the surrounding islands.

Another snap caused me to turn, not wanting to have such an animal come up behind me, and all I can say is that at that moment, I would have taken a half dozen of the fearsome porcine creatures over what I actually saw.

Standing there, not three feet away from me in the dark, was a shadow that I instantly recognized, and I caught my breath as Stoker stepped forward to block my path.

I took a step back.

"Yer missin' out on the party," he growled from much too close to where I was standing for my liking.

"You're right," I replied, trying to keep my voice from betraying the fact that he scared me. "It seems you are too. Shall we head back?"

I made a very bold and deliberate attempt to just walk by him, and knew instantly, as his hand closed roughly on my elbow, that I was never going to make it to the beach.

I started to scream, but the fact that Stoker clamped his hand over my mouth, coupled with the fact that the beach was currently the site of a drunken pirate sing-along, ensured that my strangled cry went unheard.

"I was thinkin' I might have my own party, right here," he breathed in my ear, and then he laughed as he felt my futile attempt at freeing myself from his grip.

"Yer invited, of course," he said, pulling me backwards roughly up against him, still speaking close to my ear.

He smelled strongly of rum and layers of stale sweat, and I thought his fingers were going to crush my elbow where they were digging in. He nuzzled drunkenly into my neck a little, and I turned my head away as much as I could in disgust.

He slid his hand off my mouth, but any idea I had about screaming was crushed as his fingers grabbed me by the throat, and he stepped around in front of me quickly, and shoved me up against a nearby tree, knocking a bit of wind out of me.

"Now," he said, leaning closer until he was an inch from my face, "yer going to play along like a good girl, ain't yeh, Doctor?"

There was a fair amount of derision and cruelty in his tone, and I gave him no answer from where I was being pinned against the tree. I glared at him, furious and terrified at what he might be about to do.

"Well, here's a little insurance that yeh play by the rules, luv," he said with obvious wicked delight at the look that must have come across my face at the sight of the knife he held up in the moonlight. He let go of my neck at that point, but pressed the point of the blade against my throat and watched me carefully, evidently enjoying my torment.

"I won't cut yeh much," he said, pressing his face much too close to mine again. "Jus' a little fer fun."

I gasped as the blade pricked my skin under my chin, and a second later I could feel a small warm trickle sliding down my throat.

"See, that ain't so bad, is it?" Stoker asked sadistically.

I took advantage of him lowering the knife a bit, and made a jump to get by him unsuccessfully, and he grabbed me and slammed me back up against the tree. He stuck me viciously upside the head.

"None of that!" he snarled, watching as I began to loose the battle with the tears of anger and fear that I had been unconsciously waging.

"Get away from me!" I spat, pushing him and trying to make a dash for it again. I hit the tree once again, cried out, and would have kicked him if it weren't for the fact that he anticipated my thoughts, and pressed himself tightly up against me, pinning me and keeping me from being able to strike out at him. He hit me again, splitting my lip a little and causing my surroundings to spin for a moment.

I thought my heart was going to come through my chest, and I managed to fling my head to the side as he tried to kiss me. One hand cruelly grabbed my jaw and turned my head back, as the other pressed the knife into my ribs. I didn't have a chance to curse him before he pressed his mouth roughly over mine.

Disgusted as I was by what he was putting me through, I found myself fighting less against the foul kiss the more he pressed the knife into my skin. I felt a trickle of blood running down my side at that point, since it had taken a fair amount of pressure from the blade before he could get me to submit.

He leered at me when he pulled away, and I turned from him again as he spoke. "Now, that's a bit better, ain't it?" There was a trace of my blood on his lips.

"You're nothing but a foul….." I started to snarl, but was brought up short by the blade being held in front of my eyes.

"Careful," he said, in a sweet, mocking tone. He smiled in the most unpleasant way I could have imagined, and leaned against the tree, pressing his palm there, over my head.

He looked down at the front of my dress, and rested the point of the dagger at my collarbone. "What say we unwrap this fine little package?" he asked, and he let the dagger drag slowing down the front of my dress, pressing hard enough to tear the fabric as it went, and leave the faintest trace of blood running in a line down my chest.

He stopped when he got most of the way down my ribcage, and let the hand with the knife drop again to my side. "Now," he said, digging the blade into my ribs again, "this is where I expect a little cooperation," and he punctuated the last word by jabbing me with the dagger, hard enough to take my breath away and cause a wound that went as deep as muscle.

What I expected from Stoker as his gaze dropped to the long tear in the front of my dress, was for him to us the free hand he had leaned against the tree to tear away more of my dress. The sudden scream of rage that he let out at that moment was the last thing that I expected from him, and the cause of his cry became readily apparent as I followed his own furious gaze to his hand on the tree over my head.

He was unable to move it because it was skewered to the trunk by a dagger, and one with a pearl handle that I had seen many times hanging at Barbossa's hip. The sound of steel on steel caught my attention behind Stoker, and I recognized it as the sound of a sword being drawn.

While I wrote long ago of the first time I saw Barbossa step out of the shadows and onto the Essex, and of the terror I felt at that moment, nothing could have been further from the way I felt about seeing the silhouette of that plumed hat in the shadows behind Stoker, or about the way I felt about seeing Barbossa step into the moonlight in front of him, sword in hand.

The voice he spoke to Stoker with at that point was controlled and clearly dangerous.

"Ye'd best be lettin' the lady go," he drawled, walking slowly closer.

I would have made a run for it at that moment if it weren't for the fact that Stoker, although pinned to the tree, had kept the presence of mind to keep the dagger in his other hand pressed into my side, keeping me from being able to get away. I cried out a little as Stoker dug me viciously, causing another puncture, and letting Barbossa know that he still held an important card.

Although the situation was at a momentary standstill, if I hadn't been stuck in the middle, Stoker would have already been dead, and it was only because he still held the knife, I am sure, that Barbossa kept from cutting him down.

"I wager 'tis a rock and a hard place ye find yerself between now, Master Stoker," Barbossa said, waiting patiently. "You can't get free of the tree unless you let go the doctor, and once you let go, I'll not be feelin' kindly toward you fer how ye've treated her."

Stoker, not through making full use of the one card he held, suddenly raised the knife back to my throat. "Back off, Cap'n," he snarled, "or yeh may have me but not before I've taken yer lady with me."

Barbossa lowered his sword a little and took a step back, still biding his time.

At that point, still keeping an eye on Barbossa, Stoker spoke to me again. "Reach up o'er yer head an' pull out that blade," he snarled, apparently finding a solution to his dilemma.

It was a tricky thing to comply with, pinned as I was by the dagger at my throat. Not having much leverage where I was reaching up over my head, it took me a minute and some wiggling, much to Stoker's extreme displeasure, to finally yank out the blade.

It was unfortunate for Stoker that he didn't think about things just a tiny bit sooner, and as I pulled Barbossa's dagger free of the tree and his hand over my head, I flipped the blade around on the downward movement, and extending my arms, managed to drive the blade toward the back of his shoulder. I lacked any real leverage as I was aiming for a spot on a man considerably taller than myself, and I'm afraid I didn't do much damage as the blade fell away at his sudden reaction.

It did cause him enough surprise and pain that he dropped his hand with the knife at my throat, and I tried to jump out of his reach as he slashed one last time at me with the knife, catching me in the leg, and cutting through my skirt and across the back of my thigh as I threw myself to the ground.

He never gave me another thought as he dropped the knife and drew the sword he carried at his hip, intent on meeting Barbossa who had charged when he saw me flip the dagger around.

I would write more about the duel that took place in the moonlight that night, except for the fact that there would not be much to write about. Stoker might have been the best gunner on the ship, but he faced a master swordsman in Barbossa, who would still not be beaten in a duel for another ten years. Stoker didn't even clear the sword from his scabbard before Barbossa, in two rapid moves, had severed the hand that was reaching for the blade, and opened Stoker's throat on the return stroke.

I had barely had time to scramble a few feet away and sit up before I saw Stoker's lifeless body crumple to the ground.

While I sat there, out of breath and shaking from what I'd just been through, Barbossa stood over Stoker for a moment just to be sure he was dead, and then he calmly wiped the sword on the man's shirt and hung it back at his hip.

I vaguely remember thinking that I didn't know what to say to him as he came to stand near me, but anything that might have been said about what had happened in the past few days by either of us, was suddenly unimportant.

I glanced up at him for a moment, still too shaken to rise, and he dropped down on one knee very close to me. "Madeline," he said softly, getting me to look at him.

"Are ye hurt?" he asked me, and then he reached out to let his fingers trail gently along the side of my face where he'd struck me. I realized that he wasn't asking about anything Stoker might have done to me, but referred to what I might have suffered at his own hand.

I shook my head, unable to speak at that moment, as he was tracing my injured lip with his thumb. He withdrew his hand as he realized I was bleeding, and then gently turned my head to inspect the wound at my neck. "This'll mend quickly," he said, seeing that it was superficial.

"Where else are ye cut?" he asked, evidently playing surgeon for me. He inspected the wound that ran down my chest, and found the same thing. "'Tis not but a nasty scratch," he said, gently tugging the remains of my dress in place. "It should not mar the view," he said in an odd way, and I suddenly realized that he was trying to make light of the fact that the wound ran down my cleavage.

For some reason, the fact that he had chosen to make that flirtatious remark caused me to come undone, and the emotion of everything I'd been through, as well as the realization of the fact that in an instant he and I were back on even ground, caused me to clamp a hand over my mouth to stifle the sob that escaped.

All I recall him saying softly at that moment was "Easy, lass," as he drew me in against him, and held me until I finally stopped crying.

Barbossa let go and stood up, offering me his hand to help me to my feet. While he noticed the blood and the holes in my dress over my ribs, and tried to inspect the wounds, I discovered the cut in my leg as I tried to stand on it and flinched, reflexively grabbing the injury.

Having discovered the wounds he was looking at were nothing serious, Barbossa saw me stumble a little and steadied me before speaking. "Let's have a look at that," he said, turning me around.

I have to admit, despite the fact that I had just been through quite a narrow brush with disaster, and was coming away from the ordeal with several minor, but painful injuries, that I was a bit flustered as he knelt down and began gathering up my dress and lifting it up far enough to visualize the laceration on the back of my thigh.

Although I couldn't see what he was doing, I was intensely aware of just where his fingers were brushing my skin.

"Well," he said finally, still letting his hand rest on my leg, "it'll need to be bound to get you back to the ship, and there I'll wager ye need some suturin'. 'Tis my opinion the scar will not mar this view either."

I couldn't help but laugh a little at how awful he was being.

He tore a length of cloth from my already shredded dress, and handing me my skirt to hold up, went about tying the makeshift bandage around my leg. Of course, since he had already made me laugh, I knew he wasn't nearly done, and I was right.

"I have to say that ye've surprised me, May," he said as he worked. "I thought yeh to be a right proper lady, and here you are hikin' up yer skirt in the woods fer a pirate after a month at sea."

I picked the wrong time to flirt back.

"It wouldn't be just any pirate that I'd hike my skirt for," I said softly, as he finished what he was doing and stood up to face me.

"Aye," he said, with a bit of an edge to his voice, "apparently just Master Bellamy."

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A/N: At least things are starting to look up a little for our pirate romance! ;)

Just a reminder that Friday the 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day! :)