THIRTY-FIVE: Cuisine

Elizabeth supposed that there had been no hope for Beckett to begin with—so it was ridiculous, really, to hope for any sort of feast. She trouped downstairs, cradling William in her arms, and wandered into the dining room.

The manor had a strange sort of beauty to it, but at the same time, it seemed... haunted. It looked uninhabited by anything but spirits now. Though there was a bird's nest in the library. Everything had a thick layer of dust coating it, and had to be brushed down before sitting on it, leaning on it, or anything, really. It made everything seem grey; the wallpaper, the carpets, the tabletops, the chairs and loungers.

She walked into the dining room, and glanced around at the dust everywhere. The chairs, the long table, the mantelpiece above the fireplace, the wooden floor and the rugs upon it—everything was covered. She had William supported on one arm, and some cushions in the other. She made a nice little pile in one corner, and propped William up.

He had learned to sit up about a week ago, and she couldn't be more proud of him—all right, so it was a relatively simple thing, but it was a big step. He sat happily now, his thin hair curling upwards, light brown, his eyes now a gorgeous mahogany brown. Elizabeth smiled and waved at him, and then popped her head around the kitchen door.

"Have you got any food ready yet?" Elizabeth asked Beckett, who was leaning against a counter, sipping at a cup of tea. Not too promising.

"Oh? Yes, yes I have. Two more minutes," he smiled at her sweetly, and it made her suspicious. Still, any food was better then none, right?

Wrong.

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She looked at the two covered plates on the table in front of her—slightly wary of what lay beneath. She had not smelt the waft of delicious cooking coming from the kitchen. Not that she had expected it. In fact, she had expected there to be black smoke pouring out from under the door.

"If this is the main course and the dessert, where's the starter?" Elizabeth asked.

"Oh, so I have to make starters now?" Beckett rolled his eyes, "If you're so desperate for a starting dish, eat the pot plant." Elizabeth sighed, and pulled the top off of the plate containing the 'main course'.

It was the lamb they'd bought.

That was about it. Not cooked, no sauce, no vegetables... just the leg of lamb, bleeding slightly onto the silver-coloured platter. Elizabeth wrinkled her nose.

"Cutler, this is raw," she said.

"It's rare, actually," Beckett corrected her.

"It's raw."

"Rare. Extra rare..."

"Beckett!"

"Alright, extra-extra-extra rare, then." He sounded amused.

"Not funny. You haven't cooked this at all," Elizabeth sighed, dropping the lid back down with a clang, "What have you been doing for the time you spent in the kitchen? Because I know that it's not cooking."

"What? How could you assume such a thing?"

"You were in there for three hours, Beckett," Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

"Oh, yes... well, admittedly, I spent most of it pouting." Elizabeth exhaled heavily. "And drinking tea. I still can't believe they took the best china. They were all the way from London." Beckett examined a nail idly. Elizabeth blew her fringe out of her eyes, and folded her arms.

"You did this on purpose."

"Did what on purpose?"

"You did this," Elizabeth waved an arm towards the two plates, "On purpose. To convince me that you can't cook, so that I'll have to cook. Didn't you?" Beckett made to protest, but Elizabeth continued, "Well, it's not going to work. You will cook. You will cook if I have to teach you every little thing. Alright?"

"I don't want to cook," Beckett muttered, wrinkling his nose as if the very thought was below him, "It's not my job."

"Funnily enough, that doesn't automatically make it my job, either!" Elizabeth said. Beckett blinked, as if the thought hadn't ever occurred to him.

"Yes, it does," Beckett said—not in an arguing tone, just the tone of someone explaining something obvious to someone with very little brain capacity. Elizabeth put her hands on her hips, and gave him her best 'no-nonsense' look.

"You pig," she sighed, "Are you ever going to learn? The world is not your slave, and you are not my superior any more. You're not Lord Beckett now—you're a convict on the loose. If we're going to have to work together, we actually have to... work together! If you're afraid of getting your pretty little hands dirty, then you might as well hand yourself over to Leonard now—you hear me?!" Elizabeth realised that her voice had escalated by the end of her monologue.

"Don't shout, Elizabeth, it's unnecessary," Beckett said mildly, seeming unaffected by her speech. Elizabeth realized that if she had to take this for much longer, her head would probably actually explode.

Beckett had always had that uncanny ability to drive her completely and utterly bonkers in the space of two and a half minutes. He was conceited, selfish, arrogant and an overall ass-headed weasel. And she also had no reason to trust him—he had cuffed her to him and been about to hand her over to Leonard, for Christ's sake.

She remembered something, at this point. When Beckett had cuffed her, and had been planning on handing her over to the government—when they had escaped, after all of the fighting, she had told him that she was going to leave. She had told him that she was taking her baby and they were going to get out of there. She had been planning on never having to see him ever again.

Sure, she'd been angry back then, but her decision still stood, surely? Of course, the dragoons had raided that night, and Beckett had chosen to save her life at the risk of her own, so she'd felt... obliged to help him. Even though it meant risking her life. She didn't really know for sure what had made her do such a thing—it had seemed ridiculous, but at the same time, she supposed... she was just too much of a good person, damn it! Too morally obliged to make sure Beckett didn't go insane and Audrey didn't die...

Uh...

So, there were two major failures there. But she tried her best. And she could hardly walk out on him the day his mother died—and then he had come up with the idea of this little hideaway here, and it had sounded safe so she had come along. She wanted to leave. Break out of this. She couldn't afford to get caught up in many more escapades with Beckett. It was dangerous—for her and William both.

She looked towards Beckett now, looking a tad sulky, pulling a strand of fringe. He let go, and it twanged back up into a curl. Somehow, this made Elizabeth realize that she couldn't just leave Beckett on his own. She just... couldn't!

Perhaps there was someone else she could dump him on? But what allies did she have? Her old friends in Port Royale—not a chance. The Brethren Court were a promised ally of hers; but they would never in a thousand years help her with Cutler Beckett. In fact, they may well disown her, so to speak. Perhaps if she pretended that Beckett was someone else? Would Beckett even play ball to that one? He despised the pirates as much as they despised him, after all.

What about Jack? Jack Sparrow, and his crew—no, wait, on his visit, he'd said about Barbossa stealing his ship. And how on earth would she find him anyway? And he detested Beckett; just as Beckett detested him.

So it was all a wasted idea... or perhaps it wasn't. Because it was this trail of thought that led her to think about where Beckett would be safe. Where did the redcoats dare not enter? Where did pirates frequent, with no need to follow any rules? Where was it easy to skulk in the shadows, unseen by all? Where did those shunned and shamed by society head to? Where would they be safe from Leonard?

Why... Tortuga, of course.

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"Elizabeth?" Beckett called into her ear—she jerked from her long train of thought, and blinked at him.

"I am going to teach you everything I know about cooking," Elizabeth said to him, folding her arms, "So that you can cook by yourself. Alright?" Beckett grudgingly nodded. "I feel like I'm teaching a three year old!"

"No doubt that everything you know about cooking can be summed up in about four sentences," Beckett muttered, running a finger along the dark wood of the table and frowning at the grey lining of dust on his fingertip. Elizabeth had to agree, really; she was positively amateur at cookery... but she wasn't eating raw lamb, and that was final. She steered Beckett back towards the kitchen, taking the lamb along as well.

"Time for a cookery lesson," she said, sniffily.

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Two hours later, they both sat just outside the kitchen, looking somewhat dejected.

"And you're supposed to be the good cook," Beckett muttered. "Not even I started a fire..."

"You didn't even try!" Elizabeth exclaimed, folding her arms.

"Yes—so what does this say about you?" Beckett smirked, "That you shouldn't even attempt cookery."

"Oh, shut up," Elizabeth snapped, sighing.

"You didn't look at the desert," Beckett said idly, "The one that I made."

"I was rather afraid of what I would see," Elizabeth said with a grin. Beckett folded his legs and picked at the dust-ridden carpet beneath them.

"So was I, at first," Beckett said airily, "You bought the cheaper flour, so I wasn't sure it would rise properly... and the eggs were quite small, so I think it came out a little bit heavy..." Elizabeth opened her mouth, and closed it again, unsure if he was pulling her leg or not. He just smiled his serene, all-knowing smile. She got to her feel, strode to the main table, and pulled up the cover of the desert.

In the place of the gone-off fruit or the rock-hard biscuits that she had expected to be, there was a beautifully made little cake, spongy and delectable, with the jam that she had bought earlier spread on a middle layer, and a sprinkle of pure white sugar over the top. This was all topped off with a few blobs of cream, too. It wasn't the best cake she had ever seen—it had that made-by-a-proud-ten-year-old-for-his-grandmother quality to it—but it still looked absolutely delicious compared to the junk that they had been eating recently.

"Please... don't tell me you made this," Elizabeth said heavily.

"Alright, I wont... but I did," Beckett smirked at her, and Elizabeth got that familiar urge to throw the nearest object to hand at his head with as much force as possible.

"All this time, you knew how to cook, and you didn't tell me?!" Elizabeth demanded.

"No need to shout now, you'll scare Junior," Beckett said. He was still sitting cross-legged on the floor, and he waved through the table and chair legs to baby William, who was gurgling happily in his little cushion palace.

"Beckett... why would you do that?" Elizabeth asked him.

"It's all about image... I'm sure you understand," Beckett said offhandedly, "And anyway, now that you know that I taught myself to cook, you'll probably make me do all of he cooking," he sighed.

"Too right I am!" Elizabeth huffed, "On the island—in the barns—I've had to do all of the cooking, and you... you... how do you know how to cook?!" She couldn't believe it. She had just spent two hours trying to 'teach' Beckett to cook, and all the while... all the while, he'd been some sort of secret master chef!

"Like I said... I taught myself," Beckett shrugged, "It's good to excel in all types of skills. When being brilliant at everything else began to bore me, I decided I might as well try it. That and the fact that my mother went through cycles of motherliness, at the lowest of which she would barely remember my name, and at the peaks she would press-gang me into all sorts of 'quality' time as a child," he yawned.

"What does that mean?" Elizabeth asked with a frown.

"My mother was a very special person," Beckett said, resting his head on the wall behind him, "She would do something terrible, usually spending the night with someone who wasn't my father, and then the guilt would compel her to follow me around everywhere, making sure I was alright, and wanting to spend time with me and suchlike—riding, baking, whatever she felt like. As a child, I felt it rude to refuse, let alone the fact that I spent hardly time with her anyway. She would buy me things, want to know my opinion on everything, and so on. After a while, the novelty would wear off, until we were barely talking again... and then she would do something else horrible," he spoke surprisingly lightly.

"I... I see. I think I see," Elizabeth said blankly. At least he was talking more openly about his mother now. Is it any surprise he turned out the way he did? Elizabeth thought to herself, his entire family are covertly mad...

"You can eat the cake," Beckett said, changing the subject quickly. "I'm not hungry."

"You've poisoned it, haven't you?"

"What? Oh, please..."

"So, where do you keep the cyanide? Next to the breadbin, perhaps?"

"It isn't poisoned, Elizabeth."

"Oh, yes?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm not sure I believe you." Elizabeth couldn't stop the grin from coming to her face, at this point. Beckett rolled his eyes.

"Elizabeth. The cake either goes in your mouth, or it gets smashed over your head..."
NB: Ah, I was wondering what you would all think about the new crackers Beckett. Don't worry, he's just a little unsteady... heh heh. This chapter was strangely cooking-orientated; it wasn't going to be that long, but I just can't resist the Beckett-Elizabeth banter... see you next update, I'm off carol singing. With a bad throat. What jollies!

Extract from the next chapter: "I have an idea," Elizabeth said cautiously, "But I don't think you're going to like it."