It was entirely incomprehensible to her how a man so thick as Philip could find things as well as he did. It was though he could sniff out things: gold, liquor, weaknesses. Most of all, he could sniff out her. If she were more than a minute more at the laundry, he knew. And tonight, though he'd been a quarter hour's walk away from the docks, he'd come looking for her.
"Quite a good thing," she said coldly. "I'll thank you to take your hand from me, brother." She clasped the small leather bag in her hand, hoping against hope he hadn't seen it. "I was only looking at the water and thinking of mother." The lie fell easily from her lips, as many others like it had for years. Amelia found no shame in lying to avoid a blackened eye or a split lip.
At the mention of Taletha, Philip hung his head like a wounded dog and moaned. "Ohhh, mother," he said mournfully. "Our poor, sainted mother."
He seemed to ruminate on this for a few moments, and Amelia was nearly certain he was dozing on his feet.
Jack watched the tableau in front of him, arms crossed over his chest, his long, ringed fingers stroking lovingly against his pistol and a dagger he'd recently lifted from a street brawler. Violence shined in his black eyes, and he kept a keen ear on the conversation. If either sibling were to have chanced a glance at him, however, it would have looked as though he were staring out to sea, swaying back and forth as though entranced.
Philip snapped out of his doze as though slapped and shook his twin as a terrier would shake a rat. "Lying baggage!" he shouted as her head snapped to and fro on her neck. "You hated mother."
Letting out a yowl of mingled pain, frustration, and anger, Amelia raked her nails against the side of her brother's face, spitting in his eyes as soon as he let her go. She raised the hand holding the leather sac and began to swing it by the strings. He wanted gold from her, by God, she'd give it to him right in his stubborn, jackassed, abusive jaw.
Jack's eyes widened in genuine surprise as he saw what she was about to do. Stepping forward and drawing his pistol from its leather carriage in one smooth motion, the rolling, peculiar gait gone, he rammed the solid butt of it down on the drunken ox's skull.
He made an appreciable thump as he fell on the wooden slats they stood on.
Jack had expected a thank-you, an effusive maiden's gratitude, a shy offering of reparations. But instead of paying him any mind, the small woman stepped forward, catching the pouch neatly in her palm, looked down at her brother, and kicked him squarely in the ribs. He made a moist grunting sound but stayed perfectly still.
"You rotten, evil snake," she hissed, moving to the large hands that had harmed her so often, that had bruised and stolen and kept her chained as effectively as iron would have. Without a second thought, she tramped a boot nearly worn to holes down on his fingers and twisted her foot.
Jack shook his head and stepped back as he heard bones crunch. "Well, I'll be damned, 'tis another time I find meself wrong about you. I'd had you figured for a weepier sort, I did, but it looks to me like you just crushed his hand." Stroking the braids that dangled from his beard, he leaned down and craned his head sideways. "Aye, that you did."
Brushing off his hands as though ridding himself of the business, he headed back toward town. A woman like that was a danger, indeed, for she was not only interesting but damned frightening.
"I've not finished speaking with you, Captain," Amelia called after him calmly, trying to swallow the mysterious bubble that seemed to have lodged itself in her chest. Had she taken more time to think about it, she would have recognized joy and freedom in that hysterical feeling. She hadn't felt them since she'd been old enough to know better.
"I think it best you not walk away from me just now. I've a deal to make with the devil, I do, and I'd prefer to get it done. If it should be my request is not enough to keep you, then you'd do well to remember I have a bit of your money here that I'm yearning to return."
Do well to remember that? Jack thought he'd do well to remember that the woman, small enough for him to pick up and carry away without exerting himself, had just broken her brother's bones without flinching.
"You know," he said, turning on his heel and staying in that position, one heel extended, "Though I realize I'm not acquainted with everyone's customs, it's customary for someone who is given a gift to keep it, maybe even say thank you, but to give it back is, customarily, offensive."
"Hard to believe a fellow like you could find room for offense," Amelia said, slapping the bag into his hand, pleased when he curled his fingers around it. "But I'll not be taking pity from a man whose gold is surely stolen and whose manners merely borrowed."
"They're real enough when I want them to be," he said clearly, straightening his posture and looking down at her. For that fleeting moment, the pretenses were dropped, then the mask was back.
"You've a deal to make with me, you'd best start by giving me your name and then getting it on with fast, as you've eaten up a great deal of my night already, and I'm looking for that brute brother of yours to wake up any second now, bellowing for my blood, or yours, or both, since we've both done him a considerable amount of damage. I'd like to be on my way, drinking with a beautiful woman, before any of that happens, and not even God himself could stop me from that." He looked up at the sky and smirked. "Well, on second thought, perhaps He could."
Brushing a hand over her hair, which had fallen mostly free of its pins when Philip had tossed her about, Amelia took a deep breath and began. "My name is Amelia Hamilton, and I've only one thing to ask of you. After I ask, you may be on your way." He nodded for her to continue. "I beg passage of you, to wherever you may light next."
If she'd asked for a winged pig, he'd have been less shocked. "Passage? It isn't a charter I'm sailing. That's my life you're wanting passage on, my blood and my sweat and my freedom."
When he saw his words weren't affecting her, he stepped toe-to-toe with her, close enough to count the freckles on her nose, to feel the breath from her lips. With feline grace and speed, he raised a hand and tangled it in her hair, levering her head back to expose her throat.
"I'm a pirate, Miss Hamilton." Speaking in a low growl, he lowered his head, bringing his lips close to the fluttering pulse in her throat. He looked up at her through thick black lashes, appreciating how still she was, no shudders, no struggling. No reaction at all. "A woman on a pirate ship doesn't ride like a queen." Wishing to shock her, he looked contemplative. "Though she would, in fact, ride quite a bit."
Amelia let out a stuttering breath as her whole body flushed; she wasn't ashamed, as she ought to be, or embarrassed, as she'd have expected, but it was something else⦠the muscles in her thighs went lax and she felt her knees knock into one another. His eyes stayed on hers, and she could smell the sweat of him, saline and elemental like the ocean around them.
Keeping her voice level and her honey-brown eyes on his, she spoke quietly, her brain at waged battle with her baser urges. "So that's what you and your rebel angels do, then? That's what it's like for the dishonorable men."
"Rebel angels?" She'd thrown him off-balance, a feat not easily accomplished. Moreover, for a moment, the barest moment, he'd forgotten his surroundings and breathed in the scent of her. Alarmed, he removed his hand from her hair as though burned and stepped away.
She stayed where she was, half-risen to her toes, chin tilted in the air, long pale column of throat exposed, and she spoke in a soft, steady voice. "'His pride had cast him out from Heav'n, with all his host of rebel angels.' That's you to a tee, isn't it? Milton writing about you." She blinked once, twice, then stepped back, bringing her eyes to a level position and pressing cool hands to warm cheeks.
There was something unnerving about a man who made the brain conjure up nothing but comparisons to the devil.
Only a fool would be tempted by the tempter himself.
Her reverie was broken by the gurgling, long groan Philip sent up. His considerable bulk shifted a bit, and Amelia brought wide, panicked brown eyes to Jack's unreadable dark ones. Gathering her skirts around her and rising to her toes, she directed her words at Jack in a fevered whisper.
"Should I remain here, he will kill me. If I am not miles away from him, I will die. Have you any conscience, that will weigh on it. Though I run now, I will be back." She dared a glance at the stirring form of her brother, and then was gone.
Jack Sparrow, still both singing and stinging from being compared to the fallen angel, had never been quite so amused and confused in his life. Turning his attention to the groaning man at his feet, he sighed. He wanted nothing more than to draw his pistol and put the ogre out of everyone else's misery, but he didn't have it in him. He'd only just steered clear of the watchful eye of Briton law. Murdering a man wasn't likely to add to his prestige.
With a wistful sigh, Jack booted the man in the side of the head, sending him back into the unconsciousness from which he came.
His fingers slipping over the smooth leather of the pouch he'd been handed back, Jack inhaled the lingering scent of her. He was afraid his night had been ruined, after all.
