Amelia drew in one breath, then exhaled shakily through her nose.  At a lack for a witty rejoinder, she tried to keep her focus away from those eerily changeable eyes of his, but save for gazing at his mouth, there was nowhere else to look.  So thinking, she closed her eyes.  "I've already stated my position on this matter," she said quietly, trying to quiet the small trill of mistrust that went through her.  To close your eyes around such a man could surely not be considered safe. 

            She felt him push away from her, felt the heat radiating off him recede, and a chuckle permeated the resulting silence, first quiet, then growing into raucously loud laughter.  When she finally opened her eyes, she saw him standing in the center of the small room, hands on hips, head thrown back in laughter.  The gold caps on his teeth winked in the light of the oil lamp

            "Your position?  Aye," he said, placing his hands behind his back and pacing like a man prepared to give a speech.  "I'd say that's the right phrase to use, love, since I'd be putting you through all sorts of positions, if that was what I had in mind."  Stopping in front of her, his gaze grew faraway.  He stayed like that for several moments, then snapped back instantly.  "But it isn't.  I was speakin' of goin' down to the hold, and findin' a garment that doesn't make you look so common, savvy?"

            He executed a quick, mocking bow and walked out, leaving her alone to wonder why, exactly, she hadn't used the gun when she'd had the chance.

~~~

            She had thought things couldn't get any worse, but Amelia discovered the only good thing that had happened upon boarding the Black Pearl was the dress. 

            Her strides unhampered by the roomy folds of rich bronze-colored fabric, Amelia paced the length of the upper deck, talking to herself loudly.  It had been only moments since he'd given her the particulars of his request for her, and her anger was still fresh.  It was one thing to try and teach one of the crewman to read; it was quite another that it wasn't a crewman at all, but the token crew-woman.

            "I won't do it.  It is positively idiotic, and what's more, will be of no practical use.  Do you hear me?  No practical use!"  Stopping, she turned to direct the shout at Jack, who was standing at the wheel of the ship, the wind blowing his beaded strands of hair back from his face.  It was hard to yell at a man who looked as truly happy as he did—a genuine happiness, the only expression she'd seen from him that was completely lacking artifice. 

            She suspected, though, that the yelling only made him happier. 

            "It's upsetting the crew, ye are, with yer shoutin' and carryin' on.  Though ye look a mite finer than ye did when we dragged your carcass above decks, ye still talk like a high-nosed bitch."  Anamaria stood, arms crossed, behind Amelia.  "Besides, ye're stuck wit' me whether you want it or not."

            "A high-nosed bitch, is it?"  Amelia turned and tried her best to look down her nose at the dark-skinned piratess.  "'Tis a bit hypocritical of you to call me so, is it not?"  When the woman didn't answer her, Amelia sighed.  She'd naught to do on the ship but shout, anyway.  She'd do better to occupy her time, but what angered her was that she knew Jack had counted on her thinking so.  He was a canny bastard, and seemed to be three steps ahead of everyone else.

            She'd remedy that in time, but she would deal with things in their proper order.

            "I believe we've gotten off to a start not conducive to a learning situation," she said, swallowing her pride in one bitter gulp.  "Jack wants you to read, and so you shall."

            "Don't ye mean Captain Jack?"  Anamaria crossed her arms and looked archly at the only other female on the ship.  She was amused but also troubled by the missy's familiarity with the captain.  It spoke of things Anamaria knew well of Jack.  She wondered if, when Jack was done with her, the woman wouldn't just kill him rather than slapping him.

            That was, in her opinion, a more likely course of action for such a high-nosed bitch. 

              "Yes, yes, Captain," Amelia said absently, her gaze drawn back to the man in question.  His eyes burned with the coming sundown, and she wondered what it was like to crave something as powerfully as he seemed to crave the sea.

            "Well, then," Anamaria said, following the laundress's gaze and rolling her eyes.  "What the Cap'n wants, the Cap'n gets."

            "Then it's best we give it to him," Amelia said, her cheeks burning once again.  "Let's take it below deck, shall we?"

            She didn't have a clue where to begin.  Amelia was largely self-taught, her father gone too much to help, her mother and brother both too low for such a pastime as reading.  As a little girl, she'd shamelessly asked help here and there, of merchants, of the laundry women.  Even, she recalled, from several of the prostitutes, women whom the child Amelia had called "rouge-ladies." 

            It didn't help matters that the only books she had, the only possessions she'd been able to keep, were far too advanced for a beginning reader.  Marlowe's Dr. Faustus and a collection of poetry from John Donne hardly seemed appropriate.  But she would make do. 

            "'Go and catch a falling star,'" Amelia read slowly aloud, following each word with her finger.  Though Anamaria was stoic at best, she could see the young woman's interest.  "Do you like it?"

            Grudgingly, Anamaria first shrugged, then nodded.  "It sounds fine," she said.  "Like something the Cap'n says when he's rambling on."

            That surprised a laugh out of Amelia.  "All right," she said.  "Then we'll start with that line and see what we can do."

            Jack stood outside the largest of the three wardrooms and listened to the two women poring over the poetry.  Under his breath, he recited the rest of the stanza that Amelia had started to read aloud.

Go and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me, where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

            With a rueful grin, remembering things long past, he turned away and went back to the quarterdeck.

~~~
            Amelia hugged her books to her chest, a smile slipping over her full lips.  It had actually gone much better than she'd anticipated; Anamaria knew her alphabet fairly well, she only needed to know how it all fit together. 

            "Miss, the captain wishes to see you in his quarters."  Gibbs appeared at her elbow like a portly, grizzled valet, his fingers playing nervously over his ever-present flask.  "Immediately."

            The summons was enough to slap the smile straightaway from her face, Briggs noticed.  She was a pretty slip of a thing, even if she were leagues away from the captain's usual type.  He noted now, at his message, the flush drained out of her cheeks, leaving her freckles standing out sharply. 

            Who'd've ever seen the Cap'n takin' up with a missy like that?  Christened by a baker, sure as the sun sets west, and blue-stockinged to boot, Gibbs thought, shaking his head as the woman marched up to the door of the captain's cabin.

              She knocked on the solid wooden door, turning her back to it as she waited.  It was indecent for him to call for her this late in the evening.  It was nearly full night.  Inhaling the scent of the ocean, she pressed a hand to her uneasy stomach and thought of her parents, each sucked away by the waters that ruled the earth.

            It was unnerving, to say the least.

            Jack stood, braced against the sturdy wood of the doorframe, and wondered how long it would be before she realized she was standing with her back to an open door.  Her hair was now swept up in the best braid she could manage, stray locks teased out here and there by the wind.  The dress she'd chosen looked nearly baggy on her compared to the too-tight cotton she'd worn earlier, and made her seem frailer, smaller.  Not for the first time in the last day, Jack wondered why on earth such a creature was on the Pearl.

            "I would inquire as to what was on your mind, love, but as I'm a selfish sort, I won't."  He was inordinately pleased by the way she jumped guiltily, turning to face him a flush high on her cheeks.  "What do you think of it?" he asked, gesturing widely with his left hand at the ship, its endlessly tall masts, the complicated riggings.  Keeping his hand aloft, he blinked owlishly and looked at her expectantly. 

            "It's…"  What could she say?  Terrifying?  That was certainly the truth.  Foreboding?  Also the truth.  Settling for diplomacy, she finished her sentence.  "Interesting."

            Reading the meaning in the hesitation, Jack laughed.  "Come in.  I'll not speak with you in the open, as it affords little privacy.  Privacy is precious, it is, and it's scarce to be found on a ship.  I'd sail by my onesies, but—"

            She couldn't bear to hear out the rest of the rambling declaration.  "By your what?

            He rolled his eyes dramatically, stepping inside the cabin and sweeping his arm in an arc.  "Ladies first, Miss Hamilton."

            She gasped in mingled shock and breathlessness as she entered the cabin.  Soiled laundry littered the floor, the smell of it strong and uniquely male.  Feeling swamped, she thought frantically that it was all definitely his laundry; it smelled precisely like him.

            "Oh, dear heavens," she said.  Turning to him, hand pressed to her chest, she meant to question him, to ask if he actually expected her to do all that laundry at once, and felt breathless all over again.

            The cad was taking his bloody shirt off as she stood right there.

            "What in the name of all that is holy do you think you are doing?" she asked, slapping at his arms unthinkingly, trying to get him to lower them from the action he was performing.  All she succeeded in doing was making him undress slower.  She closed her eyes and turned her back, wondering what she'd done in life to deserve such torture. 

            She'd caught only a glimpse of a long, lean torso, sinfully tanned and with a thin black line of hair snaking downward.  That was as far as she'd looked before cursing at him and herself loudly and turning away. 

            Delighted, Jack sat in the single chair perched in the middle of the mess of laundry and crossed his legs.  "I, love, am giving you laundry to do."