She tried to hold back, she really did.  But for all her education, Amelia had grown up in a house of drunkenness, of impropriety left and right. 

            She couldn't hold her tongue. 

            "You," she said, keeping her back to him, her hands clenched so tightly at her sides that her fingernails cut crescents into her palms, "Are a bloody cur of a dog.  The filthy clothes suit ye, ye mannerless horse's ass."  As she spoke, the low-class accent she worked so hard to banish from her voice thickened.  "I'd not do laundry for the likes of ye even if it meant drowning in the sea.  Calling a girl in here like a servant only to undress yerself in front of her, aye?  Well, then ye can finish undressing with yer door open." 

            Now she just had to figure out how to get past him without looking at him.  She didn't know what the problem was, precisely.  She'd read much of Cowper's Anatomy, and had certainly looked at all the pictures.  And what a strapping she'd gotten for that from her da when he'd found out.  But it had been interesting. 

            He was different than a drawing, in more ways than one.  Seeing her sod of a brother passed out shirtless on the floor of the shack had been a common occurrence.  But Jack…

            Best not to dwell on that too long, missy, she commanded herself, heading blindly for the door.  She'd acted like a fool, she was afraid, overreacted like a crazed hysteric and shown herself for the naïve idiot she was.  Who had any modesty on a pirate ship, anyway?

            She'd nearly made it to the door, very nearly, when long, strong fingers banded around her wrist and jerked her to a stop.  "Oh come, now, love," he spoke gently, trying to calm her.  He'd only been trying to get a rise out of her, not by undressing but by giving her one more piece of work to add to all the others he'd given her.  And he hadn't thought she'd be so offended.

            Face it mate, you know a whole lot of nothing about innocents, having never been one, and not having met one in a great long while, he thought, feeling the small bones of her wrist beneath his fingers.  Her pulse was kicking like a horse, he noted. 

            "Well, love, you're a first for me," he said sincerely, trying to decide whether to keep his grip on her wrist or to let go and put his shirt back on.  "'Tis the only time a woman has complained about the sight of my skin, as it were." 

            She turned then, her dark eyes cooler than the breeze from the waters.  Trying to will her hand not to tremble in his, she let her gaze drop deliberately, dispassionately, over his bare chest and stomach, keeping her nose in the air.  Compare it to the book, she told herself firmly.  But the drawings had been neither exceptionally well-muscled nor tanned nor tattooed.  He was, in a scientific way, fascinating. 

            Science had nothing to do with the color creeping up her neck and to her cheeks.

            Tilting his head and looking smug, Jack stood.  Though he saw her draw in a quick breath, he admired that she stood her ground.  "I see the complaints have—" Fluttering his fingers in the air, the smugness slipped into a roguish grin.  "Vanished."

            "Behind a rapidly thinning veil of manners," she said, biting her tongue to keep herself from the panicked whimper that wanted to escape her lips.  He was inching closer to her, blast it all, and the man was generating heat like a wood stove.  "If it be to your satisfaction, Captain, I believe I'll do your laundry tomorrow rather than falling asleep in a tub full of suds and soiled shirts."

            He'd forgotten.  So accustomed was he to running only on the barest amount of sleep, he hadn't given a single thought to where she would rest.  He could see now, however, the dark smudges nestled under her eyes.  Whirling away from her suddenly, he began to pluck through the piles of clothing on the floor, tossing things this way and that.  Occasionally he would mutter to himself, tug at the braids of his beard, and start rooting in a different place.

            Finally he crowed triumphantly, a wild sound that made Amelia's eyes grow wide.  She was afraid to ask what he was looking for, or moreover, what he had found. 

            "A cot," he said, flourishing his hands at the long feather cot that stood inches off the floor.  "I'd offer ye my bed," he said confidentially, "But I've a feeling you'd slap me."  Rubbing his cheek as though remembering slaps long past, he narrowed his eyes.  "I seem to attract that sort of thing."

            "And I seem not to be the least bit shocked at that," she said, her eyes round.  Sleep in his cabin, with his bed only inches away?  "Are you quite certain that's a wise idea?"  She tried to shape her phrases carefully, as not to either irk or titillate him.  It seemed to take precious little to do either. 

            "Do I look like a wise man to you?" he asked, drawing a strand of beads through his fingers and looking at it contemplatively. 

            Amelia rubbed her temples with her fingers, letting her eyes drift shut.  Anything to be relieved of the sight of him.  "I'll not answer that question." 

            "I'll say, then, you're a smarter girl than you look.  I suppose you could stay somewhere else on the ship," he said, picking his way with small, affected steps through the piles of clothes on the floor.  "I'm sure none of the men on this ship, pirates though they be, rogues and thieves and murderers, branded as such, each and every one, would ever dream of laying a finger on you."  Laying a hand on his chest, he looked at her soberly.  "Gentlemen at heart, we pirates."

            Amelia was starting to think that staying in the rum barrel for the entirety of the trip wouldn't have been such a bad idea after all.  "Then why does Anamaria get to sleep among them?" she said, hating the petulant note in her voice.  She was being childish and stubborn, inconveniencing him more by the minute.

            How do you inconvenience a pirate?  The thought eased through her mind.  They don't have rules, they're basically ignorant, and they do what they please on the smallest of whims.  But even as she thought it, she knew it wasn't true.

            Jack laughed, pleasant this time rather than mocking.  How long had it been since he'd had an intelligent conversation?  Most of the discussing that got done aboard the Pearl consisted of drunken, malformed soliloquies.  "Because, love, Anamaria can take care of herself, while you can't even hold onto my weapon once you've grasped it."  Smiling broadly at his double entendre, he watched her cheeks grow even redder.

            It had nearly made his eyes cross when she'd slithered that small hand down the length of his body, but sadistically, it had been more arousing when she'd swept his own gun into his face.  Fire on the high seas.  It had been a day, a long one for her, and that blaze was showing no signs of abating.

            After freedom, Jack loved nothing more than being entertained. 

            Amelia knew when she'd been beaten, fair or no.  And with her head aching like a rotted tooth and her eyes threatening at every moment to drop shut, she was too weary to argue.  Even after a full day of laundering and a rousing fight with Philip, she'd never felt so exhausted.  Stepping on the mounds of clothes rather than bothering to walk around them, she laid down on the cot and turned her back to his bed. 

            "That seems to be settled, then, as you yourself seem settled," Jack said, looking down at her for a few moments.  "I didn't even get slapped in the process, which is quite amazing in and of itself.  I must say that's the first time I may have deserved it, but didn't actually get it.  Though I did deserve it after stealing Anamaria's ship… but it was too nice a ship for a lass, anyway."  He stilled with a grin as Amelia rolled over and fixed him with a stare.

            "If you'll not stop the chattering, the slap may be forthcoming."  Not as though she'd be able to sleep, anyway, with every inch of her body tense and humming like lightning.  When he made a big show of shutting his lips, she turned her back again and closed her eyes.

            He wanted to ask if she was actually going to sleep in the gown, but thought of what she'd been wearing and let it pass.  Someone could find her a more appropriate garment in the hold tomorrow.  Sitting up in the bed, Jack lowered all the lamps but one and drew out the one thing he had left from his life before piracy.

            Just before she drifted off, Amelia was sure she heard pages turning. 

~~~

            "He was shorter than I," the man growled, lowering his face to the innkeeper's.  "Hair like a woman's, he had, prettied up with trinkets and bits of glass.  Talked fancy, but fast."

            One of the women sitting on the stairs, her large breasts all but spilling out of her low-cut dress, fanned herself and spoke up.  "What if we did know who yer talkin' about?"

            Philip huffed out a breath, holding his right hand close to his chest.  He wanted to threaten, to hit, to make the worthless whore tell him something of use.  It was hard to do when his hand had been turned to a worthless mash of mush.  The stench rising from the mangled hand was nearly unbearable, and the only treatment Philip had given it was a splash of homemade rye-brew.  "Then ye'd tell me, pintle-merchant."  He flipped a coin to her, laughing nastily as she scrambled after it on the stairs. 

            "Aye," she said breathlessly, testing the coin with her tooth.  "'E's Cap'n Jack Sparrow.  Surely ye've heard of 'im?  'Scaped the Brit soldiers not too long ago.  It'd take a brainier fella than ye to find 'im, I warrant."

            "Warrant all ye like, ye bacon-fed baggage."  Philip crossed the room to her, leering like a madman the whole time.  But she was stupid and greedy, so she pushed herself up, shoving her breasts into his face by way of invitation.  Without so much as breaking stride, he backhanded her with his left hand, dug his coin and others from between her breasts, and left the inn a happy man.

            Nobody took what was his until he was finished with it, and he wasn't near finished with his whore of a sister.