And another chapter written at midnight. Man, this is getting sad. Thanks for all the great reviews, especially to those of you who reviewed my Les Misérables fic- you guys are the best!

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Aletté spun slowly before Will's entranced eyes, her blue chiffon skirts rustling quietly. "Well?" She asked, her eyes alight with genuine happiness. "What do you think?"

"It suits you." He said, unable to pry his gaze from her tapering waist and graceful arms. To say it suited her was the epitome of an understatement; in her sky-blue rumpled skirts and fitted bodice, she looked like some unearthly goddess.

Aletté had been happy today. Today with Will. They had been just like a pair of old friends, hitting the town with what little they had, laughing, joking, having fun at Jack's expense. Nothing bitter, awkward, passionate, or lustful had come between them. Not once.

"Aletté?" Will was serious now.

"Aye?"

"There's something I've been meaning to tell you." He paused. This had to be worded just right. To say, in such a nonchalant way, 'Elizabeth is out of the picture, you can be my sloppy seconds' would demean Aletté and all that she meant to him. But then, to sob and blubber that Elizabeth was gone would only aggravate her rare good mood. He needed to put this exactly right.

"Well?" Aletté prompted impatiently. "Spill it, then. While we're still young." She was eager and curious to hear what it was he had to say, hypothesizing that it would be something along the measure of their relationship. Would he say that he loved her?

Will gathered his thoughts, cleared his throat and began. "It's about Elizabeth."

Wrong answer.

Aletté's good mood evaporated, along with the smile that had been on her face. "Oh lovely!" She cooed sarcastically. "Lets all talk about Elizabeth now! Beautiful, high-born, wealthy, perfect Elizabeth."

"Aletté," Will tried. "Please, just hear me out for once!"

"Look," She spat, tearing at the chiffon lacing that fastened up the front of the bodice. "if you want advice, or to brag, or whatever else men talk about their women for, you can wait for Jack to drag his drunken, amorous arse back here and then you can gush you bleeding heart out but please don't try to make a listener out of me." She wrenched the dress off, baring her sleeveless under dress. "Just shut it about Elizabeth!" She pulled her blouse on over her head and tightened the leather laces, turning away from Will to find her breeches.

"Aletté for the bloody love of God will you just stop acting like a spoiled monster for just a minute and listen to me?"

"Why?" She yelled, all the bitterness and malice that had permanently installed itself in her heart surfacing again. "So you can tell me you love her and not me, that you have a son and a family and the life I could never have? I know what this is really about- this is about my being a prostitute isn't it?"

"What?" Will scoffed. "No- of course not! I've known that since I met you-"

"And since you met me you've been leading me on! What- you think that because I've had a loose past I'm just some toy, some men's plaything? God, I thought maybe you had more liberality- you think I'm unclean, don't you?" She struggled into her breeches and tied the belt untidily.

"No, Aletté- not in the least! That's not on my mind at all!" Will grabbed her arm as she started for the door. "Aletté, you're not even giving me a chance to speak- you cant tell me I'm narrow-minded if you wont listen to what I've been trying to tell you!"

"Fine!" She snapped. "Tell me. See if it changes anything." Her eyes danced challengingly, a dark fire burning within her.

"Aletté," Will released his grip on her arm. "just around a year ago, Elizabeth and I had a talk about our, um, our vocations. About the sea, and land, and… well, you've heard it before." Aletté nodded. "Well, Elizabeth wasn't very tolerant of sailing and life on a ship, but I stand by that it is in my blood. It's who I am. So, we decided that-"

"That you would give up who you were to please her, yes, Will, I know you're a saint and a martyr thank you for rubbing it in my face." She rolled her eyes. Her voice changed to a sort of hollow sarcasm. "And the moral of the story is never fall in love with a married man. The end."

Will frowned. "Fall in love?"

Aletté replayed her last words in her head. Shit.

"Well…" So much for thinking before I blab my big mouth around. "I meant… well… not that I mean I'm in love, I really meant to say-"

"Got the disguises?"

It was Jack. He had made his way through the hallway without their noticing and was now surveying the pair of squabbling travellers with a touch of innuendo in his dark brown eyes. The two felt his gaze like the heat of the sun in the desert. Will ground his teeth and glanced around self-consciously, Aletté felt strong colour rising in her cheeks.

"Well," The captain prompted impatiently. "do you have the bloody guises or not?"

"Right, those, yes." Will stammered, reaching for Aletté's dress where it lay, in a careless heap in the floor. The apparent hurriedness with which the dress had been cast off did nothing to dispel the suggestive glimmer that now lighted Jack's face. "Well, here's Aletté's, and I found a cleaner waistcoat. We'll be able to blend in well enough."

"Aye, grand, grand." Jack said distractedly, his gaze slipping over to the beautiful blonde heiress who stood beside him. "Aletté, luv, you wouldn't happen to have any more coins stashed away in your bodice, darling, now would you?"

She snorted. "No, and if I did, I wouldn't go giving them away to a man who will blow them on wine, women, and song."

He smiled back contemptuously, despising this lady's sharp wit and feisty disposition. "I've never liked song, darling, 'less its coming from Meryl, and women I've been quite turned off of since meeting you." Will snickered in the background. "As for wine, never cared for the stuff. Redundant, superfluous drink. Find more alcohol in highborn Britain."

Aletté sighed. "What money have we left now, then? We need to eat tonight."

Jack glanced over at Will, who returned his blank stare. The captain locked eyes with the heiress and said very quietly, "I think you'll be getting a wee bit skinnier now, luv."

She scowled at him, then, as if resigned by premeditation, turned to the foggy looking glass and attempted to neaten her appearance a little. This achieved, her hand flew to the doorknob.

"Where are you going?" Will asked, suddenly realising that she was leaving.

Her reply was barely audible as she disappeared down the dim, twilit hallway. "To earn myself some money."

Will turned to Jack. "You think she means selling herself?"

He shrugged. "What else would she be doing?"

A desperate look crossed Will's face and he made to race after her, only to have Jack's hands take hold of his arm and yank him back forcefully, causing him to trip and stumbled backwards onto the floor with a sound thump. "Let the lass be, mate, or take her all the way. Ladies like Aletté don't like you mulling your time in the middle."

Will rubbed his neck gingerly. "I still haven't told her about Elizabeth." He muttered.

Jack raised his eyebrows. "No?" Will nodded and sat up, his back aching with bruises. "That's interesting." He paused to think. "So then I gather you two haven't…" He motioned suggestively with his hands.

"No, we haven't…" Will retorted, mimicking Jack's gesture clumsily. "Why, you think we had?"

Jack shrugged. "She is a bar whore, mate. There's something to be said for that."

Will frowned, as if this news had completely blindsided him. Just the 'is' had gotten to him- present tense, and he knew it, too. She was selling herself right now- giving her body away to anyone who would pay, not caring that she was the most beautiful woman in the world…

Will stopped, intrigued and puzzled by his thoughts. He tried to mesh through them, but the thought of her giving herself away like that kept seeping into his mind's eye. Her 'clients' wouldn't appreciate her- to them, she was just another flavour-of-the-moment, not to be remembered, only to be paid. They would not even bother themselves to learn her name, nor to be gentle with her body, to respect her intelligence and her fiery personality, to stop and admire how stunningly her green eyes caught the starlight… He couldn't take this. He couldn't sit here and wait for her to return. His conscience would not let him.

He grabbed his coat from the musty wooden floor and headed out the door, not bothering to explain to Jack where he was going. Jack, however, did not care. He had expected this- hell, he'd been counting down to it, giving Will barely a minute to play the hero. And now the room was all his. He lay back on the bed, closed his eyes and dreamt of what he would do to Morgan the first night he got her back…

Wills eyes scanned the courtyard that lay smack in the middle of six grungy inns, one of which currently housed him himself. He couldn't see Aletté- it was too dark. In fact, all he really could see were several scantly clad ladies who were approaching him, a seductive gleam on their faces. Will tried to ignore them and look elsewhere. His hand instinctively travelled to the hilt of his sword, and he gripped it tight. It gave him a false sense of security, but false or not, it was comfort.

He was standing right under one of the few streetlamps in the courtyard, so that anyone, from anywhere around could spot him in an instant, though he could barely make out the faces of those standing five feet in front of him. Suddenly a slender female figure broke into the circle of light that surrounded him, hurtling herself towards him and into his arms.

Aletté.

She was breathing hard, the same way she had been when she had entered the hotel earlier the same day. Her eyes, though, were dry. This time she was not crying. She simply buried her face in his chest and said, though the sound was muffled by the fabric of his waistcoat, "I cant do it, Will, I just cant. Not again, not again… I cant go back to that life."

He felt his arms instinctively draw her closer against him. He felt her pleasured shudder at his touch, and then he felt head move a little as she raised her eyes to his face. She stared at him intensely for a moment. This need for him, this desire was more than she could handle. She couldn't bear any other man's touch when she thought of him. Being around him, but denying herself him was like being two inches underwater and unable to breath. She wanted his touch more than anything else. Her entire body was coursing with a desperate and terrible longing for him. And there was no denying it now. There was no use in pretending…

"Will," She breathed, "I want you to have me tonight." He stared back at her, no words escaping his slightly parted, heavily-breathing lips. "I know you cant pay. I don't want you to." Her gaze was locked with his. "I want you to bed me." It was said. There was no going back. She closed her eyes and waited for him to say, in his gentle way, that he cared for her, but that he had a wife, and a son. She braced herself for his familial embrace and comforting eyes, his words of 'I cannot give you what you seek.'

They never came. No words came. Will could barely breathe, much less speak. He had been expecting the harsher Aletté who would yell at him for trying to impede her search for clientele. He had found, or rather been found by, the Aletté who wanted to just lay in his arms and be loved by him. And he wanted to love her. To make love to her. But somehow this just wasn't right.

She did not know that Will had no Elizabeth, and something about that made bedding her tonight not right. She had to know, she had to have time to decipher what it meant, and now was not the right moment to tell her. Not when she was vulnerable.

And even if she did know, could he take a woman out of wedlock? He didn't want to- didn't want to risk getting Aletté into the same fix that her mother had found herself in all those years ago. She was too precious to him. Too cherished.

He stared at her for a long, thoughtful moment, then gently took his arms down from around her trembling form and took her hands in his. "Come on." He smiled at her. "Let's go back inside."

She followed his lead dazedly, stunned by how forward she had just chosen to be, and how strangely he had just reacted. Did he hear her wrong? Didn't he understand that she had just seriously threatened his marriage? Did he realise that she had just asked him to make love to her? He seemed so nonchalant.

They made their way back up the stairs. The room was dark, lit only by the stub of an old beeswax candle, and Jack was lying sprawled out on the bed, his chest rising and falling placidly with each passing breath. He stirred and sat up slowly, glancing at the couple enquiringly.

"Back so soon, mate?" He asked, his eyes boring into Will accusingly, wondering if Will could either be hailed a genius for getting Aletté to come back with him so quickly, or an idiot for not trying his luck with her.

Aletté pushed through the doorway and plunked herself down onto the bed next to Jack, kicking him a little with her legs. "Shove over."

He rolled onto his front and mumbled into the sheets. "Son, you can take the sofa tonight." Aletté recoiled as Jack's left arm slung across her chest sensually. She heard Will lay down on the couch, and watched his silhouette as it calmed and settled to sleep.

Will felt unbearably uncomfortable. Having Aletté in his arms, so needy and so willing, had stirred him. He wanted to do with her what she had asked, wanted to make sweet blacksmith love to her. But he couldn't.

She was too beautiful to touch. Any virgin princess of the most secluded, heavenly upbringing seemed low, loose and unclean next to her. He sighed and resigned himself to sleep. Tomorrow he would tell her about Elizabeth- maybe then loving her would be right. Until then, sleep was his only call.

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Review Replies:

Elentari II-

Who likes break-ups? Not me. They're so sad and depressing, but this story needed it to be logistically correct- unless you wanted Will to be a sleaze. Which I personally don't want. Yeah, Jack is so full of himself. So full of his adorable self… *giggles* Well, I cant write Meryl in 'til later, but I will. Promise.

Lizard-

The spelling? Ok then. I talk to myself. In my head. We all do sometimes… I think. Maybe. Ok, I don't know.

Cecile Li-

Jack's common-law with Morgan and she's carrying his unborn child. He's so sleazy. Yeah, Will's nice… I prefer Jack, but I just wanted to develop this relationship farther.

Erin Richards-

Well, its after midnight again. It's one AM. God I have no life. Yeah, no story is complete without adequate bloodshed. Well, I should go to sleep. Wow, we really live close. That's cool.