She could not help but be daunted when Bessie was brought into the drawing-room, eyes red with weeping and her plump face drawn beyond recognition. She seemed to have aged twenty years in the six months since Elizabeth's last glimpse of her -- rosy-cheeked in the crowd at the church door and wreathed in happy tears -- and she refused to meet her former mistress' eyes.
The housekeeper was hovering somewhat officiously, as if reluctant to see another woman succeed where she had failed.
"Leave us alone together, please," Elizabeth said sharply, her order confirmed by a frown from the Governor when the other woman glanced up at him for support, and Mrs Halcombe sniffed and withdrew. "Father..."
"Are you sure?" Weatherby Swann looked at her in some concern, and his daughter sighed.
"I'm quite sure I don't need protection from Bessie -- and I'm sure she will speak more freely if she can be certain Mrs Halcombe isn't listening at the door." An indignant breath from outside went to prove her point, and despite himself her father's mouth twitched in a sternly-repressed smile. "Do take her away, please, right up into your study--" it wasn't only Mrs Halcombe's listening ears she had in mind, she admitted to herself privately -- "and let me have a nice comfortable talk with Bessie on our own."
But even when the door had clicked firmly shut behind them, all her coaxing could draw no more than a few words from the other woman. Yes, she had taken the silver. Yes, she had taken the three missing spoons down into the town, and had intended the rest for the same destination. No, she would not, could not say why she had ever done such a thing, not even for Miss Elizabeth's sake. No, she would not say who had the silverware now, not if she was to be chopped up into little pieces and fed to the sharks, not ever so. No -- this in response to a question prompted by Elizabeth's own increasingly uneasy conscience -- she hadn't ever seen a man like the one Miss described, not with gold teeth and beads in his hair and all. No, it wasn't him who'd told her to do it. No, honest to God it was someone else --
And then, having inadvertently let slip this much in reassuring her former nurseling's fears, she bit her lip with a little gasp and refused to say anything more at all.
"Please, Bessie--" No response.
"You know what they'll do to you for stealing--" A nod, tears brimming.
"Then why -- oh, why?" Elizabeth knelt down and flung her arms about Bessie's warm bulk at last, burying her face against the familiar shoulder as she had done so long ago. "My father would have given you the money, if you'd only told him why you needed it -- or I'd have found it somehow--"
Will's finances were tight enough, and he wouldn't touch a penny of her own dowry save for that portion of it that had gone to pay for their narrow little house down in the centre of town -- if he was to give his only daughter away, her father had insisted she should at least have a roof of her own over her head -- but she would have scrimped and saved sooner than see Bessie ruin her life for the want of a few golden guineas.
But Bessie, weeping openly now, shook her head in mute refusal, and Elizabeth, all but exasperated, and angry with herself for it, found herself on her feet again and pacing up and down the length of the room, the weight of her skirts swaying with the unladylike vigour of her strides.
The door opened, briskly, when she was at the far end, by the long shutters that shielded the elegant interior of the house from the sun. Voices in the hall; male and impatient. A tall figure in a captain's uniform, thrusting past Peter, the footman, as the latter tried to protest.
"Governor, I--"
His eyes found Elizabeth, standing frozen by the window; took in the incongruous figure of Bessie huddled in upon herself amidst the luxuries of the drawing-room; returned to meet Elizabeth's own gaze with a momentary hesitation that was all the acknowledgement he would ever give of the constraint that lay between them. James Norrington. Commodore of the Fleet. The man she'd given her word to marry... before wedding Will.
She had barely seen him in the six months since that ceremony. The instant's unguarded look in his eyes told her all too clearly why.
Elizabeth looked down, flushing as much on his behalf as her own. It was not fair, to take a man by surprise like that. To catch a glimpse of what he had never intended for you to see.
The girl who'd listened to his stilted proposal on that insufferably hot day so many months ago had been a sheltered innocent, for all her dreaming; a child with no more notion of what it meant to wed a man than that it marked the next step on the road to adulthood, just as the fluffy little tigrish kittens that tumbled about the stableyard inevitably became staid tabby Puss within the year under Amos' indulgent eye. The young woman who'd bargained away the offer of her hand to rescue her lover had known full well her power over men... but she had not known what it was to share a husband's life. To reach out for reassurance in the night; to learn every line of his shoulders from behind as intimately as his laugh; to discover his little likes and dislikes and coax him to eat when he was tired, or to change his coat when he was wet; to feel the brush of his kiss on the nape of her neck as she pored over the accounts by lamplight, trying to balance their slender income, and to reach up in reproof, half-scolding, half-glad of the distraction, to return the embrace in full. To lie in his arms and know oneself one half of a whole, sheltered and sheltering against the whole world, come what might -- to be his and know him to be hers, utterly, whatever sharp words had passed between them or were yet to come. To be a wife in truth... until, down the long, long years, death should them part.
She'd given her consent to Norrington. But she hadn't had the faintest idea, then, of what it was he asked of her; of what that state of marriage would have implied. The knowledge, now, of the way his eyes had rested on her brought a sudden shock of understanding; and of unwanted, quickly-stifled pity.
"If I may ask the reason for this intrusion --?" Her voice was a cool echo of his customary tone, and she met his gaze again with a challenge that brought a faint colour back to his own frozen features.
He inclined himself briefly in her direction, acknowledging her presence.
"Your servant, Mistress... Turner." That little stumble over the name, as if it was stiff in his mouth, was, she thought, unconscious, though it grated on her. "I was informed the Governor was to be found here -- but clearly I was mistaken."
"I didn't know you were in port -- I mean--" Mortified, she could have swallowed the stupid, gauche words as soon as they were out, as his brows rose.
"Eurydice docked some hours ago." There was a warmth in his mention of the smart little sloop that had not been there for her own name, and despite herself Elizabeth remembered the excitement in town over the capture and the crowds of urchins who had swarmed to watch the Commodore's new ship fitting-out. The chance to replenish his little fleet must have come as a great relief, she guessed. She wouldn't know. She'd scarcely seen him, then or since.
"We came in on the morning tide," Norrington was saying smoothly, the polite phrases evidently intended to mask her confusion, save face for them both, with the servants listening. Then the edge in his tone gave her sudden warning, in the moment before his next words cut through her like a bitter wind. "Of course, there was a time when you would have known that. A time when you took an interest in every ship that entered or left the harbour, Mistress Turner."
And this time there was no doubt at all about what it cost him to admit that last word.
Elizabeth felt her cheeks flame as if she had been dipped in scarlet. Yes, there had been a time -- so long ago now it seemed -- when she had dreamed of adventure, of rich cargoes and grizzled mariners carried in on every tide, and imagined herself aboard every ship that left, standing gazing from the shore on some contrived errand into town or tracing them with her father's spyglass from her bedroom window high above the bay. There had been a time -- before pirates in all their grim reality came to Port Royal -- when she had fantasised herself shipping along with some bold buccaneer as cabin-boy in jacket and breeches.
She hadn't dreamed that young Captain Norrington might have been aware of the girlish eyes yearning after his ship, just as they'd followed every dashing vessel that ventured out onto the high seas. It hadn't even crossed her mind -- her cheeks burned painfully now -- that he might once have read that gaze as intended for him.
"My father is in his study, sir." Despite everything, her voice came out admirably steady, and she swallowed, gaining strength from the thrice-blessed windows at her back, against whose light her high colour must surely be invisible, even to those level, judging eyes. "If you will wait a moment--"
But it was at that instant that Bessie, whose sobs had been choked off by the sheer astonishment of the fine gentleman's unexpected entry, spilled over once more into weeping, and Elizabeth came forward swiftly with a little gesture of despair, caught out of awareness of herself by the renewed crisis. "Forgive me... you catch us in a bad moment, as you see. My father is half distracted -- a matter of theft, and the woman cannot be brought to utter a word in her own defence--"
"Indeed?" Norrington had halted as she tried to hasten him out of the door, his face sharpened into obvious interest -- he must often encounter such cases on board ship, she realised. "She is shielding someone else, I take it?"
"I... suppose so." Elizabeth had not fully articulated the thought to herself until now. She flushed again, feeling herself foolish in his eyes. "But you have business with my father -- I had no intent to inflict domestic matters upon you that are none of your concern--"
Norrington had brushed her entreating hand from his sleeve as if removing a stray hair. "On the contrary, if it is a matter of law and order in the town it is very much my concern." His voice was deceptively mild, the steel barely sheathed beneath. "Perhaps you could give me a few minutes alone with her, Mistress--"
"Elizabeth." She could not bear to hear Will's name jerked out again with such reluctance on those lips. "Please -- Elizabeth."
"Mistress Elizabeth." A punctilious nod of acknowledgement. "If you would --?"
It was only at his gesture and faint, amused smile that she realised she had ranged herself defensively in front of Bessie as if to protect her from merciless naval assault. She dropped her eyes in confusion, but stood her ground. "If you mean to browbeat Bessie into some confession--"
A sigh of impatience, as unfeigned as his earlier amusement. "Mistress Elizabeth, I do assure you I am no ogre. Now if for once in your life you would kindly submit to the judgement of your elders, perhaps I might be able to extend some hope of reaching to the bottom of this. Your Bessie seems to me a sensible woman--"
It was a dismissal, in her father's own house, and a stinging one at that. Elizabeth had opened her mouth to rejoin hotly when she caught sight of Bessie, who had been startled out of her tears and was staring with some awe up at the naval gentleman who had ventured such a decided judgment in her favour. Perhaps the Commodore might stand a better chance of handling her after all, Elizabeth told herself firmly, swallowing down the hot words that rose instinctively to her lips with an effort that threatened to scald her.
After all -- much though it irked her to admit it -- she herself had achieved nothing more than to reduce the woman she'd been trying to help to a state of tears even the Halcombe creature hadn't managed. If James Norrington's questioning could do anything for her, she owed it to Bessie at least to let him try.
She bit her lip and let herself out quietly, resisting the temptation to leave the door a fraction ajar. As she crossed the floor to the stairs that would lead her up to her father's study, she heard the voices from the drawing-room begin: the man's steady and uninflected, the woman's responses fragmentary at first but gathering in strength. She could recognise the stubborn note in Bessie's words, even from here. Elizabeth couldn't resist a small, unworthy smile at the thought of Norrington's calm strained by mounting frustration.
She hesitated a moment, halfway up the stairs, wondering if she ought to intervene; then folded her mouth firmly into a line of decision, abandoning the interview to its fate, and swept on up to her father's door. The Governor deserved to be informed of this unheralded visitor, even if his subsequent arrival promised to be somewhat delayed... and she herself had come by arrangement to spend some much-missed hours with her father, and intended to do precisely that.