22.
A Darling, but not a Dear...
She was pacing...
No...
She was practically storming back and forth across the bedroom. When she had begun pacing the room, talking to herself under her breath,while she prepared for bed.. she had been alone in the room.
Then Hook had come in...fresh from having a nightcap with her father. ( and no doubt that stern talk that fathers thought it was their duty to have with their daughter's husbands or fiances ) He had a tight lipped look to his face, making him appear stern. She didn't notice...and soon his expression turned to one of curiosity.
She was pink faced...as if she had recently been embarrassed. Her hair was down, and Jane had been there already and unlaced her from the tight dress, and corseting. She strode around now in her nightgown...looking very much like the wild girl she had been ten years ago.
" Might I ask?" he raised a brow.
" Only if you desire no answer." she strode purposefully for him, to help with the shirt and leather harness.
Once he was free of the encumbrance, he watched as she continued to storm around, searching, first for her hair brush...then for a length of ribbon.
" I could nearly swear that something was amiss..." he said, as if solving a great mystery. He was certain it was not with him..he had kept his promise...but there was something.
" Hmmm?" Wendy turned, too nonchalantly, to face him. He was lying back on the guest bed...( Aunt Millicent had been unceremoniously re-deposited in the nursery with Elisabeth...) shirtless, and drinking from his flask. Seeing him only made her turn pinker...and she sat at the dressing table and began viciously brushing through her brunette hair.
" I suppose I should apologize for my brothers...they are perfectly dreadful!" she said. He had the strangest suspicion that had little to do with her agitation.
" Yes...well I am afraid that you will be less one brother..."
She whipped around to stare at him.
" ...I believe I was challenged to a duel. It is inconceivable that I might miss." he teased.
Wendy merely frowned and resumed brushing her hair. " It is inconceivable that he would have the courage to even attend someone else's duel...his own would be unbelievable."
She glanced at his reflection in the mirror. He was smiling, still lounged so...arrogantly on the bed. He looked quite handsome, and she had to turn back to her own reflection to keep from staring.
" And what did father have to say? " she asked, hurriedly. " More non-sense? He's like that sometimes...but it's his nature. He places an awful lot of importance on balance sheets and what-not." She chattered on.
Still as she gazed into her own plain sapphire eyes...she heard her mother's words invading her head.
Earlier...
After dinner that evening, when the pirates had returned, and delivered their luggage, Hook had stepped out to converse with them, and Wendy's mother had whisked her upstairs to have a
" woman-to woman'' talk.
Luckily, that had rescued Wendy from having to answer any of John and Michael's queries...
However...an hour later, she wished she had been in their company, trying to impress them with her adventures...instead of being seated beside her mother. Her mother, who held her hands as they sat on the end of the large bed, and began to gently question her.
Oh, she began with the simplest questions...such as why was Wendy married to Captain Hook, (because her mother knew all of the stories about him...Wendy learned) and where Wendy had been all of this time.
Because she had left the farewell letter, they knew she had gone willingly...which very much helped her to convince her mother that she had not been kidnapped, or forced away. Wendy carefully extracted the gruesome promise of trading her life for those of her playmates.
Then her mother had looked at the ring, and said it was beautiful, and had tears come to her eyes...which surprised Wendy.
Then Jane had come in, and Mrs. Darling had sent her away...which made Wendy squirm just a little, because the last time her mother had taken her aside to speak in this manner...it had been a vague discussion on how girls became women...and all that it detailed. It had been excruciating then, to learn that she must grow up in that manner...and she had been rather embarrassed.
Wendy knew right away that the same thing was about to happen again...and she tried to deter her mother from the inevitable. It was an impossible feat. When Mrs. Darling began something,she finished it. Serenely, yes. Gently, yes. But firmly.
And firmly she had held Wendy's hand to ensure that she stayed seated, and she began the dreadful so-now-you are-a wife lecture, that would have been the so -you-are-going-to become-a wife lecture, had this been before a wedding.
Wendy had sat still, and listened, and answered even the most painful questions, the first of which was, simply, had she and her ' husband '...shared of the same bed?
Wendy learned a good deal...but wasn't all too certain if it was correctly learned, because there seemed to be a great deal of knowledge that her mother was either unaware of, or incapable of speaking of. Mrs. Darling seemed to think that the ' bed' was a place to be tolerated for the sake of love...as if there were no honest reason why a woman would choose to go there on her own volition.
That meant that one of the two women seated on the bed had not had the most experienced of lovers...and Wendy most certainly didn't want to think about that! She kept her tongue in check, but not her blush...(which still clung about her, two hours later...)
Wendy merely nodded and looked down demurely at her hands, and decided that she might talk to Jane later. Perhaps the woman who had come from Neverland, would be more helpful. Then, her mother had embraced her, tearful, and trembling...saying how happy she was for her, and that her dress was beautiful, and that she should probably leave the room now, as ' they' would want to retire..
That was when Wendy realized that, as husband and wife, they would be sharing the same room. If she hadn't still been angry at her brothers, and so distracted by her mother's conversation, she might have been more surprised, and a little more shy...it seemed different in her home!
But then her mother had left, and Jane had come in to help ready her for bed, and she gotten more and more angry at her brothers...and more confused and bothered by the talk. And, to add to her embarrassment, it was apparent to her immediately that Jane had known exactly what her mother had been saying!
Now, she realized that the Captain was still watching her...and curious to know what had gotten her into such a temper so fast.
She smiled reassuringly.
" Well?" he asked.
" What?"
" I asked you if you were enjoying your visit...but I believe it might be an ill-timed question." he took another sip from the flask.
" Oh, it's nothing really. It...just feels strange, is all. I do believe I already miss the motion of the sea." she laughed.
She turned back to her mirror, and took out the ear bobs. She dropped one, her fingers suddenly trembling again as she realized she was purposefully taking too long...to avoid going to the bed. Not that the bed wasn't where she wanted to be...but it seemed so strange to share a bed with the captain...in her parent's house...
When she raised back up, she almost yelped in surprise. He was standing right behind her.
" You make entirely too little sound when you walk" she said, with a nervous laugh.
He brushed aside her hair, and began to play his fingers along the skin of her neck. " All the better to startle you.." he murmured, bringing his lips down against her ear. She jumped a little, even as she felt her skin warm to his touch, and her lips tingle with the anticipation of his kiss.
" Why Wendy...you act as nervous as a bride..." he whispered, deliberately blowing into her ear. The color that was just beginning to recede from her cheeks, rushed back and she lowered her head so he couldn't see it in the mirror.
" Mmmmm, no doubt your mother's conversation was far more entertaining than your father's?" he hummed.
" Entertaining! It was ghastly!... Oh! We didn't...talk. " she amended hastily.
She caught his blue gaze of amusement. The next thing she saw was the floor. He had swung her up and over his right shoulder so fast it made her dizzy. She scrabbled for something to hold onto, but there was nothing shy of digging her nails into his skin.
" Oh! What are you doing!" she squeaked, as he spun twice around the room.
" Taking you to bed, before you brush out all of your dreadful hair. It isn't much to speak of as it is...it doesn't need you pestering it." he slapped her bottom with his hand, causing her to protest loudly.
" What was that for?" she demanded.
" I think a good spanking would set you back in the right temper..." he joked,
" She said something under her breath as she tried to straighten herself.
" Say what? I couldn't hear that! " he stopped spinning and pretended to listen.
" I'm falling!" she gasped.
" Then hold still...now what did you say?" he smacked her again, not hard...but enough to make her furious.
" I SAID I don't need a spanking!" she cried out, still struggling not to fall right over his back.
He almost roared with laughter, and she realized that the whole house might have heard her...
" You fiend! " she said accusingly. " Let me down!"
" Fiend?" he smacked her again..." I don't think that is the way to go about getting me to let you down" he turned his head and bit lightly at her hip. She shrieked then, not caring if the whole house heard...and this time the shrieks involved giggles in between the protests. It tickled maddeningly.
" Pl...ple...please " she gasped, in between sobs of laughter, that not even her brothers, who could hear her at the other end of the hall, could call anything but laughter. They made faces of disgust and pulled the blankets over their heads.
" Please what?" he growled, her nightgown in his teeth.
" Please, put me down..." she pleaded.
" Where?"
" O...on the bed...I'm dizzy!" she laughed again, this time for no good reason, and he dumped her over his shoulder onto the bed, where it was another minute before the giggles subsided, enough for her to notice her nightgown was disarrayed. He lay beside her, on his side, watching her as she laughed...which only made her laugh harder, until even he was having a difficult time controlling his own mirth.
Since there was no cruel trick he could play to stave off the threatening formation of a smile he felt beginning...he rolled onto his back and closed his eyes...until she finished.
When the spasms of joy finally ebbed away, and she could speak...she rolled over and poked him.
He frowned and opened one eye.
" What?"
" I don't like London anymore..." she said.
" How do you know, you haven't been out yet."
" Oh, if it is stifling in here, then it will be much worse out there."
" Then I don't have to worry about you refusing to come back with me."
" No. I want to go home...and I don't think home is here anymore. I don't think home has been here since I first agreed to become a pirate."
" You were a horrible pirate." he muttered sarcastically.
" Good storyteller though."
" Tell me a story then...Jill. "
" Right now?" she asked...suddenly aware of the fact that he hadn't kissed her at all.
" Yes. One about what might lie over the sea...in the opposite direction of Neverland. "
" What is over the horizon?" she asked, looking down at him. He had closed his eyes again...and she took a moment to look at him. Especially his mouth. His lips were pursed thoughtfully to hide the smile she had given him, and it made his mouth more inviting.
" Don't you know what is over the horizon? It is legendary.So famous, that people all over the world have heard of it. A substance both comforting and fearful, dangerous, yet necessary. A type of jewel so precious, and mysterious that even the gods worship it." he opened his eyes to listen to her as she spoke. When she spoke in such a fashion, she became excited, and it made the story seem far more interesting than what it might be.
" It is so little that it can be carried on your finger, yet so heavy, that it can crush a man to death. "
" What colour is it?"
" Sometimes it is blue, or green...in places it is even white, or grey...it is red on the mysterious islands of the Kavo's, a fierce tribe of cannibals that boil there captives in rum. It is white and pink sometimes , like fine pearls..."
" Well! " he demanded impatiently. " What is it? This substance? Or do you have it named yet? ''
" Oh, yes, I have a name for it. "
" Something imaginative."
" It is called many things, in many languages. I call it by a simple name..." she smiled up at him, clearly waiting as long as it was safe before she told him the name.
" What is it?"
" Would you truly like to know?"
" YES!" he huffed.
" Truly ...or are you just humoring me?" she batted her lashes.
" Tell me what it is or I'll ...I'll..."
" Kiss me?" she interjected hopefully.
" Kiss you!" he said, he hadn't meant to say ' kiss ' at all! " KISS you?" he cried. " I ought to..." he stopped, and looked down at her she was still smiling up innocently at him. " ought to kiss you." he finished. " Until you quit breathing."
" That would be nice. Will you still kiss you if I tell you what it is?" she asked.
" And nobody could stop me!" he growled.
" In that case...this beautiful, mysterious substance is called..." she paused dramatically, for just a second...
" Water" she finally said.
He was a smart man and it took him only a half second to fully swallow the fact that she had tricked him...in a fashion. She had gotten him to lose his temper, and to promise her a kiss, when all she had done was tell him a riddle!
" You little brat! " he said. " I really ought to thrash you!"
She was laughing softly, though...and she had the mangle stump of his arm cradled across her belly, and was idly tracing her fingers over it...
" Water!" he repeated.
" Yes. I predict there will be a wealth of it between here and forever. Now what do I get for my story?" she said.
" I think you have just forfeited your career as storyteller aboard the Jolly Roger! " he glared at her...but his eyes twinkled.
" You needn't be ungrateful," she ran her fingers up his arm now, toward his chest...and he decided he had pretended to be angry long enough. Rolling over her, he pinned her to the bed, and gave her the kiss she requested. And then...another one, and another one...until his irritation with her family was gone...and the words of her mother faded away somewhere to that locked place in her mind that she rarely visited.
When he ran his hand under her gown, she gave a mild protest about not wanting to..."here in this house" but he could hardly believe her sincerity when it was she who didn't still her motions...or her kisses.
After a few minutes...Wendy was not even trying to be quiet anymore...and he had to clamp his hand over her mouth to save them both a little dignity for morning.
Perhaps... it would be a good idea not to stay too long in London, after all!