Disclaimer: See chapter 1.
"Bella!" Elizabeth cooed, holding her arms out for the child, who went willingly as if attracted by the glinting shine of Elizabeth's burnished gold hair. Christina huffed under her breath and forced her face into a reluctant smile - Isabella's snuffling to be fed apparently forgotten. Isabella was quite content to let her aunt cuddle her, giggling happily and tugging on Elizabeth's tightly curled hair, which of course bounced back into its perfect shape no matter how hard the little girl tugged on it.
"Hello, Christina. Hello, Will. How are you?" Elizabeth asked, smiling brightly from behind Isabella's pudgy little hand. Christina said nothing and stiffened as she felt Will's hand on the small of her back, ushering her into the mansion.
"We're fine. And you?" Will asked, casting a rather anxious look at Christina, who was pretending to examine the tapestries.
"The mansion looks wonderful, Elizabeth, you must have the servants working hard at keeping everything so…so….clean," Christina finished lamely, inspecting one of the marble busts that adorned the atrium of the mansion. Elizabeth looked puzzled.
"No harder than usual, no. I'm afraideverything would come undone if I tried to meddle with their routine," she said. They headed into the warmly furnished den and waited for Mary to come bustling in with the tea, but were greeted by Linda instead.
"Here you are, Miss Elizabeth. Mr. Turner, Mrs. Turner," the girl said quietly, curtsying a greeting and curtsying again on her way out after having placed a fine silver tray laden with tea and scones on the small table that Elizabeth and the Turners were sitting around.
"Where's Mary?" Christina asked, tentatively shooting a glance at Isabella; the child was still content to place with the lace on Elizabeth's dress, and was in no hurry to leave. Christina wouldn't embarrass herself by taking the child back and having little Bella cause a fuss - it wouldn't do for Elizabeth to know that Isabella preferred her to her own mother.
"Oh, she's usually out with the Commodore around this time," Elizabeth said easily, nary a trace of rejection in her voice. And why should there be? She was never in love with the Commodore and had long since ceased to think of the man as part of her territory. "I quite approve," she continued.
"Is she still working as a maid, then?" Will asked, smiling at Christina as she handed him his cup of tea. Christina smiled back weakly, still undeniably uncomfortable although really without a solid idea as to why. She wasn't entirely discontented with her life as a wife - she rather liked it. But things seemed so different now, she didn't feel young or desirable anymore even though she was only twenty-three. And, honestly, she had very rarely felt desirable in her life - so why the sudden displeasure?
"Oh, no…She's been promoted to housekeeper, now. Quite a bit more of a salary, and she's in charge of nearly everything that goes on around here. She's been letting me help her, actually, while Father's away, but I wouldn't be able to manage without her. It's a bit of a learning experience, actually, and I'll quite need it if I ever get married…" Elizabeth was saying. Christina blinked.
"If you ever get married? Why, don't you want to get married, Elizabeth?" she asked, torn from her thoughts. Elizabeth shrugged and let Isabella, who was beginning to fuss, be taken by Will. The child quieted down instantly as she was bounced on her father's knee, and Christina felt her stomach clench as if torn between elation at Will's obvious love for their daughter and jealousy - she wanted Isabella to come willingly to her and not just when the child was eager for a meal.
"Of course I want to get married. But it's been so lovely having the mansion all to myself, without being forced to attend ceremonies or galas or teas with 'all the best people'," Elizabeth sniffed. "Besides, who is there to marry? You've married the formerly most eligible bachelor on this little island." Elizabeth's eyes were twinkling and her lips were twitching, and Christina knew that she didn't intend any harm by her words. Her spirits lifting slightly at the fact that she and Elizabeth were able to joke about things that had formerly caused violence, Christina smiled back and looked rather lovingly at Will, who was singing under his breath at their daughter. Feeling her gaze, Will looked up and smiled, his ears turning rather pink at having been caught playing the doting father.
"Commodore Norrington is now the most eligible bachelor but I'm afraid he wont be for long," Elizabeth was saying, delicately taking a sip of tea and grimacing. She placed it down and added a hearty amount of sugar before taking it up again.
"Has he proposed to Mary?" Christina asked eagerly, hoping for an answer in the affirmative. Elizabeth grinned, breaking off a piece of a scone and handing it to Isabella to gnaw on - the baby still hadn't had a tooth come in.
"Oh, no. He wouldn't be so bold as all that. Their courting has gone unbearable slowly, in fact. But I don't think there's much hope for any of us old maids in Port Royal where the Commodore is concerned," Elizabeth said jokingly.
"What about Jerome Dawson?" Christina asked, warming up to the subject. Good Lord, I'm just as much of a gossip as the rest of the matrons on Port Royal. Marriage does strange things to women…she thought to herself, smiling broadly at the scandalized look on her sister's face.
"Jerome Dawson, that rogue! Oh, I wouldn't marry him if he were the last man on Earth!" Elizabeth said viciously. Perhaps more viciously than necessary, if the spots of color that bloomed on Elizabeth's cheeks were any indication. Christina shrugged haplessly and held out her arms to Isabella, who hid her face in Will's neck. Christina sighed, pouring herself her own cup of tea and adding honey to it. She was just about to lift it to her lips when Isabella gave a tiny cry of "Ma!"
Christina was so startled that she nearly dropped the tea cup. Elizabeth's eyes widened and Will was smiling so broadly it looked as if his face might split in two.
"Was that her first word?" Elizabeth asked breathlessly, her eyes shining strangely all of a sudden. Christina shook her head, unable to speak.
"She's been saying 'Da' and 'no' for a while now," Will explained, handing the baby over to Christina, who was staring at Isabella with a mixture of gratitude and joy on her face.
"'No' came first," Christina said absently, as Isabella pointed to the scones with a petulant look on her face. Elizabeth laughed.
"But don't babies normally ask for their mothers first?" she asked, rather harmlessly, but the question struck a nerve with Christina all the same. Will looked uneasily at Christina, whose face had hardened as her mouth set into a thin line.
"I've got to nurse the baby," she said archly, standing and walking out of the room and into up the stairs into her old bedroom. Will sighed.
"What did I say?" Elizabeth asked, looking rather hurt. Will shook his head.
"Nothing. Christina fancies that Isabella…well, I suppose the main thing is that she's afraid she wont be a good mother," he said, knowing full well that Christina would not be pleased that he was talking about her. Still, his wife's moods were aggravating at best and down right troubling at worst. He knew of Christina and Elizabeth's mother's flight from Governor Swann, and he knew that her mother's history worried her, just as his father's history as a pirate one worried him.
"Like our mother, you mean?" Elizabeth asked.
"Don't let her hear you say that - she believes Isabella's grandmother was some sort of heroine," Will said stiffly. Elizabeth rolled her eyes.
"I'll never understand it. The woman left us. She was a passably good mother before that, but nothing can excuse her desertion," Elizabeth said angrily, the spots of color on her cheeks that had been fading flaring up again. Will sighed, not eager to discuss such private matters with Elizabeth - it was better to leave the issue of Belynda Swann as absent as the subject herself. Nobody knew where Belynda was, or if she was even alive, and since her leave-taking was thirteen years past, it hardly seemed to matter anymore. Still, Christina's cherished memories of her mother did not mix well with the fears she felt in her new motherhood, and the fact that Isabella was a headstrong little imp only added to the tension. The fact was that Will worried for his wife and while he knew that she loved him, he also knew that something was bothering her, and she wouldn't tell him what. And above all, it was her secrecy that worried him the most.
"Come now, Isabella," Christina said softly, sitting with her back to the headboard of her old bed and loosening the ties on her dress to pull it down so that the baby could nurse. Christina sighed, stroking Isabella's perfect dark curls and marveling at how their color was nearly identical to the color of her own hair.
"You are my little miracle," she whispered to the child, who was otherwise ignoring her mother. Christina wished, not for the first time, that she had her own mother hear to tell her stories of herself at Isabella's age and assure her that the child's apparent indifference as just a stage - or better yet, a fabrication of a tired young mother's mind. Christina had been sure that she'd felt a connection to the baby when Isabella had been born. She had taken nearly twenty-four painful hours to deliver and Christina was exhausted afterward, but she had stayed awake to nurse her baby for the first time and had seen Isabella's then-blue eyes watching her, wide open with amazement an a peculiar sense of recognition that Christina assumed all babies shared when they saw their mother for the first time. Christina had sworn to herself then that she would love and care for this baby with everything in her - she would fight for her daughter, die for her and never dream of abandoning her the way her own mother had abandoned Elizabeth and herself. But Isabella, though she was naught but a baby, had never seemed to need Christina as much as Christina needed Isabella; or, in fact, as Christina still needed Belynda sometimes even though she was a grown woman.
It hurt to suspect that Isabella didn't love her at all. Anita, who would frequently visit with her daughter Yanira to help Christina with the cooking and who was an experienced mother at twenty-seven, had explained that a child's love was a selfish love. "My little Yani holds my heart in her tiny hands and I swear she knows it. She'll do everything to test you, little things to break your heart - but Isabella loves you, Christina in a child's own selfish way. She knows you'll always be there even though she's still so young, she'll take you for granted- so you must always be there."
Isabella was presently drifting off to sleep, her now-dark eyes heavy lidded and her grubby little hand clutching the necklace of black pearls that hung around Christina's neck. Without waking the baby, Christina shifted her onto her other side and, with one hand, pulled up her shift and over dress, buttoning it at best she could around Isabella's heavy sleeping body. She brushed a kiss to her daughter's soft cheek and heard the little girl murmur "Maa…" thickly. Christina leaned back against the headboard and closed her eyes feeling at peace with her sleeping child in her arms even as black ships and tumbling seas danced behind her eyes.
She woke up only a few minutes later, groggy and disoriented with the arm that was holding Isabella numb and tingling. She had been in the crow's nest of the Pearl, returning to Naneth's island hoping to sit with Naneth and Taeryn for a while, even with Maurya, if only to ask to listen to their wisdom. Taeryn had seemed nothing but contend with her rounded belly and her sturdy husband and Christina felt like she was betraying Will and Isabella every time she thought about the Pearl and the sea. With a sinking feeling of disgust with herself that even now Christina knew she would cover up with a prickly attitude and a sharp tongue, she headed down stairs carrying the still-slumbering Isabella.
She paused on the landing, hearing Will and Elizabeth's voice murmuring quietly so that they would not carry up the stairs.
"I just worry about her, is all…She seems so unhappy sometimes, and I don't know why…Isabella's just a baby, she doesn't understand. I just wish she would be a more…I don't know…a more needy child. She's so blasted independent…" came Will's frustrated voice. Christina could tell that he was raking his hands through his hair with agitation and her stomach flipped - he had noticed her unhappiness, and he felt just as helpless as she did. She felt suddenly worse about her - a failure as a mother, as a wife, probably as a woman as well. As a female, she was meant for this, wasn't she? She had been taught that there was no greater achievement in a woman's life than to be a dutiful, loving wife and mother…Rubbish, the defiant part of Christina's mind snapped. I can do lots of more useful things than pop out babies and clean the cottage! I've fought pirates!
But that part of her life was apparently over, wasn't it? She was married, she had a child. And now there was nothing left for her but to adjust to being a wife and mother…Why couldn't that be enough?
A/N:I'm doing a bit of research into post-partum depression, if anyone wants to know. I'll try to keep to updating on weekends, as weeks are a bit hellish (but delightfully so), but I'm starting (rather late) to plan for college (eek) so I don't know how much time I'll have to write...