(Author's Notes – I am so, so sorry I haven't updated in such a long time! I hope you guys don't hate me, or haven't all gone away! Anyway, thank you, thank you, thank you to my lovely reviewers!
This chapter skips around a bit in the middle and end – sorry, experimenting with style a little. I won't do it again. I thought it sort of fit the chapter.
About Gale – she does have a story, I just don't know if this is the place for it. I might include it if I find a place and time for it; otherwise I might do a companion piece.
I didn't know what to do with the ending – it doesn't belong in the next chapter, and doesn't really belong here, but takes place between and is somewhat of a necessary revelation. Wow. Long note. On to the story!)
In her wildest dreams, Laura had never actually expected to meet the woman Nathan and Theo cryptically referred to as Gale.
Furthermore, in the concocted situations in which she did, Laura expected someone far removed from this starved urchin.
"How is he?"
Laura looked up from her 12th study of Captain Sparrow, glancing at Miss Wetherhill perched demurely on a barrel installed on the quarterdeck for precisely that purpose.
"Nathan?"
She nodded minutely, stifling something that sounded, at least to Laura, like a sob.
"He's … well, Nathan," Laura smiled, "I suppose after he came back from the New England station, he was rather … bitter. He's gotten a little better, but still prone to bouts of melancholy."
"And is he … beholden?"
"He courts a Miss Delancey, though rather half-heartedly if truth be told."
Miss Wetherhill's thoughts whirred through a rapid spiral of hope and despair – in terror of seeing … well … being in his presence again, and then wanting, desperately, to have the chance to make things right.
"Miss Bell -"
"Laura," she corrected.
"Laura, then," Miss Wetherhill stuttered as she bit her lip nervously, "I must ask. What do you think of me? I'd quite understand if you despised me."
"I reserve my judgment, Miss Wetherhill."
Laura frowned and darkened a line over Captain Sparrow's brow, then gave her full attention to the frail girl and her story.
"I think you should know, Laura, that two … almost three years ago, I was an entirely different girl. If you can believe it, I was the beauty of Newport – there was not one face in a thousand like mine. I used to cherish the fact that I could stop a man in his tracks with my smile, that I could elicit a proposal of marriage in a half hour of conversation. But as I grew older, I realized how … how objectified I had become – men sought me for my beauty alone. I was a prize.
"So I began to withdraw from my position of resident coquette, despairing of ever finding an equal match. You must understand, Laura, that a marriage in which I was nothing but a trophy was abhorrent to me. My parents desired for me a good match, but thankfully understood that I could not marry any of the suitors who paid court to my face and not my heart.
"I had quite given up by the time I reached the age of nineteen, for I have never been a patient girl. So forlorn was I, that I nearly refused an invitation to the mayor's assembly which would have, in truth, been the breaking of me, for that is when I met Nathaniel Gillette …
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"Captain! We're coming up on the Pearl!"
Alexander St. John looked up from the wine bottle to his 1st mate.
"Run up the colors, beat to quarters! We'll have the cross before nightfall!"
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"Peg?"
"What is i', Toby?"
"Do you remember that necklace old Captain Bloor had?"
"Cap'n Bloor? 'E was 'anged by the Scourge long ago."
"But do you remember the necklace?"
"Aye, the Cross o' St. John, 'e called it."
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"Ship on the horizon, sir!"
"Colors, Gillette?"
"She's flying the Jolly Roger, Commodore. And she's too big to be the Pearl."
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"Jack!"
"What is it, Mr. Gibbs?"
"Sail in the horizon, bearin' down on us."
"Foe?"
"Dunno. She's flyin' the Jolly Roger."
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"He claimed it was something special, as I recall."
"From the neck o' a little girl, 'e said 'e took it. Something about a curse and a blessin' – thought 'e was drunk when 'e said it."
"Immortality?"
"He was drunk, Cap'n."
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God – for once in this miserable life – don't take the woman I love again! You took Emily, you took Elizabeth, and now Laura – This time I cannot bend and not break. I cannot. If I lose her … I don't know what I'll do …
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"Make sail, Mr. Gibbs. Put as much distance 'tween us an' her as ye please!"
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No! – stop running! – that ship could be the Dauntless – I need to get out of here! God, James, please, I need you. I need you. Get me out of here, oh, God, James, rescue me before it's too late …
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"I thought he was dead … I agreed to a marriage that never occurred. Then the illness took me, leaving me the way you see me now."
There was a stunned silence, Laura struck by the tale that had unfolded, Abigail waiting for a judgment that never came.
"Where are we headed, Captain Sparrow?"
He swaggered over, glancing at the sketch before uttering a cryptic answer.
"Upriver, luv."
"Running?"
"Why fight?"
"Fight?"
"That, luv, is the Black Horizon, captained by Alexander St. John, a truly frightenin' man with a truly frightenin' crew. I'd be mad takin' 'er on only a day after a major battle. We run. And find out why 'e's been chasin' us this last month at least."
Captain Sparrow watched as Laura's hand moved toward her diamond cross, though she barely seemed to register the gesture.
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The Pearl raced onward through the night, cutting across eerie swaths of sea heading due west into the unknown. A silent watch was kept; the only noise heard for long stretches of time was the raw voice of Mr. Cotton's parrot. When morning came, the sunlight barely burned through the thick fog, yet still Captain Sparrow pressed on, sure of his heading.
Like she did every morning, Laura stumbled out on deck, leaving Abigail slumbering peacefully in the tiny cabin they had been forced to share. Usually the sea breeze proved a stimulant, a thrill of raw reality that woke her up very rapidly indeed, but today, nothing could lift the haze in which her mind swam. Barely conscious of what she did, Laura stumbled to the rail, and heaved everything she had eaten in the last twelve hours into the Pearl's wake.
Good God, she realized, I'm pregnant.
I'm bearing James's child.
