Usual Disclaimers…I own nothing but those characters that you don't recognize from the movie…but if my plan to rule the world goes as planned I will be able to buy rights to Johnny Depp…Shhhhh don't tell any one.
A/N: sorry for the typos in this chapter and the last. And I have made some additions to the last few paragraphs in Chapter 8. You may wish to reread it so you get the references Jack makes to a certain ship in the beginning of this chapter
RebelRavenclaw: my chapters end in cliff-hangers because that keeps you coming back! Muwaaahahahahahaaa! And as to Jack's dignity, of course he has some hence why he was a gentleman to Elizabeth…there was the night with the rum…but she was already recognized as Will's. Adelaide is fair game as far as Jack is concerned.
Chapter 9: The Chase
Jack lay on his back, arms spread across his bedspread. It was nearly dawn and he had been laying there for almost five hours. He was wide awake. It had been three weeks since they had slipped away from Port Royal. So far Jack was still confident that the Black Pearl was going to win Adelaide's wager. The only thing that worried him was that he had not seen hide nor hair of the Midnight's Dove since it had faded from view tied to the docks in Port Royal three weeks ago. While it was not like the Caribbean was a small pond where the ships would bump into one another but both ships were concentrating on the same trade routes and had the same time constraints of one month to ply their trade. Both had to return to the waters around Tortuga by June twentieth and it was already the thirteenth. That did not give either ship time enough to stray from the known routes. It was common sense that they may at least come into view of one another in the passing month.
The only ship they encountered that Jack paid any attention to was a British frigate that was trying to pass itself off as a merchant vessel. They had come into view of the Hunter twice in the last week. The second time Jack could have sworn that it was trying to follow the Pearl. He had ordered the sweeps taken out and they had quickly lost their tail. Curious, Jack had ordered the Pearl to make a wide sweep back until they were behind the Hunter. He ordered regular white sails to be raised so that the captain of the Hunter would not recognize them for who they were.
This hoax proved unneeded because the Hunter sailed with no apparent purpose. Jack thought they might be searching for someone but as long as they did not interfere with his plans he would give them no further thought. He had ordered the Pearl to take up a wandering course toward Tortuga. Hopefully in the next week they could come across a few extra pickings of ships. Since the holds were already bursting with swag he did not think they would need any more to defeat the Midnight's Dove in this little wager.
Jack shook his head to bring his thought back to the present. None of these musings explained why he was still awake. He had tried everything to try to get to sleep, even drinking a good portion of his rum reserve. All that had done was bestow him with quite an unpleasant hangover when he had sobered up. He was still feeling it's after effects. He would not have minded the hangover, he was quite used to them as it were, but he still had not been able to get a wink of sleep tonight. It irritated him that the only reason he could find was that something about the whole state of affairs set him on edge. No, that wasn't entirely accurate. Adelaide set him on edge and all his unanswered questions about her objectives in the Caribbean did not help the situation. He just did not like the feel of the whole lot.
Resigned at getting any sleep Jack pulled himself out of bed. He shrugged in to a pair of breeches. He padded bare-footed and bare-chested over to his desk. Dejectedly, he studied a map of the Caribbean. He sat there doing nothing for about twenty minutes before shoving back from the desk. He was not going to get anything done. He paced the confines of his cabin before stalking over to the bookshelf. This was entirely Adelaide's fault, he thought as he grabbed a book off of the shelf. He thumbed through the pages until he came to the picture that was hidden in its pages.
It was a small portrait that had been painted years ago. Jack's memory of the time was hazy. It seemed like another life from the one he lead now. Absently he ran his finger over the people in the picture, his family. His older brother, James, was standing tall. The painter had captured his auburn hair perfectly. His younger brothers, Theo and Nick, were grinning mischievously. They had always invented ways to get themselves into such trouble. Jack himself had more often then not been right there in the thick of it with them. He chuckled when he thought of the number of tutors he and his brothers had gone through over the years. He remembered standing in his father's library listening to yet another lecture on decorum. His father had always looked at him with an air of dissatisfaction. He and the twins had been extras in his father's eyes. James was the heir and that was all that mattered.
Then there was his baby sister. She had been only two when he had left. Had his parents had any more children after he had gone? God, had it been nineteen years ago? He guessed that he would not recognize any of his siblings if he passed them on the street now. They definitely would not recognize him. He would guess that his mother would fall into a faint if she saw what had become of her second son. Jack sobered up, pulling himself out of the memories. It did no good to dwell on the past. He had left that life behind at the age of thirteen with out a glance back. It was all Adelaide's fault he was doing so now. He shut the book with a snap and placed it back on the shelf. He needed to do something to get his thoughts out of the trench they had dug. He grabbed a shirt off his bed. He walked to the doors of his cabin and flung them open. He stood in the doorway and took a deep breath of the sea air. This was where he belonged. It did not matter where he came from only where he was right now. Without a word to his crew he climbed into the rigging, making his way to the crow's-nest. He stood there watching the sunrise.
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Adelaide watched the sunset from a similar vantage point on the Midnight's Dove. she had actually slept tonight, much to her surprise. They had had another close brush with the Hunter the evening before. Edgeworth had actually managed to get a shot off this time. It had landed just short of the Midnight's Dove's bow. It worried Adelaide because if it had been a few more feet to the right they would have been hulled. She guessed that Edgeworth would have doubled, maybe even tripled, the crew on his ship so that in the event of a fight her crew would be overwhelmed by the sheer number of his men. She shuddered at the thought of what would happen if Edgeworth actually caught up with her.
Adelaide did not fear many men, but Edgeworth was different. There was something about his eyes. They were piercing blue and had just a hint of madness in them. He was a sick horrible man, Adelaide thought. Three years ago she had made the mistake of allowing her aunt, Lady Jessica, to add names to the list of invitations to a weekend party at their estates. Adelaide had been too busy with other details to check who exactly her aunt had invited. She normally went over the invitation list for these parties with a fine toothed comb. It was different when she was having a ball in London. At those huge crushes it was almost useless to have an actual list of who was asked to attend because so many showed up uninvited. But Adelaide was picky about who she allowed to her weekend parties. These people she was letting into her home and for an extended period of time. Three years ago, due to her absent-mindedness, Adelaide had come face to face with a monster.
Edgeworth on the outside seemed to be the normal fop so common to the ton. When Adelaide had been introduced to him she had felt like she suddenly needed a hot bath. She had endeavored to spend as little time in his company as possible but her witch of an aunt had apparently sensed how Adelaide's reaction to Edgeworth and made it her mission of the weekend to throw them into each other's company as often as she could manage.
The weekend had been utterly ruined. Adelaide was sure that Lady Jessica had gotten great pleasure from her discomfort. Adelaide had dealt with Edgeworth coolly. Her comments had been dripping with icy sarcasm when she was forced to reply to his overtures. But that wasn't enough to get her point across. When he had cornered her in the garden she had made her point quite clear, leaving Edgeworth curled in the grass after firmly planting her knee in his groin and her fist on his jaw. She had not felt the least bit of guilt until she had found out that he had taken his revenge on one of the young chamber maids that served in her house.
The girl had been found outside the kitchens bloody and badly beaten. Adelaide had been awakened by a nearly hysterical maid bidding her to come down to the kitchens at once. Adelaide had been furious at what she had found. Polly's jaw, her left arm and her right leg were broken. Her face had been cut, deliberately. He had also used the knife on her torso. Adelaide had no idea how she had managed to survive the attack let alone crawl from the gardens to the kitchens. It was fortunate that one of the kitchen boys had found her when he had gone to collect the morning eggs. If he had not done so the girl would have surely bled to death. Before she had passed out from the pain Polly had mumbled her attacker's name, Edgeworth.
While Adelaide would have loved to have seen Edgeworth hang for what he had done Lady Jessica had stepped in giving Edgeworth an unassailable alibi. She stated quite openly that Edgeworth had been in her chambers during the night in question. Adelaide had been surprised at this because Jessica normally shied away from any type of social scandal but she couldn't be shaken from her story. So Edgeworth had just smiled coldly at Adelaide and suggested they all spend the day at the coast to rid themselves of this whole "nasty affair". Adelaide had taken great pleasure in having Edgeworth bodily removed from her land.
She and her aunt had gone a couple of rounds over that but Jessica had eventually backed down when Adelaide had threatened to cut off her quarterly allowance. Adelaide used that memory to remind her not to let her guard down around Lady Jessica. The woman was filled with bitterness. Adelaide was not quite sure why it was focused solely at her but she imagined it had something to do with her parents and her Uncle Franklin, May the man burn in hell. Franklin was a whole different terrible chapter in her past. She wished she could cut most of the family out of her life but she could not do so and continue to control the family businesses.
Edgeworth had managed to continue to be a nuisance in her life in the last three years. He showed up at the most inopportune times, insinuating himself into her social circles. Most society hostesses refused to have him at their parties. He was branded a wastrel and not even the most desperate of mothers would allow their daughters even the idea of entertaining his courtship. But the man still managed to find a way to see Adelaide in social situations. He seemed to have formed some sort of obsession with her.
Adelaide had suspected that Lady Jessica had revealed her secret profession to Edgeworth. He had made leading comments. His appearance in the Caribbean only served to confirm her fears. She wasn't sure what he planned but she was genuinely afraid of the man. It seemed that she would be leaving these waters directly after the end of this wager and a final visit with Will and Elizabeth. Flight did not sit well with her but she was not prepared to risk the lives of her crew in what would be an unjust fight.
It seemed that the Midnight's Dove was going into a temporary involuntary retirement. Of all the issues that were flying around in her mind the thing that pissed her off the most was that because of Edgeworth's interference they had missed the last two scheduled merchant ships and were in serious danger of loosing this wager to the Black Pearl. Adelaide didn't even want to contemplate how she would go about dealing with Sparrow's 'requirement' if they did loose. And it would break her heart to loose the Midnight's Dove. Trying to be practical, Adelaide thought about what it would be like if she was not in control of her ship.
She would be lost. She realized that in a still moment. She would be absolutely lost with out her crew and her ship. They were her real family. She knew where all of her crew was from and who they had left behind. It would be like cutting a piece of her heart out if she had to leave them under command of another. But if she lost this wager that would be what she had to do. She could not let her people in Wales fall into the clutches of Lady Jessica. Adelaide just couldn't allow her father's legacy to fall into that bitch's hands. If they lost, she would have to give up the Midnight's Dove. She would deal with Sparrow in her own way.
A shout from below brought Adelaide' attention back to the present, a merchant ship was sighted off the starboard side. The crew scrambled to their positions. The Midnight's Dove took up pursuit. This ship would be easy pickings. She smiled softly. Maybe this feeling of dread was unneeded. She began to scramble down the rigging. Maybe they had a chance.
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Okay you guys give reviews. I know this is kinda a dark chapter but it explains Edgeworth. But the joy can be found that I am going to post the following chapter by this time tomorrow. So you won't have that long to wait…
Thanks to all my reviewers: Freak in Corner, Immortal Captain Young, Elonna, TriGemini, lissa james, Rebel-Ravenclaw, Mean Girl, Nova Viper, tvmademma, Down2MarsGirl, and it is great to have you back jennifer123. We are a posse once more!