Disclaimer: Unfortunately for you, me, and that new Apple laptop just begging to be bought, I don't own this, and I'm not making any money off of it.

Chapter Two: Frequently There Must Be Beverage

Greta frets over her, taking measurements and throwing silks over he shoulder, around her waist, pausing to glance through books full of designs. She can hear Teague rifling through a display of fabrics outside the stall she is in. "This is ridiculous," she shouts out to Teague from behind the curtain. "I'll just grow out of it in a month."

She can practically hear him smile. "Pirate King garners all the free clothes a person might ever need."

"I don't want new clothes."

"I said need," he responds.

She huffs, then glances down at her stomach. He's right. There is absolutely no way she'll fit into anything she owns two weeks from now. So she lets Greta make her measurements, and picks out the fabrics she likes, and requests they make things a bit loose, around the middle, and then struggles to pull her shirt over her belly.

She throws a glare at Teague as she pushes open the stall's curtain, and she crosses her arms over her chest. "No more visits to anyone. No more. I'm tired of being lauded and forced to try things on, or take this on the house, or just taste this damned stew. No more."

"I never told you this would be easy."

"You never said it would be like this, either. I thought there was a point, to this. Now I'm getting the feeling this is a charity case, and I'm not ready to become a part of it."

"There is a point. There is a job, for you. But you are a King. Their King."

"And?"

He pats her back comfortingly. "And you'll have to put up with the lauding for a while."

She pushes the door of the shop open, and stomps her foot like a petulant child. "No more. Not today."

He grins at her, and she sticks out her lip a bit, in a pout she knows resembles someone. "Fine. For today."

They've barely made it out of the pressing crowd before a swarm of children is upon them, screeching, yelling, reaching up for Teague. He swings one of them onto his shoulders, and grasps another's hand, and Elizabeth throws a glance his way. "Are these all…?" She starts to count them, and makes it to fifteen before she realizes just how much moving is being done, and knows she'll never get a good count.

"Mine?" He chuckles, glancing at the group. "I've a few in there somewhere. But not all."

She lets a hand fall to her stomach as one of the smaller boys tugs at the edge of her boot, and suddenly feels very glad that her son will be born here. Teague throws an arm over her shoulder. "Let's get you home, Your Majesty."

She swats at him, falling into step beside him as he laughs uproariously.

Yes. Her son will be very lucky indeed.

Teague teaches her things she already half-knows. Things her governess didn't talk about, but that she'd heard James, and her father, and a dozen other businessmen her father knew talking about. Things she'd wheedled from her father, or heard over dinner conversations she wasn't meant to hear, but did anyway.

He teaches her how to chart a course without a map. To use the stars. He teaches her, in great detail, about the Code, and about Morgan and Bartholomew, and she is surprised by how much she doesn't know. Teague seems equally shocked at how much she does know.

He flirts with her. It is the kind of flirting she's come to realize leads to nothing more than fast friendship. The kind of flirting two girls might entertain when they've nothing else to do, though perhaps not any girls she grew up with. He teases her, insults her, and she realizes how much she's missed this. Missed having someone who likes to rile her up just to see how she'll respond, and gets worse and worse the more they realize she doesn't intend to back down.

"So tell me, love, how your ankles are faring?"

She shoots him a nasty look as she takes a drink of spiced hot chocolate, savoring the flavor as it glides down her throat. "About as well as your face, I imagine."

He chuckles. "How much longer is it, you said?"

She takes a moment to think about Will, and the look on his face as he moved toward the rowboat, away from her. "Two months, twelve days." He raises an eyebrow. "Give or take."

He slides a plate across the table to her, and she thinks she must be dreaming this. He has crumpets. There is a crumpet on her plate.

She reaches for the plate, then lets her hand drop to her side. She hasn't seen a crumpet in nearly a year. Perhaps longer. No. Definitely longer.

"Go on. I know you've wanted one."

She glances up at him. Has the distinct impression she never said a word about her cravings, but isn't surprised that Teague knew about them anyway. She drops two fingers to the edge of the plate and pulls it towards her.

She almost shrieks in delight when he props a jar of jam in front of her. She barely composes herself, and doesn't shriek, but by the way his eyes light amusedly as she smears the sweet smelling jelly across the crumpet, she knows she hasn't done a good job of suppressing her childlike happiness.

"You're going to get fat, eating like that."

She smiles at the jibe. "I'm already the size of an elephant."

"This way it'll be more like the Kraken."

She winces at the reference. Wonders what, exactly, he's been told about her experiences with Jack.

"So tell me, how exactly did you meet Nolan?"

Elizabeth swallows. "He found me washed up on a beach, and he convinced me to help them…mutiny against their captain."

Teague laughs loudly. "He used you to throw old Hammond off the Murchadh?"

For some reason, she doesn't like the way he says "used". It sounds too…pirate-like for Cairbre Nolan. "There wasn't any throwing involved. Hammond was up spending his fortune on rum and whores, leaving behind an entire crew of men who hated him to watch over his ship. Well, the bosun, Flandery, he didn't seem to like me at first. But he was persuaded by the point of my cutlass."

Teague smiles. "Well, it's not a small wonder that your men are so loyal, then. Hammond was a monster, really. Hateful bastard."

She glances up at him, and as he beams down at her, the babe in her stomach does an odd roll, kicking out.

She lets a hand rest on the swell, and Teague turns back to the globe he's been showing her, points out a few spots where there are other, smaller pirate strongholds, and a few places pirates avoid, for practical reasons. Elizabeth leans forward interestedly, taking another bite from her mostly-eaten crumpet.

"My son used to love that song," Teague says, leaning against the doorway. She has her fingers splayed across the ebony keys, and she wonders when this piano came to Shipwreck Cove. She has a funny feeling Teague had it ordered – stolen – for her. It's beautiful, a Cristifori piano, like the ones she'd seen in books about the Medici family.

She's been playing old songs on it, surprised her fingers even remember the movements. This is the first time since she's been here that anyone has brought up Jack.

"Used to sit in my lap and hold his fingers over my own, like he meant to learn the songs like that. Only time I've ever seen him so focused on any one thing." He glances up at her, and she doesn't have to guess at what he's thinking. "Well. Almost the only time."

"And did he ever learn it?"

Teague shrugs. "Stopped talking to me, really, when his mother left. Blamed me, I think. Like he thought I was unfaithful, or…" He shakes his head. "I don't know. I don't know what he learned."

She reaches for his hand. "He's a good man."

Elizabeth feels his gaze on her, but does not meet it. Doesn't want him to see the tears sparkling in her eyes. "Aye. That I know."

She lets go of his hand, returns her gaze to the piano, and lets her hands glide across it, playing a song from memory, because she can't read music anymore, and she always loved this song, too.

Teague watches her for a moment longer, and then she can hear him moving away, out of her quarters (Still overly large, she thinks. She could do with a few less balconies, less windows to close every night. Teague always rolls his eyes. No one is going to steal from their King.) and she waits until she is sure he is gone before she stops playing. Her head bowed, she stares at the keys, dark and light, each polished perfectly.

She brushes away the salty tear that falls onto one of the keys, and the noise reverberates around the room.

It is most definitely too big, she thinks, as the noise echoes.

She throws the book across the room, and it makes a dull thunking noise as it hits the wall. This is unbearable, she thinks, as Cairbre laughs at her. She can't stand it.

"Laugh at me any more and I'll have you murdered in your bed."

Cairbre smiles at her, turns to sit down at the edge of the bed, grabs her bare feet. She kicks at him. "I know you hate being stuffed up in here."

"I can't move," she complains, huffing resentfully. "I can't breathe. I can't think." She glares offensively at her stomach. "I want it out."

"You've still got a ways to go," he tells her, and she glowers at him.

"Four weeks. Four weeks more, stuffed in this damned room, with horrible books and no air. I need air. I need…I need the wind in my hair, and the spray of the sea. God, I need…"

He stares at her for a moment before making some kind of decision, and then stands, leaning over and offering his hand. She glares at it, as well.

"What?"

"Come on."

"You heard them all. I'm supposed to stay here, locked in like a prisoner, and wait."

"They said you needed to rest, not pace about like a caged animal."

"Nolan…"

He reaches for her, and slips an arm under her. He picks her up.

"Nolan!"

"What? You said you couldn't walk."

"I can't."

"Well, you need some way to get you from here to the docks."

She smiles at him, and buries her head in his shoulder. She thinks she feels him kiss her hair, and so she clings tightly to him, trying her best not to feel a bit embarrassed when they pass people in the halls. She is a King, afterall, and if she wants someone to carry her down to the docks, it should be no one's business.

Cairbre sets her down a few minutes later, and she watches him sit heavily beside her. Elizabeth takes a deep, cleansing breath, and smells the sea. And something…ginger.

It always smells of some new spice in Shipwreck Cove. Sometimes basil, sometimes cinnamon, sometimes they are exotic ones she's sure she's never heard of. But the ginger is always her favorite. It reminds her of Christmas, of tugging at her mothers skirts while she made cookies, and she remembers her father, every year, poking round the corner and shaking his head, wondering why Beatrice Swann couldn't let the cook do that, remembers her mother smiling enchantingly at him, and remembers her father returning minutes, hours later, his wig missing, throwing an apron around his waist and swinging Elizabeth over his shoulder to help him.

Ginger has always been her favorite.

She glances at Cairbre, and finds he's been staring at her. "Stop that."

"What?"

"I look dreadful."

And she does. Her feet ache. Her ankles are swollen. She is practically bursting out of the dress Greta had made for her only a week ago. Her breasts hurt. She is quite sure her face is swelling. And she can barely move.

Cairbre grins at her, takes her hand and kisses her knuckles. "You look beautiful."

She snatches her hand from his much larger one. "You're ridiculous."

"I'm quite sincere," he responds, taking repossession of her hand.

She turns away from him, but doesn't bother to hide the smile curling on her lips.

The wind blows through her hair, and she spares a moment to think she'll spend hours trying to untangle it. If she bothers. She might just cut it all off, make things easier.

She knows, really, that she won't. It's the one thing she keeps, from her other life, the one she's only ever been half-in. She'll spend the time to make sure each and every knot is pulled loose. But for now, she settles against Cairbre, lets him stroke a pattern up her arm, and listens to the sea, feels the wind on her face and lets the aroma of ginger and the sea waft past her, reminding her of things she's quite sure she'll never forget.