Additional update. I got this done a little bit earlier...I suppose you don't mind :-)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As usually Josephine was woken up by her maid precisely at seven o'clock in the morning. The heavy curtains were pulled apart so that the sunlight could illuminate the room and wake the sleepy young woman who stretched on her bed and protested with an unladylike yawn. It hadn't been her idea to rise that early. Her brother considered it a substantial virtue and so she had to obey. It was his house and he made the rules in it. A fact which she was constantly reminded of.
She got to her feet and looked around owlishly. Contrary to the general fashion that predominated in London, where ladies applied a substantial amount of perfume to cover up their body odour, she actually washed herself each morning with water and soap. Besides splashing her face with ice cold water always helped her to wake up.
When she was done, her maid Clementine usually helped her to get dressed. It was the part of her morning routine, she hated the most. She was laced up much too tightly into yet another corset which reduced her already slim waist to impossible tiny proportions and kept her from breathing properly. It was like a medieval torture device. Whenever she didn't hold herself absolutely straight, the corset bones duck admonishingly into her sides.
After she had finished dressing she slowly descended the stairs to the dining-room, where she would have breakfast with her brother. Usually she had just a few bites of her toast and half-hearted sip of her tea. As a habit Cutler blissfully ignored her, but today he was oddly eager on making conversation with her.
"You look well rested, my dear," he flattered her with an unusual gentle voice.
"It might be the warm climate," she answered cautiously.
"So, how did you like yesterday's dinner party?" his question made her alert. Usually he never asked for her opinion. He didn't deem it valid. Her thoughts were as trivial to him as the babbling of a little child.
"It was pleasant," she replied curtly.
"What about our new friend, the Admiral?"
"We shared some polite words over diner, but I fear that will be too little to actually judge his character," Josephine answered elusively.
"Well, I'll afford you the possibility to deepen your acquaintance further, dearest sister. He will be our guest for the coming three days. After that he is supposed to perform a little errant for me," she didn't like the way he pronounced the word errant. It made her assume that it was an euphemistic way of paraphrasing mortal danger. If her suspicions were correct, it was no wonder Norrington had been so agitated yesterday.
"What do you expect me to do, brother?" she asked obediently.
"Behave as a good hostess should, since I'll have to excuse myself. There are matters of business I have to attend to." The prospect that he would be away for a while made her rejoice inwardly, but those emotions didn't reflect on her inexpressive face.
"It will be my pleasure," Josephine responded and inclined her head.
Obviously Cutler was satisfied with her answer, as a content grin briefly flitted over his face, "Excellent," that was the last word they spoke with each other over breakfast.
A lady wasn't expected to do anything useful with her time expect maybe knitting or reading (of course, no books were allowed that could corrupt a woman's impressionable mind). She wasn't allowed to be idle either, because idleness provoked the most inappropriate thoughts.
Apparently Josephine had been thoroughly corrupted by idleness and the wrong reading. She preferred books that were not meant for a female readership and treated topics like politics and philosophy. It was quite easy to disguise them accordingly, so that no one would suspect her of reading them. She simply took the cover of an romance novel, ripped out the original pages and then clued in new ones.
Right after breakfast she went up to her room to pursue her usual interests and do some reading. Today it was Thomas More's Utopia. At times she let the book drop to her lap and looked out of her window pensively. Before she had come here, she had often despaired upon the fact that her life was so limited, due to the fact that she was a woman. She would have never rebelled openly, but now things were different.
The first thing she had seen, right after she had disembarked at Port Royal, was a young woman dressed in man's clothes, arguing vividly with a merchant. Evidently this was a perfectly normal sight around here, because no one had turned his head or pointed with his finger.
Shortly after she had heard about Elizabeth Swann, the Governor's daughter. She was the talk of the town. A rumour said she had escaped from prison - where Cutler had ordered to detain her, by the way - and run off to rescue her fiancé, a pirate, which made matters even more scandalous.
Josephine had even been able to catch a brief glimpse of her, when the Miss Swann had snug inside the mansion and threatened her brother with a weapon. The situation had been deeply disquieting to her, because she had discovered that she didn't feel frightened for her brother nor preoccupied for his well-being. Quite the contrary, Josephine had admired the other woman for her courage.
Those experiences had inspired thoughts that she could no longer suppress. Her brother Cutler was not the only one who understood something about scheming. She had devised a thoroughly laid plan in the last couple of days, how she could finally break free from those bounds imposed on her by her gender.
When she had roamed the town the other day and accidentally collided with Norrington, it had just been a test run to see whether anybody would recognize her in her disguise as a boy. Everything had run smoothly except for that tiny hitch. Perhaps she had been too nervous. Anyways it wouldn't happen again.
Tonight she would try to arrange a passage to Tortuga and maybe with any luck she would be gone by the end of the week. The thought made her feel ecstatic and frightened her at the same time.
What part Norrington would play in her plan, she wasn't able to tell yet. Her brother had mentioned his name a couple of days before the Admiral's arrival and told her that he had once been a respectable officer in the Queen's Royal Navy, but had now fallen from grace.
This information had stirred her curiosity and Josephine had made some investigations of her own. During a stroll over the promenade she had casually mentioned Norrington's name in the presence of Minzy Diggery, she was the daughter of Mr. Cedric Diggery, a wealthy merchant, and gossiping about other peoples misfortunes was her favourite pastime. Minzy had related to her, of course in all confidence, that Norrington had once been one of the most eligible bachelors of the town, "quite dashing" were the words she had used. The poor Commodore had been betrothed to Miss Swann, who preferred the apprentice of the local blacksmith over him and ran away with the young man, some William Turner or what-was-his-name. Such a humiliation! What was more scandalous yet, was the fact that the couple formed a deep friendship with the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow. Here Minzy had inserted a dramatic pause, because she was sure her conversation partner understood perfectly well how inexcusable Miss Swann's behaviour had been.
Captain Sparrow was a name that was mentioned quite frequently in the Beckett household, especially in connections with death treats. Her brother had once had a run in with him which didn't bode all too well, but that was another story….
Anyway, the Commodore had graciously given up his interest in Elizabeth, stepped back to let love take its course. After that he had gone crazy because of his unrequited love for Miss Swann, that was at least how Minzy had put it. Josephine found that formulation a tad bit over-dramatic. In the next three years he had put all his energies into catching Jack Sparrow, that terrible pirate. It was rumoured his methods had been quite reckless. Just exactly how reckless Josephine hadn't been able to learn from her friend, because Minzy had suddenly gotten very excited about some dress that was displayed in a shop-window they had just passed by and had refused to talk anymore over such "frightfully depressing matters".
That had been just about everything she had been able to find out about him. That little information wasn't enough to make sure whether he could be trusted with her secret, let alone become a part of her plan.
Josephine wasn't as naïve as to believe that she could manage to escape on her own. She would be disguised as a boy, which already ensured her a considerable amount of safety, but that would not be enough. Thanks to her small frame and her soft feature she would still be viewed by others as particularly easy prey and what made matters worse, she didn't even know how to fire a pistol nor how to handle a sword. She needed an accomplice, preferable male. Maybe now she was able to provide one.