As they prepared their respective ships for battle and waited for Angelica to arrive, Elizabeth found herself drawing closer to Jack. They spend most of their days together, either on the Pearl, at Teague's house, or exploring the town and the island. They fell into a pattern: she would feed Jacob in the morning and then don trousers and go off with Jack until lunchtime. Then they would return to Teague's house for lunch, pick up the baby, and go out again. Often the mornings would be filled with more sparring or navigation practice, but sometimes Jack would just take her on long rambles around the island. Jack showed her many of his old haunts from when he'd spent some time there in his late teens, and she learned more about his early life. Elizabeth was fascinated. The more she learned, the more curious she became. What, exactly, went into the making of a Captain Jack Sparrow, anyway?
"And here I thought you'd sprung fully formed from your father's forehead, ship and all," she teased.
Jack snickered. "Alas, 'twasn't the case. Not very wise or virginal, am I?"
Elizabeth blushed. "I didn't mean—I was only—that is—" Then she thought of something and looked back at him. "Jack, where did you go to school?"
"Why d'ye ask?" he asked warily.
"Well, you go to great lengths to portray yourself as a drunken, illiterate pirate, yet you don't really drink that much most of the time; you have a tremendous vocabulary; you write beautifully; in fact, you show many of the signs of having had an excellent classical education. How many pirates would have got that reference to Athena just now?"
Jack shrugged. "Sailors pick things up. I've been to Greece."
"Yes, I know, but…" she slipped her arm into his as they reached the edges of the town where no one could see them. "But if you lived in England and helped bring up your brother and sister, then where did you get your education?" she persisted.
"Not going to let this go either, are you," he remarked. It was not a question.
She shook her head. "You know me better than that."
He sighed mournfully. "I do, it's true." When she dug her nails into his arm, he grinned at her and pried her fingers up again. "Fine, then. Me step-mum taught me. Said I'd need every advantage she could offer me. She'd been a governess, a long time before she married Teague, so she taught me just as if I'd been her own." Jack pulled his arm out of Elizabeth's grasp, laced his fingers between hers, and tugged her along with him as he walked. "An' that's all I'm sayin' on the subject."
She brought Jacob out to the Black Pearl a few times, after Jack's crew had finished scraping and repairing it and had put it back into the water. She was amused by how Jack spoke to the baby, bringing him up to the forecastle and addressing him as he would another adult.
"This here's the bowsprit," he told the child, shifting the baby's weight to one arm so he could point and make his dramatic gestures with the other. "Under that is the figurehead. See the pretty angel down there? She sort of embodies the personality of the whole ship. I'n't she beautiful? And this is the foremast, and these sails are the jib and the flying jib. Keep that in mind."
Elizabeth chuckled. "Why should he keep it in mind? You realize that at this moment, his mind is probably occupied with such thoughts as 'bright sun,' 'hungry,' and 'want to eat those beads'?"
Jack looked, and sure enough, Jacob had snagged the string of beads from his hair and was gumming on them. Carefully he removed them from the baby's mouth and offered him Tai Huang's teething ring instead, which was tied around the baby's neck on a string. "Try that instead, Master Jake. Less likely to swallow it and have it disagree with you."
Jake didn't agree, and shoved his bottom lip out in a fearsome pout. Jack grinned. "You realize," he informed the child, "that if you stick that lip out any further, seagulls are going to come a build a nest on it?"
Elizabeth came over and held out her arms. "Let's see if some lunch will help improve his mood," she suggested.
Jack gave her a gleaming grin. "It certainly would improve mine, if 'twere offered in a similar fashion!"
Elizabeth gasped, jaw dropping in outrage, before she turned on her heel and stomped away toward Jack's cabin.
"Need any help?" Jack called after her, laughing.
"No, thank you!" was her crisp reply as she slammed the door and shot the bolt home before she went and sat down on his bed to nurse her baby.
"Oh, that man!" she grumbled to herself. "What am I going to do with him? He's such an incorrigible lecher!"
He wasn't, though. Not anymore. She thought about him as she sat there feeding her baby. Jack still said shocking things to make her blush so he could laugh at her, but his actual conduct had been that of a gentleman. She hadn't seen him with any other women since they had arrived in Shipwreck weeks (or was it months?) ago. He still flirted all the time, but his remarks usually held more of an affectionate tone than a lecherous one.
They touched a lot more than they used to, as well. They didn't walk arm-in-arm when she wore trousers in town, but as soon as they were out of sight of anyone, he would often offer an elbow for her to take, or would toss an arm around her shoulders. Sometimes she slipped her hand into his as they walked, and these days there was nearly always a hug and a kiss on the cheek when they parted for the night. Neither one of them spoke aloud about it, but Elizabeth was surprised at how comfortable it was.
When she and Will had been courting, every touch had been tentative, fraught with nervousness, every timid gesture carefully guarded for fear he would think ill of her for being too forward. She suspected it had been the same for him—all the more so because he was so far below her in station. Each separate gesture of affection, whether it was a kiss or just holding hands, carried the weight of so much meaning that she and Will had never become comfortable with touching each other.
Jack wasn't like that. He was not in the least bit shy about reaching out to touch her, to hold her hand, to stroke her hair, to caress her cheek. In return he seemed to revel in her touches, welcoming even the most innocent affectionate gesture with a pleased smile.
Elizabeth had gone for two years without being touched by anyone. She'd had no hugs from her father anymore, no awkward-but-significant hand-holding with Will, not even any servants to help her dress and do her hair every morning. She hadn't realized how starved for touch she had become, until Jack started reaching out to her so often.
She found, paradoxically, that his affectionate gestures were more meaningful when each separate one didn't carry so much individual significance. Touching Will had been like visiting someone important and being on your best behavior. Touching Jack was like arriving home again afterwards.
"God help me," she whispered to her suckling son. "I'm falling in love with him!"
She reflected that Will's dalliance with Calypso had freed Elizabeth in a way. It no longer seemed strange to her that she wasn't married to Will. His long absence had made their childhood romance seem more like a dream or a story now, and their last conversation aboard the Pearl had established Will very clearly as a close friend but that was all. Really, she mused, Will and Jack had pretty much switched places in her mind. If they weren't married at all, and if Will had already found someone else, then she felt no qualms of conscience regarding her resurging interest in Jack.
And it was definitely resurging. It had always been there, but she had ignored it and tamped it down for the two years or so that she had been married to Will. She had told Will the truth: she had been faithful to him in both body and mind. She had carefully disciplined her mind to relegate any thoughts of Jack into the "friend" category, and not to take his flirting seriously. She hadn't allowed any interest or attraction to Jack enter her conscious mind the whole time—but at the same time she couldn't forget the compass pointing in Jack's direction whenever she held it, and she couldn't forget the taste of his kiss or the warmth of his body pressed against hers.
When she slept it was another story. She flushed now, remembering some of her dreams from the last two years. Her conscious mind had been carefully disciplined, it was true; however, her subconscious mind had longed for Jack—for his flamboyant presence, his voice, his touch, his kiss… and yes, his body. Now that she knew what men and women did together, she could no longer deny her curiosity about what it would be like to do them with Jack, to sleep with him, wake with him, live with him, share herself with him. She still dreamed of him often, and sometimes the dreams were normal, friendly sorts of dreams. Other times, they left her gasping and blushing when she woke. Physically, viscerally, she wanted him. She wanted to feel his skin against hers, to strip off all the layers that made up "Captain Jack Sparrow" and make him naked and vulnerable and hers. Her Jack.
The physical affection they had begun to show, however innocent, only made her longings worse. She could finally admit what she hadn't let herself admit even when the compass pointed to him: she wanted him.
But wanting did not equal love.
She did know that he was the first person she thought of when she wanted to talk or share something; he was the only person she trusted unequivocally, with both her and her child's life.
Trusting him with her heart was more of a risk. Jack himself had told her about when he developed "feelings" for Angelica, he took to his heels and left her. Elizabeth also hadn't been exaggerating when she had told Aunt Agatha that Jack had a girl in every port and two in some. If she and Jack did begin a romance, would he abandon her when the harsh reality of it hit him, and go running back to his easy, no-fuss string of whores?
Elizabeth couldn't stand the thought of being thrown over for a whore; yet, for a man of Jack's temperament and experience to settle down with one woman who already had a baby—well, he had always been a free spirit. She wouldn't really blame him if he decided it wasn't for him.
However, Jack had proven his friendship time and time again over the past year in addition to all the previous years. She decided to take him at his word, when he'd told her in the crow's nest that his flirtation was as real as she wanted it to be. The more time she spent with him, the more sure she became that she wanted it to be very real, indeed.
She decided, sitting there in Jack's cabin where she had spent so much time under his care, that she would be honest with him. She would speak first, sparing him the risk of being rejected. She would rather risk it herself. She could do that much for him, at least, and leave the choice up to him. She would not go into this battle without his knowing how she felt about him.