Note: This was a background scene that took place during the time that Elizabeth and Jack were starting to realize their feelings for each other, but were also quite busy preparing for Angelica's imminent attack. With the two of them gone so much, Teague and Agatha had plenty of time to get to know each other. This is a slightly deeper exploration of Jack's family background.

"Captain Teague, who is she?" Agatha asked her host one day as they sat together in the sitting room. She was looking at the portrait on the wall.

He had his guitar on his knee as usual, and had been picking out a new melody. He looked up at the portrait Agatha was pointing at.

"Sure you want to know, ma'am?" he asked. "Might not like the answer."

"Why not?"

"Might not want to 'ssociate with me or me son anymore. Might not want to let yer niece do so either."

"I'll risk it. Who is she?"

"Jacky's mother."

Agatha's jaw dropped. The woman in the portrait was formally dressed in English clothes, with an English hairstyle and English jewelry… but she was incontestably and incontrovertibly a negress. Teague, her gruff and taciturn new friend, had evidently had an affair with a black woman… and not only that, but had had a child with her—a child whom Agatha was currently attempting to inveigle into marrying her niece!

If Elizabeth did marry Jack, their children would be Quadroons at best, and probably still not received in Society. Agatha would have to give this match some more thought.

She glanced up at Teague, intending to ask about the woman's ancestry—perhaps she looked more black than she really was? Maybe she was the quadroon herself?—but she noticed his expression.

He was looking up at the portrait with look of wistful adoration on his face. A sad smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and he sighed.

Whatever she was, he obviously still missed her.

"What happened to her?" Agatha asked, instead of what she had been going to ask.

"Died of a fever." Teague's voice was unutterably sad.

Agatha took a deep breath. "How did you meet her?" she asked quietly.

For a while she thought Teague wasn't even going to answer her, and then he took in a sudden breath and started playing again. As before, he spoke in a low, gruff voice, and let the music convey his emotions for him.

"She's what the Spanish call a 'sambo.' Her mum was an African slave who escaped into the mountains and married into a local Taino tribe. Fellow what called 'imself 'Smith' when he interpreted for the English. They had one daughter, name o' Senya, before this Smith was killed in a Carib raid. Well, Senya's mum went a bit crazy and attacked the whole raiding party singlehandedly. She was killed, o' course, leaving Senya all alone with the Taino. They didn't want her, so they brought her to an English mission and left her there. Luckily, her dad had taught her English. She got an interpreting job, but ran afoul of a couple of visiting English who thought they had fair rights to 'er 'cause she was dark-skinned. She killed 'em both and ran away from the mission. If she'd been caught, she'd have been hanged, or worse, so she ended up stowing away on a ship."

"So how did you meet her?"

"It was my ship, wasn't it? She was found and brought before me, and I talked with her. Ordinarily we'd toss a stowaway over the side and be done with it, but I liked her. I liked her spirit. I mean—killin' the men who attacked her, 'stead of just givin' in to stay safe? Takes courage. So I didn't throw her overboard. Put her to work instead."

"What sort of work?"

"Sailin', what else?"

"Many men would have put her to work… you know. On her back."

Teague snorted a laugh. "After I heard what she'd done to the last two who tried it, she was very safe aboard my ship, I can tell you! No, she only had one problem with that sort o' thing during the whole voyage, and she came to tell me about it after she had already dealt with the miscreant."

"Good heavens! What did she do?"

Teague hesitated. "Er, let's just say she made him permanently uninterested in interferin' with women. Said she give him the choice: either that or go overboard, so that's what he chose."

Agatha covered her mouth with her hand, swallowing hard.

Teague chuckled a little.

Agatha, wanting him to change the subject, asked, "How did you and she end up… you know… together… if I may ask?"

Teague smiled, leaning back and plucking the guitar again. "I knew by the time we arrived in England that I wanted her for me wife. Hell of a woman—er, pardon me, ma'am. Quite a woman, I should have said. We'd got to be pretty fond of each other on the crossing. So I proposed to 'er and she accepted. Trouble is, me family wouldn't allow me to marry 'er an' stay respectable. So I told me family to stuff it, beggin' yer pardon, I turned pirate, and we sailed back to the Caribbean and were married in the Taino way."

"Oh, so she was your wife!" Agatha exclaimed. "I'm sorry, I just thought—"

"Ye thought her just a passin' fancy? So did me family. We proved 'em wrong, we did." Teague's guitar riff showed his simultaneous satisfaction and irritation with his family. "Twelve years' worth of 'passing fancy,' it was. She gave me a son, but then she died of the fever when my Jacky was only ten. The Taino didn't want 'im, so I brought 'im back to England. Turns out the English didn't either. Lad had a bit of a rough time of it, until I remarried—an English lady this time—and he moved in with his stepmother."

"How did she take to Jack?"

"She couldn't afford not to take to 'im. Poor Bertie was a sickly sort. Gave me a set o' twins, and then was too ill to keep 'em so Jacky stepped in and took care of 'em for the next few years. They got right fond of 'im, they did. Didn't matter to the little ones that 'is mum wasn't a white woman."

"Did it matter to your second wife?"

Teague smirked. "Not for long," was all he said. "Question is, will it matter to Miss Elizabeth?"

Agatha didn't know what to say.

Teague shot her a sharp glance. "Does it matter to you?"

Agatha flushed dark red. "Yes," she confessed. "A little, yes."

Teague stopped playing for a moment. He gazed up at the portrait. "Seems funny," he mused. "Woman like that—fearless, beautiful, honorable, loyal—that she should be looked down on because of her color, while the white Englishmen who enslaved and transported her mother and tried to molest her are the ones deemed 'respectable.' Ironic, really."

"I see what you mean," Agatha said thoughtfully. "I am sorry if I offended you, Captain. Will you tell me about her?"

Teague smiled, apparently at Agatha's interest. "Her real name was Senya," he said, "Though in England she went by Sophie Smith. She was like a river. Combination of rapid shallows and deep, powerful currents. Now, the sea, you can get to know her, and navigate her. You can know where things are, and if there's a storm, you can just ride it through and then continue on your way. A river, though—" he shook his head.

"A river's never the same from one season to the next, with its floods and droughts, and changin' courses, and movin' stuff around, and smoothin' out the sharp rocks. You think a river is easily navigated, until you hit a rock that hadn't been there before and you capsize. You never know how strong the current is until you're well into it, and then it's too late to get out. Only way to save yourself is to just swim along with it. And like a river, she could wear down the sharpest stone just by flowin' relentlessly past it. After a few years with her, I couldn't recognize meself anymore. She'd changed me. She'd smoothed down my sharp corners a bit, and ground down my rough edges."

Teague noticed his guest's quickly hidden look of surprise, and chuckled. "Yes, ma'am, if you can believe it, I used to be even rougher and sharper than I am now."

Agatha dissembled. "I'm sorry, Captain, I didn't mean—"

Teague cut her off with a quick Spanish riff. "No, she did. She made me a better man without me even realizin' it. Yes, ma'am," he finished, gazing up at Senya's portrait. "She was one hell of a woman."

Agatha replied into the silence. "You must have loved her very much."

Teague said nothing, but only nodded once and went on playing.

"My Jacky's a lot like his mother," he said after a while. "Always full of surprises, no matter how well you think you know 'im. Shallow and full o' chatter like the rapids, but other places are smooth and deep and don't give nothin' away."

"I can see that in him," Agatha mused. She looked up again at the portrait and made a decision. It was a decision that she would never have been able to make, only a few months before; however, with Elizabeth's current situation, and with what Agatha was beginning to learn about non-Society people in general, she was able to make it now. Living in Shipwreck had educated her on more than one level.

"Your wife was very beautiful," she finally said in a more formal tone. "I condole with you on her loss, and I find your son to be a very fine man. I believe my niece is starting to do, as well. If she does have a problem with who his mother was, then I shall have a talk with her about it," Agatha promised.

Teague played a cheerful little riff, like a chuckle. "Thank ye, ma'am."

"You may call me Agatha, Captain. If you wish," she told him.

"Edward," he invited in turn. His black eyes sparked with a speculative gleam. "Though it ain't exactly proper, Ag'tha. Usin' our given names. Ye know that, right?" he added with mock concern.

Agatha raised her chin and met his gaze evenly. "Neither is marrying a negro, yet you managed that easily enough. I'll be switched if I'm going to let a pirate outdo me in a social matter!"

Teague was startled into a laugh. He leaned forward and reached for her hand, pressing it respectfully to his lips before releasing it. "You are a fine lady, Ag'tha, and no mistake."

"It sounds as if Senya was, as well," Agatha said generously.

Pleased, Teague just nodded. "Aye."