The Best-Laid Plans

by etsfanfics

Pre-DMC courtship of Elizabeth and Will. After Will and Elizabeth free Jack from the gallows, the couple battles with class differences, political intrigue and an entire smithy of swords, as they set out together to explore the expanding boundaries of their relationship and build their dreams for a shared future of new adventures.

4. The Usefulness of Friends - Part 1

Although his mind desperately reeled between the due dates and untouched orders he'd left in the smithy, Will had committed himself to trying to rest more properly. The night had continued to pass fitfully around his mattress. It was over an hour past dawn when he finally conceded that real sleep would not be coming, and his unsettled dozing would have to be sufficient until nightfall.

A hasty breakfast of bread and milk was followed by an equally hasty use of the chamberpot and wash stand, before returning to the smithy for his delayed morning chores. The donkey was watered and fed, the ash trap dumped and the forge reignited to full fervor. Once Will finally began to toil beside ignited iron and struck steel, the crispness of dawn slipped away far faster than usual. That was the unfortunate part. As for the good parts: although he still was more tired compared to an average day, his uneven sleep seemed to have helped more than he expected. The weariness and pain in his shoulders had lifted significantly and he was able to bang out another key piece for the next major order on the smithy's list. Soon they would be caught up, just as he'd promised Elizabeth, and he felt confidence filling his chest, energizing his resolve.

He worked through the morning, the blank spaces in his thoughts soon filling with imaginings of her inquisitive eyes and invented conversations with her. Idly, he wondered how her yesterday had gone, then found himself asking her as much in his mind. The vision of Elizabeth in his head told him a story he couldn't rightfully hear, but he smiled to himself imagining the animation with which she would answer if he could listen. He hoped in reality her day had been happy and good, and that it would be so today as well. He thought she'd probably reply by asking him whether he'd slept the way he ought, and he toyed with all the ways he might respond that could be both reassuring and breezy. He had tried his best, at sleeping; thoughts of her had helped his best be a little better; and he would try again tonight with more success… he hoped. There were many times thoughts of her before sleep were a torment just as surely as they were a blessing.

He attempted to redirect those thoughts before they became too distracting to his work. At length, his mind suggested that she might ask him what he was making, and whether he would show her how it was done. Then he allowed himself to be carried away in the happy pretense of mentally narrating his tasks to her, explaining the whys and hows of each movement of his hands as he attacked his craft with a renewed relish. Perhaps she'd enjoy the sparks that flew from a redhot strike? Or it could be that she would like to guess what it was he was making before he was finished…? Or maybe not?

Would the woman outside his head actually care to learn about the ways of earth and fire, or would the call of wind and water always be all that would ever truly fascinate her? He wasn't entirely sure.

When the daytime noises of town began to slip through the shutters, the distant clatter signaling the auction block's opening, Will set down his tongs and hammer with a sigh, letting his imagined company drift away. As expected: his master had still not come down to work. The pattern was always the same every time Brown drowned himself in his drink.

But something about today felt different. With his mind so recently occupied by Elizabeth's influence, Will couldn't help but consider what she would think to find out about the frailties of Mister Brown and the extra burdens they unceremoniously dropped upon his own shoulders. While he couldn't be certain of her precise reaction, he could be certain of one thing: she wouldn't tolerate it one whit.

So why had he?

The question struck him hard enough to freeze him in his tracks: why had he tolerated this? When he was younger, he'd still had years of training before him and a fear inside him of uncontrolled change that could tear him farther away from Elizabeth than he already was. She may have been castled on the hill and he burrowed in the valley, but at least he could always look out his window and catch sight of the eaves of her home, knowing she might come down from under them every so often.

Things were different now. He was more capable, more in control of his own destiny than he'd ever been before. He'd stopped shrinking from change and uncertainty, having learned to grab onto them with both hands to see where they took him. And he could see so much more in his life than glimpses of distant rooftops through jungle canopies.

No, Elizabeth wouldn't tolerate this sorry state the smithy was in, and neither would he. It was enough.

His shoulders squared, Will retrieved a bucket, filled it at the fountain, and returned to the main house with a long, determined stride. Inside, he entered his master's room, leaving the doors agape and throwing the shutters open to bring in all the sun that could be admitted. He marched about, not bothering with silence in the least as he set a kettle to boil and refilled the wash basin. Then he dropped a chair and sat at his master's bedside, one foot perched on his opposing knee and arms crossed sternly, waiting in no small measure of impatience for the drunken man to resurrect from his torpor.

It didn't take long. Mister Brown had already been twitching and flinching from Will's onslaught of daylight and noise. Eventually, with several grunts and groans, he began to blink, squint, and squirm, examining the room around him. When his narrowed bloodshot eyes found Will at last, recognition began to flicker in his face. He laid his head back down, covering his eyes with a wrist and an air of defeat.

After several minutes of relative silence dragged between, the ailing man smacked his lips to moisten his mouth and croaked, "What time you get started?"

"Doesn't matter," Will responded firmly, not moving. He would have preferred to be able to look the man in the eyes as he addressed him, but he chose not to press it. "The Woolmer order's nearly done. I would like to focus on Dodson's today. If you can handle the finishing for each of those, there's a chance I could finally get started on Clarke's tomorrow. Then we'll have caught up at last."

More silence as his master absorbed what he said.

"Alright," Mister Brown eventually replied… and that was all.

Will felt his frustration and anger begin to simmer in his belly. No. That was not all. It was clear Brown expected Will to once again leave Master to quietly, slowly pull himself back together, while Apprentice returned to the anvil and held the smithy together with his labors—the same way he'd done time again for months on end. But Will was through with such sorry routines. By now he knew better than to let this continue, for both their sakes. While Brown's tale had become sad in recent years, it was not unique.

Instead, he unfolded himself so that his feet were both planted on the ground, and he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, bringing his voice just a bit closer to his master's ears.

"I think it's time we talk about this properly, sir."

Mister Brown didn't say anything in response, but Will caught the brief hitch in his breath that revealed he was in fact listening.

After a sharp, motivating breath, Will pressed forward at a measured pace, having his say, "I've accepted that the blame for our heavy workload these past two weeks has largely been mine, and as such, it has also been largely my responsibility to set things right. I've also tried to give you time and sympathy over the past few years. I understand what it's like to have people you love leave you—it isn't easy."

Brown still didn't speak in response, still refused to look his underling in the eye, yet the pursed lips behind his unkempt beard indicated he'd heard and recalled the similar tragedies between them which Will alluded to. The young man felt a pang of pity, but took another breath and pressed on.

"Even so: I cannot hold this place together alone. Not if this keeps happening, and especially not as an apprentice. Not only is it not right, it's becoming impossible to manage. And I've seen before how much lower things can go from here," his voice began to tighten and he was forced to pause and swallow. Cold and shadowy memories passed across his mind for a moment, of the poorhouses in England and the ailing bodies that filled them. He blinked them away, forcing himself to re-affix his focus on the ailing body before him now and the flickers of dust floating on the window's sunbeams.

But there were other anxieties that held on all tightly, as circumstances began to echo each other. His hands gripped each other tightly and he grit his teeth as they began to chill unpleasantly within his guts.

"You've cost us pounds over the last few nights, sir. Pounds. We cannot afford that—I cannot afford that."

Saying it out loud caused the anxious pits inside him to bite as if filled with ice, and he attempted to calm himself before it froze him in a panic. This was not England, he was not a child, and he was not afraid of the cold anymore. If the smithy failed, he could make his way all the same—he'd learned enough now, understood that there was always someone looking for iron and steel bent to their desires and he could be that someone who made it so. If he absolutely had to, he could start over.

But he had dreams now, and dreams were expensive. He had hopes, and hopes were fragile. He would fight and pay for them with all he had, but deep down he knew he had very little to offer compared to more powerful men or forces of gods and nature. Starting over could cost him dearly, saving his life while costing him those precious hopes and dreams.

It was a price he was not willing to pay.

He unclenched his hands but kept them clasped together. Brown remained unheard and hidden under the shield of his arm, practically refusing to acknowledge Will's grievances. Well, it didn't matter. As long as he heard Will, then he couldn't claim he didn't see what was coming. This was his warning, and it would only be his own fault if he didn't care to listen.

"I've made plans for the coming year—I know which way my life is headed now, and what it'll cost. You're a good smith, you've taught me almost everything I know about this trade, and you've given me your home when I've had none. I would like to continue to work with you past the end of my training…" Will paused one last time to see if he could detect any reaction in Mister Brown, but he found none. So he rose to his feet with a sigh. "But as soon as I'm a journeyman, I will go where the money is secure, be it here or elsewhere."

And that was that. Still not a single word in reply. If it weren't for the patterns of his breathing, Will might have thought the man had passed or fallen back into sleep. But he knew better—the old drunkard could hear him just fine. Whether or not he heeded his notice would be another matter entirely.

Will turned his back and walked to the bedroom door. Tiny churning feelings began to bubble in his chest: agitation at the disrespect before him, relief at having taken the first steps to freeing himself from this yoke he wore alone far too often, and pity for the broken man he was likely to leave behind. It was this last feeling that made him stop and look back when he reached the door frame, casting a final look at the sloppy, sorry state the master blacksmith was in. He hadn't always been like this, after all. Once he'd truly been an attentive mentor, a caring friend, happy.

In spite of all of his aggravation, Will doubted there was anyone more aggrieved or frustrated with his situation than Jonathan Brown himself. How could he not be pitied?

"You are a good man, sir," Will felt inclined to remind. "I wouldn't have made it this far if you weren't."

He could see Brown swallow. "You pay me too much credit, Turner."

"She would have said the same."

It was the first time Will had mentioned the late Missus Brown in a great many years, but clearly the pain of her loss was as fresh as it had been in the beginning.

Mister Brown's face visibly tensed tightly, even from this reply was barely above a whisper, "She gave me too much credit too."

Perhaps it was best not to mention her still. It was worth a try. But Will still worried that telling the man he could leave him soon would leave him now without much to hope for, himself. So added one last thought before returning to his work:

"I'm willing to help you, if you're willing to start helping yourself. Until then… I'll see you downstairs."

---

The first thing that came to Elizabeth's waking consciousness was how leaden the weight of her own limbs seemed. She felt nearly as exhausted as she had the morning after the battle of Isla de Muerta, which was baffling. Next, the foul and sticky dryness of her mouth crept into her awareness. Then she realized she was alone, Mary's side of the bed already vacant even though the curtains were still closed. The discovery made her reflexively stretch her legs out and nestle back into her pillow for another hour of sleep. However, while her mind and limbs were ready for more dreams, her insides did not agree. In spite of her lazy desires, she found she desperately needed a drink. And a leak.

She groaned to herself, lacking any and all desire to rise but knowing it was necessary. In pushing her body upward, her bedding clung to her like a tar pit and her head began the subtlest of throbs. While it was definitely not the worst bout she'd experienced, she was most assuredly suffering from morning fog.

To think they had hardly done anything the night before! If they had gone dancing as well or some other grander outing, all bets on rising today would have been off.

Except to piss. And to eat—now that her feet were on the floor and she was wandering towards the close stool, she realized she was also surprisingly hungry. There was no chance at all she would be returning to sleep now.

But god, she was tired—so much so that for a few minutes after she'd finished doing her business, she simply sat on the stool in a daze, utterly indifferent to the risk of a chambermaid walking in and seeing her. She didn't want to stand. She could sit here for a while, what would it matter? … What had they done that left her feeling so exhausted? Talked? Since when was talking such a demanding exercise? No, it had to have been a combination of the wine and the laughing and the lateness of the hour…

She laughed and shook her head to herself. Here she was bemoaning on how tired she felt after only one late night of silly banter. Meanwhile, Will had been slogging away for weeks at genuinely demanding physical work, and was still picking himself up at dawn nearly everyday. What would he say if he knew she'd followed her chidings that he get some proper sleep with a late night of her own–-

Suddenly, Elizabeth remembered something and sat upright. Had she written him a letter in the middle of the night? She thought she had. At least, she felt she remembered stumbling across the room and almost spilling the ink across the desk in her inexplicable desperation to reach him with her thoughts. Now that she thought about it, the memory was so hazy it may well have been a wine-fueled dream that had mixed in with reality.

With a bit of haste, Elizabeth dried herself and made her way back to Mary's writing desk, to see if she could reopen whatever missive she'd composed and decipher what she'd been thinking.

The desk was shut and locked, with no sign of having been touched in the night. A frown pouted her lips. Although Elizabeth was confused, there was nothing about the matter that could be done without assistance. Well.. almost nothing. But if there was one thing Elizabeth had learned from a young age, it was the value of using other people before taking matters into her own hands. If that failed, then she would be back.

---

By the time she'd left her room, Elizabeth had eliminated one option of putting her mind at rest regarding her letter's existence. She asked Estrella as she changed into a clean shift and morning dress whether the other servants had said anything about an outgoing letter to Port Royal. Her father's coach had left on its journey home earlier that morning, but no such word had been heard from any of its staff. Nothing had been mentioned by the Blackwell's servants either. However, Estrella conceded that the labels of envelopes was not a frequent topic amongst the household staff, unless it involved a very important figure, in her experience.

It seemed most likely that the letter had been a dream, which was both a relief and a disappointment at once. She was certain the thoughts of her drunken self would have been somewhat entertaining to re-read in sober daylight, and she would be sorry if it had only been a figment of her imagination. But then absence wasn't exactly the best example of proof…

Evidently, Elizabeth had carried her pondering with her throughout the morning. Because even though she now stood assembling a breakfast plate before the dining table, Missus Blackwell had surprised her by joining her, beautifully dressed and perfumed, adorned with pearls and a rather amused expression on her face.

"It seems you four had quite a night," said the hostess with a lilt of laughter. "You all are so quiet this morning, especially compared to last night. It's a small wonder half the town didn't hear you."

Elizabeth blinked into brighter attention, and smiled with some deference. "I suppose we've been rather excited to become reacquainted. I apologize for the uproar."

"Of course. I do remember what it was to be young," Missus Blackwell returned lightly and with a polite smile of her own.

Elizabeth kept her amicable expression in place as she considered whether asking about the outgoing post would be a fruitful effort. Not only was it likely that such menial things were handled by her staff, Elizabeth still had a sense that she ought to be cautious around her hostess.

But Missus Blackwell continued the conversation with an introduction of her own topic, before Elizabeth could begin to broach to hers: "You seem to be doing quite well, all things considered."

'All things,' referring to the attack and every real and imagined tragedy thereafter, of course—especially the imagined parts, she was certain. While Elizabeth had spent the last few weeks largely cooped up in her father's mansion, she wasn't a fool. She knew very well what sorts of things were said among high society, when even a whiff of potential scandal made its way about town. And she was beginning to have a feeling she knew what additional motives there may have been behind the Blackwell's invitation… And why she probably needed to be more careful about the things she said to her friends.

She reached for the butter and applied a pat to her plate. "Yes. Admittedly, I've been rather fortunate… all things considered."

An ambiguous look flickered across Missus Blackwell's face, one that very well could have belied sympathy just as surely as relief or even disbelief. But it was quick, and Elizabeth couldn't be certain either way. She placed the butter back down on the table.

"And how is your father? The attack must have been a great personal shock for him, leaving alone the impact it's had on the island's security." Missus Blackwell reached for the jar of jam just as it caught Elizabeth's eye, and held it up for her to take more easily.

Elizabeth accepted the jar with a ginger cradling of her fingers, the caution which was now flowing in her mind beginning to creep into her body's movements as she dished herself a serving. The taps of her spoon against the dish felt unusually loud in the anticipatory pause of their conversation. She felt a nagging concern that the question she had been presented was a loaded one, and her suspicions began to grow stronger that her invitation possibly had more to do with assessing aspects of her father's governance than reuniting with old friends… For Mary's parents, least ways.

After she placed the jar down at its former place among the dishes, she made a point of examining what else there was to be had from the breakfast offerings, and replied as breezily as she could, "He'll manage."

"I would hope so. We're all relying on his leadership, and the Navy's protection," Missus Blackwell responded with a pointedly deliberate air. She then began to busy herself with straightening various items across the dining table, regardless of whether it was necessary–her pretense at idle occupation seemed unusually transparent, as she kept her eyes focused on her little task. "Such a shame about the commodore."

Elizabeth felt that familiar knot sink once again into her guts, though she was careful to maintain composure outwardly. Him again?

"A shame?"

Why did they keep coming back to James Norrington over and over? There was hardly anything more to be said of him or their failed match, especially with him out on the hunt once again. All the legal documentation and proceedings in the immediate aftermath of the Dauntless' return should have laid everything worth saying out in the open. What more did they need to know or say?

"Well, with him leaving so soon, while our main port is still recovering: it puts your father in a very difficult position, I'd wager." The matriarch turned her elaborately curled head back in Elizabeth's direction and struck her with penetrating eyes. "Besides, if you don't mind my saying, the three of you seemed to be spending quite a lot of time together recently. I'd assumed he was something of a family friend. You must miss him."

The knot inside twisted in two directions at once, and she drew the insides of her cheeks between her teeth. For some reason, the Blackwells seemed determined to get to the bottom of the nature of her relationship with Norrington in particular. Not only did it make her suspicious as to why it was considered necessary knowledge, it filled her with a faint sense of dread.

No one else had been told the reasons why Norrington attempted Will's rescue–not the crew, not the courts, and certainly not the public. As far as the world was concerned, Commodore James Norrington and the valiant crew of the Dauntless, had set out to capture the villains that had cruelly razed Port Royal to the ground, and bring their depravity to justice. And in this they had largely succeeded, with many ragged pairs of feet dancing the hempen jig in the days the followed.

But it wasn't the truth.

She had used him, his heart, and his ambitions for her own ends. That was the truth of it, the unpleasant little secret that only she, and he, and her father knew… In Port Royal, anyhow. And by using him, Elizabeth had not used the man alone: in using him, she had wielded his rank, his entire crew and the might of the Dauntless, indirectly directing a small army of unsuspecting men against an unkillable enemy. Many men died that day, but it wasn't for a quest for justice… it was for the life of a lowly civilian the governor's daughter couldn't bear to lose.

She'd avoided thinking about what had ultimately happened both on the Dauntless and between their two hearts, reassuring herself that it had been necessary to save an innocent man's life, that she hadn't meant for bystanders to die, that she had tried, however late, to warn them about the curse… that James seemed understanding of it all in the end. It was meant to be a rescue, in circumstances that were beyond usual and involving the rewarding of heroics deserving of protection. Surely, it could be believed that she'd had little choice, when considering what was the truly right thing to do. And that was what it was, wasn't it? Not merely self-serving but right?

In any case, it was in the past, the hatchet buried… Perish the thought that it could ever be unburied.

At length, Elizabeth dropped her gaze and returned her attention to her breakfast platter. "We'll manage."

There was an extended, uncomfortable lapse in their conversation as Elizabeth felt Missus Blackwell's eyes focused on her in intent examination. She knew there was nothing that could be discerned from her appearance regarding her hidden lie, especially as she had fought to maintain a dispassionate demeanor, but she felt her insides squirm nervously all the same. It was possible, likely even, that the older woman saw something behind Elizabeth's plain answers. At the very least she knew there was a reason for her careful ambiguity–even the least experienced political actors could guess as much.

Eventually, Elizabeth looked back up and offered Missus Blackwell a polite smile. The older woman seemed to decide their moment had ended, giving a small laugh and finally turning her eyes away from Elizabeth's scrutiny.

"You're welcome to take your meal in the parlor. The light will be better there, and a few of the girls have already taken residence for the time being."

---

Taking her meal to the Blackwell's parlor, not a few but all three other ladies had in fact perched themselves about the room, in various postures of langour. While Mary sat quietly near the window considering a book, Amelia had sunk into an armchair with her eyes closed. Violet had taken things a step further by strewing herself across the entirety of the divan with an arm cast over her eyes, looking quite like a painting of mournful tragedy. In the middle of the room was a coffee table, set with a tea pot and a few associated accouterments.

Elizabeth slapped at Violet's feet with her free hand to bid her make room for her seating.

"Mornin', Lily…" Violet's drawl was her only indicator of life as she sluggishly bent her knees and lowered her feet off the furniture.

"Afternoon," Elizabeth responded with a suppressed smile at her friend's expense.

She sat herself down in the space made for her on the divan, and placed her breakfast on the nearby table, choosing to reach for the tea before digging into her nibbles. No one said an additional word, with the room instead permeated by the faint rushes of wind outside the window announcing the approach of the deep blanket of clouds in the distance. Elizabeth looked around at their still figures, and marveled at how easily they could have been ghosts.

"We're all quite dead to the world today, aren't we?" she teased as she stirred her milk into her tea. "I would have thought you have a stronger stomach for this stuff, Violet.

Violet was far less cheery on the matter, groaning, "Don't you dare laugh. I had the worst dreams of my life last night, and I feel they were your fault."

Elizabeth scoffed in dismissal and lifted her teacup. "Oh, you're too old for nightmares from bedtime stories. Just admit the wine did you in—it happens to the best of us."

"Not to you," Violet sneered, and peeked out at Elizabeth from under her arm with a jealous glare.

"Oh no, I feel awful," Elizabeth replied after a hasty swallow of her tea. "But I did sleep alright, mostly. Although I fear I may have awoken you, Mary, sometime in the night?" She turned her head in Mary's direction.

"Mm…" Mary hummed thoughtfully without looking up from her book. "No, I don't think you did."

Elizabeth's brow wrinkled. That couldn't have been right, not if the letter had been real. Being as late and dark as it was, Elizabeth had been certain she had stumbled across the room with all the grace of a newborn foal.

"You looked right at me from the noise I was making, I'm certain." If Mary hadn't noticed, then perhaps it really had been a dreamed up moment. There was likely no point in asking about the letter at all.

Mary looked up as she shook her head, frowning an apology. "I don't remember a thing—I slept quite straight through the night and into this morning with no dreams at all."

"Witch," Amelia's voice accused in exhaustion.

Mary narrowed her eyes in a response Amelia couldn't see, clearly peeved.

Elizabeth took another drink and shook her head to herself. So they weren't entirely dead to the world just yet. "How are you, Amelia?"

Amelia responded by waving her free hand vaguely.

Alright, so even if they weren't quite dead, they were still very close. Perhaps Amelia and Violet had kept each other up a bit longer with more talking into the night. And speaking of which… Elizabeth's eyes slipped towards the parlor door to gaze for a moment down the hallway, replaying her conversation with Missus Blackwell, and wondering where she had disappeared to. Her unease from the encounter began to return, as well as her misgivings about the prior night.

"I, uh…." She cleared her throat, and daintily set her teacup back down on the table. "Speaking of last night's stories: there are some things I might have said that weren't precisely the truth. I don't remember everything that was said, but I feel I may have been prone to exaggeration and embellishment for the sake of your entertainment."

"Obviously," Mary scoffed. "Who would believe half of what you said, about devil rituals and blood curses or whatever it was?"

"I believed it," Violet quipped from her place, clearly joking.

Elizabeth pressed her lips together, attempting to keep her sincerity evident in her tone. "Either way: I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't repeat it. Seeing as I don't know what parts I may have embellished. If you want to know what happened, it's best to refer to my testimony from the trials for W—for Mister Turner and Captain Sparrow."

"Oh, I see," Amelia interjected, opening one eye to pin Elizabeth with a knowing look. "So you're going to pretend to be purely formal about them now that everyone's sober, is that it?"

Elizabeth felt a rush of alarm climb up her spine, which she fought to keep from climbing to her face. Somehow, she was more right than she originally suspected about the looseness of her drunken tongue. She realized her mouth had fallen open and was failing to bring words to her lips, so she redirected her attention to grabbing the tea cup she had only just set down.

"I don't know what you mean," she lied and took a drink.

"Ha!" Violet barked, obviously not buying the fib for two parts of a half-penny.

By now Amelia had opened both eyes and was positively skewering Elizabeth with an accusatory expression. "Yes you do. You might dream up or exaggerate some things about magic and feats of battle, Elizabeth, but you can't have gone on speaking the way you did about 'Captain Sparrow' and especially 'Mister Turner,' and believe we would think your familiarities are all a fiction."

By now Elizabeth could start to feel the heat of blood rushing into her face. "What things? What did I say?"

"They're exaggerating," Mary sighed, snapping her book shut and laying it on her lap. "You weren't too far out of line, only a little surprising once or twice."

Amelia responded by pulling an openly skeptical face in dispute. "Mostly. What you described happening between you and Mister Turner on the Interceptor came awfully close to Violet's idea of a good story."

A hole may as well have opened up and swallowed Elizabeth into the ground. While she still didn't know exactly what it was she had said, she had a strong suspicion. Even before her adventure with the pirates had ended, she found herself reliving versions of it in her mind and revising the events to 'fix' mistakes she felt had been made. Much of it was sensible and innocuous: what if she had fought back against or hid differently from the pirates that had invaded her home? Or what if she hadn't used Will's name in her negotiations with Barbossa? What if she had warned Commodore Norrington about the curse just a little earlier?

When the danger had passed, and the aftermath was still being sorted, her mind had begun to drift away from the things that had nearly killed her to the quieter things she felt remorse for, like agreeing to a marriage her heart seemed incapable of embracing. She began to regret it bitterly before they'd even made it back to port, feeling that every hopeful smile from James she could not return and every enthusiastic suggestion from her father she could not endorse was an extension of a betrayal–both of them and herself. And it was all made worse when even her accomplished goal did not comfort her as she wished it would have. She'd saved Will's life with her choice, yet somehow he'd felt as far from her as ever before, leaving a chasm between them that had sunk into her heart with an inexplicably deep feeling of loneliness.

So for those few, miserable days, before things were made right, in the private nights of her bed chamber Elizabeth had replayed in her mind all the stolen chances and missed opportunities between her and Will, all the moments they had been interrupted, all the times he'd politely turned away from her signs of affections. 'Why had it gone that way?' she would ruefully wonder, lying awake for hours, swept away by her disappointments and dismay, then tearing it apart and reassembling it again into something new in an attempt to console herself.

Their private conversation on the Interceptor had been one of her most frequently revisited memories. In the reality of that moment, Will had taken her belowdecks to heal her. In doing so, he had captured her breath with the intensity of the tenderness in his eyes, that made her lean towards him, hoping... But when he'd reached to kiss her, she'd stopped him. She'd had to, she'd known at the time, and she'd told herself as much thereafter. Regardless, more than once her mind had tantalized her with the simple question: what if she hadn't? And then she would imagine what it would have felt like if she'd had let him kiss her, if his kiss had become deep and his embrace passionate, if she had kissed and embraced him back, drawn her skirts and entwined him between her legs. What if she had allowed them both to become enfolded in one another for just one moment, before it all had been lost?

Her face felt like fire. God forbid she had mentioned any of such private reveries out loud!

"How close?!" she demanded from Amelia, fighting to sound firm rather than frantic.

The expression Amelia had as she leaned forward was something mixed between pained sympathy and no small degree of mirth. She whispered dramatically, "Impassioned, bare-breasted embraces close."

"Impassioned what?!" Elizabeth shrieked in spite of herself, suddenly slamming her tea cup back down and standing on her feet. Surely, she hadn't–she had?! No, no, no, no! Not even Will knew she'd already thought of him in such ways!

"Do you really not remember?" Violet began to cackle, finally sitting up on her elbows to take in the spectacle of Elizabeth's panic. When Elizabeth could find nothing to say in return, she sat the rest of the way up. Her catlike grin returned in full, and she pantomimed with her hands theatrically as she explained, "You'd said that was how he'd discovered the cursed coin you'd buried in your bosom: both of you had been drawn into each other's arms; you unfastened your bodice while he drew you closer to him still; and at your behest he began to kiss you from your mouth down, down, down until–"

"Oh, my god!" Elizabeth gasped, with her hands flying over her mouth, positively mortified to hear one of her most frequently imagined fantasies coming from another person's lips altogether. What had she been thinking?! This had become out of control, and had to be stopped immediately. "That never happened. We never actually– It was the wine talking, and the way that you listened, and I am so sorry, Mary, Amelia–"

"Oh, don't be embarrassed," Violet soothed, reaching out to take Elizabeth's hand and draw her back to her seat. "We were all sloshed and enjoying making fools of ourselves quite well, weren't we? Do you not remember Mary's ridiculous rant about the prime importance of shapely calves in a mate?"

Elizabeth could hear Mary's choked intake of breath from across the room. Amelia pressed a palm to her mouth to keep from escalating things with a laugh, and for some reason the moment helped break the tension that had built up inside her. As Violet ran a sympathetic hand up and down her back, the heat began to drain from her face and her mind began to calm. In trying to remember the night's events, clearer snatches of memory began to weave themselves back together.

"Now that you mention it…"

Violet was right: they had all been similarly candid. Still… why did she have to reveal such specific, intimate thoughts? Couldn't she have just become rhapsodic about the attractive features she found in his face, or something else more, dare she say it, proper? Perhaps it would have been another thing altogether if she and Will had already, actually consummated their affections with one another in such a fashion. But as it stood now, with them not even having spoken of such things with one another, the experience of hearing other people speak of them first felt so… so…

She began to feel her embarrassment give way to a more mild type of humility. After all, the feelings she felt weren't the problem, especially to these women. She considered herself fairly open-minded, and they had appeared to be of similar minds. It was a little shock to be reminded that even her most blatantly carnal feelings were considered quite natural to others, and not something she needed to be ashamed of. But it wasn't shame that was growing in her, it was worry.

If she, in spite of believing herself to have been careful, had been so free-spoken about such sensual secrets, what other little things might she have let slip unwittingly the night before? And they had become so loud! The uncomfortable feeling of being prodded by Missus Blackwell's questions returned. Even if her unplanned revelations were limited to her unspoken carnal desires, who knew who else may have been listening? What would happen now that she'd opened her bag and let those cats loose into the world? Why had she been so thoughtless?

What if her letter wasn't a dream and wasn't truly missing at all?

At some point Amelia had seemed to interpret Elizabeth's silence as coming from pure embarrassment, and perched herself on Elizabeth's other side from Violet, able to sling a reassuring arm across her shoulders with a chuckle and a sigh. "You spun a good yarn, and we were entertained. That's all. You just so happened to also make it very clear to the entire room what you really think of your 'dear friend' at the same time…"

While the heat flared a little bit in her cheeks one more time, Elizabeth let out a careful laugh. That's right, they knew it now. And what could she do? If she pleaded for their silence, it would confirm how valuable the truth of those feelings were. With real friends, that would foster greater confidence that such things would never be spoken of again. But for false faces, it would signal such things were useful blackmail.

Perhaps the best thing would be to calm down. If she could maintain a calmer air, perhaps she could better blend her falsehoods with unfortunate revelation, and disguise what else was worth knowing. So she took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh.

"I'm not all that worried, truly. Only a little surprised I'd invent such things for your entertainment." She reached up to pat Amelia's hand in a show of gratitude. "It would seem Violet's licentious talk creates infectious competition for adulation when paired with good wine. Now we know."

"Ooh, yes, I'm extremely influential, and very happy to hear you confirm it! But you're right, now we know:" Violet threw her own arms about Elizabeth's shoulders and gave her an additional tight squeeze. Then Elizabeth felt her draw close to her, capitalizing on her captured position to sing-song a taunt, "Elizabeth Swann wants to fuck someone!"

Elizabeth responded by elbowing herself free and playfully shoving a snorting Violet back onto her back. "You're one to talk!"

"Of course I am! I clearly am the most qualified on the subject. In fact, I could even lend you a very helpful book on the subject, to help you secure your prize–"

"That's enough, please," Mary sighed from the window.

"Yes," Elizabeth agreed, relieved for a chance to turn the conversation. "In fact, let's not talk about men anymore. It's becoming repetitive. For the rest of the week, let's only talk of ourselves and other things."

"I agree," Amelia panned.

Violet pretended to swoon and resumed her former position with her arm cast over her eyes to block out the sun. "You might commit to that, but I certainly will not. In fact, right this very instant I feel I must share how very deeply I would love to have a nob for me notch–"

"I vote you stop talking altogether," Amelia snapped, now outright angry. "You are slowly killing me."

"Good! You deserve it for kicking at me all night."

Elizabeth sighed to herself and took up her tea, now cooled significantly and having somewhat lost its savor. She looked to the window to peer into the darkness of the distant storm looming upon the town. And when her eyes slipped to Mary's silhouette, Elizabeth realized that in the entirety of their conversation, she had been the only one who hadn't laughed even once.

---

When Will heard the shutters rattling, he knew it'd probably be best to take his daily trip to the fountain early, this time with a bucket in hand in case the storm lasted into the evening. That was how he just so happened to hear the bells and clamor clanging in the harbor. When he saw more than one familiar face rushing towards the docks of Chocolate Hole, he knew something unusual was afoot, and decided to take a detour to discover the source of the fuss.

As he crossed the bridge that led to the docks, he was stunned when his eyes caught sight of not one, two, or even three masts poking up over the heads of the crowd, but eight. Three whole ships had pulled into the harbor, flying the Royal Navy's colors and looking to drop anchor in the choppy waters. Rather than try to work his way through the crowd, Will stayed towards the back with a few others who had a similar idea as him, climbing atop a parked wagon for a better vantage point. Two ships were smaller—one a corvette that seemed like it might have been fitted with twenty-odd guns, and the other a converted ketch. But it was the presence of a ship of the line, big enough to more than fill the void left behind by the Dauntless, that was generating the most excitement and chatter.

Will looked at the young man to his right, who had seemed to have been standing there for a good while longer than Will had. He'd managed to procure a spyglass, which he was sharing with a friend on the ground beside the cart.

"Which ships are they?"

"Defiance, Success and Granado," the youth responded, keeping his glass trained on the harbor with one eye asquinting. "Apparently reinforcements in from Barbados—almost 150 guns altogether. S'pose to fill in for the Dauntless and the commodore. Bout bloody time too, if you ask me."

The young man passed his glass to his friend on the ground. Will's brow furrowed and he squinted at the ships to try and make out more details, maybe get a sense of how big their crews were. It was interesting… There had been no indication from Elizabeth that her father had coordinated such grand supports, but it did make sense to do so. Especially considering how the Dauntless was not their only navy ship absent now.

"How fast is the corvette?" he wondered out loud.

The man beside him scoffed before turning to look at Will with a snide expression, "Why, you planning on making off with that one too?"

Ah, so he was recognized. Will shook his head, choosing to ignore the jibe and continue to try to take mental measurements of the force in front of them. "Very funny."

The youth certainly seemed to think so, sharing a private smile with his friend on the ground. But he continued by pointing towards the docks. "Ask one of them, says I."

It was then Will realized that behind crowds, docks, ships and such, several longboats had already been lowered from the ships, and a good amount of blue could be seen rowing towards the smaller docks across the Hole. In fact, Will would wager that all three ships had been crewed to a maximum capacity, with the number of coats he was beginning to see.

"That's a big regiment…"

His compatriot nodded in agreement. "Good thing we've built such big barracks…"

"I expect the taverns will be an interesting place for a while now," Will mused.

But his neighbor didn't reply, instead aggressively tapping his ground-level friend on the head and gesturing for the spyglass to be handed back over into his open palm. His friend glared at him, but complied, and the lad returned to observing the scene more closely. The wind began to gust again, bobbing the boats right as they were making it to shore and tossing the ships' banners, making play with the crowd's hats and bonnets. The spying man snorted derisively, and then tapped Will's shoulder with the glass, offering a chance for him to look through it himself.

"Look at that turnip-pated fat cull. He looks delightful, he does."

Will's brow knit in temporary confusion, before he lifted the glass to his right eye to see what his companion was talking about. It didn't take long. A tall, slightly paunch and obviously high-ranking officer in the referenced white wig could be seen angrily berating the first portion of the regiment stepping out onto shore as they were scrambling out of their boats to create a formation.

Yes, he seemed very delightful, Will thought sardonically.

The other man continued as Will handed him back his glass, "Well, in any case, I will say I'll sleep better tonight, knowing the harbor's armed again. Still can't believe the commodore up and left the way he did, runaway prisoners or no…"

Will kept to himself the thought that a large part of that was technically his fault.

"Oi! Mister Turner!"

He perked and cast his eyes around the crowd reflexively. Someone was looking for him? Or another Turner? Movement caught his attention on the bridge, and once he turned his head to look he saw a clean, younger footman dressed in the governor's uniform jogging across in his direction.

"Mister Burley?"

Further in the distance he could just make out a bit of the coach in the court near the smithy. His heart did a tiny leap. Had Elizabeth come back so soon? He hopped down from the wagon and trotted to meet Mister Burley half-way.

Mister Burley touched his forehead in greeting, only a little out of breath, and held out folded and sealed paper for Will's taking. "I'm supposed to give this to you."

The joyful thrill felt at the unexpected contact from his beloved was soon replaced by swirls of confusion. While the letter should have obviously been from Elizabeth, the penmanship was… wrong. And turning it about in his hands revealed it was sealed with a green sigil that Will did not recognize at all.

"Who's this?" he asked, holding the letter up to clarify his question.

"Blackwell," was Mister Burley's simple reply.

A whistle near Will's right ear startled him, and he turned with surprise to find his spyglass acquaintance had followed him to eavesdrop on his encounter with Mister Burley. "Look at you, getting all cozy with the bigwigs."

Will used his shoulder to nudge at the man for space. Who did he think he was? "It's probably just a commission."

For his part, Burley tipped his hat in Will's direction, before turning back towards the bridge and the parked coach, several streets down.

"I'm off. The governor's expecting company." He used his thumb and head to indicate in the direction of the harbor. "Good day."

"Thank you!" Will called, holding up the letter.

But the feeling of a small stone had dropped into the pit of his stomach at the footman's words, realizing that not all of the incoming reinforcements would be staying at the barracks. And as he turned his head to look into the trees, thinking of the mansion that was hidden behind them, he sighed a condolence, "Oh, Elizabeth..."

---

The first rumblings of thunder signaled the crowds to begin dispersing, and for Will to finish his errand at the fountain. So he shoved the letter in his pocket, retrieved his bucket, and made his way over to the courtyard that had been his original destination on his outing. When he arrived, he found he wasn't the only one looking to collect a bit of fresh water before the storm hit. A small queue had formed of four other townsfolk, along with a pair of familiar, young faces off to the side, seeming to have become distracted by a line of ants coming from between a great crack in the ground nearby. These last two little people were the children of Mister Brown's neighbors, the Hackleys.

"Lucy Locket lost her pocket! Lucy Locket lost her pocket!" the young girl, Ruthy, canted to herself, seeming to have just lost interest in the ants and beginning to hop about on one leg.

Denys, the older brother, raised his head and opened his mouth, probably to chide his sister over a song he'd heard far too often recently–Will himself had heard her singing it through the walls of the smithy multiple times a day over the past week. But Will's approach drew the eyes of the boy in his direction instead, and his young face shifted from an angry type of annoyance to a long-suffering one.

"THERE you are, Will!" the boy sighed dramatically as he stood. "I haven't seen you in AGES!"

Ruthy perked at her brother's voice and came to stand beside her brother with curious eyes.

Will's brows and mouth bent in opposite directions, as he smiled with no small degree of confusion. It was true he hadn't passed the Hackleys in the streets as often lately, thanks to the demands of his schedule. But he didn't think there was any reason for an eight-year-old to care about changes to an adult neighbor's routine. He took his place at the end of the fountain's queue.

"Well, I haven't seen you in ages either," Will replied. This was something of a lie, as they were from the same family Elizabeth had unwittingly identified at the beach the other day. But he chose to assume 'see' meant something less distant or passive in this case. "So whose fault is it, really?"

"Yours!" both brother and sister insisted in overlapping voices.

"And that lady you like to kiss," Ruthy added, seriously.

"Is it?" Will attempted to maintain a casual expression, although the two women ahead of him in the queue paused in their conversation to laugh quietly. He would have to warn Elizabeth that they'd had more eyes and ears on them than they'd expected, lately. Although, to be fair, they hadn't exactly been trying their hardest to be discreet. "Perhaps you've been looking in the wrong places?"

"No," Denys argued, not acknowledging Will's teasing and placing his hands on his hips to emphasize his certainty. "You're the one who ran off and went missing."

"And you promised us horseshoes!" Ruthy accused in a tiny voice. Her eyebrows were pressed into a perturbed wrinkle.

Will took a step forward with the advancing queue. "Did I?"

"Yes!" the two voices replied together again, Denys now sounding outright exasperated.

"I don't think I did…" Will replied slowly. This was true—he didn't recall any such thing. Although he must have promised them something, if they were both in such unified agreement.

"Yes, you did," Ruthy huffed. She pointed across the courtyard to the bridge, underneath which the town's children often gathered to march in little expeditions upstream, capturing lizards. "Right over there, you did!"

Ah! So that's what they were talking about. Will wouldn't have called what he'd said to them a promise, so much as a suggestion he had brought up on a whim. It had been at a time when he had passed them trying to play a tossing game with some of their friends using only sticks and rocks, and wondered why they didn't bother a farrier for some old shoes. That had been almost two months ago, thanks to the delays from the pirate attack and its aftermath. He had honestly forgotten about the encounter–but clearly the children hadn't, and had in fact interpreted his suggestion as a "promise" for a gift. That amount of time combined with such childish anticipation really would make it feel like "ages" to them.

"I don't think so!" Will responded, deciding to have some fun with their miscommunication. "Only horses wear horseshoes, and neither of you look like horses. So why would I give you horseshoes?"

"No!" Ruthy giggled, although she clearly didn't want to and was trying to appear angry still–she was equally upset and amused by Will for denying her story while appearing to not know what the horseshoes were for. "Not to wear! To play!"

Denys didn't think Will was funny at all though, tutting, "Stop being silly, Will. I know you remember."

It was finally Will's turn to fill his bucket, and he spoke with his back to the children as he held the bucket in place in the basin to catch the stream of water falling from the spout. Thunder rolled again through the sky in a low tumble. They all would need to be hurrying to their homes soon.

"You're right, I do remember. And I'm sorry to have missed your horseshoes." Once the bucket was filled enough to stop bobbing in the shallow water pooled at the bottom of the basin, he looked back at Denys with an exaggerated wince on his face. "I was a little naughty and missed my chores for a while. Now I'm having to make it all up again."

"I suppose it's alright…" Denys sighed his acceptance of Will's apology with his head rolled back, as if overcome by his young empathy for Will's situation. "I do that too sometimes. Besides, I don't much care for horseshoes anymore."

"Don't you?" Will suppressed a laugh. He suddenly had a feeling he knew where this conversation would be going, and understood much more why his apparent absence had become so important to the boy.

"I do! I do!" Ruthy bounced and sang, clearly eager to be included in the conversation.

But Denys ignored his sister. "No. I'd much rather have a sword. I want to throw and fight with them like you've done."

There it was. Will shook his head as he lifted his filled bucket from the fountain, trying to think up a way to dissuade the boy from an idea he'd no doubt been thinking about night and day for several weeks now.

"You'll throw better if you learn to throw horseshoes first," he tried to suggest, and began to walk back towards the smithy.

Ruthy took the bait, exclaiming happily, "I like horseshoes!"

Denys did not, screwing up his face in consternation. He marched towards a bucket Will had not realized he and Ruthy had brought with them, calling over his shoulder, "No, I won't! You're just saying that!"

"How do you know?" Will asked, slowing down to allow the boy to catch up without sloshing all the water out of his own bucket.

"Because adults always say that when they're avoiding good things," groused Denys.

"DENNY! RUTHY!"

Man and child alike were startled by the shout, although the children looked quite a deal more fretful over it whereas Will had merely been taken by surprise. The voice belonged to their mother, and she was marching towards them with a heavy and brisk step, looking intimidating to an almost supernatural degree with the way the wind whipped her apron and petticoats about. Her face was drawn and screwed up in a frustrated scowl.

"Why have you been dallying? I told you to bring the water straight away!" she scolded, reaching for Denys' bucket with one hand while waving the other to usher them ahead of her and towards their home.

Denys scurried ahead with a sheepish expression, eager to avoid a tongue-lashing, but Missus Hackley gathered Ruthy's fingers in her free hand and drew her to her side.

"I'm so sorry, Mister Turner–they're always getting underfoot," the woman sighed, puffing from her sprint.

"No, I'm not!" Ruthy cried, offended. "I stayed all the way back behind–"

"Hush!" Missus Hackley hissed. "Where are you manners?!"

Ruthy closed her mouth, but looked sullen. Denys came wandering back to find out why he wasn't being immediately followed.

"I don't mind," Will assured. "I've needed a change of pace."

The woman stared at him for a moment, seemingly unsure of how to respond. There was a strange look about Missus Hackley, Will noted, a type of disquiet. It could have been because the storm was very obviously bound to start at any moment or maybe because she had been worried where her children had gone in the bustle caused by the arriving military men. But Will had a feeling that she had become uncomfortable with him following his recent spurts of lawbreaking, especially around her impressionable children.

"Get inside, the two of you, and get the water going," she hissed at her children, handing the bucket back to Denys and giving Ruthy a little nudge in the direction of their house, down the street. Once they'd taken several steps away, she turned and looked at Will with an openly anxious look on her face, stammering, "I've been saving to pay your master for the door, I promise, but with the attack and Mister Hackley away, everything has been unending–"

Will raised his eyebrows. A debt? He hadn't realized Mister Brown had performed a door repair for the neighbor family–the man had neither mentioned nor written down anything about such a thing. The revelation was a slight relief, as Will had started to believe he was becoming something of a social pariah even among his peers. It also made a great deal of sense. Considering all the damage that had been done by the Black Pearl's pillaging, there must have been a lot of effort put into early repairs and cleanup that he had missed.

He cut her off with a wave of his hand. "Oh, I wasn't looking to collect anything. We just ran into each other at the fountain, and they got a little distracted talking on the way back. That's all."

"Ah!" the woman replied, looking a bit surprised herself. "I see…"

This made Will wonder whether Mister Brown had been pestering other clients on collections for orders Will knew nothing about. He frowned, making note to discuss it with him.

But Missus Hackley still appeared anxious, and he found himself empathizing with what she seemed to be thinking: while Will wasn't collecting on the smithy's debt today, the debt still existed and doubtless hung over the housewife's head lower and more foreboding than the storm clouds in the sky above them at the moment. One reason he had been so insistent to Elizabeth he could push through the temporary difficulties of the smithy's recovery, even passed sleep, was because he knew that he was not the only one doing such things, just to make ends meet. There was a lot of extra work and a lot of extra sacrifices being made by people all across the lowtowns. Missus Hackley in particular was a good example of it, having to try and make ends meet with a husband who often was away at sea.

Looking at her, Will realized that even though she was only a few years older than Elizabeth and himself, she somehow already appeared nearly middle aged. He found himself suddenly reminded of the frail, toilworn appearance about his own mother in her final years, and the empty helplessness he'd felt watching her work herself to death as a boy not far from Denys' age, regardless of what he himself tried to do, to help…

He swallowed and blinked the memory away, reminding himself for the second time today that he was no longer a child powerless before the world's cruelties. And at this moment, he had an idea.

"You've started taking laundry, haven't you?" he inquired.

Missus Hackley seemed hesitant to answer at first, but eventually responded, "Yes, I have."

"Perhaps we could arrange an exchange…?"

She was silent again, but this time her silence seemed more wrapped up in calculation than caution. "Your wash for the door…?"

It occurred to Will that her hesitation was likely still tied to a monetary concern. If she normally were to do the laundry of two grown, paying men working with fire and oil, that would be one thing entirely. But here Will was asking if she'd be willing to devote her time washing their things, and not receive pay for it. It was one thing to waive a debt, and another to ask a debtor to give up time needed to bring in income.

He almost immediately began to regret the suggestion, and felt obligated to offer her an option for backing out politely: "If it wouldn't be too much of an extra burden on you, that is."

"I could help you, Mama…" came a quiet voice, and Will saw Denys had returned with a face upturned in a look of desperate determination Will found uncomfortably familiar. The boy took a step forward, insisting more strongly, "I know how to do it—I've gotten the ashes for you already."

"We'll discuss it later. Now get inside," Missus Hackley responded, equally mild and commanding.

Will watched the emotions playing out across Denys' and his mother's faces as they stared at each other in quiet contention, feeling he understood every split-second of every one. Eventually, Denys took his sister's hand, and obeyed his mother without saying another word.

Once both of the children seemed to have disappeared down the street and into the Hackley home, Missus Hackley spoke again. "Would Mister Brown be willing to accept?"

"I don't see why not," Will responded. He actually did believe Brown would have some reservations, but he also believed he could smooth the situation over and make it work. After all: "In the end, it cuts our expenses. Just as good as receiving coin, in my book."

A significant portion of the unease had disappeared from Missus Hackley's figure, but her brow was still creased with calculation. She chewed her bottom lip for a moment, then answered slowly with a little glimmer of certainty starting to kindle in her eyes, "I couldn't afford to do a full batch at once, and push off paying customers. But if you're willing to exchange smaller batches more regularly… I could probably work your pieces in with my other customer's items."

Will nodded, understanding and approving. "Send Denys by tomorrow and I'll give him our first batch."

---

The remainder of Elizabeth's day moved along pleasantly and with little additional disturbance–discounting Violet's antics, of course. The storm that had rolled in darkened the day significantly and began to drench everything in sight as well. That combined with all four ladies' general lethargy, and led to a vote to stay home for the day. So it was that the book Estrella had brought ended up useful after all, for a time.

However, Elizabeth found her mind was prone to wandering backwards often, replaying snatches of the conversations from earlier in the day, trying to remember the full extent of her drunken night's story and whether or not she'd said anything else that had been too much. At one point, Elizabeth realized she had begun to rub at her collarbone, making her sunburn sore, so she gave up on her book and returned to her and Mary's room to dig out the salve she had bought the day before. In doing so, her eyes fell on a corner of the copy of the Gazette she had bought alongside the salve. And before she knew it, she found herself seated at Mary's writing desk, delving into the newspaper as if it were a novel itself.

She was actually surprised at how thoroughly it piqued her interest. As her father had indicated, the sections for formal local reports were small, and seemed to have a generous sprinkling of stories regarding pirate activity in key waters–although there was nothing to be said of more notorious ships like the Black Pearl at this time. There actually was hardly any of the backbiting type gossip she had expected.

What she hadn't noticed at the mansion was that the paper actually unfolded to reveal four pages of print, not only two. Being a gazette, the entire front page was dedicated to business of the Crown–summaries of trials, upcoming elections, public executions, edicts, proclamations and the like. (She smirked a little bit upon seeing there was a section for runaway criminals, and how a certain Jack Sparrow had earned himself very top billing.) But large portions of the paper were dedicated to civilian affairs as well. In fact, it was along the inside pages that Elizabeth found something of a fascinating window into the world she realized she would soon be joining, as all sorts of business and concerns of people of all classes were vying for attention on each page. Perusing the panels, somehow she felt she could start to see the island alive in a way she'd always had a general sense of but had never been permitted to truly see more in full until recently, being sectioned off the way she had been in her carefully orchestrated world.

The paper was divided into individual advertising boxes, each appearing to be reserved by almost any person who wanted space. Much of it was business related, and certainly, the "business" she had expected still was to be found aplenty: she saw more than one posting in search for a man or woman on the run from their enslaver, announcements of slave auctions, and requests to buy or sell "house maids," sometimes alongside their babies and children. It was all mixed in with everything else, and the casual impartiality with which it was all treated made her guts feel like they were filling with stones, over how normal it seemed for so many people outside her own family, how her father's personal distaste didn't extend to his governance hardly enough. She soon found her self skipping any passage that mentioned words like "slave" or "negro" to spare herself of her own frustrations for the moment.

Instead, it was everything else that she found fascinating: the largest advertisement came from two partner shopkeepers announcing goods from a newly arrived ship and which warehouse they were to be auctioned wholesale; the print shop had new books and sheet music available, while new bolts of fabric for fine ditto suits were to be had at some tailor's; debt collectors posting warnings on upcoming deadlines; there was a small marine table summarizing dockmasters' records of ships coming and going from major ports, while ships posted their own individual listings looking for passengers or buyers and sellers of cargo to fund their latest venture; one house was looking for boarders, while another one was to be sold in a sheriff's sale; a doctor had moved his business to a different part of his town and wanted clients to know it…

Then sprinkled in between it all, there were other advertisements or announcements of more personal matters: there had been one death and one marriage and two births; a man lost his boat while feverishly drunk and wanted help getting her back; someone even posted an anonymous poem about death on one page, while another person had written almost-incoherent musings about the plight of Sisyphus, of all things.

These last two things were not only amusing but also somewhat tantalizing, leaving Elizabeth's mind abuzz with questions—however, it was not because of what had been written. Every other advertisement and announcement was signed by the subscriber who submitted it, while these were entirely unsigned. Who posted them? Were they thoughts from the editor? If not, did the printers know who submitted it? If so, how easily could they be compelled to reveal an identity wished to be secret? And what were they allowed to say? This was a paper for the Crown, so surely there had to be some restrictions on what could be said, even beyond legality. But if one were to, say, post an opinion or even a treatise denouncing certain traditions or institutions taking up space in their paper and their island… Would it be doable? Would it be safe?

Would it be different if it were a privately funded newspaper?

"Would you like me to open it?"

Elizabeth jumped in her skin, turning with surprise to find Mary standing in the bedroom doorway. So absorbed in her thoughts she had been, she hadn't noticed Marry approach in the slightest. She also didn't fully understand what she had been asked, and sat without answering for several seconds.

To clarify, Mary pointed at the locked desk at which Elizabeth was seated.

"Oh!" was all that Elizabeth could manage for a moment, still mentally reeling from the interruption to her thoughts. Why was Mary even offering such a thing, anyhow? Did she appear to Mary that she wanted to write something? Or was this somehow about the mystery letter…? She held up the Gazette for Mary to see. "No, thank you—I was just reading…"

Mary crossed the room to withdraw a key from a drawer in her wardrobe, then returned to the desk to unlock it and lift its lid. Inside, the desk was only a little disorganized with some sheets of paper sticking out of their slot and some writing essentials left strewn across the desk's surface. Otherwise, it was altogether unremarkable.

Elizabeth looked at Mary, not quite sure if there was anything she had been expecting in specific. "Thank you…?"

But Mary didn't move, instead looking at Elizabeth with an expression she couldn't quite describe but could have called 'thoughtful,' if anything at all. "I did finally remember you writing something last night, after you mentioned it. Since you seemed somewhat distressed, I asked our staff about it… I believe you wrote a letter?"

A lot was happening at once. Mary remembered…? And her staff…? "Excuse me?"

Mary's tone became more firm. "You came to this desk last night. Did you write a letter?"

"I believe I may have, yes."

"It would seem it was found and sent off with your coachman."

Elizabeth's breath caught. "What?"

"We have a new maid," Mary explained. "She came in to tidy the room while we were both still asleep. She says she saw your message already addressed and sealed, and assumed it was mine and meant to be sent in the morning."

Now Elizabeth was beginning to just feel stupid—or at least that she appeared so, with the way she had nothing useful to say in response and let her mouth flap for words. But the truth was that she felt she had just experienced a mental form of whiplash, and needed a moment to sort things out.

"The letter was real?" she processed aloud.

And not only had the letter not been a lucid dream, it had been sent already? Well, of course it had! What else would anyone think? She had sealed and addressed it and everything, like a fool. Why had she done that? Why had she written that idiotic letter in the first place, drunk and half-asleep? What did she even end up saying? Was it coherent? Was she going to have to explain herself to Will when she returned home? God, what if she had written his name wrong and it went to the wrong person?!

"So I'm told," Mary answered, taking her question to be one needing an answer. "I apologize for the invasiveness of our staff. She has been disciplined."

That helped snap Elizabeth's mind back into place. Certainly, it was a problem for maids to be looking at written contents about the house at all, but Mary had indicated her maid was new and likely didn't know any better yet.

"Not too harshly, I hope," she replied with a reassuring smile. "If the note makes it where it must, I think it'll be fine. I don't…"

Elizabeth trailed off, catching herself before admitting out loud how little she remembered of the moment. She still felt uncertain about what things she could or should share with Mary at this point. It occurred to her that she believed Mary, but there was admittedly a small risk that what she said wasn't true. The coachman could and would verify the most crucial parts of her story later, but other parts…

She stopped herself. Was she being unfairly suspicious? Paranoid? Or was she being properly cautious? For some reason, it was getting difficult to tell. Even now, regarding Mary's somewhat stoic demeanor, she couldn't tell if her feeling that she had become unhappy was an exaggeration.

Well. She could always ask—purely assuming wasn't necessarily wise.

So she did ask, "Are you upset about something?"

Now it was Mary's turn to blink in quiet surprise at a turn in the conversation.

Elizabeth went on, "You've done nothing but scowl today, and I can't help but feel it's something one of us may have done."

Mary flitted in her appearance from confusion to a wry, skin-deep smile. "I have a headache. That's all."

"I don't believe you," Elizabeth asserted at the same time she thought it. Mary had been an entirely different person the day before. It was one thing to experience the after effects of a long night of spontaneous drinking, but this seemed like another thing altogether. And maybe it was unfair, but Elizabeth could help but draw parallels in her mood to the demeanor of Missus Blackwell throughout the day.

At this her friend looked properly peeved, which Elizabeth felt sorry for but also satisfied that it seemed properly sincere, at last.

"Fine:" Mary spat, placing her hands on her hips, "I have a headache and I'm tired, and I have had Violet MacDonald in my house as a guest for four bloody days already."

Elizabeth bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing. She didn't want to insult Violet behind her back—it was just well known that Mary was a quiet sort who often liked to have time to herself, while Violet could hardly stand the time she spent in the latrine before needing company again. They were like oil and water in many ways, and the two of them having already spent so much time together explained quite a bit about their high number of little spats over the past two days. Whoever thought of putting the two together for such a time either didn't think things through, didn't care, or ought to have had a very good reason for it. Mary noticed Elizabeth's poorly hidden smile, of course, and became more peeved by the action.

"Were you not just complaining about how difficult house guests can be, last night?"

"I suppose I did…" Elizabeth admitted, slowly recalling the conversation. "But then aren't you the one who indicated that it was just a job to be done?"

Here Mary crossed her arms, defensively. "I didn't say I had to enjoy every moment of it."

"And I thought that was my point?" Elizabeth rejoined, secretly enjoying the little argument. However, Mary clearly was having less fun with their debate, having downcast her eyes in a thoughtful look that was oddly forlorn. Almost on cue, Violet's laugh could be heard carried up from downstairs, which could be charming most times but at this point seemed to obviously grate on Mary's nerves.

Elizabeth felt her amusement melt into pity, and she offered half a shrug with her suggestion, "We could stay here for a moment—they aren't dignitaries or anyone else who would take offense. If they want either of us, they know where to come."

For a moment, Mary turned her head to stare out the bedroom door and down the narrow corridor, thoughtful. Then she dropped her eyes and sauntered to her bed, where she sat softly.

The shadows of raindrops shivered on the glass and danced about the dimly lit room. Long seconds extended into long minutes with only the restless rushes and rumbles of the storm leaking in through the window, the two women both content to listen to the sky's feelings while in their minds gently wandering through feelings of their own. Elizabeth's hand busied themselves with tidying the writing desk, while she imagined what the rain looked like from outside, whether her father and Will were too busy to pay it any mind, or if they just so happened to have stopped and listened to it as well.

"I'm worried about both of them," Mary suddenly confessed.

It took a moment for Elizabeth to grasp which two people Mary meant, instead of the loved ones she had been pondering over. Their friends…?

Elizabeth shot Mary an inquiring look, wordlessly asking for elaboration.

Mary let out a deep, weary sigh. "Violet has been so careless about everything, the way she goes on about it. She wants to act like she's got everything under control, and nothing else matters. But all it'll take for one of those men to become jealous enough to open their mouth to one wrong person or for her to become pregnant or…"

She trailed off, allowing them both a moment to think.

These very concerns were what had most shocked Elizabeth about Violet's brazenness, far more than any suppositions of morality. Engaging one secret lover was already a risky undertaking for unmarried women of their stature. They were women trapped in a class where inheritance and breeding mattered quite literally more than any other of their characteristics or achievements, wealthy and prestigious enough to have heads turned in their directions, while not influential enough to turn minds or conventions to a similar advantage… A lady like them who deigned to find her own comfort or pleasure in strange places, especially with lovers who could produce unwanted offspring, was a risk to wealth and dynasty, and could face serious consequences for indiscretions, if caught. This was why such disgraceful endeavors often required careful orchestration: to allow some level of deniability, even when an affair was an open secret. Engaging with two lovers with lax secrecy seemed either terribly bold or terribly foolish.

Mary seemed to be of a similar mind. "It's like she wants to play with fire on purpose. She won't listen to me. She thinks I'm just trying to preach to her…"

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows knowingly. "If I remember correctly what her grandmother is like, I think I can understand her somewhat... And it is her life, I suppose."

"No, it's not. Not really," Mary retorted with a bitter edge that was somewhat uncharacteristic of her. Her fists had clenched into a ball on her lap, and she glowered at things Elizabeth could not see, past the floorboards and into another realm entirely. After a minute or so, her fingers began to loosen and her eyes came back to their room, settling on Elizabeth with a sharpened point to her gaze. "I have not been able to stop thinking about the things you were saying last night."

Not that again—why had she gotten so carried away? Now Mary believed her to also be careless with her relationships? "Oh, you needn't be concerned for me as well. I really did just get excited–"

"No, not that," Mary waved Elizabeth off. "How you said that we're all compelled to do the same job, for any comfort at all…"

Oh! That was surprising—Elizabeth hadn't believed her friends had been listening all that much to her sudden tirade, least of all Mary. If anything, she had assumed they all were wishing her to stop souring the mood of the moment. Mary had even seemed openly antagonistic to some of what she had said. But now she claimed to have changed her mind? Or did she have more clarity with a new day? Whatever was going on inside her head, she appeared deeply serious to the point of seeming troubled, with the way her shoulders tensed and her brow pinched tightly. There were clearly words she wanted to say, but didn't seem sure of which ones she needed.

Eventually, she looked back at Elizabeth with steady eyes, "You said your parents were fond of one another."

It was both a statement and a question, Elizabeth knew. It called to mind faded memories of her mother's smile, reflected in her father's eyes on shafts of moonlight. "They were."

"Is that why your father was alone all this time? They were in love?"

Alone?

On impulse, Elizabeth wanted to say he wasn't alone, that he'd had her. But her mind interrupted those thoughts with reminders of how much more often lately she'd wanted, needed to leave him and begin to find her own way, and she knew it wasn't true. Beginning to learn to love another the way she had, she knew for certain now how different types of love could be. And while her love for her father and his love for her was unbending, it was not the same as the companionship or absence of a loving partner. Yes, they had held onto each other tightly when she was young, setting out into the vibrancy of a new world together to leave the mists of their shared grief behind. They had played their little games to find reasons to smile, and he had told and handed her down stories of grander worlds so she could dream of something better.

There was one story in particular her father used to tell her, while the pain of her mother's death was still raw for them both. He'd tell her how there was a saying, a belief, a legend that when a swan first looked into the eyes of their true love, their hearts became sealed together and their love was made everlasting—enough that they could love no other soul the way they loved each other, so closely did their hearts beat and break together.

So it was, in the ancient days, when the lands and waters of the Isles were still alive with magic, the Swanns had once lived as hunters. One hunter went on a quest, which was long and filled with many smaller tales her father would tell over many bedtimes. But for his final journey, it was said that the hunter fell in love with a fairy, who turned them both into swans so that their love could be everlasting. They had children together and were happy. One day, the hunter's brother saw him, the swan, and shot him through his heart, not realizing it was his brother until he found his human body struck with his own arrow. His brother's lover died soon after from a broken heart, so bound to her love she had been. As penance, the hunter swore to raise and protect his brother's children as though they were his own. And that was how, it was said, from that day forward there walked among the land people with the faces of humans who bore the tender hearts of swans, destined to ever truly love only one other heart for all their lives for better or worse.

Elizabeth didn't believe it, of course. But having lived through the things she had, having looked into Will's eyes and felt the terror that cut through her when his life had been in such danger, having watched her father live as he had, without ever finding the eyes of another his heart could be bound to… she felt she better understood the power and pain that likely inspired the story, long ago.

And now she had her own journeys before her—she had to take wing and leave the nest, to use a cliché. It was as it was always meant to be. And if things went the way they were likely to go, with her father choosing to return to their estate in England, while she stayed and built her own nest with her lover, there was a chance her father would finally, truly be alone.

Whether because of ancient magics or fate or a simple broken heart… was her father's lonely state tied to his love for her mother?

Elizabeth swallowed, her throat having tightened significantly, and she whispered, "Yes."

"And your father is allowing you to find a love match?"

Elizabeth saw the connections Mary was making behind her father's choices. But she wasn't ready to hint so closely at what was happening between her and Will, still wary of the questions being lobbed her way about her other would-be engagement, and how intertwined its failure was to their criminal actions on the fort's parapet. So she answered, somewhat diplomatically, "He has granted me final say in my match."

"Mine would never," Mary groused, eyes darkened with a surprising shade of bitterness. Her fingers were fisted once again, clutching at her skirts as tightly as she was gritting her teeth. "They hate each other. Even being in the same room as one another is something they make out to be a torment. My mother's here so she doesn't have to be in the same house as him, and he would only allow it if she wasn't alone."

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. Was she to understand that she, Amelia, and Violet had all been invited as a compromised hindrance to a miserably married Missus Blackwell? Some strange substitute for a chaperone for a fully grown woman, at the behest of a husband she loathed and who both loathed her in return and yet wanted to keep her for himself all the same…?

"I can't imagine having to live like that," Elizabeth gasped. "I think I'd have ended up much more like Violet if that were the case…"

Mary pulled a face that seemed to indicate perhaps Elizabeth was not too far off the mark with that thought process. It brought up a rush of questions Elizabeth felt she probably ought not to ask just yet, if at all: Did her mother actually have many lovers? Was her father always so controlling, or did it come with time? Did her parents merely avoid each other, or were there worse things to the way they lived? Did Mary expect to end up in a marriage like her parents, where money and power came at the cost of pure misery? Or was she looking for a way out…?

Suddenly, Mary's eyes met Elizabeth, and seemed determined to say something important. "Elizabeth…"

But she froze with her mouth halfway open, seeming unable to decide on what it was she actually wanted to say. A split second of confusion crossed her face, before she closed her mouth and dropped her eyes. "Nevermind. I'm sorry about your letter."

"It's alright," Elizabeth answered, now confused herself.

Mary stood and handed her the key to the writing desk, before leaving the room—supposedly to return to the parlor. "Just put it away when you're done."

---

There was a strange daze to the rest of Will's afternoon, as his mind became wrapped up in the things he had just seen and heard outside the smithy's walls. The forge had cooled significantly, and he had no interest in bringing it back to life. The rain started to come down a few minutes after, cloaking everything in the feeling and hush of a dim dusk much closer to night than the day actually was. He didn't want to light more lamps or candles, and he had to force himself to sit at his workbench, to pick up his tools and make something worth selling.

Unhappy memories and concerns kept creeping into his thoughts, acting like tiny sea monsters caught in a fisherman's net. He kept trying to throw them back into the depths of his mind and think about better things instead. Somehow they kept coming back. He wondered and worried, about his mother and his father, about Elizabeth and her father, about Mister Brown, even Denys and Ruthy and their parents. He found himself feeling more and more that the wonderings and worryings would not leave him alone, that instead they brought up things that he wished he could say to this person or that, that there were things he wished he could fix about this matter or that. He was especially concerned about Elizabeth, knowing how distressing coming home to a mansion filled with guests could be, feeling the way that she already did… Perhaps that had been why she'd been so upset with her father the other day? He wished he could reach out to her… just in case.

He realized what he was thinking about, realized his hands weren't moving the way they needed to be, and he lay them down for a moment and sighed. He was deeply distracted, and could have really used his master's help right now, if only for motivation…

Turning his head about the smithy, as if looking about might reveal inspiration hidden among all the tools and creations, his gaze eventually landed on the donkey holstered to the bellows mechanism. The mellow creature stared back at him with dark, slowly blinking eyes, twitching her ears to the sound of water spattering and sweeping across the world outside. She appeared sleepy and content to do nothing. Not exactly the burst of energy Will needed.

He leaned back and stretched his arms and legs out wide. In doing so, he felt his trousers pull and gather about his legs, revealing the press of something smooth and flat against one thigh.

Ah! The Blackwell letter. If he was right, it could be a new commission. Spending time concocting fresh ideas for a new work sounded far more appealing than sanding away rough edges mindlessly, and could be a perfect way to light a fire under him. He slipped the letter from his pocket and cracked the seal.

It was oddly difficult to unfold. Once he'd undone the outer creases of the letter lock and reached the folds that would reveal the actual contents, Will found the paper quite stuck to itself, as if the person writing it hadn't bothered to let the ink dry properly before sealing the letter up. Will frowned from concentration and confusion, together, as he tried to peel the letter open slowly and carefully, so as not to tear the paper. Who would send such a sloppy missive, especially from such a prestigious family as the Blackwells?

Once it was opened, he found he was all the more perplexed. The letter was extremely short yet difficult to discern, with the writing already looking like pothooks and hangers before considering how splotched and smeared parts of it had become from the wet folding and presentation. It was almost as funny as it was bewildering. What the hell was this?

He brought his lamp closer to cast a clearer light, to try and make out whatever it was the sender had been trying to say.

'My most… something… of parents?' No, that didn't make any sense. 'Pastors? Pastures…' that made even less sense, but that was definitely a 'p' there at the beginning. Who exactly sent this? His eyes traveled to the bottom of the message, and found the smeared, vaguely familiar writing of 'Eliabeth' at the bottom. His heart did a little flip, and he sprang to his feet, letting out a delighted laugh.

"'Pirates!' " Will turned and shouted triumphantly to the donkey, the only living thing in the vicinity he could effuse to. "Because I'm her pirate!"

The donkey continued to stare blankly, not even twitching its tail.

Will flashed his teeth in a giddy grin, before he sat back down to decipher the rest of the letter eager with many questions. Why had she sent him such a strange, sloppy letter? Why hadn't she used her own seal? Why had she put an empty postscript at the end…? Slowly his delight started to dissolve and he began to feel concerned. Some of this wasn't making sense. It seemed like the letter had been written and sent in a rush, possibly even with an interruption. And yet Mister Burley seemed entirely unconcerned in delivering it. Actually, thinking about it, Mister Burley seemed to not even realize the letter had been coming from Elizabeth to begin with.

Why? Certainly, she might have simply wanted to remain discreet about their relationship, but… Had something gone wrong? Or had she simply gotten into mischief?

He stood and retrieved a pencil, realizing that re-writing the most smudged portion of her penmanship might help make the decoding process easier. Fortunately, her message was largely only badly smeared in three main places—where she must have freshly dipped her quill and left the most ink behind. The rest of it was fairly easy to read.

Understanding her meaning was another matter altogether.

His concerns were melted away almost immediately and replaced by renewed bouts of giggles, as it became clear the reason for all the strangeness did have a very simple explanation: she'd obviously had too much to drink and had decided to write to him while somewhat inebriated.

She wrote of the wine he assumed was responsible for the whole letter and of wine showers—which he understood well enough, considering their recently created inside joke about showers and gifts and such. The part that was difficult to understand was her writings about baths. Mostly he thought she was intending to continue her joke using it as a metaphor for their expressions of affection. But that didn't make as much sense when she claimed he'd "never had one." Therefore, there were two other possible meanings he could make out: either the alcohol had finally freed her from her concerns for kindness enough to confess that she had noticed the terrible difference in the way he smelled compared to her and her father; or she was hinting at exploring something… physical they had not yet explored together.

Her very next, rather bold little paragraph seemed to reinforce the latter. But the silly, disorganized flow to her thoughts made the former equally plausible. Both options brought a rushing heat to his face, and other parts besides, for the most opposite of reasons. Weighing them, he couldn't resist the urge to give himself an insecure little sniff. Right now, he didn't feel he smelled all that bad. But he was sitting right next to a donkey. And some days…

He looked at the donkey once more, and it let out a huff from her nose as if she knew what he was thinking and was offended he thought so little of her.

His eyes fell back to that bold little paragraph, the one portion of the letter that had hardly any smearing at all and which was written most closely to the elegant, flowing confidence of Elizabeth's sober hand. The unpleasant heat of self-consciousness in his face was replaced by a delectably warm glow, while his mind brought back the way it had felt the other day to have her fingers on his neck, her lips brushing enticingly across his jaw and whispering provocative words into his ear about bathing in one another's affections. His fingers reached out to touch her words, looking for ways to make up for how he could not touch her memory back. She'd long joked and insinuated, especially now that they were allowed to be together, but here she was saying what she wished and he also craved, if he were honest, so very plainly: 'to make love…'

A part of him could picture the way she may have appeared, writing that out for him: perhaps rosy-cheeked and nose wrinkled in puckish delight at the idea of teasing him with such surprise and distance between them? Or did she look the way she did when began to make advances on him, with her eyes both dark and glittering and her tongue nested gently between her teeth? Had she still been dressed for her party? Or was she already unbound in her night shift, thinking about lying with him naked while surrounded by the softness of her bed chamber? His eyes wandered to her scrawled, nonsensical 'truly, truly,' the misspelling of her own name, her pointless, empty postscript, and he found himself utterly overcome with the charm of her, moved by the thought of her wanting him to know her feelings even where she was. Soon he was laughing to himself with his elbows resting on the table, pressing the heels of his hands firmly against his eyes and aching for her presence like he felt he never had before.

God, the things she did to him! He wished he could drop everything and go to her that very instant…

Maybe he could write her back, instead? There was a problem in that he didn't know the address for the Blackwells, and he didn't really have money he could afford to spend on sending things by post—not to mention it would be a little hypocritical after having lectured Mister Brown on his recent spending spree. But the post system between towns was rather unreliable anyway, and sending things privately was usually best. Perhaps, he could find time to give his reply back to the servants at the governor's stables, for when they returned to pick Elizabeth back up?

But what would he say? Not only was he feeling a little overwhelmed and at a loss for good words at the moment, but there was always a risk with letters changing hands that they could be read by nosy interlopers. Which made Elizabeth's frank language all the more amusing, now that he thought about it… At the very least, he could check in regarding the news from town today?

It was worth a try.

He pulled out the shop's writing box, then folded and tore off a large square from the letter Elizabeth had sent him—her message had been so short and simple, most of the paper was entirely blank, and he felt it would be a shame to waste it. He wrestled with his response for almost an hour, scratching ideas out with his pencil on a separate sheet, waffling back and forth between wanting to simply write his feelings as he felt them and holding back with his concerns over being seen by outside eyes before her father had revealed their courtship to the island…

At length, a response he was mostly satisfied by sat on the workbench, drying off to the side. And Will, for the first time in several days, took up a sword of his own making and turned his feelings into a distinctive dance-an expression led by a renewed burst of life that conveyed so much more of what his words could not:

"Beloved treasure, "Thank you for your unexpected message. It seems that you are enjoying yourself, and I am glad to hear it. I would like to report that I have been taking your advice, and am feeling much improved myself. "May I suggest we explore together the subjects of your proposals at your earliest convenience? I look forward to it with great interest, as there are many things I wish to say and hear from you in person. "However, I also wish to sympathize with you, knowing you may find your home in such a different state from how you left it. I'm sure you were made aware beforehand, but a small flotilla arrived today, with a large regiment of marines and officers. The town will be quite busy for a while. I have reason to believe that soon you may be as well. "I do intend to keep my promise to you upon your return, should you ask it. "Everyday, "Your devoted pirate"