With a flourish, Elizabeth tipped the opened bag of pieces onto the game's table in a chattering pile of blackest ebony and golden briar. Without needing to speak on it, she and her father began sorting the pieces out into their two separate color groups, with father collecting and placing the light pieces, while Elizabeth gathered the dark ones. After watching for a few moments, Will's searching hand brushed Elizabeth's, causing her to pause. He'd picked up on the placement of the pawns, and began to form a row of them on his and Elizabeth's side, in imitation of her father. She smiled to herself, and then with one eye still watching Will's progress, she continued gathering the larger pieces—only now, she began placing them in her lap, to clear space for Will's efforts.

Father glanced in their direction and seemed to notice their silent arrangement.

"What do you know about this game, Mister Turner?" father asked.

Will raised his eyebrows for a moment and cocked his head to the side in a sort of twitched sign of resignation, like a huff transformed into a completely different gesture somehow. Almost without conscious thought, Elizabeth laid her hand on his back in reassurance—he wasn't a failure for not having played before.

"I know that it exists," he responded, and cast a quick look of gratitude in Elizabeth's direction. A tiny, rare showing of the dimple in his cheek appeared, and her heart fluttered a little. "And what you've told me just now."

A sympathetic chuckle came from father, as he set his last pieces into their places. "Well, I suppose we all start somewhere." His half of the board set, he looked up at Will, and began adjusting the cuffs of his sleeves, pulling them back a little for less interference during their play. "Have you ever played draughts?"

"I've observed it," Will said, also having finished setting out his pawns. When there were no more pieces on the table to arrange, he began looking around, to belatedly discover the back row of pieces were now cradled in Elizabeth's lap. He shot her a quizzical look, all while still speaking to her father. "To be honest, I haven't played many table games that are meant only for two. Larger games are easier to join on a whim…"

Elizabeth smiled in response to his unspoken question, and plucked up the first piece for him to take.

"But you recognize the board?" she began to ask, until her attention was taken quite suddenly by one of their servants reappearing near her left elbow. "Oh, Estrella! You're back!"

"Yes… I am back," Estrella answered in a somewhat awkward, every so slightly wooden voice.

Elizabeth had to resist rolling her eyes. They'd agreed to pretend Estrella had been sent downstairs for some special assignment, while she actually finished her bath at her own pace, got dressed, and then took her time with her dinner in the gardens. Evidently, pretending wasn't Estrella's strongest talent. She could practically feel Will's confusion over the maid's badly acted charade churning his face behind her turned head.

She blinked her side-tracked mind back to focus on Estrella. "I left my pockets on my desk. Would you bring them to me?"

Estrella curtsied, and made quick work of Elizabeth's command, swiftly returning from her mistress' chambers with one of Elizabeth's pockets held out in each of her hands.

"Ah, thank you!" Elizabeth chirruped happily, as she set the chess piece back in her lap and accepted her flimsy treasure hold.

While laying those on her lap as well, she caught an almost wistful emotion behind Will's eyes, which were looking over the collage-like embroidery that decorated the pouches like he was reading pages of a letter or journal. He reached out and traced one particular design with his finger: amidst the beautiful, floral enhancements and maritime geometries, there sat one very sloppily sewn jolly roger's skull, obviously done when she was much younger than she was now. Her enthusiastic longing for the romance of a pirate's life was well-marked, and had proven to be much more lasting and significant than most of her other childish fancies.

Except for maybe one other…

Looking at Will still, she noticed the wistfulness in his face began to change, into something weighed down by deeper contemplations of something… else. Something sad.

'Now, none of that,' she thought.

Tonight was to end as happily as it could. She laid her hand over his, to snatch back his attention back with whatever rewards her smiles and affections could offer. It worked—the shadow that had come over him receded, and in its place shone a reflection of happier memories—whether from their childhood tomfoolery or their more recent tastes of mischief didn't matter, only that whatever he was thinking of was good.

Satisfied, Elizabeth shoved her hand into the opening of one pocket, and after a little bit of blind searching through her trinkets, she pulled out her fan. Then, considering the convenience of having Will so close while her pockets were open, she fished out the letter he had given her yesterday and held it out for him to take. He blinked for a moment in surprise, then with a grateful little smile, accepted the gift.

While he tucked the letter into the inside of his coat, Elizabeth returned her pockets back to Estrella's waiting hands.

"I don't believe I'll need you for the rest of the evening," she remarked over the hand-off, "so you may be on your way."

It was as she'd tried to bargain with Estrella earlier: an effort to lighten her load a little, and win some good will.

Estrella's lips twitched, but she maintained a professional composure with one last curtsy for the evening, "Thank you, miss."

Then she withdrew to Elizabeth's chambers to finish up the last of her night's business.

With that interruption settled, Elizabeth turned back to the games table, and slapped her closed fan in the palm of her open right hand.

"Alright… shall I or you explain?" she asked her father.

He gave her a genteel little wave and bow of his head. "Please go ahead."

"Very well," she smiled through her answer, then wriggled a little in her chair to sit up straight and take command of the conversation. Her bared forearm brushed Will's sleeve as she moved, and the unexpected tickling scratch of the wool sent a little zing of pleasure down her arm. She tapped the edge of the table with her fan to reset her attention and tossed her hair back over shoulders, signaling the beginning of Will's gaming lesson. "The sum of it is that chess is war—one army pitted against another on a battlefield. Your goal is to capture the opposing army's king to claim victory."

"While thwarting your opponents' attempts to do the same to you, of course," father chimed in helpfully.

Elizabeth watched Will's eyebrows flashed upward in a little moment of understanding, wherein his eyes traveled across the still partially-empty board and back again.

"I can see why this would be popular with the officers, then," he commented in a voice that was lifted by a breezy, quipping tone. But in his face there was a weight Elizabeth recognized of committed studiousness—he knew this wasn't merely a game in the parlors or coffee houses of those who called themselves gentlemen.

The corners of her lips tucked upward—Will had never been anything if not deeply earnest.

Setting her fan down and reaching for the pile of pieces still sitting in her lap, she went on with her explanation, "Each piece has different rules about where it may move and in what manner. Our king…" She lifted the tallest, crowned piece, and set it on the center white square on their edge of the table. "… must always start the game on this space whenever you play black, and may only ever move one space at a time in any direction."

She waited for a word of understanding, but this time Will said nothing—he only watched the board and appeared to continue listening, intently.

So she resumed, "Though your most important piece, a king may only one one space at a time, no matter the direction. He is trapped when he cannot move in any direction without avoiding the attack of another piece—at that point, he is considered captured, and his army loses."

This time Will nodded his signal that he was, in fact, following what she was saying. Then he asked his first real question, "Who is our king?"

The fuzziness of misunderstanding tickled Elizabeth's mind for a minute, as she pressed her finger over the center point of the piece's crown.

"This is… Wait, who…?" she stammered about, realizing halfway through re-emphasizing this new piece was the king that Will was like not asking about the piece itself. "You mean which army are we?"

"Yes," he answered, and in his face there was not a wink of irony. If this was an imaginary battle, why wouldn't there be imagined roles for the players to take on?

And it made some sense to ask. When she'd been a child learning the game, she'd wondered something very similar, imagining in her head that the knight's horses could rear their heads, that their knights might be valiant and their causes for attack or defense could possibly be just… But who were they?

"I'm not sure it matters," her father answered before she could form her own. "Emulating real politics too closely could create sour feelings between players. They are the armies of the Swanns and Turners—that's all."

"No, that's boring," Elizabeth declared back, already charmed by the ideas Will's innocent question had begun to wave in her mind. She loved stories—and all wars had stories behind them. That was what she'd seen as a child, imagining the pieces alive. "I like this idea, that we can pick an army of our own. It makes things a little more interesting."

Father frowned, clearly feeling that the decision was an unwise breach of propriety.

Before he could say as much, Will asked another rather interesting question, "Does it have to be an army, or can it be a band or a crew…?"

Like a candle's wick catching its light, Elizabeth felt her mind light up with the realization of where Will was going. Her mind couldn't resist returning to the way his fingers had touched the sloppy childhood embroidery that marked her pockets as definitively hers.

When she looked at him, she was grinning toothily. "A band of pirates?"

He tugged his lips to one side in a lovely, lopsided smile. Yes: a band of pirates.

Father scoffed at the suggestion. "Please! Pirates are disorganized riffraff! They do not have armies, how can they have a king?"

Oh, Elizabeth felt a thrill rush through her as she recalled something she'd read in one of her many books and pamphlets over the years. Without a moment to waste, she leaned forward as if to more quickly share her enlightenment, "They do have kings sometimes, actually! It's happened at least once before."

While Will frowned as though turning over this fact in his mind to examine at different angles, father again seemed resistant.

"Well. Maybe they believe it to be so," he stammered. "But I think we all know that that would not be a real k—"

"So this shall be our pirate king!" Elizabeth declared with a clap of her hands, cutting her father's protestations off quite deliberately and to his obvious irritation.

Will seemed to understand her motivations in pressing ahead, and quickly followed her declaration by playing along, "But what is our king's name…?"

Oh, names? They were picking names, were they? She wasn't expecting that.

So, put on the spot as she was, Elizabeth awkwardly offered a, "… Captain Jack Sparrow?"

Father huffed and rolled his eyes, obviously never hoping to hear that man's name mentioned outside the context of arrest warrants ever again.

But Will took a moment to visibly weigh the suggestion in his head, before nodding his agreement—it seemed to him as good an option as any.

The gesture wasn't anything particularly special—Will's face had even been scrunched up in a funny sort of frown as he'd nodded. It was neither conventionally graceful nor handsome of him. But it didn't need to be. There was a different loveliness about the way he was willing to play along with her, to invite this little extra bit of play to begin with, and it was charming her all over again. It was him, being with her. When he looked at her once more, with an almost silly sparkle in those eyes, those eyes, those eyes, Elizabeth felt the tiniest stirrings of her earlier wanting waking inside her once again, needing him so…

She tore her gaze away from him forcibly. She couldn't afford to be overcome all over again by her desires at this moment. They were very much in the middle of something!

'But when, when, when?' her heart began to thrum in a way that was beginning to reach beyond her chest. She was suddenly reminded of just how close to each other they were seated. Will's hip was almost connected to hers, her thigh only a few inches farther. It would take such a small movement to bring her body just a little closer…

'Why can't it be now, now, now?'

She bit her lip.

Then wishing to regain control over herself, and also wishing for father to not be completely put out by the unconventional additions they were making to their game, Elizabeth pushed their topic forward with an embarrassingly high-pitched, "Who is your king, father?"

Father blinked in almost as much surprise as she had over the question, before taking a moment to consider his own half of the board.

"… I suppose I shall be the King of Great Britain."

That was boring. But boring was probably good for her right now.

"Which one?" she pressed, looking to lean out of her distraction. Will was still close beside her after all, and she had only managed to gain half of the upper hand over her rebelling blood.

"Oh…" father sighed, hopefully, seemingly, completely unaware of her inner turmoil, "I'll leave the more precise imaginings to you two."

She could only smile back. Just a few breaths… and she would be calmed again.

Her progress was sent backwards when Will's left hand moved towards her lap. And with her breath held captive, she watched him pluck a new piece from the pile still cradled on her thighs. It was stupid—so, so stupid. He did not touch her, not even accidentally. He wasn't even looking at her, he was looking at the collection of wooden figures. But for a moment, a stupid, stupid part of her mind thought that touching her was what his hand was moving for, that he would lay his fingers upon her knee or run his palm across her lap itself. And that half-second imagination, brief and stupid as it was, had been enough to almost shoot herself upward, out of her skin with panicked exhilaration.

Now, as Will held up the piece he'd plucked, she was meant to come down in privately humiliated disappointment.

'What a pathetic mess of a woman I'm becoming. I will have to apologize to Violet for ever judging her, if this is what she's felt like all this time...'

Thankfully the jolt that had shaken her had seemed to only be a feeling, not an outward, physical response. Neither her Will nor her father had batted an eye in her direction.

In fact, Will simply moved on with the topic that they were supposed to be focused on, musing aloud, "If that is the king, then this other crowned piece must be the queen."

He looked back at her for confirmation. It took Elizabeth several seconds to register what he was saying. But once she had, she nodded.

"Exactly, yes," she actually said, and she felt even stupider with the way she could call up nothing else useful to add yet.

It didn't matter in the end. Will's mind was clearly on a completely different path from hers by now, with observant eyes traveling from the piece to the board.

"And it falls in the dark space, here," he declared confidently.

Then he set the queen down on the black space to the King's right—an exact mirror of her father's setup across the board. Though her tongue had been tied, somehow he was still learning. And through all the frantic feelings inside her, there rose up twin feelings of pride and chastisement. He was more clever than people often gave him credit for, and she couldn't resist the pull of admiration she felt knowing it. But she was also meant to be guiding him, and she was sitting here floundering like a lovesick fool!

Seizing on the back of this train of thought, and slamming her feet back on the ground mentally, Elizabeth resisted grabbing his sleeve to better secure his attention. Instead, she simply leveled a finger at her father's queen. "But… across the board it's the light space—see?"

Will's brows rose and then fell again, the thoughts in his head appearing to turn like clockwork. He began to repeat in low, breathy mutters to himself, "Kings clash… queens match."

Simultaneously amused and fascinated by this, and wondering whether her father thought similarly or differently of it, Elizabeth glanced across the table. From there, she was surprised to find her father staring quietly yet intently at Will, as though studying the way he learned. She frowned a little. Was this game meant to be a test…?

Eventually, Will was satisfied he'd memorized his mnemonic, and nodded to himself.

"So who is Jack's pirate queen?" he turned to ask Elizabeth with a pointed look.

Elizabeth felt a blush begin to creep across her nose. Surely, he only meant that she was the best one to choose—he couldn't mean she ought to be the queen? After all, he must have known as well as anyone that there was only one real "lady" love in Jack Sparrow's life.

"The Black Pearl?" she offered.

Will leveled at her a playfully doubtful glower. She could feel herself flushing outright, considering any sort of alliance with Jack Sparrow as a king or partner. Ha! What a thought! That man was… well, unpredictable. In some ways. In others…

Shaking her head at Will, she pursed her lips into her own challenging scowl back at him.

That simply couldn't be what he was suggesting. No, on second thought, it made more sense if what he was really getting at was something else: for instance, how she'd named herself a pirate queen on more than one occasion in their past childhood playtimes. But in those imaginary games, there'd been no king—she'd simply been pirate queen all to herself, like the real Queen Elizabeth who was her namesake. Not even Will had been her pirate king, back then…. Admittedly, she had invited him to join her once or twice… and possibly, perhaps, maybe had outright, ah, encouraged him at stick-point a few times more. But in the end, he'd preferred to be her opponent, defending sandcastle villages against her treasure raids. And it had been more fun that way, with each of them turning circles in the sand, trying to defeat or capture the other.

Like two kings on a chess board, the two of them had been.

As for the queen… Elizabeth picked the black crowned figure back up and turned it in her hand, thinking a little longer. Maybe father had been right, and making these personal associations could be a bad idea. It might be better to walk this suggestion back a little…

"Well, there isn't really a pirate queen or consort—there's no need for one," she declared with matter-of-fact authority. "The Order of the Brethren works a lot more like the admiralty than any monarchy. Supposedly, they have their own assortment of pirate sea lords. I just don't know who any of them are."

Will shrugged with one shoulder at this. "Well, Jack isn't actually a pirate king, last I checked. And I still don't know of many other pirate captains that he gets along with well enough to trust. Do you?"

"No, neither do I…" she had to laugh, setting the queen back down in her starting square. Even Jack's own crew had been initially unwilling to wait for him at the Isla de Muerte—true enough, they'd come back for him in the end, but… "To be honest, I'm not so certain that King would suit Jack very well in reality. He's too…"

Independent? Carefree? Dishonest?

She picked up the king's piece now, and turned it around in her hands like she'd done with the queen. The truth was she'd only known Jack for a handful of days, and in that time he'd shifted under each hour of the sky's light into whatever form had seemed to suit him in the moment. Even Captain Barbossa had been clearer to read—the moonlight had revealed him, and he'd stepped into it willingly. Even so, she had a feeling she'd gotten to see Jack for who he really was, persuaded him to drop his masks under that moon. That he was good when all things came back around to ask for it.

But maybe kings were cut from a different cloth than only that.

"I think you're right," Will responded, and by gently brushing some of her hair back over her shoulder, won her attention again. "Then again, this is just a game…"

The skin on her shoulder where her hair had been swept away by him was burning, and he was smiling that crooked smile of his. She couldn't resist answering it, couldn't help the giddy bubbling that stirred in her stomach with him so close and so at ease.

It was just a game. It didn't actually mean anything. And they could make up any rules they wanted. Who were kings and queens among pirates, anyhow? And as far as she knew, the queen was meant to be a general in the game's more distant past...

Her father sighed—growing impatient with all this discussion that was only delaying the start of the game.

Elizabeth held out the king for Will to take from her. "Who's his most loyal right-hand man…?"

"I'd say Gibbs," Will responded easily, while taking and placing the piece back where it belonged, "if he hadn't made off with the Pearl."

"Well, he did come back," she countered.

She let her mind drift to that breathtaking afternoon, with the almost miraculous sight of the Pearl's brand new cuts of black canvas coasting across Port Royal's harbor, calling Jack's name. She remembered the feeling and sight of Will beside her, hands clasped tight and wide-awake eyes turned toward the horizon. He'd seemed more at peace than she'd ever seen him then, watching Jack swim his way to meet his dream ship in flickering, golden waters. She remembered that feathered hat, and how surprisingly well it had become Will—not just at the end, when she'd learned he was finally hers, but as he'd broken through crowds and soldiers to act out the wishes she'd somehow allowed herself to become barred from acting out herself. He'd cut Jack loose, made his run for freedom…

She remembered the way her pulse had begun to pound, from the moment he'd professed his love at last, until the sight of that parrot made her understand what it was Will had done, what it was he'd meant to do, had set her heart into a furious race like she'd never felt in her life…

Her pirate.

Elizabeth ran her finger over the ribs at the base of the queen piece. "Let's make this you. Just for my amusement."

Father tutted as though she'd paid Will an insult.

But Will only laughed, and wrinkled his brow in bemusement. "What? I'm no captain."

"You certainly came close to being one aboard the Interceptor," she fired back quick and sure. Her heart was starting to beat more loudly, and her mind was eagerly dreaming of him standing on the ship's taffrail with a sword on his hip and the wind in his hair.

Her pirate.

"No closer than you or Anamaria," he countered.

She gave half a shrug—he was a little right, they'd been more of a team persuading Anamaria to accept their frantically made battle plans, but she wasn't about to admit it outright.

Apparently, Will wasn't about to let his own ideas go, however. He slid his left hand along the back of her chair, so that he could lean into her with a little more conviction, and her heart did a happy little leap.

"Why not make it you?" he asked sincerely. "You're the pirate expert."

"Mm, yes," she bragged, all while stroking the same right-handed finger down the piece's base to distract herself from her desire to grab him and win the argument by a very specific kind of forceful persuasion, "but currently you're quite a bit handier with a sword, and have actually done some proper pirating under Jack's command."

"Elizabeth, that isn't something you ought to—" her father began at the same time that Will insisted, "But you were able to—"

"Too late, I've decided!" She announced and gave the table a slap. "This is you now, Jack's finest blade."

Will looked unconvinced but accepted her decision. Father, on the other hand, frowned at Elizabeth, and ran an uncomfortable finger along the inside of his shirt collar.

"Perhaps these pieces shouldn't have such specific names, dearest?" he tried to suggest. "I would hate for this to feel too personal."

Elizabeth smirked—they were well past that. If anything, the idea of Will and Jack having to fight together as each other's king and queen was deeply amusing to her. And Will didn't seem to mind. Mostly.

"Oh, it's just harmless fun," she allayed, and waved a dismissive hand in father's direction. "We're only playing against each other anyway. How much more personal can it get than that?"

There was no spoken answer from father, but Elizabeth noticed the way his eyes drifted their focus to Will… and the way Will looked back at her father with a strangely intent determination.

Yes… this game was going to be a test.

She rolled her eyes a little to herself. Why were so many men like this? Why did her men have to be like this?

With an abruptness that actually made her jump a little, Will suddenly turned his head back to Elizabeth. "How about you be the pirate king? And I serve you?"

She? King?

Her father frowned at that. But Elizabeth was too busy turning the idea about in her head like the pieces she had been examining.

"Hm…" she pondered aloud, chewing gently at the inside of her bottom lip. "I don't think there's ever been a woman pirate king before."

Her father opened his mouth to offer his opinion.

Will pressed back, "And as I already said: I am not really a pirate captain."

As if to further secure his point in place, he laid his left hand over her right, where it still had been toying with the base of the queen. It stilled her movements, and when he carefully curled his fingers around hers, it sent a shiver through her arm. But before she curled her fingers in answer, it became clear that he hadn't reached out to simply hold her hand. He lifted their hands together, and moved them one space to the left, guiding her hand to cup the king's piece instead. Then he uncurled his fingers, and she wondered whether he let them ghost across her skin on purpose when he drew his hand back to himself.

"You are the expert," Will asserted. "And I would bet there's no rule against it in the Code, is there?"

She didn't remember. Partially because nothing really had been said on the matter, and partially because she didn't want to think of anything else but herself and him taking command of some ship in the harbor and sailing off into the sunset together. She? King? Unlikely.

And yet… it was pretend. And she… King. With Will at her side…

Yes…. Yes, maybe this could be their little fantasy together.

"Alright. I can think of another piece that would suit Jack better, anyhow." She smiled at him with lips pursed around the half a dozen things she would like to say to him, but knew she ought not. Instead, she settled with taking a deep breath, to try and settle herself once more. "So I am pirate king, and you are my queen and most trusted captain."

Father groused in deep annoyance. This imagination seemed to be a little too far-fetched for him, but Elizabeth did not care. She'd always dreamed of things that seemed just a little too far into the clouds for him.

Will picked up on father's cue at last, though, and made an effort to return the conversation to what it always should have been. "What do I do?"

Elizabeth reached for the queen again, this time taking her—him?—by the crown, so she could demonstrate the movements she would begin to explain.

"The queen—or flagship captain, shall we say?—is a particularly important piece, since it can move in any single direction, with the only limit in range being the size of the board." She ran the queen up and down its row.

"A single direction?" Will echoed, brow once again pressed with concentration.

"Yes. You may change direction in a separate turn," she pushed past the pawn in front of the queen to allow her to run into the center of the board, "but one straight line only for each turn." She returned the queen to her starting position, and replaced the offended pawn.

"But as far as you like or need."

"Yes…" Elizabeth confirmed. Then she smirked, deciding she couldn't entirely resist herself anymore. "You may move any way that pleases me."

Her father tutted loudly, calling her to attention. When she looked across the table, he was shooting her a deeply disappointed look, clearly communicating, 'This is your last warning!'

In spite of the sternness in his face, she only just managed clamping her lips shut around the laugh that was building inside of her. It was hard to continue caring about these warnings, these limits, especially when they were in private as they were. She was remembering how it felt to live like a pirate, what Will had been like when he'd turned pirate. And her heart was pounding, less rushed, less out of control, but still steadily: 'Let it be now, now, now…'

However, she felt Will tense a little beside her, obviously worried about the direction of her father's displeasure. He reached out to straighten the pieces on the board almost fretfully, "Perhaps you should be queen after all—"

"No, Will. We've already decided it. Hush," Elizabeth insisted. To seal her point, she picked the two royal pieces up, the miniature King-Captain Swann and Queen-Captain Turner each in one hand, then pushed ahead with Will's instruction. "Next, the king and queen," she tapped their two pieces together in a little 'kiss', then set them back down, "are flanked by their … retinue? We can call them officers or allies for our scenario."

"Our crew," Will offered.

The words sparked a wide grin on her face. She was liking this imaginary world they were building more and more. "Yes, of course."

Meanwhile, father began to slump in his chair, apparently having given up at last on entertaining any semblance of proper appearances. They had won the evening, it seemed… And if they played the rest of the game right, perhaps she could possibly win a little extra as well. Maybe she could negotiate that "day off" for Estrella… or some other opportunity to shake free of watchful eyes even tonight.

"So… who is Jack, now?" Will asked his next, most natural question, interrupting Elizabeth's scheming thoughts.

Within a few blinks she was back, and grinning at Will like the cat she imagined Jack to be.

"A wily piece…" She picked one of the knights, and held it aloft between them with her right hand. Then with her grin widening and reaching high enough to wrinkle her nose, she added, "Except we have double this time." And she revealed the knight's twin in the palm of her left hand.

"Oh, no…" Will shook his head with a laughing groan. "That would be especially troublesome."

To their surprise, father actually puffed out a genuine laugh at that. With only a brief pause, she and Will joined him in a moment of shared chuckling.

"Yes, it would be!" Elizabeth guffawed with her head tossed back. Then she placed the two Jacks in the open hands of her playmate, her partner, her pirate. "Now enough talk—pay attention."

With his eyes like midnight and a smile like the moon, he paid her all that and more.

The rest of the pieces were presented in a quicker succession, and Will had to pay much closer attention to keep up. Elizabeth demonstrated how the horses, the knights they would pretend to be twin copies of Jack, could leap about in any direction, so long as it was in the same L pattern. He had to admit it did seem better suited to the madcap pirate better than the other pieces had. Two more matching pieces with pointed heads were revealed to be bishops. But because these could only move diagonally and were forever bound to either golden or black, they were given distinctive names: Gibbs would guard the dark squares, and Ana the light squares. The straight-moving castles were simply named after the Black Pearl, since ships were the closest things to castles on the high seas anyway.

After all the pieces were introduced and set, Elizabeth explained a few more simple rules. The most important rule she explained was about capturing. Just like the king could be captured, pieces could capture and take prisoner the pieces of the opposing army—which would of course make the game easier or harder, depending on who was doing the capturing and who was being captured. It also made the game much more complex: in addition to trying to capture the governor's king, Will's other goal was to capture as many other pieces as possible, while avoiding being captured as often and long as possible.

The rest of the rules she asserted would be best explained as they came across them in the course of a match. So before long, Will was shoved off a proverbial cliff and plunged into the depths of his first match, with Elizabeth sitting at his side—very closely at his side—as his mentor.

Since Governor Swann had the lighter pieces, he was given the advantage of moving first. He reached his hand out to take hold of a pawn, but Elizabeth stopped his move.

"Wait!" she cried out suddenly, with an outstretched hand. "What are the stakes?"

Ah, yes. There always had to be stakes.

Her father furrowed his brow in a look that projected deep suspicion at his daughter, and Will had to hold back a sympathetic laugh. "I'm not sure, but I'm under the impression that you already have an idea."

"Of course! I want to ride Will home," Elizabeth said in a voice woven with pure nonchalance.

A long, awkward moment, without anything other than the echoes of her words and questions of their meaning, filled the room.

"You mean… you want to ride with me home?" Will eventually offered, while flustered feelings crept over his neck and cheeks.

Elizabeth looked at him as if he'd spoken in tongues. "That's what I said!"

Will exchanged a nervous look with her father, and was surprised and relieved to find a similar expression mirrored back at him. Without a word, both men came to a rare, easy agreement that Elizabeth was perfectly free to believe that version of reality, if she wished, and they would never speak of it to one another again.

Her father cleared his throat. "I'm not interested in bargaining over that, Elizabeth."

"Why not—?" she tried to protest.

To her consternation and Will's impressed amusement, the governor simply didn't engage with his daughter, instead reaching out again to deftly move the pawn that sat right before his king. The match had started… Except, the opening move was different from what Elizabeth had described it would be, and Will found himself immediately frowning in confusion.

"He moved two spaces," Will noted, and turned his head to her in a question. She'd told him that pawns could only move one space at a time, and only in forward directions.

It was the governor who answered, instead of Elizabeth. "Yes. You may do that, but only on a pawn's first move."

Will frowned as he tried to commit to memory this extra rule—or rather this exception to one of the many rules he was already trying to memorize to begin with. "So, if an enemy is two spaces away diagonally from a pawn that has not yet taken their first move, may I cross two spaces to attack it?"

The governor looked surprised for a moment, as though his question were unusual. Then he simply answered, "No, it only applies to normal forward movements. Think of it as the starting charge of an army's front line."

Alright, so pawns moved only one space at a time almost always. A little tricky, but not terribly complicated to remember on its own. It was remembering all these pieces at once that would be a bit of a challenge.

The touch of Elizabeth's hand resting on his back surprised Will a little, drawing his gaze back to her watch. Something about her seemed different today—or more specifically, something about the way he was feeling about her felt different, and he was uncertain whether or not it was affecting the way he saw her. He kept seeing fire in her, even after time had given distance to their close encounters during his dressing. And it was not any of the fires he'd seen flared when she was angry or determined, but something that seemed almost…

'No. Don't go there. Not this time.'

Elizabeth was leaning into him even closer now, to speak with a whimsical, conspiring air.

"Our turn," her breath stroked his cheek as it carried her words to his ear.

Ah, what was he thinking? No it hadn't! She was only talking like she always did. He needed to wake up and stop turning everything she did into something provocative. That smile she was giving him now—it wasn't alluring, it was patient. Patient! And he needed to be too!

"What ought we to do?" she mused with him.

'Run away,' the rebellious parts of his heart insisted he try and joke. And it was a thought more tempting than he cared to admit: taking her hand, bolting into the gardens to play hide and seek from her father and their other minders for an hour or so.

But that wasn't her question. And now was neither the time nor the place for those types of jokes or ideas. So he refocused his attention back on the board to think up a strategy.

Except he didn't know any strategies. The only thing he really knew was that he needed to capture and avoid capture. He didn't know all these surprise little loopholes like pawns being able to leap an extra space at the start of their turns. He still felt like he still had no idea what he was doing at all, really.

Fortunately, he was familiar with that feeling. Mister Brown had spent his years teaching him all sorts of techniques how to draw, cut, bend, twist, and weld hot iron. But he'd only shown him the precise steps to a handful of the most common tools and components he'd be expected to craft regularly. There were many, many things in the world Will had never heard of, new tools and inventions being made all the time. And the world still expected him to be able to fix or replicate them. If Brown was not available to explain the way to make a specific set of pliers—and he often wasn't these days—there was nothing Will could do but strike out and start experimenting with the process himself. If he made a mistake… well, then he would simply have to adjust one way or the other, and keep moving ahead.

Or when learning different techniques with his swordplay: he could watch others strike each other night and day, but until he himself got involved and tried it himself, allowed himself to fail and fail until the failures became successes, his body would never master any part of the art.

This felt… not all that different. If anything, it seemed simpler, because there were no raw materials to accidentally waste, no customers to displease, no limbs that could be painfully cut or bashed if he chose poorly. There was only the game… and Governor Swann watching his every move.

So he did what he always chose to do when first learning something new: he imitated. Picking up the pawn in front of his own king, he launched it out two spaces, bringing it head to head in a mirror image with the governor's pawn.

K-thip!

With a flick of her left wrist, Elizabeth had spread the panels of her fan open. Rather than use it as expected, Will felt her right hand drifting from his back, fingers seeking a way loop under his arm, so that she could sidle her face as close to his as possible. When her lips drew near his ear, he began to understand what she was about, together they dipped their faces behind the barrier she created from her fan, concealing their consultation from her father's eyes as well as his lips.

To strategize—that was why she had drawn him close. His body didn't seem to think it made one lick of a difference, as her whisper caused his skin to prickle underneath his coat, and … all that nonsense was starting up in his chest again.

He did his best to ignore his body—ignore her body—and focus entirely on the game, on the board, on her advice.

"Explain to me why you did that," she requested so softly against his ear he almost felt the words before he heard them.

Ignoring that! He was ignoring that sensation, and others spurred by it.

"To block him," he answered honestly. It was one of the only things he knew how to do…

Wait. He had blocked the pawn, right? Was there another trick to them when they met like this? Could they suddenly jump or be allowed to move to the side? Did they have another form of attack? He hadn't considered any of that to be options beforehand.

"That's sensible—especially from the perspective of a swordsman," Elizabeth reviewed for him in a voice that was both reassuring but also heavy with implications that he needed a different perspective. "He's attacking, so you're stopping his advance…"

She trailed off a little, as though she had more to say. When she did not continue as soon as he expected, he dared remove his focus from the board and look at her. Now her gaze didn't feel warm so much as sharp, as though she were pointedly assessing every little detail in his face anew.

He shot her a questioning look. "Yes…?"

There'd been a "but" coming from her, he'd been certain of it.

The corners of her lips twitched. Then Elizabeth cast her eyes back over the edge of her fan, and realigned her mouth to his ear.

"Even though this board is small and the pieces limited, there are many strategies a person can employ besides simply striking down the first piece that moves. Pawns generally cannot pass each other in this configuration, so you've temporarily eliminated one option of movement." She unhooked her right hand from around his arm, and lifted up in the surprisingly crushed space between their faces and the fan, to try and gesture to different pieces on the board without her father's observance. "Remember only the knights—his as well as our Jacks—can leap over other pieces. By moving that deckhand, father is opening up a path for a few more pieces to come out from his back line into battle. Which ones are free to emerge now?"

He sat up a little straighter to take a clearer glance at the entire board, counting the openings that had been created by his and her father's moves. Then he crouched back down to hide with her behind the fan as he answered, "The kings, bishops, and queens."

"Which means now those pieces may now attack at any point, in addition to his pawns and knights."

The significance of her words came at his mind and poked it like a great finger prodding him awake. He repeated them over again in his mind, as he once again straightened his spine and looked back at the pieces around the space now vacated by her father's pawn.

They were supposed to anticipate her father's moves? At first it seemed ridiculous.

Will's eyes began to dance, as he mentally imagined the moves she suggested playing out on the board—not just escapes from the pieces' starting formations, but attacks that they could launch at him. A king could only advance one step ahead. That was no different after this opening had been created in the governor's first line of defense. But the queen and bishop on each of the king's sides could strike out diagonally as far as they wished. And imagining them stopping on each space in their path unveiled to Will a new potential target…

For one option—or two, actually—either piece could take one step forward, to land in front of the king and close the hole in his defense. Both pieces had the option of moving one step farther, then either one would be in a position to attack whatever dared to capture the governor's first pawn currently occupied, effectively protecting that pawn, in a way. And each step farther, bishop or queen each could target a different one of Will's front line, with different advantages and disadvantages for each pawn in their range. Even his first pawn currently lingering at the center of the board could be targeted by the governor's queen, if it suited him.

There had to be at least a dozen options for those two pieces alone.

'What the hell…?'

Elizabeth seemed to see the wheels turning behind his eyes, pumping the bellows in his mind to awaken his thoughts more and more. With her hand slipping back to rest with reassurance on his shoulder, she built upon her explanation for him, "We don't yet know for certain how or when, but we know it is now possible for father to use those pieces against us sooner rather than later. We only want to keep that in mind, watch for when they might be moved. Since the King must avoid capture, it's most likely to be the other two pieces first..."

Two strokes of relief soothed Will's increasingly excited mind: there was no secret, fancy two-square trick moves from the king like the pawns, which was good to know; and thanks to that, he'd already on his own managed to figure out the uselessness of the governor's king in this scenario. At least he was following that much.

But even so, even removing the governor's king from the current list of possibilities, that still left the two remaining pieces and all their possibilities to consider. And even with all those possibilities, Will still had no idea which option would be the most likely, the best option that her father might take. Hell, there were actually more options for the governor, if he remembered that all the other pawns themselves could still be moved, and the two knights in addition to that.

Was he really supposed to keep all these possibilities in mind? At one time?

Elizabeth had an answer. "If we were more advanced, we'd have played so often we'd be able to predict which moves might most logically follow after, and we'd be able to develop a strategy that predicts more precise outcomes, several moves ahead."

So he was supposed to know what all this meant, eventually. The thought floored him somewhat, and he looked at Elizabeth with some awe.

"You can tell all that already?" he asked.

At least in fencing there were only six or seven ways an opponent might come after him. This… this was ridiculous. And if it really were the case that people spent their time training their minds to see all these little variations in this game of attack, then that certainly would explain to him how Elizabeth could be so cunning when she wanted to be.

"Oh, I cannot perfectly, no," she was quick to answer, and Will felt a tiny sense of relief fall over him. "But the possibilities become more clear with each play a person makes, and you begin to learn more and more of their uses with practice. For now, we'll watch and guess for the very next move. I think your move was a good choice—I only wanted you to begin to think about what's to come."

For some reason, as Elizabeth had said what she said, two particular faces came before the eyes of Will's mind, and he began to wonder if pirates ever played games like this one, the way navy officers did. From what he'd seen recently, most pirates seemed to pay little mind to things beyond their next haul and the prizes they'd purchase with it… and maybe whatever revelry they could reap to chase away life's pains and dreariness. He couldn't imagine half of Tortuga's clientèle having the wits about them for any sort of contest like this one.

But men like Captain Barbossa or Jack Sparrow… Looking back on his encounters with the Black Pearl, Will was almost certain those men had been thinking along lines like these, while they'd dueled and debated with each other back and forth. Will had seen it behind Jack's eyes almost the moment he met him: his mind darting about, marking the paths to each of the shop's entrances and the different ways he could walk them. Jack had stumbled like a drunk, but Will knew real drunks–that one had been too sharp to be dismissed outright. He'd seen it even more after allying with Jack to capture the Interceptor by first capturing the Dauntless. It was never one step ahead for Jack Sparrow, it was two, three, probably even more.

And so it was with Barbossa as well.

Failure to look at the world more deeply, to read his situations for all their possibilities the way Barbossa had, had resulted in Will's failure to properly negotiate Elizabeth's safety. He was lucky, so so deeply lucky, that she didn't have that same weakness, that same blindness, and was able to save herself when he could not.

The game moved on without regard for Will's wandering thoughts. Elizabeth closed her fan and returned her attention to the board.

Her father, who had actually begun to slump his chair, straightened back up and leveled his attention on Elizabeth. "Are we ready to continue?"

"Yes, please," she answered.

He immediately deployed a second pawn two spaces—this pawn was the one before the governor's threatening bishop, and its movement brought it directly to the right of the governor's first pawn.

The pawn was diagonal with Will's—which meant that he could take it as his first prize, if he wished. His first capture.

A small push of excitement drove his right hand to reach out for his pawn, and do just that…

But then he paused, and wondered: why would the governor give him a prize so easily? To help him learn the game? Or was this a trap?

With these second thoughts, he reexamined the impact of this widened opening in the governor's defenses. His bishop was more exposed, but no other piece seemed freer to move. That new pawn was not in the path of the dormant queen, the bishop or even the knight. It seemed safe.

Why did it seem safe?

With his hand still suspended in hesitation over his pawn, he turned to look at Elizabeth for confirmation. Was he blind? Uninformed? Stupid?

With her lips quirked in an amused smile, she flipped her fan back open and repositioned it as a privacy screen before them.

"What are you thinking?" she asked him gently.

He took a breath, and hoped what he said was mostly sensible. "I think he'll take my pawn if I do not first."

She nodded at him once—a good sign. "What else…?"

What else…? He looked back at the board to remind himself of all the things he'd just observed. "That pawn did not free up any other pieces for movement."

"That one did not, yes."

And…

And…?

She was still looking at him, still sounding like she expected him to see more—which what he had worried was the case. This game physically wasn't that big—it took up less space than a sparring match, by far. And yet already he felt all these goddamn possibilities confounding him. What else was there…?

When several seconds passed and he had no other answers, Elizabeth's smile softened.

"If your pawn takes that pawn, what happens to it? Can another piece take it?"

He'd already thought about that, but trusted her line of questioning would lead him a little further in his calculations. "Not yet, no."

"And what happens to the pawn you were blocking?"

Ah! There it was—the thing his eyes had not seen on their own. "It will be able to advance again."

That had to be the hidden challenge he hadn't considered, hanging right in front of his nose. The board was wide, there were many pieces at a distance, but there were smaller things, smaller scrimmages he needed to be mindful of as well. He was grateful to have Elizabeth by his side, making these little things more clear.

"Which is worse, do you think?" she asked, patiently guiding him through his first little dilemma. "Losing your pawn or providing father an opening to advance to that opening?"

Will wanted to say losing his pawn was worse. If he moved out of the way of the first pawn, then it posed no real risk to his king, being unable to attack straight ahead. He had his queen and his bishop able to defend themselves as well… And yet he had a feeling the question was not so simple. His brow began to wrinkle deeply as he reviewed a similar list of options on what would happen if he allowed her father to take his pawn….

Then he felt the warm, soft press of Elizabeth's lips upon the tense muscles in his temple. He relaxed. And he looked at her, wondering what had prompted that little blessing.

She smiled at him, then offered some straight-forward advice: "Take his pawn, this time. Your deckhand is not the only one able to defend your king."

Once more, Will felt the satisfaction of some validation over his calculations. As Elizabeth's fan went back down, he reached with confidence and captured her father's second pawn.

As though he'd anticipated it, the governor wasted no time in sliding his bishop out to the same row which both pawns now occupied. And Will frowned, both at the swiftness of the move and the way he could not immediately see what made it useful. The only piece placed in the bishop's line of attack was another one of his pawns…

Elizabeth's fan was back up again, her hand upon his shoulder, her words in his ear within a moment's notice.

"What do you think now?"

"I… don't know," he confessed, as his eyes darted around trying to see more, feel more than his failures … and the way Elizabeth's thumb had begun to stroke against the weave of his coat. "He could take a different pawn from our crew now, but you are still safe…"

"That's true," she conceded. "But attacking isn't the only motivation for moving a piece. Look at how many spaces his king is now free to move to."

Will obeyed, and now saw what Elizabeth was indicating: the governor's King now had an extra space it could maneuver in—more places it could run and hide. He was grateful she'd pointed it out, as it seemed more likely to be part of some plan the governor had. Still, he grit his teeth to himself to keep from sighing aloud in annoyance. How was there still more to consider in his opponent's mind?

Elizabeth rested her chin on his shoulder, pulling him back out of his head, back to her and the game. "So what shall we do?"

He let the sigh he was holding back go free. How was he supposed to know? It was after dinner, after dark, and his mind wasn't built for shit like this at times when he normally would be falling asleep. He didn't like it, people in a "polite society" having so many hidden motivations and secret plans, all cloaks, masks ,and daggers. If he had his way, people would just say what they wanted and meant all the time. And when they needed to, they'd simply fight each other face-to-face. Those were better games, better ways of doing things…

…

Perhaps he was starting to let his frustration get the better of him. This wasn't "polite society," this was a game. Except for when it wasn't.

Will stole a glance at Elizabeth's father, and noted the way he was staring right at him, unblinking and pensive, with no consideration for the board.

'He must feel like he's playing a child…' he thought with gritted teeth, and tried not to once again be overtaken by the low opinions he knew the man still held of him. No little handshake or truce could automatically fix all that.

He looked back over the fan, down at the board, and tried to consider his options. Though he hated the cloaks and daggers, it was clear he needed to learn how to use them—to prove he understood the world of the men who somehow called themselves "gentle"… as well as those who did not. A world that seemed capable of being summarized as a field of sixty-four squares, and thirty-two wooden pieces.

"I could create… an obstacle for him," he thought quietly aloud, "Move the deckhand in front of my piece to cut him off."

"You could," she responded, and he knew it was the wrong move by the simple, flat way she said it. "But that deckhand is currently one of my defenders on one side, isn't it? The bishop would only need to move one space to put me in check."

Ah, damn. She was right about that, and he hadn't even considered it. He was bad at this.

Elizabeth was not though, and thankfully she was almost literally perched on his shoulder, like a not-so-innocent angel, offering him both good advice and terrible distractions with her lips. "So maybe we'll want to keep it there, just for now. What else can we do?"

He took a deep breath and refocused on the board, tried to see new movements he had overlooked. Could he mirror her father's move again? In a way, yes. Their bishops were different, locked to completely different colored squares, which meant he could bring his to stand right in front of the governor's, just as he'd done with his pawn. But it would not be to the same effect—pawns could block each other by standing right in front of each other. These two bishops could never truly block or pursue each other. Maybe that was worth mentioning?

He pointed it out, "… His Ana is facing our Gibbs, so they cannot intercept each other."

"Right."

She didn't say anything else. No clues, no hints. Nothing. Evidently, he was meant to try and solve this puzzle himself.

But he wasn't even completely certain what part of the game he was most meant to be looking at: the governor's bishop itself? Their waiting pawns? That gap opening up around the golden king? The poised queen? Everything seemed so unclear. The only other time he felt more lost and in over his head was while listening to Jack jabber on about honesty and dishonesty, about possibility and probably, about everything "a man can and can't do," all while saying as little about the Aztec gold and its curse as possible.

But then… in a way, that had been exactly Jack's point, hadn't it? Sometimes all the extra rules and possibilities didn't matter so much. They were just mud in the water, creating places for people to hide their secrets, making it harder to see a way down to the treasure waiting for him on the seafloor... He had to simplify—to see more clearly.

What could his bishop do or not do?

"I can move Gibbs in the same direction, but not on the same squares as your father's bishop."

"True…"

Elizabeth's thumb was moving again, along the edge of his shoulder. Was there another hole appearing in the shoulder's seam? Or was she…?

He swallowed, and forced himself to re-examine Gibbs' path. Starting from the farthest square out, he carefully considered the benefits and risks of stopping him on each individual square in the route. The farthest square would result in his capture. The next did nothing notable. The one he'd considered before would position him at an angle ready to capture the governor's exposed knight, but that was within reach of its neighboring rook. So again, that was probably nothing…

The first space closest to him, though, was the space right before Elizabeth, the breach in the wall meant to protect her. And if he couldn't think of anything else to do, he always certainly could fall back on offering her his protection, at the very least. Hell, his piece could even do it—he hadn't even touched it yet.

His mind made up, Will nodded to himself mentally. Then he turned his head as much as Elizabeth's perched head would allow.

"I could fill the space at your front—cover you."

A puff of hot air against his neck signaled a laugh from her, and he felt his face grow hot for an uncounted time—not only from the sensation of her proximity, but from the sense that what he suggested could be stupid enough to summon laughter. Was it really that bad?

But more than chuckle in his ear, Elizabeth finally pushed herself to sit back up, enabling to look at each face to face once more. And his shame was temporarily overtaken by how dazzling she was whenever she laughed in good humor. The sound of her giggles were light and airy, and he struggled to hear the mockery that might have been there, when her eyes were hidden from him.

Her hand remained on his shoulder, and he felt her fingers give him an affectionate squeeze before slipping a little down his back in a stroke that could have been sympathetic, and yet somehow felt more…

'Do not.'

She tipped her head and her smile to one side, looking towards him with an almost dreamlike expression that suggested her vision was turned towards an inner world as much as it was fixed on him. "That is also a possibility, yes."

That still wasn't a "yes," which meant she thought there was still something better he could do. But she still wasn't saying what it was….

And she still was running the tips of fingers along his back, looking at him through her eyelashes instead of paying the board any mind. He found himself unable to look away, even as his brow pinched and the back of his mind wondered whether her father was scowling. What was going on? Was this that fire again, being stoked back alive by each pass of her hand? Maybe he wasn't confused before, seeing what he wanted to see and nothing else. Maybe…

Maybe she really was burning like he was.

Maybe they needed to talk about things other than … than chess.

No—no "maybe"s. They needed to talk. He'd already bemoaned it to himself how many times this weekend alone? He'd given her that letter, and she still had its words wrapped up with her. He still hadn't found with her the chance to stop looking for assumptions, to ask her what they meant. There was something happening between them, around them, probably inside them—definitely inside him. That goddamn fire. And it had been a little pesky at first, muddling his sleep, making him turn to dreams in broad daylight. But now it was becoming outright vexing, practically stealing his attention away and holding it for ransom. They couldn't even get a single half-hour through one afternoon, one little parlor game, without this happening, whatever this was right now.

Oh, he knew what it was. Except there was a part of him almost scared to name it…

Elizabeth wasn't though. He could see it, with the way there was mischief in her eyes now. And though she glanced at the board to try and signal to him what it was she was supposed to be speaking about, he knew from the way she grinned that she was now very much of two different minds at once. When she leaned back into him, her were lips so close they brushed the shell of his ear:

"Could you thrust for me a little more lustily, my love? A bolder move may be to both our advantage…"

Ah, it was over for him now. There was not a thing in this world, not one single thing, that could have stopped the feverous surges of desire that her words had unleashed so intentionally. Strangely enough, it was not the double meaning of her words that laid him most to waste—though that part would no doubt play out in his mind many times throughout the rest of the night. No, it was what she'd call him, something completely new and other from the lovely song of her beckoning him by name:

'My love…'

It could have been seconds, it could have been an hour before Will saw anything else besides her again. Where they were and what they were there for didn't matter anymore. The only thing he cared to know was that Elizabeth was looking at him now, sitting in this small piece of the world and sharing every part of it she cared for with him. He knew he loved her—he'd known the moment she'd first called to him. And even though it still swept his feet out from under him almost every day, it felt like nothing at all compared to this euphoria of knowing for certain that she, she somehow loved him just as well.

How did he end up so lucky?

Eventually, he did see more again. The room they were in, the house, the company, the time. And he remembered what they were actually about, what her hidden meanings had actually been disguised behind: chess. With her father. Moving the queen—moving him.

Her words bounced back around his mind, and he looked for her hints in her eyes. They were twinkling like impish stars, and as the wave of feelings inside him pulled back, the joke caught back up with him at last. He smiled at her, and behind her fan they giggled together like they once had under the stairs aboard the Dauntless, when they'd been doing things they ought not.

Eventually, they both looked back to board. To "thrust more lustily," she meant he ought to strike out farther than just the one space. Perhaps he'd been too distracted by the situation with her father's bishop—he hadn't looked all that much at what the piece he was meant to be was really capable of doing.

But now he saw it: if he took his queen out all the way to the edge of the board, then he would be in range of…

"His king?"

Elizabeth smiled at him: check.

The fan came down again at last. Will struck at his father with a quick and sure placement of his crowned piece. When Elizabeth's right hand slipped from his shoulder to snake her fingers into between the grips of his left, he welcomed it with a kiss.

And for the rest of the night, the only game he could really think of was the game he'd have to play to finally get this brilliant woman some time with him alone, at last.

The rest of the game played out without much fanfare. With Will as Elizabeth's hands, learning while they played through his first match together, they put up a reasonably good fight. It almost looked like it could have been a stalemate, for a while. They might have even won, in better circumstances. However, father had won, of course.

Elizabeth had tried to stay engaged for Will's sake, to speak up when he looked at her with such flattering expectations that she would know exactly what to do. She wanted to care about the game, to be excited for this moment of bonding between her father and future husband. But the truth was, as the game progressed, she knew less and less what was happening between the competing players—only knowing more and more of what she wanted to be happening between her and her teammate, before their clock struck midnight. She'd been driven deep into distraction, and by now the climb back from it was so far uphill she didn't feel at all trying. Not tonight.

Father barely said a word throughout the match, probably because he became so competitive and focused. And probably because he was simply tired.

That was a large part of her situation as well. She was simply worn out from the long succession of "firsts" that had come throughout this even longer day: she'd received her first sword, and her first private duel. She'd watched, to some extent, Will try his first bath, and his first real suit—oh, how many combinations of those suits! And finally, he got to try his hand at an actual chess match. Between it all, there'd been so many highs and lows, with emotions washing over her like the changing tides.

And the strongest of those feelings all came from having Will so constantly near her. It was the truest, biggest "first" of this entire weekend, for her—they hadn't been together this constantly in… four years years? Five? And once night had begun to fall, giving room for the tree frogs and night birds under the stars outside, Elizabeth answered the calls that came from the baser, simple joys bubbling up inside her. She cleared her mind of everything else, and allowed herself to take an easy pleasure in simply watching Will, counting his smiles, keeping note of what conjured his frowns or sparked his biggest questions.

In the middle of it all, she found herself actually feeling as though something about everything that was happening was too good to be true; that she would wake up in the morning to a dreary life where they were parted again, while her heart cracked into two from the weight of facing the world with him on its other side. Life was so full of things that could go wrong, until recently, her future had been so full of inevitabilities she'd dreaded—how was it they had come to be here like this? How could she be so happy?

She almost had to pinch herself a few times, and at other times she had to reach out to touch him, just once more, to be absolutely certain it was all was still real.

It was. Which not only meant that the day's events had been better than magic, but also, like she'd dreaded before, they were coming to an end. The game was over now. No matter how she wished to fight it, tomorrow was coming for them all.

Father stood, and Will slipped from her fingers as he followed his lead, so that he could reach across the board and shake hands. It was time to say good night.

"There's no shame in losing, especially after a match like that," father said to Will. "I hope Elizabeth's advice was at least educational."

"Very much, thank you," Will answered with only the faintest, traceable hint of irony in his voice.

She would have found it funny if she didn't find his parting so distressing.

"Now, wait a moment," she insisted, reaching for the elbow of Will's coat sleeve. "That wasn't a proper match, two against one. That was just Will's introductory lesson. You ought to try really playing each other, one-to-one."

To her surprise, Will was the one to counter her, looking at her with a discernible heaviness starting to appear behind his eyes, "I would love to, Elizabeth. But I must confess I can offer no more competition at this hour. And even if I could, tomorrow will begin much earlier for me, to make up for today. I must go."

She understood. She really did… in her mind. She knew very well that Will needed time to rest, and time travel. She wanted him to rest, to have a full night's sleep and a fulfilling day's work. Because, as much as she hated it, she knew he needed to give his time to his work first. His time was not yet his to take and give so freely. She knew that.

However, in her heart, one more hour felt like so little for him to give and so much for her gain all at once. And she herself was tired—tired enough to forget herself, and what was right or wrong or even considerate.

Soon her lips moved of their own accord, voicing her faltering, selfish protests, "But… if you stayed… Perhaps, we could…"

What? They could what? She wasn't naive. She saw the way Will had tensed up when her hands touched his hips. Just because she knew better than to believe either of them were prepared for anything beyond a little bundling, at best. And Father would never tolerate them bedding together, not this early in their courtship. Bedding with father would only be awkward. Putting him in the guest house would be no different than if he'd gone to his bed at home. Furthermore, no matter how late he stayed, or even if spent the night, he would still have to make his journey back to the smith well before breakfast…

"Mister Turner is welcome to come back next weekend, Elizabeth," father tried to assure her. He was also beginning to look visibly tired. But for some reason, his voice reminded her of how he spoke to her when she was a child, and it only irritated her. "For now, he has given you his answer. And if I'm not mistaken by Mister Strother's hovering in the hall with a lantern in hand, Mister Spotswood has already prepared the horses."

Glancing out the drawing room doorway proved father correct, and Elizabeth felt her stomach begin turning into knots of disappointment. And the knots were quickly made worse, when she considered how foolish she felt for feeling this way at all. It wasn't as though this parting was any, truly long goodbye or anything else out of the ordinary. It was, actually, very ordinary. Before this weekend, going a week without seeing him in person had been the most ordinary thing in the world.

When she looked back at Will, she only saw apologies in his eyes, and somehow it only made her feel more desperate to stop him from leaving her. Perhaps not for an hour, but… just a few minutes? If not here, then maybe…

Without observance for Elizabeth's internal debate, her father waved an indirect finger towards his butler's direction. "Mister Strother will see you downstairs, Mister Turner. If you meet Mister Spotswood, he will see you home, as we discussed."

Ah! This could be a chance to bring up her earlier argument again, now that father was growing weary of the night. Perhaps he'd have less resistance now…

"I would like to accompany him—" Elizabeth insisted, while also trying to stand up once, but failing.

"I cannot allow that," father asserted, and offered no further explanation or visible interest in debate.

Expecting that response, she protested anyway, again trying unsuccessfully to draw herself to her feet while arguing, "But if I ride with him down there, Mister Spotswood and I can just bring—"

"You may see him as far as the stables, as I said before," father finished with a certainty she knew could not be argued against. "And that is the end of the discussion."

She pouted so mightily it may as well have been a scowl. Nothing about this last part of her day was going like she wanted, and she couldn't see why. She wasn't asking for that much. They'd have a chaperone with them, and no one would be able to recognize them at this time of night. She just wanted to hold onto her heart a little longer, was that really so much to ask?

Also, her knees were growing achy and unpleasant again. Either the bath had helped only for a little while, or their hour-long sit had undone its benefits. Why was everything so unfair to her right now? It felt like nothing was coming together the way it was meant to. She felt her stomach twisting anxiously again, as thoughts from the night before creeped back into her mind, fears that she and Will would soon start to grow stagnant or fall backwards into places in their lives neither of them wanted to be.

She was halfway through the motion of opening her mouth to complain at her father more, when suddenly Will slipped back out of Elizabeth's hands by gently shrugging his elbow. Before she could redirect her grievances in his direction, she found him offering for a replacement an open palm with a dimpling grin.

Temporarily, her tongue was stopped. His offered posture she knew was for her support, but his charming manner seemed purely for her delight.

And in spite of her irritation, she was delighted: the former knots in her stomach were replaced altogether by the exhilarating flutters that time with him continually incited in her heart. Her own misgivings melted with such little effort whenever Will could help feed the fires of her certainties with his own. How extraordinary it was, especially when he had been so uncertain, so long, about so many things. That he could confidently extend his hand to her in the way he was now still felt like a small miracle.

'No… it's getting better. Everything will come together soon, I can feel it.'

But first they had to re-assemble. So, with Will's helping hand, Elizabeth pushed her stiff knees to lift herself onto the carpet, beside him.

Then Elizabeth prolonged her own pleasure in accepting the support he'd offered. She was ever and always happy for any touch she could take, even when it involved leaning on him a little heavier than usual, the way she did now to accommodate the slight tinge flaring in her unbent knees. And after her feet had settled on the ground, she let her hands linger over him. There was a fresh indulgence to partake in the allure of his eyes, and she took it greedily, with her fingers reaching one more time to examine the smoothed contours of his softening smile.

Somehow, the return of his naked face was rapidly becoming familiar again… and yet somehow it wasn't the same as the face she'd known before. She'd been worried time would begin to turn back, that with the extra youthfulness returning to his appearance, so would his past, imbalanced sense of decorum. Yet thus far the boldness in his sunlit eyes was as vibrant as ever. And instead she realized she could see that the man in front of her was still the one who raised his chin and voice to an encirclement of bayonets, not the boy who had bowed his head under an invisible thumb of shame. She saw a man visibly committed to improving her father's esteem, seeking their fullest happiness while wholeheartedly honoring the love they'd promised each other.

And he was so beautiful.

Even if her father couldn't appreciate all of it in the same way she did, Elizabeth felt much more certain he would soon fully recognize the beauty in Will's noble spirit. Yes, those fires of certainty igniting both her and Will's hearts would one day kindle some assurance in father as well—it was practically inevitable. Perhaps today he would merely appreciate the cooperation displayed in Will's more genteel grooming. Then they could talk of swords again, or find something else new to enjoy together. They both loved her, and she loved them both—that was what mattered. And even if today hadn't been perfect between them, tomorrow they could breathe anew and start over, day after day until practice would make it perfect.

"I'll go get my shoes…"

The room felt Elizabeth's absence as keenly as a hole carved right through it. Despite the somewhat better exchanges between her father and himself, Will couldn't help once again feeling that hole fill up with a silently deep sense of awkwardness between them. He wasn't surprised and therefore not too disappointed, despite the twists of anxiety in him. The two of them were utterly hopeless together, but in the most absolutely opposite way from the effortless connection Will felt between himself and Elizabeth. As they sat there looking blankly at each other, fidgeting and swaying, their exchanged smiles were so tight and flat, there might as well have been hot pokers jabbing at their backs, prodding for even a little warmth from the practically dead hearth that was their non-existent bond.

A laugh hiccuped from Will's belly and out his nose at the thought. It was followed by a tiny jolt of alarm that the governor would think he'd committed an error—letting his mind wander, or possibly laughing at him. But almost as though the laugh that left Will had been caught by him, the governor let out his own single laugh as well. And though it didn't grow from there, though their smiles were still small, they felt more natural. Perhaps one little, glowing ember had been found in the ashes.

The governor cast his eyes downward, appearing thoughtful.

"I apologize for her brazenness, Mister Turner," he offered with a candor Will did not expect. "I've done my best with her, but there are times she entirely forgets or refuses to hold her whims in check."

Many quiet arguments flashed through Will's mind for a moment. The governor wasn't wrong—Elizabeth lived life a certain way that swayed heavily between motivations of fierce compassion and unbridled selfishness. Those whims, those moments of her forgetting or refusing to resist them, were part of what made Elizabeth who she was. She simply wouldn't have been herself without them. And, yes, her feelings could be hard to predict, sometimes hard to understand or respond to—but then so were his own, in their own times.

Will didn't need or want to be with a saint. He needed to be with her.

In the end, admitting as much was the only thing he could think of saying that wouldn't pour another untimely bit of tension over the two of them. So he simply looked at her father with a steady eye, hoping the man would see the full extent of the fervor he felt in his heart.

"I love her, sir."

The governor's returning expression was almost inscrutable, with his eyes cast back down again. Was that a little sadness in the wrinkles on his brow? Or was it wistfulness?

Whatever it was, it was soon overshadowed by the sincerity that settled over him, as he spoke in a strained whisper, "As do I."

An invisible thread tied itself around Will's chest, tight but fragile. Its other end spanned the stoic distance between the two of them, connecting with a piece of the governor's heart. They understood each other in this—this one thing they would always understand about each other, no matter whatever else they could not come to agree on.

The governor raised his eyes again, and looked Will squarely in the face, "It could have been a prince."

The string fell away, and the great stone of discouragement dropped heavily back into the pit of Will's stomach. What prince? With no other context besides the topic of his love for Elizabeth, the only thing that came to mind was that her father was again lamenting who he, Will Turner, was not. She could have had a prince—she should have had a prince. She was worthy of the very best among husbands. And Will… was not anything of the sort.

After the calm of the truce had settled between them, such a thought caught Will off guard, and struck him so harshly he felt almost dumb.

"I'm sorry?"

What had he done wrong? Would it always be like this—an impossible feat to please this man for more than a moment?

For his answer, the governor popped his chin in the direction of the chessboard. Their finished match still spread across it like a monument to their first proper battle.

"This is a war," he said. "The queen could have been the king's son, yet you chose to believe a king would go with his queen into battle."

The stone weighing down Will's guts fell and rolled away entirely, and relief filled the hollow left behind. Then a sort of bemusement followed soon after.

"Yes," he answered, unsure of what else to say.

What was the point of that comment? Was there a question in there? If it was only a remark, had his assumption been all that remarkable?

It had seemed so obvious to him that the piece should be a queen. But perhaps this was one of those differences that existed between people who worked for their village and people who worked for the Crown? He'd hardly remembered that the affairs of kings, and especially of their princes, were more than the stories of far off lands or fairy tales. Why would he? Those palace dwellers had almost nothing to do with him out here in the Caribbean. The only ways they crossed paths was through declarations of the empire's changing laws and shifting tariffs. And he certainly had never been to war.

But even in war, he could hardly imagine what use any of those people would be to him in a battle, anyhow. Were there any kings or princes fighting to protect Port Royal when the Black Pearl attacked?

No… No, thinking back on the fights he had to face against Barbossa's pirates, the one true ally Will had fought beside and would choose to fight beside again first and foremost, had been Elizabeth. It didn't matter that she wasn't trained properly. Through their coordinated plans and shared weaponry, he found a certain unity with her that was unlike what he'd felt with anyone else, bolstered as it was by a trust he knew he could depend on in any place, time, or circumstance. Maybe it was only from experience—from years past playing at war together, dreaming it could one day become real for this reason or that. But whatever the reason, there was not one other person in the world he'd choose to watch his back in a fight before her, not even the world's most decorated admiral or swordmaster.

Of course, he imagined the second crown to be a queen. With a woman like Elizabeth in his life, how could he think differently? She was already a queen to him—he was just lucky she saw him as anything more than a pawn to begin with.

There was no elaboration. The governor simply looked at Will throughout his confused puzzling, studying something on or over his person for a full minute, before turning back to his trademark, ambiguous nods.

Elizabeth returned then, wiggling a little as she leaned upon the drawing room door frame, in order to better nudge one of her shoes onto its assigned foot.

"I'm ready!" she announced, a little breathless from the rush she'd made. Then she raised an eyebrow at him in one of her teasing motions. "Unless you've changed your mind, of course."

As she walked back to him, the beating of Will's heart tapped to the timing of her feet, and leaped a little more strongly when she was back at his side, taking his hand and arm once more.

"Would that I could," he lamented, before lifting their joined hands up so he could plant a fresh kiss on her skin.

She pursed her lips in a pout that was partly playful, but still sincere.

He was sorry to go, truly. But the world never waited for him or what he wanted—it would be a strange and rare thing if it ever did. Until then, he could only count each extra minute she tried to spend on him, and consider himself lucky she had.

The sound of the governor yawning drew their shared attention. He covered his face with one hand and signaled an apology with the other. "I apologize—that came out unexpectedly. I think I'll retire for the night, if you don't mind my absence."

"Of course not," Will answered, understanding the need to get a good night's rest. But after a split-second, he realized he'd just said, very quickly, that he would not mind the governor's absence, and began to stammer out awkward corrections, "That is—not that we would want you gone! I didn't—What I meant—"

Elizabeth was laughing, fanning up the redness in his face.

The governor simply shook his head and waved a placative hand. "I understand. Thank you for your cooperation." Then before disappearing into his chambers he leveled the two of them with a very pointed look. "I hope you have a good night, and continue to demonstrate such fine cooperation with Misters Strother and Spotswood on your way out."

"Not that there's much left for us to cooperate through, anyhow," Elizabeth cut off Will's agreement. He did not fail to notice the glimmer in her eye as she did so.

"Indeed…" her father muttered, evidently having noticed the same gleam Will had.

In four long strides, the governor had come to stand toe-to-toe with his daughter. Quietly and, if he were honest, with some fascination, Will watched as Governor Swann cupped Elizabeth's face in his hands, and planted one single kiss in the roots of her hair. A memory came to him, from exactly when or where he couldn't say, of a night colder than this, lit only by the light of a single fireplace. Someone had kissed him like that once, when his head was so small the hands that cradled it had nearly surrounded his entire head…

"Remember yourself," the governor beseeched his daughter in a private tone.

Will watched her face shift to something a little less unruly, eased by her affections for her father. "I always do."

Then they all said good night, and parted. The governor left for his chambers with the accompaniment of his valet, meanwhile Will and Elizabeth tailed Mister Strother out of the drawing room, and towards the darkness of the stairs. Though her fingers clasped him tightly, Elizabeth said nothing to Will as they walked, not even in the brief moment she hesitated again at the tops of the staircase. He thought of asking her about her knees. But once they began their descent, the sharp look she gave him told him enough: her pride was more wounded than her body, and he knew prodding such a tender wound would do no good.

When their feet struck the middle landing, she sent him another similarly intent look, and he started to doubt himself. Did she want him to ask her something? Perhaps she was hoping he would say he changed his mind, and really did wish to stay? He offered another apologetic smile he hoped she could see in the mansion's shadows.

"If you would like to meet me tomorrow, I usually have finished most of my work by—"

"Not now!" she hissed.

He closed his mouth and blinked. So she didn't want to speak? Then what were these looks for? Was she angry with him? If so, why was she clutching him so tight?

It was when they arrived on the stair's bottom landing that her body tensed, her fingers gripping his hand and arm like a vice. Then she finally began to offer some insight.

"Wait," she breathed, just barely audible. "Walk more slowly… quietly."

Ah… He should have known she'd be plotting something. In all the time he'd known her, Elizabeth Swann rarely ever took 'no' for an answer—not without a fight… or a scheme. He wasn't sure what it was she meant to do, and he knew he probably ought to insist they continue on to see him on his way out. But, god help him, whenever she wished to lead, he could hardly resist the urge to follow. He was curious… And he was hopeless.

So in time with her, he shortened his stride, taking more careful steps off the landing, onto the foyer's main floor. When Mister Strother turned around to peer over his shoulder and make sure they both were still there, they both smiled, perfectly innocent of any wrongdoing. He rolled his eyes, approached the doors, and reached for the keys in his pocket.

"This way," she hissed as lowly as she could, under the jangling of the butlers' keys.

And tugging on his arm, Elizabeth led Will as swiftly and silently as they could manage, through the back entrance of the unlit dining hall. Once through the door, she did not lead him all the way into the hall, but turned to the left and reached for a pair of handles that Will hadn't immediately noticed sticking out from the wall's trim. She pulled them open, and revealed a hidden pantry, shelves mostly bare within.

Before he could even turn to shoot a questioning glance in her direction, her hand was on his shoulder pushing him forward into the closet. He stumbled inside and spun around, just as she joined him, closing one door of the pantry. But before she could close the second door, his eyes caught sight of the corner of the dining hall's rug, overturned by Elizabeth's haste to disappear. He caught the door with his hand, then with his fingers to his lips to signal her silent patience, he bent outward to reach for the rug and flip its corner back over.

Then he crept with his hands back into the pantry until he could stand up straight, and the second door was snapped shut.

"Miss Swann?" Harold's voice called in confusion. Then, after a beat of silence, footsteps disappeared in a direction that sounded like the doors leading to father's parlor.

Just as Elizabeth hoped.

She let out a triumphant little cheer, and tried to find Will's face in the pitch-dark.

"I can't believe that actually worked," he muttered, and the lowered pitch in his normally-soft voice rumbled through the silence with an almost alarming resonance.

Her hand followed the sound to press the pads of her fingers to his lips, telling him through touch to lower the volume of his speaking. She stepped a little closer into him—purely for the purposes of better maintaining their silence, of course. Certainly not with any questionable excuse to feel the warmth of his body radiating in the night.

"Yes, well, I think you'll find I've learned a trick or two over the years," she breathed.

As her fingers slipped from his lips down his chin, Elizabeth felt Will's hand fall on the swell of her hips, lower than where her stays reached. It was likely an accident—he couldn't see a thing, after all—but once settled, his hands were not moved by him or her. She had dressed casually for the evening, in that same light robe she liked so much, with only a single petticoat beneath. And she found herself liking the gown much more now, having discovered the way she could feel his touch so distinctly through the thinner layers of cotton that shrouded her skin. In the dark, he was mostly heat—every part of him anywhere near her taunting with a reminder of how close they were. And even though there was the scent of honey and soft powders on him, she could still detect the more rustic tangs of fire in his clothes. She didn't need to see him to know what pictures his heart was likely painting in his eyes—she could hear in the hitch of his breath that they were the same as her own. She felt a yearning inside her, warmth answering warmth from deep in her belly.

And if she leaned just a little closer, she could taste…

No. Though everything in her cried for his kiss, she pulled back, fearing once they started she simply would not be able to stop. As intensely tempting as it was—and oh, oh, it was—they likely would only be able to pull this trick once. If they were caught in a passionate embrace here, father would never again grant them even instances of privacy from a distance. And she did have other reasons for coming here with Will, truly.

"We don't have much time," she lamented. "They'll check here soon."

When she removed her hand from him, she felt the puff of his laugh on her cheek, and had to resist again the impulse to bring his mouth down over hers.

"Even after you've turned twenty years old?" Will questioned, with as much incredulity as he could muster in this hushed volume.

"Possibly? I don't know—I just don't think we can rely on this spot forever. We have to get outside," she hissed back, then drew herself away from him and pressed her back against the uncomfortable ledges of the closet's shelves. "Listen for the back door…"

Elizabeth's heartbeat counted the seconds twice over. She heard footsteps come back out of the parlor, cross the foyer, and approach the dining hall's front doors. She felt Will brushed against her side, and lost count of the beats inside her, instead becoming enthralled by the sound of his voice muted in each exhale he breathed. She found his hand hanging down near hers, and tangled their fingers together like a fistful of desperate lovers.

"I'm sorry, Will," she breathed.

Though sightless, she could hear his lips part, and she wanted them. With her free hand she clutched at the edge of one of the shelves behind her, anchoring herself to this side-by-side stance in this cramped space.

"Sorry for what?" he whispered. Under the hush of his question, it sounded as though he genuinely did not know.

She felt the heat in their connected hands rising up her arm, reaching into the apples of her cheeks.

"For…" She stumbled, surprised that he didn't remember their awkward moment, after seeing the tension in his face at the time. "For before," she said. And then she waited again, hoping that would be enough to remind him without summoning more of her embarrassment.

The quiet between them stretched long—much longer than it ought to, thanks to the dark making it impossible to tell what it was Will was feeling. If there were candles lit or the moon creeping through the dining hall to slip through the cracks of the closet's doors, maybe she could have made out the details of his face. But as it was, she was only just beginning to catch the shape of his silhouette. Why wasn't he saying anything? Did he still not know what she was talking about? Oh hell, he was really going to make her spell it out…?

Why did she always have to spell it out for him?

She swallowed against her pride. "The breeches. I didn't mean to touch you in any way that would make you upset—I was only trying to be helpful, and I didn't think that... I overstepped," she finished her stammering weakly.

"Oh…" was all that Will said at first, sounding like he was still lost. But before Elizabeth could huff and really, actually say it plainly, he added a quick, "Oh, that!" Memory had seemed to finally strike him, thank god.

She nodded, hoping that his eyes would be able to see it by now.

His next breath bounced on a single chuckle. "I wasn't upset with you. You were very close—it took me by surprise. And there were…" a pause, as he seemed unsure of what he wanted to say, "other things happening that made me a little uncomfortable. For a moment."

Smiling to herself, she tipped her head back against the shelves with a small thud. Mostly, she felt relieved she'd misread his reaction to her earlier advances, but there was also amusement swirling in her over the way their tolerances to their supervision seemed to differ. There was a boundary she had crossed. But evidently, it was not because he'd disliked what she had been doing, as she had supposed, so much as he'd disliked that a certain judgmental father had been watching. How silly of her not to consider it! She was so used to having eyes on them at all times, and he'd shown so little hesitation in exchanging affection with her overall, she thought that who was watching wouldn't matter. But now that she thought about it, when father was with them, Will had only given her the most chaste of all his kisses. And he had been trying so genuinely to improve his image in her father's eyes—she'd been so overwhelmed with her own wants, she had allowed herself to be quite unconcerned with his efforts.

Well. That was in the past. She'd wasted part of their evening overlooking both their feelings and pining for him unnecessarily. But they were alone, for the moment. Actually, really, truly alone.

And she couldn't help but ask, "Are you uncomfortable now?"

A quiet heartbeat pulsed once through their connected hands.

"That's not what I would call it," she barely heard him say.

Ah, what was she doing? She'd been practically out of her mind today, wishing for a chance to whisk herself and Will away to somewhere secluded. And now that they were here, she was actually resisting? Whatever for?! Was she afraid of being caught, or had she actually been telling herself that to avoid considering the possibility of Will responding with rejection? He'd rejected her before… But that had been before-before, before everything had changed. He was different now. And she wanted him so terribly…

She swallowed to even the moisture in her mouth, followed by a deep breath to still her heart a little. Then pivoting on her shoulder to lean against the shelves, she turned to face him. Dim as it was, she could make out the shape of him, and that his head had swiveled back in her direction.

"I thought we don't have time," he questioned, but the stroking of his thumb over hers gave him away.

"We have until the back door is opened or they find us. It's better than nothing… even if it's not much," she reassured, and continued trying to force her eyes to make peace with the darkness, so she could see the thoughts on his face, see his eyes…

He responded mimicking her changed posture, leaning one shoulder against the cabinet's back shelving and turning to face her. "We're not listening very well, are we?"

"Perhaps not…" But who cared anymore? Not her… All she wanted now was to feel his hands back on her hips, clutching at her back, buried in her hair. Hell, she wanted to bury her hands in his hair, to bury her tongue in his mouth, the way she'd done in the smithy. She felt her body flare to life at the thought, and before she could think exactly of how she ought to broach it, her free hand had already reached for him. Her first impulse had been to snare his coat in her fingers, and press him back against the shelves, hard. But at the last possible second, a more reasonable part of her mind suggested she ought to build up to it this time, and instead she took his lapel in a flirtatious rub between her fingers.

"You've been wonderful today," she sighed, her mind still rolling through that last long and languid kiss with an anticipation greedy for its reprise. "I've had the time of my life with you… and a hell of a time keeping my hands to myself this evening."

"Except I felt your hands on me quite often," he laughed lowly, again some of his voice coming into his whisper and sending a few little rumbles through his chest.

Though she considered chiding him, Elizabeth was interrupted from doing so with a brush she felt against her hip. The unexpected sensation made her jump for a split-second, before realizing it was only his hand searching for her, exactly as she'd been hoping for. This time she knew his touch was with intention, so she melted into the careful grasp of his fingers.

Clutching his coat the way she'd first desired, she drew them both closer together for her answer. "My lips, then, if you must know."

She felt his chest rise and fall, caught a glance of the whites of his teeth, as he led their interlocked hands to rest over his chest. "You're not forgetting that prize of yours, are you?"

"Why would I? I meant what I wanted…" Together their joined fingers went lax, allowing her to slide her hands out from under his. "If you wouldn't leave me now, I… we'd—"

The sound of his breath caught between them, while his free hand wrapped her round her back, pulled her close, pressing her stays flush between them and catching her breath as well. Up her palm flowed in a slow glide towards his shoulder, feeling every thick, hearty thread in his coat scrape and roll against her hand, telling stories of who he was underneath, until she'd cupped him behind his neck.

"Will…" her mouth grazed over his once. Thrilling waves rushed through her as he returned his own gentle nudge, then brought his lips down to nestle with her own.

"Miss Swann!" shattered the silence, and the hurried footsteps that followed, jogging up the stairs, tore Will's face away from Elizabeth's.

'Oh, fuck you to hell, Harold!' she cursed in her head, while making a sound between a snarl and a groan out loud.

As she did, Will breathed out another single laugh, then let his forehead fall upon her shoulder. She wanted to laugh with him. More than that, everything in her wished to pull his face back to hers, to kiss him into forgetting anything outside mattered more than this moment between them. But she could hear doors open upstairs, and feet shuffling in other rooms—

"Harold? What's happened?" she thought she heard her father's voice bouncing off the walls in the stairwell.

Now she really did groan, "Oh, for god's sake…" They'd waited too long. The house was becoming a rush, and the moment as it had been had been shattered. And not only that, the game was over—she would absolutely be in trouble with father for this failed stunt. "We need to go," she hissed, and unwrapped herself from Will's arms to reach for the closet doors.

She forced herself to focus back on their circumstances, not how much she hated them. She realized they'd never heard the house's back door open—but there was a chance it hadn't been locked up for the night yet. If they both moved fast and smart enough, they could maybe make a run for the front doors in the event that the back was already sealed. And, well…

"If the back and front doors are both locked, we'll make a run for the parlor—pretend we'd been there all along," she instructed, already panting a little from the mad dash that was about to come.

"If you say so…" Will muttered ti her, slipping into position partially behind her with a hand poised on her back, as though preparing to give her an encouraging little push.

She wished he wouldn't. Every touch from him lately kept sending her mind reeling backward in distracted remembrance of him holding her, earlier that afternoon…

'Shut up, idiot mind!' The sooner they made it outside, the sooner they could try for that kiss again.

Voices and footsteps were painting a completely different picture from the ones that kept threatening to swim before her eyes, of an impromptu meeting with different household staff on the upstairs landing. If they walked to the back doors, there was a risk they could be seen by someone looking down the stairwell. They needed to be quick and careful. Together they listened for the indication that most servants had already gone upstairs, that the foyer was cleared below and unwatched from above.

There was still a little shuffling about, but the moment seemed like it was coming. Elizabeth tensed, readying to make her run. Out of the black, Will's lips took a chance to place a kiss on the back of her shoulder, making her shiver. She gasped.

Then the silence came, and she flung the closet doors open.

Out they both slipped, trying not to trip over each other or draw attention to the sounds of their escape as they sealed the closet back up. With her skirts hitched in one hand, Elizabeth shuffled out the dining hall door, rushing around the banister that framed the foyer's lower alcove, and practically skipping down its stairs.

Yet Will, the reckless fool that he could be, attempted to leap over the banister. And while he did technically manage the jump itself, he seemed to misjudge the tightness of the space where he would be landing. He nearly ran into the settee nestled in the back corner, and in his efforts to avoid crashing his shins into that couch, stumbled backwards in an overcorrection that sent him straight into a pedestal which had once held one of father's prized vases.

On the one hand they were lucky—the vase had been stolen by the Black Pearl's looters the night of the pirates' raid. On the other hand, the empty pedestal still made a grinding, hollow sound, announcing up the stairwell its tenuous wobbling on the stone floor.

Will's wide eyes met Elizabeth's, while the upstairs meeting audibly came to a halt.

"Elizabeth?" she heard her father call.

Frantically, she reached for the latches on the back doors and pulled.

They opened!

She whirled around to wave Will to her and all but shove him through the doors before her, sending him tottering onto the garden's whistling way. She followed after him. Then in a scramble, she shut the doors behind her, taking some care not to slam them, but no longer bothering with perfect silence. Speed was more important now. And once she was satisfied that the doors were secure, she snatched her hand out for Will's, missed, swiveled her head to actually look where he was standing, then finally grabbed his hand and began walking at a rapid clip down the whistling way. They needed to get nearer the stables, to at least create a pretense of having followed father's instructions.

"What the hell was that?!" Elizabeth sputtered over her shoulder at Will, referring to his failed jump over the alcove banister.

Even though they were outside now, rushing down the covered path between concealing hedges on either side, the stables were near the cook house and servants quarters. There was always a chance that servants could be awake and taking in the night air—a chance someone would be able to hear them from behind a bush from the shadows. She didn't want this part of their escape route to be spoiled too.

Will didn't whisper, but he did keep his volume lower as he replied, "I thought it'd be faster—I didn't know there was a seat back there! Why do you have so many bloody chairs?!"

A laugh caught itself in her throat and came out like a scoff. What was it with him and the chairs thing? And also, "Estrella was sitting on it yesterday!" Didn't he remember?

He lengthened his stride to be walking beside her instead of just behind her. "I didn't pay attention to her—I was kissing you!"

She'd never been more jealous of her own self before than she'd been this entire evening.

They came to the end of the main whistling way, where its path intersected some of the main servant's paths leading to their quarters and the cook house, and Elizabeth slowed them to a halt. She raked her bottom lip under her teeth, peering through the crossroads for signs of other people while debating whether she and Will could stop where they were and find some dark corner to hide in for a moment.

But no—they needed to find a way to end this, one that would cool father's temper somehow, and make it all seem like a harmless prank. They could kiss at the stables.

The coast seemed clear. She pulled Will forward and together they continued, off the official path and towards the back sides of the cook house.

"Well, you could have looked where you were leaping!" she continued as though there had been no break in their conversation.

"I did! It's dark!" he pushed back, now starting to sound a little annoyed. Then after a beat, he added, "And I was distracted by the thought of kissing you!"

That was it. She had had it!

As they rounded a corner to the left, Elizabeth used the momentum of their turn to swing Will forward, clumsily pinning him against the wall of the stables. He'd only had time to grunt and open his mouth for questions, when without grace or caution, she covered those questions with her desire, forming a connection that was messy and frantic. Open lips jostled for a moment, seeking out the most gratifying fit to come together. Once found, she coaxed his lips into following her lead, and she felt him accept her position hungrily, drinking in every bit of lust she was sighing into him by weaving his fingers tightly through her hair, drawing her deeper. Eagerly she answered, falling under his spell. In every little cusp and cavity of her body Elizabeth's pulse raced so hard it felt like her heart was screaming with delight, pushing her to thrust her tongue inside him almost aggressively. A deep, pleasurable sound rumbled in his throat, and she nearly gasped when he answered with equal enthusiasm, entangling her in a mad dance they'd never engaged in so desperately before.

It was more than she'd ever had, yet for an unmeasured moment, she still found herself prodding, seeking, aching for that part of him that would finally douse the fire raging inside her.

At length, they were able to soften their dance into something slower, until their mouths released their embrace altogether with a soft, wet pop. However, Elizabeth hovered close, relishing the way their shaking, feverish breaths extended the tingling of their kiss in short, heady gusts of longing. Her forearms were nearly trembling where they lay against his chest, from the effort of leaning into him. She felt her body simultaneously buzzing with that same want and excitement all over, allowing herself to remain mesmerized under the dark and fervent reflection she caught beneath Will's eyelashes.

"Better?" she asked.

"No," he rasped, and there was a desperation weighing his voice which she recognized inside her. When she moved to bring his mouth down on hers again, he pressed his head back in a gentle signal of resistance, and she paused to hear him beg, "No, Elizabeth, I want—I need to spend more time with you than only this. Time alone. And away from here."

"I've been thinking the very same thing," she gasped, drawing back at last out of the thrill of discovering this secret harmony between them.

Will took a deep breath, and when he released it, it came out in a sigh that curved his lips. He let his hands drift down her neck, teasing her all over again, until they settled on her shoulders. With a gentle squeeze, he persuaded her take a step back despite her reluctance, and allow the night to soothe the raw edges of their attraction. Crickets played their lullabies, helping ease Elizabeth's aching.

But the stars scattered bright pinpricks of earnest wishes inside Will's eyes. "When can you meet me?"

His voice was a calmer hush now, and at last Elizabeth could feel the mania inside her begin to settle into something resembling contentment. Although it was slowing, her heart's beat remained strong enough to rattle her bones, thinking ahead of when she could escape this walled-in world to meet like this again, and finally wrap herself around and inside of Will's love without hesitancy or interruptions.

She sighed, taking one more step back from him, who drove her so easily, so far out of her mind. In some residual frustration, she reached up to cup her hands behind her own neck, trying to dispel the last of the ghosts from Will's touch, which were still making it difficult for her to think: They both had their duties to return to throughout the week. Without a doubt, she'd be occupied with training up the incoming staff, in addition to catching up on everything she'd been avoiding for the past month and a half.

She began walking towards the front of the stables with her head bent up, watching clouds blanket patches of stars overhead, knowing Will would follow.

"I have a few gambits waiting up my sleeve to play…" she mused carefully. "… But they'll require a bit of setup. I doubt I could break free until this coming weekend, when we meet again. And even then, this little disaster might have shot my chances right through the foot."

Unfortunately, she was fairly certain she'd need to smooth things over with father, after failing to make this detour briefly and discretely. She'd meant to only draw Will away for this quick discussion they'd finally arrived at. But she was… admittedly a little weak to resisting her feelings' abilities to lure her down distracting detours that seemed like shortcuts to her desires.

'Perhaps shortcuts really do make long delays…'

"Why not tomorrow night?" Will asked, having caught up with her enough to start walking in step.

The suggestion gleamed in front of her heart like a new tantalizing lure. Tomorrow would be an incredible improvement over waiting the entire week, a shortcut she could hardly resist the call of. But, again, she anticipated herself being quite occupied with training the new housekeeper…

She began to admit as much, saying, "I… I would have to persuade father to—wait, tomorrow night?"

Her feet came to a halt. Blinking as Will's full proposal registered belatedly, she dropped her hands and turned to face him.

The moon was hidden, but the light of the stars was bright and her eyes adjusted enough she could see the way his lips were tucked to their right, saying for him without his saying: yes.

Incredulity struck Elizabeth in between her eyes, making it hard for her to process the questions bouncing around in her mind like tennis balls. She had to ask again, just grasp it properly, "At night, you want to meet?"

Will's eyebrows rose a little bit: yes!

"Well, considering father's insistence I not go anywhere after dark, I'm not sure how that's supposed to…" she started to mutter, then trailed off as her thoughts began to churn and tumble.

Could they really slip away after dark? They'd done it in the past, when they were still children—and it was obvious that Will was expecting they should do it again. But those escapes had been before the completion of this wall and gate, surrounding her like a locked away princess. Plus, the jungle surrounded them on every side. And ever since the attack on the city, Mister Willoughby had become especially paranoid about guarding the property's entrance…

Then again, she hadn't let a similarly thorough detainment stop her from escaping the Dauntless on Isla de Muerte, had she? There'd been locked doors, multiple guards, and open water surrounding that ship, yet she'd still been determined enough to find her way off of it, for Will. Hell, she'd gotten her and Jack rescued from that godforsaken little island in only a handful of hours, with no hope or help from him, for Will.

If she wanted it, really wanted it, she could get out of here. And even after the little relief won from their kiss, she really, really wanted Will.

But just as she was about to agree, she remembered how he'd looked the day before she'd left him for Spanish Town—worn down from lack of sleep, and an overabundance of labor. She could manage late nights any time she wanted, just fine. But Will was still a servant to another man, and she couldn't help but wonder…

"What about your work?"

"I'll make do," he reassured sincerely. Then he reached out to take her hands in his one more time, running his thumbs over her fingers in pleading strokes. "I need to see you. One-on-one, the way it used to be."

Elizabeth curled her fingers in, prompting him to do the same and interlocking their fingertips, as she tried to silently share how utterly she felt the same. She took a step back, and gave him a little pull to lead him back into a walk. They linked hands, and together they turned the front corner of the stables at last. From there, she could dimly see that their horses were no longer waiting by the stables, but had been brought down the carriageway, to wait in the casted candlelight of the main house. She also sensed that their conversation would be coming to an end. So, rather than enter the stables, she led Will forward, to cross the carriageway towards their night's final parting.

"What do you propose?" she asked Will. Since his life's needs were more inflexible, it seemed best to hear his own plans on the matter first.

"The cottonwood tree has that branch that overhangs the back wall," he said simply.

She cocked her eyebrow, and couldn't help shooting him a deeply doubtful look. "You want to scale the wall?!"

Will seemed unfazed by her skepticism, responding easily, "Unless you believe your porter would still allow you to slip through the front gate after everything that's happened… Or you have a better idea."

She let a few of their steps crunch the gravel as she chewed the insides of her cheeks, thinking of an alternative. There were other options she could try… but none were coming to mind that wouldn't take a bit more time to put together. It was reckless and it was rustic, but a good old-fashioned jailbreak seemed to be what it would take to get their deeply wished-for escape.

"Alright," she agreed. "You'll meet me at the tree?"

"After dark, yes. And I'll be bringing your letter."

She felt her brow pinch. Her letter? Which letter… not the one they'd read together yesterday?

They'd walked back into the light of the mansion, and Will read her expression. His soft smile was easy to make out, and he dropped his voice a little as they neared the horses and Mister Spotswood, "There's one more thing you wrote which I would like to discuss. I want no outside ears, no interruptions for it… Just you and I, for certain."

His assertion tickled her curiosity and stirred her worries, making her somewhat regret she hadn't taken advantage of the chance to re-read the letter while she'd had it in her possession. What could she have possibly said that should warrant more discussion? Had she said something else accidentally offensive to him?

Will seemed to see the concern in her face, as he gave her hand a gentle squeeze, her heart an extra smile of reassurance. It worked… she let her concerns rest for the moment. Whatever it was, it couldn't be bad.

"Alright," she agreed.

Then they drew close enough to greet Mister Spotswood, who was oblivious to the chaos caused inside the house. And at last, Elizabeth kissed her Will goodnight.

While he was no Elizabeth, Mister Spotswood made good company for the ride home. He'd been serving in the governor's stables nearly as long as the Swanns had lived in Port Royal. After the governor had begun to feel Will had grown too old to serve as a hall boy—or, probably more importantly, after he'd grown too old to be Elizabeth's friend—he'd been moved to work with Mister Spotswood in the stables as a post boy. He was an older man with a gentle disposition, speaking little but speaking well when he did. And under his tutelage, Will had had his first exposure to smithing, making and maintaining horseshoes.

He remembered Will when he greeted him. And as their horses navigated the night-shrouded road down the hill, the two men exchanged friendly, thoughtful stories about how their lives had changed since their brief tenure together.

When it came time to part ways, Mister Spotswood tipped his hat and sent his well-wishes to Will's master. Then he took both horses back to the governor's stables for the night, leaving Will in high spirits. But the day had been long, and the night somehow longer. A pleasant but heavy exhaustion was enveloping Will's mind and limbs more and more thoroughly. So, yawning wide enough to press tears from his eyes, Will felt his way up the outside staircase, and passed through the house's door as quietly as he could.

But the coldness of the hearth quickly made it clear to him that he needn't have bothered to begin with.