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This is not a Disney product. It is a Heart of Slash product, and as such it receives no profit whatsoever, and in exchange for the use of characters, situations, settings and ships from the POTC movie, Heart of Slash promises to not heckle the sequel for not having enough sex in it.
Jonathon
Captain Jack Sparrow teetered to the left, hands waving in grand flourishes, tilted abruptly back to the other side and came to a quivering standstill somewhere in the middle.
Will Turner had already positioned himself behind Jack to catch him when he fell, and waited with outstretched arms.
But he did not fall. He cleared his throat.
One elegant black eyebrow raised up, creasing a smooth forehead, as if the woman fully expected Jack to topple over in a dead faint.
Elizabeth stared from the calm face of her lover to the frantically darting eyes and gaping mouth of the pirate. The resemblance, despite her regal air and his less than respectable appearance, was remarkable.
Will looked at the newcomer for the first time and slackened his alert stance, in awe of what he beheld. Jack tipped back.
“I was afraid of that,” the dark-haired woman said in a clear, cultured accent.
Will braced himself for the impact, but Jack did not fall, he merely sagged against Will as if for moral support. Will slipped his arms around Jack to hold him steady.
“Alex,” Jack said.
She smiled.
“Alex,” Jack repeated, just in case no one heard. Or in case he was wrong. Or in case he was seeing an illusion, and saying the name would make it vanish and stop tormenting him, for surely it would be torment to be made to believe one’s own sister was standing in front of oneself when she was not.
“Jonathon,” she said. “It is more than good to see you again.”
Will tightened his grip. Who was this woman, and how had she found Jack? The Isla de Muerta cannot be found except by someone who has already been there. He looked at Elizabeth with suspicion.
“I didn’t guide her here,” Elizabeth said in answer to Will’s glare. “Captain DeMaurier brought us here, at the request of… Captain DeMaurier. The other, Captain DeMaurier, that is.” Elizabeth was still a tad confused about this large family, but she was almost certain that it was Jacob DeMaurier who had asked Alphonse DeMaurier to deliver them to the island safely.
“Sit down, Jonathon. You look a little queasy.”
Jack scowled and pulled away from Will’s arms, ignoring the hurt look on Will’s face at the rejection. “Nonsense, my dear, I just lose me land legs every now and then, savvy?” But he sat on the bench nonetheless.
Will stood behind him, unsure of his welcome for the first time in a long time.
Alex sat gracefully, and offered a plate of Tessie’s biscuits to Jack. He shook his head and she tut-tutted him. “Jonathon, please. Eat something. You know you have a tendency to keel over if you have a shock when you haven’t had enough to eat.” She turned to face Tessie, who sat at her right. “It’s a bit of a family trait, if truth be told.”
Tessie turned her stare on Jack. “Do as your sister says, Captain Sparrow.”
Will stared from Alex to Jack. Sister. Oh. My. That explained a lot. Actually, it didn’t explain anything except for the uncanny resemblance. And the fact that, in spite of her formal manner, this woman was being awfully familiar with Jack.
Jack gnawed on a biscuit reluctantly, clearly of the opinion that it was drink, not food, needed to steady his nerves. He stared at the teacup Kay offered him as if it were a poisoned mushroom. Kay nudged his arm, and he took the tea. Upon sipping it, he was overjoyed to learn that Will’s naughty step-sister had anticipated Jack’s needs, and slipped a bit of rum into the dark brew. She winked at him. Saucy wench, Jack thought. If he didn’t prefer men… and she wasn’t married to the somewhat intimidating and entirely brawny Franklin… and her mother wasn’t Tessie, who was openly glaring at Jack by this point…
Alex cleared her throat, and Jack looked across at her.
“I received a letter from a…” Alex paused and sipped her tea daintily. “I received a letter from a friend in Port Royal mentioning you, so I booked passage immediately. I’m most relieved to have found you. I have news of the greatest import.”
Jack put his empty teacup down on the table set on the sand between the two benches. “Will,” he said quietly, and Will slid onto the bench beside him, arm around Jack’s shoulder. Jack leaned into him and looked his sister in the eye. “Mother?”
Alex nodded.
Jack sagged.
“Father, as well.”
Jack tilted his head to look at her more closely.
“Mother passed away peacefully,” Alex added. “In her sleep. I was with her when it happened. She asked me to find you, and tell you she…”
Elizabeth took Alex’s hand in hers and patted it. Even through the shock of finding out about his parents’ deaths, Jack couldn’t help but notice that. Elizabeth stoked Alex’s hand soothingly. Alex patted her arm back. Elizabeth placed a single kiss on Alex’s cheek. Interesting.
Alex took a deep breath. “I’ll tell you that in private, later. She was not in any pain, I assure you. A few weeks later, Father passed away.”
Jack snorted. “Drunken fall? Or did someone finally fight back?”
Alex crinkled her nose as if she found the subject distasteful, but was compelled to report honestly on the incident. “He fell from his horse.”
Jack shrugged. That wasn’t such a bad way to go. Not nearly awful enough.
“There was enough suspicion about it that he was not buried on consecrated ground.”
“You mean he offed himself?” Jack blurted out.
Alex stiffened. Clearly, this was not a topic she wanted to pursue. “That was the opinion of the pastor.”
Jack whistled. “Buried off church grounds. Reckon the old man wouldn’t take too kindly to that, eh?” Although the idea of his father committing suicide appealed to him, in a way. It wasn’t very seemly idea, but then relations between father and son had never been terribly civil.
“Jonathon, please, there is no need…”
Jack sat up straight. “No need? Maybe not, but what about a want? What about wanting to see him get what he deserves for nigh on twenty-five years, eh?”
Will squeezed his arm around Jack to calm him.
Alex sat very primly, both hands in her lap, now. “You are the heir to the entire estate, including all six mills and the smithy.” She looked at Will when she said the last word. She was obviously well-informed about him.
“I don’t need it.”
“Well, it is yours.”
“I don’t want it. Give it to someone else.”
“That is the other reason I wanted to find you.”
Jack shifted closer to Will. He knew something was big was coming, he could tell by the blank, almost impersonal expression on Alex’s face, as if she were about to recite a speech she had practiced many times, and did not want to get a single word wrong.
“Jonathon,” she began.
“It’s Jack,” he said. “It’s Jack now. I left Jonathon behind long ago, Alex.”
She smiled indulgently. “And I am no longer called Alex. I’m called Lady Barrowdowns now. But I think you may still call me Alex, and I may still call you Jonathon.” She shifted on the bench and rearranged her skirts around her, fussing with on particular fold until she was steady enough to look him in the eye again.
“In the matter of the heirs of the Earl of Duncroft, if there were a grandson, and you wished to sign it all over to him…”
Jack sat up. “Grandson? You have a son?”
“Not exactly.”
Jack and Will both thought of Anamaria’s baby. Tessie shook her head at them curtly. Kay, sitting to the other side of Tessie now, made a little throat-cutting motion, as if to tell them to stay quiet about that. Of course, Alex wouldn’t know about that. Yet. Jack nodded curtly, both to Kay, to tell her he understood, and to Alex, to tell her to continue.
“When I first arrived in Port Royal I owned a house. I think you understand what sort of house it was. There was a woman in the house who worked for me, and she had a child, a son. When I retired, I took the boy with me, raised him as my own. I do consider him to be my son.”
Tessie smiled. Jack squinted his eyes, in deep thought. Marina DeMaurier. She’d bought the brothel from Alex. And someone mentioned, he couldn’t remember who, but someone, perhaps Anamaria, had said Marina had a son. So, that was why Tessie was smiling. She was after the family fortune.
“Now wait a minute, I don’t know that adopted children really count in these matters…” Jack said. He didn’t particularly want the manse, or the land, or any of it, but he didn’t necessarily want Tessie’s brood to have it either. It seemed mercenary, somehow.
“Jonathon!”
He turned his attention back to his sister.
“She was young when she had the child. And a brothel is no place for a child to grow up, so of course I adopted him. It was not a very popular decision, I’ll admit. In fact, there is some question about the legality of the adoption in England, since the child is not…” She looked over at Tessie and Kay. “Well, he’s not entirely English stock,” she said, not terribly tactfully but it wasn’t an outright insult, so Tessie shrugged it off.
Jack shook his head. “Inheritance laws…” he began.
“Jonathon, listen to me, please! Try to remember. This woman, Marina, she was young. She was stranded, in Nassau, and she turned to the only means she could think of to earn passage home. She sold herself, for a night. The man was very kind to her, and gave her enough money for food and lodging for several nights. And she knew it was his when she found herself with child.”
Marina, Jack thought. Nassau Port. “Nassau?” he asked. Marina in Nassau Port.
“It was just over thirteen years ago, Jonathon. She would have looked younger than she does now, but not all that different.”
Jack strained his memory. Marina in Nassau Port. Couldn’t be. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he concluded after a time.
“Jonathon, she described the father to me. Described him to me to the last detail. I know it was you.”
“Don’t be absurd, Alex. Even I don’t remember what I looked like thirteen years ago.”
“The scar, Jonathon.” She reached across the table and touched the scarf on his head, fingers hovering over the exact spot, Will knew, where the scar was.
Jack shrugged. “It could have been anyone.”
Tessie shook her head. “No, she wasn’t… it wasn’t a regular thing. She worked job as a barmaid after that. There was no one else, she told me that herself. But I never suspected it was you until recently. She said it was a merchant, not a pirate.”
Jack squirmed on the bench. He leaned away from Will, not wanting the closeness, but Will wouldn’t let go. He was too busy to let go. Too busy trying to assimilate all this information. Jack resigned himself to his lover witnessing this fiasco up close. Will held onto him as if he was afraid Jack might run. But Jack couldn’t run. He was on an island, and the Pearl was still stuck on a sandbar undergoing maintenance. There was nowhere to run.
“Jack,” Elizabeth said quietly, even kindly, “I knew it was your son the first time I saw him, and I knew nothing of the circumstances. It’s obvious just from looking at him.”
Jack looked up at Elizabeth.
“He’s a fine boy, Jack,” she added. “Very clever boy. Handsome too. And he wants to be a pirate.”
Jack coughed.
Alex picked up her teacup again and sipped daintily. “I believe Kay’s children took him up to see a spa of some sort.”
Jack looked stricken. “He’s here?”
“Of course he is. I brought him to meet you, to meet his father.”
Jack looked over at Tessie. Obviously, she was not familiar with this part of the story.
She glowered at him.
“My daughter felt herself disgraced, and she became a harlot because she felt she couldn’t come home like that, with the child of a man she didn’t even know. All she knew was his first name. But I don’t know how she could have mistaken the likes of you for a merchant,” she spat.
Jack sighed. “Nassau. Thirteen years ago.” He closed his eyes and a sly smile played around his lips. “See, I had that run in with the East India Trading Company.” He rubbed absently at the brand on his wrist. “And I thought it might be time to be a bit more legitimate like. So I gathered a bit of swag and sponsored a few journeys, and it turned out to be a profitable undertaking, being a lawful trader.”
Bootstrap, who sat on a log to the left of the group, laughed. “While it lasted, eh Jack?”
Jack grinned at his old friend. “Well, aye, while it lasted. But you see, it turned out that piracy was even more profitable. So, once I had enough money to buy me own small ship, I hired a few lads. I spent my days selling goods to merchants. And then in the nights…”
Will rolled his eyes. He knew exactly what was coming next.
“… the lads would pirate the goods back to me and I could resell them to other customers.”
“Or back to the ones you stole them from in the first place,” Bootstrap added.
Tessie choked on her tea. Kay had to hide a laugh behind her hand. Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed.
“You are despicable,” she said
Jack laughed. “Aye, that I am. But it turned out to be profitable in more ways than one.”
Bootstrap blushed. And Tessie suddenly didn’t care about how despicable Jack was, because the sight of Bootstrap blushing made her think about things far more immediate than Jack’s deeds of old.
“I was a merchant sailor on one of those ships.” Bootstrap admitted. “Threw my lot in with Jack when he was forced to take the ship. Seems the captain noticed that the goods Jack sold him were the same one’s stolen from him a few months before.”
“Well, they got a bit ragged, what with being sold and stolen and sold again so many times,” Jack explained. “I suppose they’d gained a few distinguishing marks, what with rough usage and all.” He rubbed at his forehead unconsciously. “When I had enough for the Pearl, I quit the legitimate business and went strictly pirate.” He shared a chuckle with Bootstrap.
Alex pursed her lips. “That’s all very well and good, Jonathon. But the fact remains that while you were pretending to be a legitimate merchant, you fathered a decidedly illegitimate son.”
All chuckles ceased.
Will rubbed small circles at the small of Jack’s back. He made a little shushing sound, to stop Jack from saying anything he might regret.
Just then, the laughter of children wafted out of the underbrush and a half dozen DeMaurier children burst into the clearing.
One of them stopped in his tracks at the sight of the pirate sitting across from his mother.
He was a wiry lad of about thirteen, with delicate, striking features. With his smooth, high cheekbones and sharp black eyes, he looked remarkably like his adoptive mother, but for the darkness of his skin and the long, thick clumps of black hair that fell in thick, twined dreadlocks, rather than smooth, tamed strands. His eyes widened. His lips pursed. He swayed a little on his feet.
“Jonathon,” Alex said in a clear, authoritative voice. “Come here, dear. It’s time for you to meet Captain Jack Sparrow.”
Next: Chapter 84 The Family Way
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