A Most Unusual Interest
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A Most Unusual Interest Chapter Sixteen (NC-17)
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A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST
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Readers/Reviewers: *blush * I’m glad you like it!
Jack was as
amused as possible, considering he was in the one place pirates the world over
considered a rat hole. "> And coming from
a pirate, that said a lot. He had found
rum, relatively cheap, had dickered with some fellows in the shipyard and
leaned heavily on his much overblown reputation to intimidate and cajole them
into repairing The Pearl in record time for an obscene amount of
coin. The fact he had picked up three
new crew members in that same yard was a mixed blessing.
down the pier towards his ship, he had more help on board.
feed, shelter and keep an eye on. He
tightened his grasp on the bag he had been clutching almost all afternoon and
into the evening. He had been unable to
stop himself from sing ing a few coins on Myrtle, things, he reasoned, to
brighten a fair lady’s stay on a dreary pirate ship. He ignored Gibbs’ snicker as he purchased some shell combs for
her hair, a necklace made of some native wooden beads and hung with a pendant
made of red stone and then, with an uncharacteristic flush, paid a hideous
amount for a fine nightgown, so thin he could easily see through it in the
shop, dim though the lighting was.
“Seems to me,” Gibbs muttered, “you’re losin’ your bloody mind…”
Jack
smirked to himself. “Seems to me he’s
right,” he laughed to himself, not caring who heard. “Dawson, Jones.
absence?” he called as he gained the deck.
“ ‘Tis fair hard on a mistress without her master,” he added, laughing
louder.
“Um…”
Jack
stopped in his tracks, rocking back on his booted heels.
Jones?”
“You tell
him,” Dawson snapped.
“You saw
her! You do it!”
“You saw
who her?” Jack said in a low, controlled drawl.
“Her her.”
“Anna
Maria?” Jack hazarded, hoping.
“No, the
pudgy one.”
“Her name,”
Jack growled, “is Myrtle!”
Jones bit
back a smile at his captain’s defensiveness.
“Dawson saw your woman in Zoruba’s square. She were leanin’ on some tall bloke, pale as whey he said.
to be so white.”
Dawson
nodded agreement, caught up in his own story.
“Aye, an’ he had the queerest expression, he he weren’t in his skull.”
A muscle in
Jack’s jaw ticked. “How long ago?”
“Oh, hours
now,” Dawson said blithely. “She were
leanin’ on him like them girlies you see in pictures, all moon eyed…”
“What?”
Jack snapped, his faith in the female sex slipping a tad at this.
thought frantically.
“Like
this,” Dawson explained, leaning against his taller shipmate and fixing him
with a cow eyed gaze of either adoration or catatonia, Jack was not sure
which.
“Right.”
this demonstration, then frowned as Dawson continued to stare.
“Oh,
er…right…”
“Both of
you get three men and fan out. Find
her, bring her back her bound and gagged if you have to.”
“Bound and
gagged?” Jones repeated.
“Aye, this
is Zoruba. No one wilticetice.”
working in mute frustration. He did not
break stride as he kicked the door shut behind him, stopping only when he ran
into the b
before were folded neatly at the foot of the bunk, her trunk open and the
things inside piled on one side of box,box, books on the other.
surprised to find it in written in French, but not the proper French of Paris.
Creole, a French mingled with a hint of Spanish and some non European
languages. _She can read this? _ he
wondered for a moment before mentally shaking himself. The first word his eyes
lit on was Zoruba. It headed the page.
There was a map, crude but a reasonable depiction for non nautical
purposes, drawn on the overleaf, of the island with some mysterious markings he
had never seen on a map, land or sea.
His Spanish was better than his French, but he managed to get the gist
of the text quickly enough. “She’s off
her rocker, she is…she’d have to be to believe this!” He flipped ahead several pages, dropping the bag in his hand as
he required both hands to rifle through her books. There was more on Zoruba, including a detailed list of native
plants and species of animals and fish, handwritten into the margins in ink
that was already fading. _This isn’t
hers, _ he realized after a moment.
_This must be Richard, her brother in law’s… _ On a whim, he opened to the front of the book and read the name
imprinted on the inside cover. _Why
does she have his texts? _ Jack ran
his fingers over the leather grain of the cover, feeling the deeply embossed
letters, leafed in gold. _Very
expensive ones, at that… _
He moved to
sit on the floor, pulling more books out of the trunk.
find on a cursory inspection, at least not in tetaietail of the first book.
and nearly dropping it at the horrific sight presenting itself to him.
surrounded by bones and what seemed to be bundles of herbs.
and “cemetiere” while the book itself captioned the plate “Corpus Animus.”