It was all the fault of the sun. At least, that was how Captain Jack Sparrow would explain matters in later years, when the story had long since taken on a life of its own. If it hadn’t been for the bright, bright sun in the heart of the emerald brooch, burning with the promise of a full belly, fine clothes to his back and a deck under his feet, not to mention the glorious prospect of rum all round — and (which he generally didn’t add) the sheer child-like enchantment of contemplating riches within your own grasp — if it hadn’t been for the dancing flame within those seductive green depths as the sun awoke its fire, he would have seen Lily coming. Couldn’t have missed her, mate. Not Jack Sparrow...
And none of it would ever have happened at all.
Of course, there had been other distractions. He tended not to mention those either.
The memory of the girl he’d lifted the pendant brooch from on the French packet-boat, for instance. She hadn’t been much of a looker — hopelessly overdressed, with a face that took after the father at her side; the spitting image of a little Gallic pug if you asked Jack, although no-one, of course, had — not much of a looker, but she’d had a fine well-filled pair of assets prominently displayed in a low-cut gown, for all the world like a jewellery shelf. More than flesh and blood could resist, really.
Jack’s fingers itched all over again at the memory of the pendant nestling on those well-upholstered slopes, where the little beads of perspiration had glistened and clung despite the shade. He held the stone up fondly, watching it catch the light, and admired the mango-seller opposite working the jostling crowd.
“Mango, Mister? Ripe mango, Mis’sus? Tender sweet an’ juicy ripe—” Her hand slipped out, in a familiar darting movement, to snip the strings that held the purse of the plump merchant she’d just accosted, even as she swung her hips to draw attention to a figure every bit as sweetly rounded as her wares. Jack caught the swift glance she shot round as the chinking purse vanished, and dropped her a flashing grin of invitation across the back of her unsuspecting mark. Pure professional appreciation, naturally. One expert saluting another.
What with the fuss kicked up over the pendant, he’d had to quit the packet-boat in something of a hurry before she sailed, and until he could raise some dibs on the strength of that emerald he was stuck in port without the price of a penny ordinary at the nearest eating-house on him, let alone a drink. Or two. Or three. So it was a pity, from the point of view of impressing a prospective conquest and potential meal-ticket, that it was at that precise inopportune moment that the emerald brooch vanished from his grasp... and with it all vestige of professional credibility.
It was so slickly done that it was an instant or so before even Jack, his attention elsewhere, realised the jewel was gone. All he’d had was a brief impression of a yellow gown and small, deft fingers brushing across his own.
Then reality caught up with him. Some lightfingered pert-faced pocket-dipper in skirts had just walked off with every penny he, Jack Sparrow — Captain Jack Sparrow, ship or no ship — had to his name in the world. And he, like a common mug, hadn’t lifted a finger to stop her.
He’d recognise those canary-yellow skirts a mile off. There she was, barely ten yards down the street, peeping in at the array of herbs under old Mama Coco’s awning as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, seemingly entirely absorbed in the display in front of her. Jack knew that look of innocence all too intimately. If she thought it would fool him for so much as a minute, she had another think coming.
But some sixth sense told the girl she’d been spotted. She’d twisted away, eel-like, into the crowd almost in the first instant that he made his move, and ducked under the arm of a brawny lobster-seller, whose basket full of indignantly snapping claws all but brained Jack as he tried to follow.
He was never going to live this one down. Captain Jack Sparrow, cleaned out by a chit of a girl in broad daylight on the back streets of Basseterre...
A glimpse of the yellow gown disappearing around the corner ahead, dark hair tumbling loose from its braids across one shoulder. Struck by sudden inspiration, Jack propped to a halt in his tracks and plunged into the steaming interior of a cookshop whose back alley happened to lead out in the right direction, scattering half-peeled yams and scrawny, squawking chickens in his wake as he burst out again into the hot sun. And there she was.
The buildings on the far side of the boulevard were considerably grander than the maze of crowded streets and alleyways he’d just left. Jack hesitated a moment, conscious for once of his incongruous appearance — it wasn’t that he minded drawing attention, quite the reverse as a rule, but he couldn’t help feeling that this might not be the ideal time or situation. He might have been down on his luck a trifle these last few months, but someone on St Kitts was bound to remember the famous Jack Sparrow who’d fooled no fewer than three plump Dutch ships into taking him on as supposed pilot under the very noses of the fine gentlemen up at the fort, last year...
But his quarry, having acquired a hat from somewhere and glanced hastily around in the assurance that she’d shaken off pursuit, had halted under a pillared arcade and was calmly tidying her hair. It was indignation at the sheer nerve of her, quite as much as any consideration of his empty pockets, that impelled Jack out of the cover of his alley-mouth and across the street.
This time she wasn’t quite quick enough.
“Mmfgh—” She twisted free from Jack’s hand over her mouth for a second. “You—”
“Sorry love.” Jack bestowed an unrepentant grin on the furious eyes that were all that remained visible above his grimy muffling palm. “’Course, if you weren’t so set on sinking those little pearls of yours into me hand, it wouldn’t taste so bad, now would it?”
The only response was a glare, and a practised and unladylike attempt to knee him in the groin. Although the latter, of course, might have had something to do with the fact that his free hand had just located his missing property in the modest recesses of her bodice.
Jack released her somewhat gingerly, stowing the emerald away in the breast of his own coat, but having clearly lost this round she showed no inclination to further attacks. Reassured, he cocked his head on one side, examining her.
Familiar, somehow. Quite a pretty little thing, barring the mulish expression. Eyes about ten years older than the rest of her, which was a skinny seventeen by his guess. That look — and the knowledge of where to kick a man — was enough to put her down as a product of the slums. But the hair and dress, too refined, spoke of class.
He grinned. Two could play at that game. Took more than feathers to make the peacock, to his mind. And wherever he’d seen her before, it wasn’t at any fine ball.
“Don’t take it to heart, love. Hands as quick as yours, you must have a good business going — and better men than you have tried to put one over on Captain—”
He saw the change in her eyes a moment too late, as the door behind them opened, and the richly-dressed young man came into view.
“Thief! Help — stop thief!” The girl had flung herself forward, her very accents changing to tones of genteel distress. If Jack hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn tears were standing in her eyes. For a fatal instant he simply gaped.
“There he is, the wretch — see how he mauled me!” Artistic disarray, nestling in her puzzled lordling’s arms. “Oh sir, seize him I beg of you — he took a great pendant from my very person—”
The display of sheer histrionic talent on such a scale had held Jack rooted to the spot. But self-preservation, in the face of this completely unexpected turn of events, lent his heels wings. He was halfway across to the alley before the first footman was launched into pursuit. If it hadn’t been for a bundle of hopelessly squawking black feathers flapping in the opposite direction, all too closely followed by a furious and breathless scullion in pursuit, the chase would have been a little less ignominiously short.
“Listen, mate—” It was hard to take this painted boy seriously, even when he was standing on the steps of his grand house halfway up the street, and you were down on your knees in the dust with a pair of his flunkeys wrapped around you like over-amorous boa constrictors. Jack coughed chicken-feathers and tried again, glaring at the girl now clinging in fragile distress to the young popinjay’s arm. He wouldn’t give tuppence for the chances of the boy’s purse.
“Listen, your Grace—” flattery never went amiss, Duke or no Duke — “I wouldn’t be blaming you and all that, but seems to me there’s just a mite of confusion here. Now, if you could see your way to letting these great bullocks of yours ease their weight a trifle—”
The boy’s lips tightened at the impudence; but, to do him justice, he was evidently open to reason. “Very well. Potts — Baker — let the man stand up. Carefully now...”
The fingers of one white hand tapped on a broad embroidered cuff as Jack climbed gingerly to his feet. “And now, sir, if you have an explanation for this—” a glance encompassed the indignant girl in her begrimed dress and the emerald held up between thumb and forefinger of the other hand — “I for one should be exceedingly intrigued to hear it!”
The girl’s eyes met Jack’s. They held a very unladylike gleam of triumph.
“Well?” His young interrogator looked somewhat puzzled at the prisoner’s sudden uncharacteristic silence, and Jack sighed. Best strike while the iron was hot, as it were.
“Truth of the matter is, you’ve laid hands on the wrong man... in a manner of speaking. Now I won’t say a word against that pretty young lass at your side, for she’s the neatest little pocket-dipper you ever did see — been at it since she was no more’n a sprog, I shouldn’t wonder. Had that big emerald right off me, easy as winking, and a fine chase I had of it...”
“Oh!” It was a sound of purest feminine outrage, and Jack winced, sliding eloquent eyes sidelong to his captors in appeal.
“My name,” the girl stated in tones of the iciest decorum, “is Lilias Paige. Daughter of Sir Bartholomew Paige of Marsh Stanton. I regret that I do not have my credentials to hand — had I been aware that I should be the object of assault and defamation at the hands of this... creature —” she eyed Jack with revulsion — “I assure you I should have made a point of retaining them!”
She was good, Jack acknowledged with reluctant admiration. A bloody sight too convincing to be healthy so far as his own future prospects were concerned.
He stole a glance up at the boy on the steps, only to see, as he’d expected, that any hope of belief for his story had vanished with the first melting look being directed upwards by Miss Lilias’ glistening eyes.
“So... down to the dungeons, then?” He cocked his head engagingly, wondering if he’d ever made such a mooncalf of himself over a charming face as the lad looked likely to do. “Off with his head, and all that? No hard feelings, miss... as pretty a job of work as I’ve seen done in a long time.”
He grinned. “‘Marsh Stanton’, nice touch.” The gesture the girl flicked at him from the shelter of her skirts was one he hadn’t seen outside a bawdy-house; but the sentiment behind it was graphic.
All the same, the face she turned to her protector would have done credit to the innocence of an angel. “Oh no, please, my lord... need it come to that? I could not endure to think the blood of any human creature was laid to my account—” a well-judged quiver of the lip — “even one such as this. And after all, thanks be to God and your intervention, no harm was done. I could not bear to stand in court and bear witness before all those eyes—”
So that was the lie of the land, was it? Jack’s grin widened.
But the boy was rushing in, oblivious, with the offer of the shelter of his hearth and home — “at least, that is, my uncle... most respectable... you understand” — blushing disavowals and all, and little Lily had smiled upon him sweetly and slipped her hand into the support of his arm. No-one, apparently, save Jack, had noticed the momentary panic on her face, as of the fisherman who spins his line for snapper and hooks a marlin.
His eyebrows went up in appreciation. Quick to take her chances, that one. Fine pickings in those circles if she could pass herself off. But there’d be more than a moonstruck boy to handle...
He shifted quietly on his feet, taking stock of bruises, and slid a quick glance sideways in search of prospects of escape. If there was one thing he’d learned in the course of a long and largely mis-spent career, it was never to waste the opportune moment.
But the movement drew attention.
“And what then of this sorry rascal, Lilias — Miss Paige?” The boy looked perplexed. “Do you—”
“You have my jewel safe, after all.” Slim fingers twined it from his grasp, as if coaxing a ripe peach from the bough. (Her jewel? but for once Jack prudently kept his tongue between his teeth.) Lilias smiled directly at her indignant scapegoat, only the knowledge in her eyes breaking the angelic illusion. “I beg you let him go with a whipping, my lord, and learn his lesson thereby.”
“Thank ’ee kindly, ma’am.” Jack knuckled his forehead in mock-rustic deference, freeing one hand from his bodyguards’ bovine grasp. “But ye’ve skinned me of every shilling I had, love — I’ve a notion to keep the skin on my back for myself...”
He swept the two of them a bow that served the purpose of pulling his other arm respectfully free, turned — before either of the two footmen had really grasped what was happening — and took a running vault upwards to the mounting block that stood outside the range of timbered stables through the archway on his left. Not for the first time, he blessed the fashions that kept fine ladies from riding astride.
There were shouts from behind him, but this was such a familiar state of affairs as to be almost a reassurance. Not one of them was armed with so much as a blunderbuss, and he had a good twenty yards’ start. Captain Jack Sparrow reached up for the derrick-arm that jutted out above the hayloft, hung kicking for an instant, strong fingers wrapped around the wood, then hauled himself up and over in one smooth movement as if swarming a yardarm across to the rigging of a prize.
He balanced briefly, feeling the stout pole solid beneath the worn soles of his sea-boots, then leapt again for the safety of the gutters and rooftop escape. Tiles skittered beneath his grasp.
From this new vantage-point he looked down. His erstwhile captors were yelling in the stableyard beneath him like dogs left baying at the foot of a tree. The richly-dressed boy had his arm around canary-yellow shoulders in a protective gesture that struck Jack, safely out of it, as supremely funny.
“You want to watch yourself, mate...” He couldn’t resist the parting shot. “You never know where she’s been.”