Jack shifted his sprawl on the sandspit to a more comfortable position, watching the imprints of his boot-heels down below fill with water. He found another flat sliver of stone from the tidemark ring of pebbles behind him and flipped it out over the water, sending a trail of feathery splashes out toward the anchored ships in the harbour opposite. The movement of a sandy head above the bulwarks of the big French barque lying close in heralded an upturned pot of scraps over the side, and materialisation of a crowd of scavenging sea-birds for the feast. Jack wondered, idly, what the Frenchmen were cooking up down there, and for what guest. Some fancy Frog cuisine, evidently. That was the third galley pail in the last two hours.
He let his gaze stray beyond, where a couple of small brigs were busy loading under the merciless noonday sun, the sound of the creaks and curses carrying clearly over the water in the stifling, breathless air. Even from here, the sweat gleamed on bare backs.
Jack made another stone dance across his knuckles without looking at it, admiring the spectacle of hard labour from a safe distance. A small boat bobbed idly in the water across the bay, a fishing-line trailing. He skimmed the stone in that direction, watching it skip. The sea was almost flat, oily in the heat. No more challenge to it than shying pebbles across the duckpond on some village green.
Now there was a thought. Conspiracy danced across the mobile features. He’d always been partial to a bit of duck.
The high call of a curlew echoed, out of place, from behind the knot of greenery further inland, and Jack came instantly onto the alert without moving a muscle. Only the stillness of his loose-limbed sprawl betrayed the sudden tension.
Boots along the gravel spit. The soft brush of cloth with every stride. No clank of muffled corselet or blade. The newcomer was advancing openly — and unarmed.
Jack’s own hand slid to the knife he wore in his boot; but he relaxed a little. He climbed, lurching artistically, to his feet just as the sound of a tentative throat being cleared came from behind him, and turned with a wide grin. “God help sailors on a day like—”
The slurring words broke off as the shock hit him. Only for a moment.
“You’ll have to forgive the poor quarters, yer honour.” A sweeping gesture took in the empty sand. “A humble sailorman don’t have much cause for entertaining a gentleman of your quality...”
The boy he’d last seen in the stableyard was giving him a level look. His clothing was as fine as ever, but he was dressed for riding and the soft leather of his gloves was splashed with salt. “For a humble sailorman, you’re uncommonly hard to find. Even for one as flamboyant as yourself.”
The knife was openly in Jack’s hand now, and the drunken sway gone from his stance. “Suppose we have a quiet talk, just you and me?” he suggested softly. “About why you might be here, and—”
The other had gone rather pale, but he met Jack’s eyes steadily. “I believe I owe you an apology, sir. And... in this matter I cannot turn to a man of my own class for help.”
“Ah.” Jack settled the hilt of his dagger more comfortably in his hand, running the point along under one black-rimmed thumbnail, and shifted his weight more casually across. “Water under the bridge, mate.”
He waved an arm, almost severing the boy’s shoulder-length locks with the blade he’d apparently forgotten he was holding, and squinted down at the offending article in apology. “Oops.”
Clapping the boy across the back with his free hand, he ignored the resulting wince. “Little Lily fluffed it, did she? Now I’d a feeling she’d bitten off a touch more there than she could chew...”
“Absconded.” A delicate flush had risen across the fair complexion of the young man’s cheeks, deepening to an awkward red. “With every trinket and garment we had given her, some trifles of my aunt’s jewellery, and...” His eyes fell for the first time. “Your brooch.”
Jack, sheathing the dagger, shot him a curious glance. “Not that I’m questioning your faith in me word, mind—” He coughed. “But a man’d be hard-set to prove the rights and wrongs of that one, which is why I’ll not be holding the mistake against ye. A lady’s brooch, see, and a likely ruffian such as myself...”
“The engraving... on the back of the brooch.” The boy’s voice was very low. “She spoke of the jewel so casually — a gift from her father, she said — but when I taxed her with the name it was clear she knew nothing of it.”
Name? “Ah.” Jack’s mind moved very fast, forestalling the dangerous point. “Her own name; no, ’twas not. And it was after you taxed her with the brooch that she...” He paused, as if in delicacy, to let the sting bite. “...left?”
Too much of a sting, perhaps. Distraction failed as the boy sheered off with little more than a nod. “The next day...” He was examining Jack’s dishevelled glory with a somewhat puzzled air. “Forgive me, but... is the French ancestry many generations back?”
Ancestry? For a moment Jack drew a complete blank. A lightning leap of connection gave him the gamble, and he thanked his lucky stars, as often before, for the dark colouring that enabled him to pass himself off from Cadiz to Constantinople.
“My mother’s side, that was. I’d a great-aunt or so still living down in Marseilles used to send me gifts when I was a lad... I keep — kept—” taking care over that oh-so-convincing little slip — “that piece in memory of her.” He winked. “And as one loving nephew to another, I can tell ye it’s a fine handy thing to pop into hock when I’ve need of the readies.”
There was an odd little half-amused crease between the boy’s brows. “That would be the ‘Marie-Thérèse’ of the brooch?”
“Her mother.” Jack banished the question firmly into the past, remembering the antique patina of the thing. Next time he laid hands on an heirloom, he swore inwardly, he’d take the time to puzzle out any fancy writing on the back.
The boy was giving him a queer kind of look.
“It must... ah... have been a great loss to you?” The probe was cautious, but Jack nodded cheerfully — in for a penny, in for a pound.
“That it was.” He flashed a smile of dazzling mendacious honesty. “Else with the price of that stake in my pocket I’d not still be here — see?”
“I think I do,” the other said rather drily, and Jack spared him a suspicious glance. But there was no hint of guile in the stiff young face.
Stripping off his gloves, the boy swallowed. “I’ve a proposition to put to you, sir, for it seems we’ve something in common. When Lilias left, she took with her a certain token I had given... a ring of my grandfather’s, passed by each heir to... in short, an exchange of promises I see now should never have been made.”
The tide of scarlet threatened to swamp him again and Jack shook his head in wonder, eyes soaring skyward. “So the long and the short of it is, these two weeks past you gave away your ring and your trust to a girl you knew nothing of — and she waltzed off with the one and threw the other back in your face, aye?”
His tone was not unsympathetic, and the other nodded, looking up to meet his gaze with the flush still burning in pale cheeks.
“I’m not such a fool as you think me, sir. I see now I was taken in. I know better than to think twice of her.” Privately, Jack begged leave with a lift of one brow to doubt that, but let it pass. “I’ve made restitution for my aunt’s loss from my own allowance; I’ve craved pardon for the abuse of my uncle’s hospitality here. It’s been put about with his aid that Lilias — Miss Paige — was summoned suddenly home to the sickbed of a sister. No-one need ever know the deception that was played — least of all my father—”
It was almost a plea, and Jack, who’d long since drawn more than a few conclusions for himself, stepped back, sizing the boy up from his fair curls to his feet.
“I’ll lay it was trouble at home sent you out here — eh? Not gambling, for you’ve funds enough. Not the wilder vices, for you’ve not the mark of it on you.” The lines of his own mobile face creased in secret reminiscence. “But you’ve no head for the women, lad: an honourable entanglement then, I’ll warrant. Every intention to wed... until your father stepped in to send her packing and you off to the plantations to save the family name. What was she — parlourmaid? Actress? Milliner’s apprentice?”
The boy said nothing, the humiliation in his cheeks telling its own story, and Jack sighed. Some people were just too simple to be true. “Paid her off, did he? Well, there’s many an honest girl would rather have your father’s gold than your pretty face without a shilling. Can’t all afford romance, see?”
The funny side of it struck him, and he grinned. “And here you come running out to the Caribbees to be kept away from bad company... and fall straight into the toil of such as Lily herself. Aye, I can see how you might want to keep that from your father’s ears...”
“Then you do know her?”
It was unexpectedly swift, and Jack hedged, fencing for profit. “Could say that all depends — savvy?”
“I can make it worth your while.” The boy faced him squarely.
Jack eyed him, fingering the braids of his beard. “See that plump-bellied vessel out there, beyond the Frenchie barque? See that little rowing boat with a couple of prime rogues aboard, lazing out the day away from their masters, as you might say?”
A frown. “Yes, but—”
Jack stooped for a handful of stones, flicking one out to splash across the water like a flighting swan. “And you saw me down here on the sandspit as you came, right? Idling at ducks-and-drakes to while away the hours, not a care in the world...”
“I take it you’re about to assure me otherwise.” That little dry turn of phrase again, suggesting well-concealed depths beneath the open countenance and boyish complexion. Jack’s look narrowed, considering.
“It’s only fair to let you know me prospects, as it were, before those generous cards of yours come down on the table.” An instant’s pause to let the hint sink in.
“Now, if so be as in an hour or so I was to shy this pebble of mine—” he flipped it high between them, caught it out of the air with an effortless snap of the wrist — “away to starboard, see, where that big gull sits, why that fat little brig might find herself a whole new crew, an’ a new port for her cargo. If you take my meaning.” He sent the stone spinning ostentatiously out to the left instead, leaving a white trail behind it that could be marked from all the way across the harbour, and sketched a bow.
“You’re proposing rank piracy,” the boy said slowly. He wasn’t as shocked as he should have been. So... not altogether a fool, then. Jack dropped him a wink.
“Your friend Lily didn’t leave me too many options else — savvy?”
“You’re taking a very great risk in telling me this,” the boy pointed out, backing away a step. His hand had stolen to the enamelled hilt of his own belt-knife.
Jack merely chuckled. “One, I’m waiting for you to make me a better offer. Two — it ever occur to you you’re worth a pretty penny in yourself? What’s to stop a desperate man striking another kind of bargain with the contents of your purse — or with your uncle, say, for your head?”
The pretty toy blade was clear of the sheath now, and he raised a weary eyebrow in its owner’s direction. “Put it away, son. I don’t deal in that kind of coin, see — and nor, I’ll wager, do you. That neck of yours is safe enough here, and so’s your purse.”
Still very pale, the other did as he was bid; but that final phrase raised a brief flash of humour. “I’m not a total innocent, sir. I did see fit to take a few precautions: it’s empty, and I’ve half a dozen men besides watching the ways from this spit.”
Jack nodded. “Aye, I thought you would. So’ve I.”
He whistled a clear curlew-call, and got an instant response that brought a wink. “Not many curlews round here, mate.”
He turned, deliberately offering his unprotected back, and sent another stone winging out over the water, watching its trail. “So. You’ve a proposition to make — my aid to find this Lilias and track down what’s yours and what’s mine. That right?” He didn’t bother to turn for an answer. “What do you say we start with names, then?”
“Jack.”
This time he did turn, not so much startled as impressed by the acknowledgment. “Aye, and yours?”
He got a blank frown in reply. “I told you — Jack. It’s my name, and my father’s before me. John Fortescue the younger: my father sits as the Member for the Borough of Westcott—”
“Sits in my Lord Frensham’s pocket, then,” Jack observed drily, grinning inwardly at the youngster’s stunned look. It paid to keep a weather eye on politics, in his trade, and patronage in Parliament was common knowledge. “Never fear, son, I’ll not hold it against you.”
He measured him up. “‘John Fortescue the younger’? That’s a fair mouthful for a slender lad. We’ll call you Johnny.”
“My friends call me Jack.”
“Could cause a powerful mort of confusion, that.” He swept another bow, doffing his battered hat. “Captain Jack Sparrow. At your service, mate—” a fleeting look — “for a consideration.”
“The prospect of getting back your own isn’t good enough?” the boy enquired with a quizzical tilt of the head, and Jack chuckled, spreading his hands with a jerk of one thumb back towards his chest.
“Pirate,” he explained simply.
Their eyes met. It was Jack who looked away first, with a queer sense that he’d somehow failed a test. The boy took a breath.
“Very well, Captain Pirate. You’ve had your eye on that brig yonder; Lilias was seeking a passage to Hispaniola, so we’ll need a vessel to follow in her wake. I’ll spare your conscience one misdemeanour at least and buy you that one. Agreed?”
“If we’re talking of buying—” Jack began, scowling. The considerations that had led him to pick out that particular fat pullet for the plucking had not included her sailing qualities.
“You wanted her — you’ve got her. For my purposes she’ll serve admirably. As for yours... I’d as lief not know.” It was little short of an ultimatum. “The selection of the crew is in your hands — there I can’t pretend to dictate. I imagine you’ll want men of your own stamp: I’ll ask no questions... but I want one thing clear from the start. This venture is for one purpose only. I’m seeking your aid because you know the girl and the circles she moves in, not for profit. When I have that ring from her finger — or wherever she may have sold it further — our contract is ended, and your business is your own affair. Until then, we sail openly and in honesty. Understood?”
For a moment, Jack could guess at the shadow of the formidable man this John Fortescue would some day become; then the boy laughed, and suddenly sounded twenty years younger again. “I mean to set a thief to catch a thief — savvy?” He spat on his palm and held it out to seal the bargain.
Returning the favour, Jack managed to look wounded and flattered all at once.