29 March 2005
Pirates of the Caribbean




He will marry, at some point.  He will take leave, go home, and allow his mother to introduce him to ladies of the family's acquaintance.  Perhaps he'll take to one of his sisters' friends.  They were all loose hair and flying skirts when he first left home, all older than he.  He has only glimpsed memories of the visiting girls chasing one another about the house.  English rose skin and hair.  Sharp, bright eyes and teeth.

Although, by now, those girl-children are a good bit more sedate, and their sharp edges have worn down.  In fact, at their age, they must all be wives and mothers.  The eligible ladies his family will offer him will all be much younger than he is.  So it goes.

He can't imagine most English ladies wanting to come out to the Indies.  Whoever he marries will see him perhaps once in two years, until his retirement.

He isn't planning on retiring.  Let someone else play paper admiral.

In the past two months, he's taken three pirate ships.  Each one, when it surrendered, carried one page of the Bermudan governor's mail.

Jack Sparrow has been using the letters as currency in games of chance.

They're drawing closer.  One of the Dauntless' raids, a week or a month from now, will turn up the mail sack.  Perhaps even Sparrow himself.

Norrington dreams, sometimes, of a lady who loves the chase as much as he does.  Far too often, the lady has decidedly unladylike gold teeth and Jack Sparrow's eyes.



jane
go back