Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom

her; he sensed that would be a major mistake. Is she trying to drive
me mad? he wondered, clenching his hands into fists.
Esmeralda’s last “revision” of his appearance came when she
reached over his shoulder and pulled loose the black ribbon tying back
his hair, so it hung loose on his shoulders. He didn’t move, hoping that
this time she wouldn’t step back. But she did, then regarded him, her
head cocked to one side. Finally she nodded approvingly and smiled.
“Now you look like my Jack once more,” she said. “My Jack is a pirate.
A beautiful pirate.”
Jack’s laugh was a bit shaken. “No, darling. The beauty stands
before me.”
She laughed, too, but there was an undertone of tension in it.
“Flatterer. What is it your Obeah woman used to call you? The one you
told me about? Ah, yes. Witty Jack.”
He shook his head ruefully. Why in the world was she talking about
Tia Dalma? “Tia Dalma isn’t ‘mine,’ love,” he corrected her. “She’s her
own woman, make no mistake. No man will ever possess her.
She’s…” he groped for words to express something indefinable he’d
always sensed about the hoodoo sorceress. “She’s…she…
sometimes it seems like she wears her woman’s body…the way you
would wear a gown.” He shivered. “She has power,” he said. “Real
power. She’s no one I’d want to cross.”
“Is she pretty?” Esmeralda asked, and he sensed a touch of
jealousy in her voice, which he found immensely gratifying.
He shrugged. “She’s…attractive…in certain ways. But not pretty,
the way you are. You are lovely.”
Why is she stalling like this? he wondered. His patience was
eroding, but he sensed that she wasn’t doing this to be coy, but for
another, more personal reason. And somehow he knew that reason
was important.
He gazed at her in the soft light. She was, indeed, beautiful. Her
eyes looked huge and dark, for she had outlined them somehow.
There was a faint flush of color in her cheeks, and on her lips. In the
years since he’d last seen her, she’d learned to enhance her
appearance, the way women of her class at court did. “Your eyes,” he
said. “I love your eyes. The way you’ve enhanced them. What did you