Carrying on with this posting...

[soubie]

Ah! I think I might as well get on with this. If you need an explaination, the first one is about 3 posts ago.

Title: Mrs Bridie's Inheritance, Part 2 COMMENTARY TRACK
Author: soubie
Characters: Elizabeth/Will, but not as we know it. Also, OCs.
Disclaimer: No, not mine. Warnings: None, other than mild angst, flagrant cannon abuse, and some mildly patronising attitudes to the over-65s
Summery: In short: fast-forward 40 years from the epilogue of AWE, and here we are. In the previous episode, Will and Elizabeth arrived at Letty's house (you'll soon find out); Will enters, Elizabeth doesn't, and meets six year-old Sophie. And now to continue...

Chapter two


Peeking around a heavy, dark red curtain at the open window, Elizabeth could not make out much of the room beyond, the greyish light outside being just strong enough to cover the indoors with green and purple after-images, save the fact that, facing the window, as if it were grinning at her, was a large instrument much like an oversized harpsichord, but with the keys coloured the wrong way about- big white keys and small black ones, like handsome teeth with seeds caught in the spaces. The thing was of some dark, exotic wood, and it gleamed, so bright it was as if it caught the feeble light better than the rest of the room within.

“A pianoforte,” Sophie whispered. “Like a harpsichord, but louder. Eliza’s beloved, Mama calls it.” She tried to pull herself up to the level of the window by Elizabeth’s skirt. “Is my grandpapa there?”

“No, nor your sister.”

“How do you know my sister isn’t there? You’ve never seen my sister.”

“There’s nobody there. I’m sure your sister doesn’t look like someone who isn’t there.”

“There’s other rooms. There’s the parlour- no, we went there- and the solar, and the music-room, and the sewing-room, and the library, though I don’t think they’ll be in there- and maybe the drawing-room, but that’s upstairs.”

Had Elizabeth Swann, so very long ago, had so many different rooms for doing so many things almost exactly the same? Elizabeth Turner had to conclude- yes, probably, and maybe more besides.

There was a point in Elizabeth’s house on Nova Sophia (she knew, on some level, that after forty years it probably, to some extent, belonged to Will, too, but somehow she had never come to immediately think of it as such) where William had discovered that, with enough craning of his neck, he could see into every room at once, save the kitchen, that being below stairs- and it was the kitchen where Elizabeth had been, contemplating a still-wriggling lobster and wishing, for once, that Briddie was still there, when Penge had come downstairs.

See, it’s like this… okay, so my AWE knowledge was shaky at this point; my AWE Compliance Patch runs as such: first of all, the freeing of the Captain after 10 years. Without any problems. Hence the fact that Letty clearly wasn’t born til Will and Liz were into their thirties. And the house- well, I explain the dress in the coda scene as such- seeing as Calypso was released anyway, and the Golden Age of Piracy really can’t be stretched out any longer, Shipwreck Island and the mighty pirate empire were never going to last. Maybe not with a big bust-up like the Pirate War with Becket- it just wasn’t something that could stand up without supernatural help. Elizabeth clung onto her rule through her mystic credentials and through being bloody good at what she did, but as the pickings got slimmer and enterprises smaller and scattered, it went from herding cats to corralling fleas. At some point, Emperess-less and Shipwreck City-bereft, she found herself in the Caribbean again, where the house sort of happened, for the sake of keeping the rain off. It was never supposed to become a permanent arrangement; it was just that once she found herself with Will in it as well as Young Will, and then Letty as well, somehow she never managed to get them all out of it, at least not as a whole. For all their joint talents, after all, the major events that marked Will and Elizabeth’s lives weren’t exactly organised manoeuvres. Before, things happened. And now things didn’t happen. True, they were dangerously close to Jamaica and Elizabeth always had a plan lest they had to run for it; only the new governor and fleet had taken the records left from Beckett’s little reign of terror with a pinch of salt, as it were- they weren’t sure what to believe, and certainly weren’t going to convict a family of eccentrics who didn’t mix with the neighbours much on the basis of loosely matching the description of persons accused within them. Because there didn’t seem to be any new trouble going on.

It was locally known that the Turners had some shady acquaintances, and came up with some strange explanations for their past. It was known that Will had disappeared for ten years and come back… odd. But then, being shipwrecked for almost a decade can do that to a man.

The underworld of the West Indies, by that time, was no longer what it had been- in truth, it had probably been waning for most of Elizabeth’s life- though the over-world still seemed at times to be perching on top of it like a sparrow trying to foster an ostrich egg.

Even so, Penge had never made it, in any such circles. It shouldn’t have been so difficult for a boatman who had managed to get a station with the Royal Mail, in an area of fragmented little nowhere-islands like Nova Sophia, to become a bandit, but he wasn’t even bright enough for that. His usual craft was to slip anything that looked interesting into his pocket, and take it home to his mother, who couldn’t quite read but knew words when she saw them.

None of this troubled Elizabeth personally, simply because she knew that Mrs Penge could recognise the word ‘Turner’ and was steeped just enough in the local folklore to order her son to deliver anything bound for them intact- for some it was respect, for some memory, for some a fear of the old dark stories- for whatever reason, nobody stole from a Turner.

(Elizabeth didn’t know it, but this was all a great boon to a short, freckled, redheaded weaver in St Lucia, on whom fate had bestowed the name of Matthew Turner, and whose family had always marvelled at the way that burglars in the neighbourhood seemed to tiptoe past their door, that none ever plucked fruit from their trees, chased their hens or threw stones at their cat. Truly, a good name can go a long way.)

“Mister Turner says I can have drink,” Penge said, sitting himself at the table. And he probably had, because Penge didn’t have enough imagination to lie, had if he had, he hadn’t the guts to lie to Missus Turner.

Fetching the bottle, Elizabeth briefly wondered who had been sending anything by official channels. Old friends avoided such formalities, preferring to turn up unannounced and drink the contents of the cellar whenever they had anything to impart.

She did hope her cousin Beth wasn’t interfering again. Through a series of letters to friends of friends of friends, Lady Elizabeth Caudellion, as she was now called, had managed, no doubt through some palm-greasing, to discover her long-lost cousin’s abode some years ago. Elizabeth had quite liked Beth- at least, what she knew of her- she had not seen the girl in the flesh since they were both children, though their girlhood letters had been entertaining- but she privately blamed Beth’s advice, given, as Beth claimed, because she ‘admired those who might be said to be romantic, but felt pressed to protect them from themselves’ for quite a lot of what had happened with Letty in the end. And the mixed blessing of loosing Briddie, who had never really taken to servitude, but then again, had been growing up to be quite a good cook, and as such would have known what to do with a lobster. More about this in chapter 3

Elizabeth, on the other hand, had no skill at all in dealing with lobsters… and the one on the table had escaped by the time she returned, and skittered under the dresser. Twenty minutes of cautiously kneeling on the floor sliding a broom underneath the dresser, with Penge crouching with his hands outstretched to catch it, and chasing the creature round the kitchen, is a story that does not need telling.

The lobster then headed for the door, but its luck was out, as this was when Will opened it, trapping the errant crustacean.

“Lobster escaped, Mister Turner,” Penge said helpfully.

Will said nothing- he seemed to have something on his mind- but picked the lobster up by its shoulders- if indeed lobsters had shoulders- and quietly took it over to drop it into a saucepan.

“Boilin’ it?” Penge sounded surprised.

Will turned and seemed to notice the weevilly little man for the first time.

“Ah,” he said. “Penge. You brought me a purse.”

“I did?”

“You did. And you didn’t take a single piece out of it.”

Penge shook his head emphatically, causing a few white specks to drift into the air.

“Nossir!”

“I’m very grateful for that, Penge.”

Penge screwed up his forehead.

“You are?”

Will held out his hand, in which gleamed a silvery coin.

“Here. To say thank you.”

Penge stared at the coin, and then looked up and stared at Will again.

“F’me?”

“Arr, ‘tis. ‘Tis a crown for you, Penge.”

“Crown?” Penge said slowly.

Elizabeth needed no such contemplation.

“A crown?” she cried. “A whole crown? He doesn’t rob the purse, and so you give him a crown? In God’s name, that’s five shillings wasted! What would you do if he pulled out of the water into his rotten little boat, give over the house to him?”

“Go on, Penge- thank you,” Will said, ignoring her as he manoeuvred Penge and his excessive reward out of the back door. “Don’t drink it all at once, now!” he called after the boatman’s retreating back, as the squirt shuffled off in the direction of the beach

Elizabeth stood, with her arms folded, waiting for an explanation.

“Well?”

“It seemed only fair. I read the letter that came with it, I counted it all out, and he’s not touched it.”

“And so you gave him a whole five shillings?”

“It didn’t seem a great loss-“

“Not a great loss? Is it really true that you went strange in the head at sea? I’ve defended you, you know, for years and years against what they say about you, but I’m beginning to wonder if they were right after all! Sometimes I think you live in a world of your-“

Because I just felt Will would publicly be given licence to just be a little bit weird. And Elizabeth, of course, has no idea what people think of her.

“It didn’t seem a great loss, out of three hundred and fifty pounds.”

“Come again?”

Will pulled a small sack-purse out of his pocket, and dropped it on the table, where it made an affirmatively heavy chink.

“I counted it, whilst the two of you were chasing the dinner. Three hundred and fifty pounds- or three hundred and forty-nine pounds fifteen shillings, now, in coins out of London, most of them pretty new.”

Elizabeth sat down upon the bench, and opened the purse, to reveal a tightly-packed mass of not-exactly golden pieces, which did not gleam much, being modern and much- handled. No dazzling forgotten gold, these- these pounds and sovereigns and crowns and half-crowns, all plain, modest and functional, did not need to look beautiful.

“Three hundred and fifty pounds,” she breathed.

“I know.”

“Three hundred and fifty pounds.”

“Yes.”

“Three hundred and fifty pounds.”

“I know.”

“Three hundred and fifty pounds.”

“Three hundred and fifty pounds. Take your choice.”

“I thought they didn’t write numbers like that any more.” (touch of the Goon Show here, and do you know, I’m quite proud).

I was trying to work out what the value of the pound (sterling) would have been, but I was confident that this was a large amount of money to suddenly appear at one go. Maybe not quite a fortune on which to Live Happily Ever After, but enough to substantially change one's plans for a year or so.

The two of them stared at the bag for a minute.

“How much have you got saved in the old chocolate tin up the chimney, Elizabeth?”

“Last time I counted? Five pounds, seventeen shillings and fourpence. And a ha’penny that fell out of your pocket.”

“Really? You’ve done well.”

“I’m going have to get a bigger tin.”

“Tin? I’d have to make a bigger chimney. When did we last see so much money in one-“

Elizabeth looked up sharply.

“I don’t want an evening of sitting trying to make out volumes of this or that heap of- Will? Will- before we live happily ever after- there’s not some story behind this, is there?”

“Depends what you mean.”

“I mean, is somebody going to come looking for this?”

“No, no, I don’t think that’s likely-“

“What about the unlikely? We’re not going to get dead things from decades ago dragging themselves in putting their long feelers up the chimney, are we?” 'Cos, you know how these things can happen.

“It’s nothing like that. It’s not stolen, it’s not supernatural and it’s not cursed. And at my time of life I’d rather have a mundane three hundred than a cursed million, I don’t care what Jack would say if he could hear me.”

“So how did you get it?”

“Letty sent it.”

“Letty- what, our Letty? Oh, god, what’s she done? Who’s she robbed?” Elizabeth gripped the edge of the table. “Or who’s she married?”

“I’ll read it to you. This is what she’s written:

Father- dear fellow! I’m writing to you as my dear Mr Briddie is passing a great many cups of Madeira to all the neighbours who we woke up by dancing in the parlour. An hour ago a boy from the publisher’s came running round to our door- this being when I was about to get into bed- to take a message from Mr Churl to ask if I would settle with his press alone for the sum of thirty-eight thousand pounds at once, before taking a portion after the sale of the first run? Well, what more is there to tell you? Only this morning I almost wept when my Eliza came to me with a hole worn through her shoe! Tomorrow my pretty, pretty girl shall have the very first-rate shoes from the Italian cobbler in Puleney Street- she may have a pair of shoes in every colour of the rainbow if she wishes it-
Damn, damn, damn. THis was meant to be in a 'handwriting' font, but it turns out that only my MSWord could produce it. So it will have to be italics, with no illegiblity to cover up for my writing. I don't doubt that Letty's voice here is not the same as elsewhere, but then, when we see her I suppose she's naturally going to be a bit more serious. I don't know if it's plausible even then, but too late now.

“Thirty thousand-“

“Yes, yes, yes.” Yes, that really is a fortune.

Well, that had been eighteen years and two further novels ago; and coming to the window of a great summer-house that thrust out from the back of the building, Elizabeth knew at once that the young women sat, with her head bent slightly over her book, upon a woven couch, framed by tall tree-ferns and stubby palms, her green muslin gown drifting out about her, was that very Eliza, now twenty-one. She was slender, and dark-haired, with a long but nonetheless handsomely-formed face, and a high forehead, and even sitting it was possible to tell that she was unusually long limbed and tall; and when she glanced up, even from here Elizabeth could tell that her eyes were dark, very dark, familiar enough, in the face of a stranger, to give Elizabeth a shivering jolt of recognition.

*****

Oddly enough, Will Turner didn’t actually see that- probably because, despite their being the proverbial truthful witnesses, most people were not really familiar with the colour and shape of their own eyes. What he did see was a wonderfully young, healthy and beautiful young woman, rising with the sort of smile that a pretty, prosperous, educated, healthy, intelligent and very kind young woman might give a strange man who is adrift on a continent he no longer knew in a century he didn’t understand.

There was a bit of me that kept trying to angst, and I kept trying to not let it. Being over seventy isn’t something to angst about in itself anyway. Btw, obviously this means that W&E would have married in about 1750 at the latest (I’m working on the basis it’s about 1802- just so it can be another century- which I know is canonically dodgy, but we know that PotC has a special arrangement with chronology anyway). (In fact, according to artaxastra's chronology, it was even later. And Letty's older brother is called Jamie.)

Mostly, he just recognised her, partly remembering what he’d read of her but also because she was so obviously Letty’s child- it was Letty, more or less, frozen in time for twenty years and more since he had seen her- Letty in an expensive dress, a version of Letty as dressed by a maidservant and taught some formal manners, but Letty all the same.

The girl who he really must remember not to call Letty dropped a small, slow curtsy, then held out her hands.

“My dear sir!” she intoned. “Welcome, welcome; I thought it best to receive you in here; I hope you are warm enough?”

Will Turner had never been called ‘my dear’ and ‘sir’ in the same breath before, or at least not, as now, with every sign of sincerity.

Will's just fun to bewilder, still.

“Miss, ah, Miss Briddie- it’s Eliza, isn’t it?”

Miss Briddie gasped.

“Oh, please, sir, no such formalities, I beg you! My relations have always called me Eliza- or Elizabeth if you must, but I would not wish you to call me ‘Miss Briddie’, for I should wish that we should be not as strangers, and I might be a granddaughter to you, as I should have been!”

Having recovered from the shock of this outburst, Will managed to smile, hoping that it would soothe this panic. Eliza is probably living an entirely different sort of story to the one Will is used to being tangled up in; the sort where comparatively small things (comparatively to, say, being dragged away by skeletal pirates) can get a maiden so very flustered. As Will is used to having a more robust heroine around, I expect Eliza is a bit worrying, in an omygod please don’t let me break her by looking at her wrong type of way.

“I shall, I shall. You might call me Grandda, if you like.”

“Oh!” Eliza blinked, and, after taking this in for a moment, smiled, and, after they had stood self-conscious for a few seconds, leaned over and, Eliza having been granted the incongruously regal Turner features, after a little awkward navigation of noses, delivered a quick kiss on his cheek.

No young fellow there, then, Will thought, and was shocked at himself to realise he had.

And so Eliza begged him sit, with much more affection and attention to whether he was comfortable (he very soon was), and whether he was warm enough (he was), and whether he was well (as he was, or at least well enough to say that he was well), and whether her grandmother was well (as she was, at least, oh surely, yes, she was almost certainly well really), and how faired her uncle, and his wife, and their sons, how old would they be now? And whether Nova Sophia was well, and who of his friends were yet living, and whether they were well, and if so what ailed them, and how the passing had been of those who were not, and how the passage from Jamaica had been, and how on from Madeira, and how on from Portsmouth, and from London (in fact, the passage from Jamaica had been strange- nothing happened- not one hurricane tossed them, not the merest glimpse of a giant squid or ravening whale, nor did any fountains nor whirlpools appear, nor even the merest hint of a raid. Beneath a meek and little moon, Will had walked the decks unable to sleep until first the sailors had shooed him away like a child that would not go to its bed, then a fellow passenger had called out: “You have walked those boards for five hours! The old brigands are all dead! Will you kindly go to your bed, you sad old flamingo!” (I actually did research for this: I had to check that flamingos would be known in that region. It seems so. Anyway, the speaker could have seen it in a book. I’ve always felt that there was something of a large wading bird about Orlando Bloom (and, thus, Will), and I imagine in later life it would seem more so.)

Alas, for the lack of a Passenger’s Code; there seemed so many vulgar types at sea these days. He had not mentioned to Elizabeth that it had made worse the queer feeling in his chest, as if his lungs were always half-full- just because he hadn’t told her before, and if he told her now she would only say it was his own fault, which it probably was).

He was in the middle of explaining as such to Eliza- who sat, though terribly, terribly straight, still managed to lean forward with every sign of rapt fascination- when a voice behind him said:

“Eliza, whoever has alarmed Mrs Bowman so? She seems to think that we are under siege.”

He didn’t recognise the voice, as such. Or rather, he did, but he knew the speaker who he recognised it from had not spoken- because he could, at this moment, see Elizabeth peeking through the window behind a very large aspidistra plant. All the same, he knew who it was, though she had sounded different when he last heard her- and all the funnier that she should sound like Elizabeth now. He wondered if she actually knew she was doing it.

Certainly the day that he had last seen her, she would not have liked to have been told that she sounded like Elizabeth. Which was why he did not say anything, while she threw this and that into the sack on her bed. Instead, he had said:

“Where are you meaning to go, anyway, Letty?”

She replied:

“Aunt Beth wrote that she would always have us, didn’t she? and that she’d teach me all the right things, and introduce me to her sort of people.”

“You know, Letty- Letty, listen- I always thought that was the sort of offer it’s easy to make to distant relations who are very unlikely ever to accept it.”

“She made it. I’m her relation. She’s a lady, now, isn’t she? Now, I wouldn’t know much about ladies, of course-“

“Letty­-“

“-but I know when they make an invitation they’re meant to honour it, no matter how embarrassing a branch of the family they have to put up because of it.”

“Letty, I don’t think trying to throw yourself into high society is going to make you happy.”

“And what do you suggest? What must I do with myself? Go off to sea and go pillaging, yes? Or marry some hairy villain, for that is the only manner of man we seem to know- or maybe off to Tortuga to be a pot-girl, or flog myself on street corners?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of apologising to your mother.”

But Letty was in full flow now, oh yes.

“I can’t stay here forever! I ain’t got forever to hang around chasing hens and catching shellfish, have I, I’m not hanging around like our William can I?”

“Oh, Letty, don’t be ridiculous, you know William has his own problems. Namely, he can’t stop turning blue.” (Of course, once Will had got over the shock the first time he had seen it happen- and it was surprising how fast a body could get over such a shock when Elizabeth was glaring at him- he had been prepared to agree with her that William’s phosphorescence was very beautiful. It was just that the ripples of rainbow colours that shimmered across the lad’s skin at moments of excitement had lost him several girls.)

You see… EL was lamenting the improbability that the Ferryman’s offspring would wind up with a touch of cuttlefish genes about them. Well…

“Well I don’t want to live with someone who keeps turning blue, or mauve, or yellow, or green, or anything like that! I don’t want to be in the family with the phosphorescent brother! I don’t want to be in the house by the beach with the mad people, who never go to church and have pirates round for dinner! I don’t want to be the family with the mad mother who carries a cutlass and says her father was the governor of Jamaica whilst she runs about after the chickens, or the father who talks in all seriousness of krakens and zombies! It would be so simple, would it not, that if a husband did disappear for ten years for no good reason his wife would make some complaint of it instead of believing completely all he would say about ghost ships!”

And now she was quiet, and stood quite still, save for trembling a little. Suddenly she looked so very little- all enormous, long-lashed eyes and pink, fluted child’s lips, perched on a body that seemed to have more in common with that of a wren than it ever would with a grown woman- even the very bones, and there was not much else to go by, seemed impossibly tiny. Escaping wisps of curls, pushing straight out at the top and sides, formed a sort of smoky halo around her head.

I was trying to get the effect- if not an actual likeness- of Keira at her most skinny and fawn-like. Actually it’s not much of a likeness at all, but I just wanted it to conjure a similar idea.

“You don’t believe any of that, then?” Will said, looking into her almost-blank expression.

“I don’t know what I believe! I’ve had all this all my life and I’ve turned out one of those bloody mad Turners same as the rest of you! And I can’t stay here forever! I’m going now and I want to get away from all this, I can’t not leave, I can’t, I can’t!”

Of course, she never did leave all that behind her. Oh, she ran away to Aunt Beth alright, and, surprisingly, Aunt Beth took quite good care of her; and she found Briddie again; and so found herself a new name, and a new voice, but above all that, she was only living in the style to which she had, back then, wished to become accustomed, through all the same old mad Turner stories that, when she was eighteen, she had never wanted to hear again.

And here she was- why, she was enormous now- she seemed even taller now than back then, and that long straight dress made it seem even more so. Forty. Forty years old, and still beautiful, oh yes, still beautiful- a few noble creases on that high forehead, a suspicion of laughter lines, one or two silver hairs against the sable. That was all.

How she walked now! Her head high, her hands graceful, her shoulders down- and what a look she had on her- cool, amused, poised in the face of anything!

Our Letty. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, and so on. I made you, you know, he thought, well, Elizabeth and I at any rate- having verbed the adjective noun with enthusiasm that was probably not surprising after ten years manning a ghost ship.

I’m actually not sure where I got this, but EL liked it.

I know you know that you look like me, but do you know that you walk like your mother? That Letty had ever existed at all, let alone been born or started walking or talking or anything she did after that had always taken him when it happened by complete surprise, and though Will was starting to believe only a little more in his own memories than anyone else did, here she was, tall, graceful, dark-eyed, elegant, simply but immaculately turned-out, and radiating intelligence like a vapour. I did that, he thought. And at last we meet again. My, haven’t you grown. You’ve put on weight, and it suits you. And whoever gave you the idea you could wear grey with our complexion? My daughter. Gosh.

It's quite hard to think that he wouldn't even have seen a photograph of her for 20 years, and would only have known in the most abstract way that she would be, y'know, older. This paragraph isn't entirely my words, but I do really, really like it.

And Letty saw him and thought: So they have come. I knew they would one day. When it comes to it, we never manage to stay away from the encounter forever.

She could swear that her father was smaller than she remembered him; and yet there was something of the past frozen about him. Of course, he was wearing clothes of a thirty-year old design, though the frogging on his coat still seemed well-kempt, and his stockings- stockings, by day! Honestly!- did not look holed at all. And he appeared to be wearing a very ill-made wig, but that was only because he had never cut his hair in the modern style, despite it now being quite white.I'm not sure my run down of costume is quite right here- I think white stockings (whenever Will got hold of those) would not be entirely passe, and wigs, well, they were passe but the older generation were not letting go of them just yet- either because they weren't about to start going round with nothing between head and hat, or they didn't wish to display thier own hair (or lack of it) to all and sundry. Though Will isn't wearing one anyway (because he is still a Hero, albeit still a dopey one), but all the same.

Of course, she still knew he was beautiful. And kind, and cunning, and noble, oh so very noble. That she believed, oh yes, she believed it; she had oftimes stifled her thoughts with the sharp rejoinder: But I know that he is honourable!

(“There are seafaring men, my dear Letty,” Aunt Beth had told her gently, when she had asked the meaning of Great-Aunt Celia’s dark hints, “who have more than one wife, in different ports so they never find out about each other; and take few formalities if sometimes they abandon one of them altogether.”)

Aunt Beth’s late husband, Sir Edward Caudellion, had owned a great atlas, big enough to show huge amounts of terra incognita, which, because map-makers do not like great empty spaces, contained therein many little drawings of mermaids and great sea-dragons. Letty had questioned this, and he had smiled, and explained that they were but decoration, and that, in places men did not know, they were wont to draw monsters; indeed, the Romans had once thought Britannia to be peopled with ravenous, man-eating giants. In unknown lands, men placed monsters.

Having been a child with an almost-grown brother, and few friends, Letty had grown up most imaginative, and able to make some very elaborate monsters indeed. But she could tell herself now, that when a man is lost at sea or shipwrecked for as long as ten years, then drinking sea-water and lying for full days under tropical sun is bound to leave him somewhat… confused, that perhaps absurd imaginings were better than the horror of exposure, that the fact and fiction of memory could begin to run in to one another. Would that not be enough to lead to obliteration of what had really happened? Would that not be enough to justify the look of one who had seen most terrible things? Would that not be enough to set one apart from others, to avoid common, judgemental sort of company and to adore a ten-years tardy daughter? For none of this did one need a guilty conscience, nor for another wife and children in New Orleans to have been carried off by fire or sudden fever.

I think Letty would give any amount of having missed out on the great adventures she grew up hearing about, if it meant getting rid of the inward shame of having let everyone else (that is, all the 'normal' people she met since) persuade her to be suspicious, and make up more adult monsters in a more metaphorical family closest.

(“And your mother was quite right,” Aunt Beth soothed her, “He was absolutely alive all that time. I did say to her that I hoped very much that I was wrong.”)

And still alive now, it seemed, even now that Aunt Beth herself was a widow (though she admitted the fact freely- rather as she had been trying to persuade her cousin to, about forty-five years ago now). Though perhaps ‘absolutely’ is pushing it a bit, Letty thought, and then wished she hadn’t.

It was about this moment that this revive was broken off by something small, pink and grubby hurtling across the room and disappearing under Eliza Briddie’s skirts.

Will blinked.

“What was that?”

Letty smiled.

“That was Sophie.”

“Oh. I see.”

“And I see you’ve met Eliza.”

“I have. They’re very beautiful girls, Letty.”

At this, Eliza turned her face down, apparently distracted by smoothing Sophie’s hair. Sophie openly pouted.

Letty smiled.

“They really are, aren’t they?” she said.

I really struggled with this ending; it still feels weak. Ho hum. It continues to something better. The trouble is, I can't turn it into anything more and a bit of exposition that links the two chapters with proper plot in them.