"Captain - you seem troubled." Syrene spoke from the partially-open door into his room, startling him. She smiled at his surprised half-jump, adding, "It's only me - no cause for alarm."

Jack uttered a low expletive, then shook his hair out of his face impatiently, "A good thing, too, ma'am, since you come upon me all unarmed." He gestured down at himself - clothed in the soft garments they had given him, no weapons at hand other than his own wits. He raised his hands now, palms out toward her, "I surrender - what are your terms?" he joked.

Syrene shut the door and crossed to the side of the bed. Standing over him - which was a reversal of their positions had he been on his feet instead of still sitting on the bed - she looked down at him, her expression somber. "Nothing less than total capitulation, sir."

Jack found himself unable to look away from her serious blue gaze. "Am I being mesmerized, ma'am? Drawn into your web, so to speak?"

"Could you be?" Syrene answered, and broke the mood by smiling. "Could you be hungry, perhaps? It's almost the dinner hour. I came to fetch you."

Jack rested one palm against his stomach, which was surprisingly flat, his having been fed on their sensible, yet tasty fare for several days now. "I could eat," he allowed. Then grinned as his belly rumbled with hunger. They both laughed. "I could eat quite a lot, apparently," he amended.

Syrene stepped back, turned and crossed to the door, "I'll come back in a quarter hour - I'm sure you'll want to bathe and change clothes." She gestured to the fresh garments laid out for him on a chair. Before Jack could comment on their as-if-by-magic appearance, she was gone out the door and it shut behind her.

"Well, damme," he muttered, rubbing his face again, the dream's remnants still disquieting him even though he couldn't remember anything exactly about what he had dreamt. "When did these magick themselves in here?" He sighed, rose to his feet and quickly stripped off his damp trousers and shirt. The water in the ewer was warm, another marvel, and he poured it into the large matching basin, wondering yet again how they had managed to bring both hot water and fresh clothing into his room and he not know it.

"I must be slipping in me old age," he told himself, and, soaping the large soft cloth, he quickly bathed, rinsed off, and poured the used water into the jar beside the wash stand. Grabbing up the fresh towel, he dried himself and put on the clean trousers and shirt. This time they were a soft blue color instead of natural white, and he wondered at the change. Did the color signify something or was it just what was clean, handy and his size? He had no further time to ponder this because Syrene rapped at his door, calling to him, "Are you ready, Captain?"

Jack opened the door to her, "Almost, ma'am, I've just got to do something with this mop of hair of mine." He looked around and spotted the tortoiseshell comb on the low table beside his bed. "Ah, there's the thing itself," he commented. He dragged it through his hair somewhat haphazardly, not seeing Syrene's amused smile at his impatient movements, then cast about for something to tie it back with. "A string, a ribbon - do you have a bit of something or other I can use, ma'am?"

She shook her head, "No, sorry - I'll get someone to bring you some things later - it's fine as it is, come along now or they won't save us any dinner." That was a joke, but it had the desired effect as he quickly dropped the comb back on the table and followed her out the door. She made her way to the dining hall, noting that with his hair loose and no shoes on, it sounded and looked rather as if she had a large blonde pet dogging her footsteps. Very large, she added, glancing around to find Jack almost on her heels, so intent was he on not getting gypped out of his dinner. "Really, Captain, I was just joking - they wouldn't dare not have food for us."

Jack braked a bit and looked surprised, then sheepish, "Oh - oh, I say there - y'had me going for a minute, ma'am." The sheepish look changed to a smile as his stomach growled very loudly. "And m'stomach too, it seems!"

Syrene gestured for him to seat himself beside her at the head of a table where several others were well into their food, and Jack quickly sat down, laying his napkin across his lap. Before he could look 'round, a server brought him a platter of chops to select from. "Lovely - lamb, is it?" he asked. When she nodded, he took a large chop, smiling happily at it. He loved chops - and these were beautifully browned and seemed to be seasoned with herbs that sent a lovely aroma wafting into his nostrils. As he contemplated the delicacy, another server put small, pearl-sized onions in wine sauce onto his plate, while yet another served him a helping of potatoes the size of his thumb-tip, each one carved to look like an ivory bead. "Marvelous," he commented, "wonderful!"

Amused, Syrene watched Jack as her own plate was filled - although to a lesser degree - with the same foods as his. Lamb, onions, potatoes, crispy-steamed asparagus and icy cold sliced tomatoes with olive oil dressing. As freshly baked bread rolls were set in front of each of them in individual baskets, they each received a full cup of pinkish-red wine poured from a ewer beaded with cold from sitting in ice. "This is wonderful, wonderful!" Jack exclaimed again, and then was silent as he was too busy devouring it all to speak for long moments.

"Hearty appetite," Syrene thought, not for the first time, and ate her own meal somewhat more decorously, stopping to converse with the others at her table as she ate. After mopping up the sauces on his plate with his third roll, Jack joined the discussion. Apparently he was able to regain his powers of speech once his stomach was full, Syrene thought in amusement. They chatted about the day - the sunny weather, the abundant catch of red snapper and grouper one of the fishermen had caught that day, the healthy vegetable crop in their gardens - mundane things, but interesting and enjoyable.

"So, this fisherman fellow," Jack put in after awhile, sipping a dessert cordial from a tiny silver cup, "does he often catch snappers and jewfish in such a large quantity?" He was racking his brains in the meantime, trying to recall in what latitudes such huge schools of those very fishes swam. Were they north or south of the Equator? And why couldn't he recall exactly where the dear old Surprise had been when he'd been blown to Kingdom Come, or wherever in the seven seas he was?

Syrene gave one of the men a sharp glance when he made to answer their guest, "Not often," she said, her look telling the man not to elaborate. The captain was sharper than he sometimes appeared, she knew well, and she could see he was trying to ascertain just where they were on the round globe of the Earth. If he was not going to stay - and she had no reason to think he would at this point - he could not be allowed to know where he had been. She changed the subject, "I understand there are some new foals in the stables - do you like horses, Captain?"

Jack beamed, patting his stomach, leaning back in his comfortable chair, "I do, madame, I certainly do! My stables at home are filled with blooded stock, but my old friend Stephen - his late wife was a real expert on horseflesh." And so he found himself telling some stories about Diana Villiers-Maturin, who had died of crashing her coach and six off a road into a ditch because she took a sharp turn at too high a rate of speed while racing someone from one village to another. "Terrible loss, Diana," he added at the end, "but she died doin' what she liked best - racin' her cattle faster than Hell down a road nobody ever dared drive a team at that speed before or since."

"Cattle? I thought she drove horses?" A youngish man asked, puzzled at the term.

"Oh - er - cattle - horses - one and the same thing y'know," Jack answered.

"It's a slang term," Syrene interposed softly, seeing the other man was still puzzled.

"Oh, I see now - forgive my ignorance," the man said, smiling at Jack.

Jack waved off the apology with a flap of one large hand, "No offence taken - I forgot that you wouldn't know the term." He sighed and put down the empty cordial cup. "Delicious - almonds, is it? Very good."

Syrene pushed her chair back, followed shortly by everyone else at the table. She stood, "And now, Captain, I believe we should walk off this fine dinner."

Jack gave her an elegant half-bow, thinking it would have a much more impressive effect if he were in his regimentals and not something just slightly more dignified than pajamas, "After you, ma'am."

They walked out the nearest door to the outside, emerging into scented night air that brushed their skin like a velvet caress. It was still warm, though not oppressively so, and the breeze brought them the scent of the sea as well as the flowers and plants in the gardens that surrounded them. The moon rode, full as a golden coin, on a drift of wispy cloud overhead. "Lovely sight, that," Jack commented, though trying to recall what phase the moon had been in that night he'd been blown off the boat to end up here. Hadn't it been a moonless night? Or had it after all been lighted by another moon like this one, only silver and not gold? His head whirled and he stopped, suddenly assailed by dizziness as his brain refused to cooperate with his quest for the memory.

"Captain?" he heard Syrene's voice, concern in her tone as he groped with one hand for something to lean against. "Are you ill?"

He found a stone bench and sat upon it, landing with an undignified plop, but feeling a bit more stable once his rump was firmly down on the solid surface of the thing. He dropped his face into his hands and the whirling, vertiginous swirl inside his head stopped gradually. "Perhaps it was the wine and the cordial - too much for this old addled head to absorb." Although that thought in itself was ludicrous given his capacity for wine and spirits in the past. Jack had no time to ponder that as a cup of cold water was thrust into his hand and he was firmly urged by his hostess to drink it.

He glanced up in time to see a young woman with a water pitcher smiling at him before she turned and hurried off, presumably on some other errand of mercy. "Deuced convenient maids you've got here, ma'am," he commented, then drank the icy cold draught gratefully. Finished, he wiped his upper lip and smiled at Syrene. "Sorry to be a fuddy-duddy who can't hold his drink," he told her sincerely.

"Is that what it was?" she inquired, then changed the subject, rising to her feet and extending a hand down to him, "Come - let's get you to your bed - you look a bit done in."

Jack could but agree, and rose to his feet, finding himself suddenly very tired. Indeed, he was almost asleep on his feet as they reached his door, and he found himself being undressed by his hostess and tucked into his bed. What inopportune timing, he thought muzzily, naked as a jay in front of this gorgeous female and he all unable to act upon it. "Too bad," he commented sleepily.

Syrene, laying his clothes across the chair, turned at his words, having thought him already asleep. "What's too bad, Captain?"

"Jack - call me Jack, darling - too bad that I'm hors de combat - non habeas corpus mentis - y'know?" He fumbled for words, waving one hand in a wide gesture that almost had him tumbling out of the bed, "Oops, can't have that now, can we?" he giggled, his voice a warm tumble of laughter that both charmed and amused her. "Shorry - erm, sorry - where was I saying? Oh - oh, aye - it's too bad that I'm bare as a babe and you're still clothed, is what I was shay-saying." He grabbed onto the mattress with both hands, "Fuck me - the bloody bed is spinning now!" More laughter, and his voice faded.

"Goodnight, Captain Aubrey," she said, stifling laughter of her own.

"Jack, darling, call me Jack - or Goldilocks," and he giggled again, still gripping the bed. "It would be damned nice if the thing would stop buckin'!"

"I assure you - Jack - that the bed is not bucking - you're just over tired. Rest now." Syrene moved to the door. "Good night, Jack."

The figure on the bed was still now, hands relaxed on top of the covers. The moonlight struck silver and gold off the blonde masses of hair spread on the pillow as he turned his head slightly toward the sound of her voice. "G'night. . .g'night, Syrene...beautiful Syrene. . ."

She closed his door behind her, stood in the darkness of the corridor for a few minutes until a servant walked up to her and gave her a respectful nod. "Keep him safely in his room," she ordered, and walked off. She wasn't sure he'd even try to leave his room to explore in the night, but there was no point in tempting Fate.

Fate had a way of delivering some very strange tricks here lately.

"Goldilocks?" she mused later, and smiled. The nickname was apt, though unsuited to his dignity as the captain of a ship such as the Surprise. Jack suited him far better, although she wasn't at all sure she would use that name to his face, either. It would not do to be on such personal terms with him, it might invite him to think there was something more between them than hostess and rather reluctant guest.

And that would never do. . .

TBC