Maiden Voyage Page 9

  Lucy fiddled with her hair and pulled Abigail’s shawl tightly around her to keep the embroidery and pearl buttons on her dress hidden. She so wanted to fit in! The way some of the first-class passengers talked, you’d think third class was filled with rats and filthy beggars. And yet as they wandered and searched the area, Lucy saw mostly families—perfectly respectable-looking families—passing time playing games, talking, or reading.

  What she did not see was the girl or the coat.

  After nearly an hour Abigail motioned Lucy toward a stairwell. She led her up and out onto the poop deck at the rear of the boat, which served as the third-class promenade. Aside from being downwind of the smoke stacks, the rear deck was quite pleasant and outfitted with comfortable iron and wooden benches. A few spinning air vents dotted about like mushrooms.

  Lucy scanned the crowded deck, nearly tripping over a pair of boys playing at her feet. The boys’ mother scooped the smallest out of her way and took the other child by the hand, gently scolding her sons to watch what they were doing. Then, before she was even done reprimanding them, she planted kisses on the tops of their heads to soften the blow and released them to continue their play. The brothers ran straight to their father, who crouched down to catch them and eagerly joined in a new game.

  Watching the tender exchange, Lucy felt a pang. She looked away, but everywhere her eyes traveled they came across more families laughing and talking, at ease with one another. Seeing them caused an ache she could not explain. She had grown up in the lap of luxury, she had wanted for nothing, and her mother had always been loving. And yet, she suddenly realized, she had never had the comfort and ease of the love that surrounded her now.

  It was plain as anything. What Lucy had been hoping for when they boarded the ship—that her father would be somehow transformed and that the three of them could become a caring family of three—was farther away than ever. The realization brought a lump to her throat and she turned toward the far rail. Within moments she’d spotted a welcome distraction.

  “Abigail!” she called to the maid who was walking along the row of benches behind her. “Isn’t that your steward?”

  Abigail looked to where Lucy was gesturing, near the flagpole by the ship rail. Lucy could see why Abigail liked the steward—he was quite handsome, and obviously very friendly. At the moment he was standing beside a boy, and both had their hands to their brows to block the sun as they gazed admiringly up at the ship’s massive smokestacks.

  Lucy looked back at Abigail expecting to see her smile … or flush. But instead of appearing surprised or delighted, Abigail looked decidedly alarmed.

  “He can’t be of any help!” Abigail said. She rushed to Lucy and took her arm. “I don’t think that girl is here, anyway.” Abigail was practically pushing Lucy toward the stairs and off the poop deck. “And we’ve left your mother for too long. We should get back!”

  “Shouldn’t we just ask him?” Lucy insisted, glancing back at the steward who was now crouching and talking to the passenger. The young boy’s face was now visible, and Lucy instantly understood what had rattled Abigail so badly. She turned to the maid with a single eyebrow raised in question. “Or at least go and say hello to your little brother?”

  “Let go of me!” Isabella jerked her arm from the clutches of the uniformed steward—the bulldog. She should have known her luck couldn’t hold, and silently she cursed herself for her impatience. She’d had to wait over an hour for the Swedish family to leave their berth so she could get ready, and then had stood by the gates for as long as she could stand it, all the while thinking about the fate that awaited her mother and sister if she didn’t locate and warn them in time. When the mounting anxiety and desperation grew unbearable, she ran. She surged past the open gates, hoping she could outrun the steward or lose him in the crowd as she’d done the day before. But she had barely gone five paces when she felt an iron grip on her arm.

  “You,” the steward snorted as he pulled her back roughly. “You’re the same girl we saw yesterday.” He positioned himself between Isabella and the passage to freedom. With a sneer across his pushed-in face, he looked her up and down in confusion. It was clear to Isabella that he wasn’t sure what to make of a girl in such a fine coat coming from E deck …

  Isabella glanced over the man’s shoulder and wondered if she should try to run back the other way, to steerage. Before she could make her decision the steward stepped even closer, nearly pinning her to the wall.

  “Are you hard of hearing? I asked where you thought you were going …” He cocked his head to look at her out of the corners of his eyes. Isabella did her best to breathe normally. She lifted her chin.

  “I’m returning to my suite!” she said in her finest impression of a first-class passenger. Out of the corner of her own eye she spotted a man she thought she’d seen before. It took a moment to place him because he was dressed differently … he looked much more like a first-class passenger than the last time she’d laid eyes on him. But she was certain he was the man who had been trying to get out of steerage two days ago. Isabella shuddered at the sight of his scar, and the realization that he was watching them with interest.

  “My first-class suite!” Isabella said, refocusing on the steward.

  Her acting may not have been the best, but it was enough to make the bulldog step back. He looked confused for a second time, and then his expression changed. “Oh, I see,” he smirked, raising his thick eyebrows. “I’m asking the wrong question. Where have you been, Miss? What exactly have you been getting up to in third class?”

  Isabella tried to look haughty and offended. She pursed her lips and breathed through her nose. “I don’t see how that is any of your concern,” she replied, narrowing her eyes.

  “Right.” He nodded, though he clearly did not believe her. “I’ll need to see your ticket, of course.”

  Of course. Isabella wished she could slap the smug look off the steward’s squinched-up face, but she had no choice but to continue the ruse. “I do not carry my ticket for passage with me,” she replied with mock disdain.

  The steward smiled coldly. “Then we will just check the passenger list.” He grasped Isabella’s arm a little more firmly than was necessary and led her to a nearby supply area. “Your name?” he asked when he had located the list.

  “Miles,” Isabella replied. It wasn’t a lie. Not really.

  The man with the scar turned in her direction.

  “Hmmph.” The steward ran a thick finger down the manifest, stopping when he found what he was looking for. “Hmph,” he snorted. “Here you are.” He looked momentarily defeated, and Isabella thought he might let her go. Then his sneer was back. “Let’s just go have a word with your father,” he said, pulling her along with him toward B deck. “I have a feeling Mr. Miles will have something to say about you mixing with the vermin in steerage.”

  Felix!

  Abby could not breathe. She could not speak. Miss Lucy had spotted Felix, and the game was up! If only it were a game and not their futures at stake!

  “I … I …” Abby stammered, struggling to find the words to explain to Miss Lucy what her brother was doing aboard the Titanic. For a split second she considered denying it, telling her mistress that the boy talking to Jasper wasn’t her brother. But aside from their obvious resemblance and the fact that Miss Lucy had seen him on numerous other occasions, she had been nothing but good to her—right down to her willingness to venture into steerage to help Abby find the expensive coat she’d so carelessly lost! Miss Lucy deserved the truth. And besides, Abby was exhausted from trying to keep Felix hidden and living in constant fear of being caught in her own web of lies.

  “Miss Lucy, I had to …” Lucy held up a hand, silencing her. Abby met her gaze and was surprised to see that the look on her employer’s face was not anger or even shock … it was admiration!

  “How did you do it?” Lucy asked. There was a sparkle in her eyes that had not been there this morning. “How did you manage to get him
aboard?”

  Abby glanced around. Her mouth was bone dry.

  “Don’t worry,” Lucy said, dropping her voice to a whisper. “I won’t say a word. To be perfectly honest I’m relieved to see Felix. I … I was afraid to ask what kind of arrangements you’d made for him while we are away from London.”

  “Your father wanted him to go to a workhouse.” Abby’s eyes welled with tears. “But I just couldn’t! I was desperate. I put him inside a steamer trunk and …”

  Lucy blinked back tears of her own—she was laughing and crying at once. “Oh, you didn’t!” she gasped. “You put him in a trunk? That’s brilliant.”

  Abby couldn’t help but smile back. “I had to. I need us both to land in America … I … I’m planning to stay there.”

  “Oh, Abigail.” Her eyes alight, Lucy put a hand on Abby’s arm. “How unbelievably brave you are!”

  “Or foolish,” Abby added.

  “Honestly, I’m not sure I would be so capable if I were the one to lose my mother and—”

  This time it was Abby who held up a hand. She didn’t feel able to continue the conversation. The emotions she worked so hard to contain were threatening to break the surface of her composure. It was all too much! She did not want to become hysterical here, now, in front of Lucy, Jasper … and especially Felix.

  Abby kept her back to the boys and Lucy thankfully did not push further. She kept her hand on Abby’s arm, steadying her, and spoke softly. “The way you manage to care for so many others without a soul to care for you is a wonder, Abigail. Your mother would be very proud. I know she would.”

  Abby drew a ragged breath. She swallowed hard and managed a small smile. “Thank you, Miss,” she murmured. Though they brought a wave of emotions to the surface, Lucy’s words meant more to her than she could know, and Abby was grateful for the kindness.

  “So what do you say? Shall we enlist those two young sailors to help find my coat?” Lucy asked, lightening the mood and giving Abby another reason to be in her debt. She tilted her head back toward the spot where Jasper and Felix had been standing, but when Abby turned her gaze to the rail there was no one there.

  Jasper and Felix had disappeared.

  Isabella nearly laughed to herself as the confused steward tried to find the way to the first-class staterooms. Instead she hid her smile and silently let him steer her up and down various corridors and staircases, leading them in circles for a good forty-five minutes.

  “Ridiculous ship,” he grumbled, tugging on her arm. Finally he seemed to recognize where they were. Prodding her up a flight of stairs, he pushed her toward the elevators near the Grand Staircase. Though he didn’t seem convinced that she was indeed a first-class passenger, the possibility that she could be seemed enough to keep him from handling her too roughly.

  They rode in silence. With the elevator’s accordion doors locked tight, there was no point in trying to get away. Isabella knew she was trapped and would soon be standing before her biological father.

  I’ll have to face him sometime, she thought, though she had hoped to contact her mother and sister before coming face-to-face with Phillip Miles. As she stepped off the elevator, she felt more like a convict being sent before a judge than the daughter of a first-class passenger. Had her whole plan been doomed from the start? Who was she to be counting on a mother and a sister she’d never met? The Miles women were strangers to her, and she to them.

  The steward gave a sharp rap on the Mileses’ stateroom door without releasing the firm grip on Isabella’s elbow. Several long seconds passed, and hope flickered in Isabella’s chest. If Mr. Miles was not in his room, he would be extremely difficult for the steward to find—particularly since he obviously knew little about the ship’s layout. It would only buy her time, but time was better than nothing!

  Isabella heard footsteps approaching on the other side of the door and her heart pounded. The latch turned and Phillip Miles opened the door, his dark brows lowered in a scowl. He looked them both up and down. “Yes? What is it?”

  “May we have a word, sir?” The steward still had the smug look on his face, and now made a move toward the door. Instead of asking them in, however, Miles glanced backward, stepped into the corridor, and quickly closed the door behind him.

  “My wife is resting. She’s very frail,” he announced. “We’ll have to talk somewhere else.”

  Isabella craned her neck to get a glimpse of Mrs. Miles—the stranger who was, in fact, her mother—before the door shut, but saw nothing.

  Miles glared at her. He glared at the steward, who looked slightly less arrogant under Miles’s harsh gaze, and then turned and walked briskly toward the open decks.

  The steward hurried Isabella along behind Miles. She was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe and her legs felt like they had leaden weights tied to them. It was as if Miles had already tossed her overboard and she was sinking under the waves.

  Finally, Phillip Miles stopped in a more or less empty area of the promenade deck and turned to wait for them to catch up.

  “Now. What is this about?” he asked gruffly.

  The steward stood taller and puffed out his chest. “Your daughter was down in steerage, sir,” he reported, his lip curling. “I caught her in the bowels of the ship myself. Now it isn’t my place to—”

  “My daughter?” Phillip Miles interrupted. “Where is she?” He glanced past the steward, past Isabella, looking for Lucy Miles.

  Isabella swallowed hard and squared her shoulders. She took a gasping breath. “I’m right here, Father,” she said boldly. “I’m afraid it wasn’t as easy to get rid of me as you thought.”

  Lucy stopped short at the top of the stairs. The sound of her father’s voice sent a shiver down her spine. He was on the promenade deck, speaking to someone in a harsh tone. She thought she heard the word “daughter” and hoped against hope she was mistaken. She and Abigail had been away for quite a long time, and it was entirely possible that he was looking for her. Although she doubted he was actually concerned—it was far more likely that he was upset with her for leaving her mother.

  Lucy looked back at Abigail, putting a finger to her lips and motioning for her to come closer. The two inched toward the doorway at the top of the stairs. Lucy wanted to see the person her father was talking to, or rather shouting at. His voice had already risen considerably, and he sounded angry.

  “But I paid the doctor to …” He halted, as if he’d just realized that he was saying too much. “That’s preposterous!”

  Lucy peeked around the edge of the door and instantly spotted another figure—a man she was certain she’d seen before but now could not place—before her eyes found her father.

  His back was toward the stairwell, but there was no mistaking him. “You’re nothing but a grubby little urchin trying to get your hands on my money!” he snarled.

  By taking a small step forward, Lucy was able to see whom he was yelling at. She reached back and squeezed Abigail’s hand to keep from crying out. It was the girl in the green coat!

  Abigail squeezed back to let her know that she saw her, too, and they both watched, transfixed, as the girl pulled an envelope out of the coat pocket.

  “I am your daughter. I have proof,” she said. Her voice trembled as much as her hand as she held the envelope toward Lucy’s father. He snatched it, turning away from the girl and the steward holding her elbow before pulling a few weathered pages from the envelope.

  Lucy stepped back so her father wouldn’t see her if he looked up, but there was no need. His attention was entirely focused on the documents. His face contorted as his eyes darted back and forth. Lucy felt herself holding her breath. She had seen her father’s temper more times than she could count, and knew all too well when he was about to fly into a rage.

  “This is nonsense!” he bellowed. He stared daggers at the girl and took two slow steps toward her. Lucy was mesmerized by the girl’s look of fear as her father held the papers close to her face. Her stomach dropped. Sh
e knew exactly what it was like to be on the receiving end of her father’s wrath. He pushed the papers closer to the girl’s face. Then he pulled them back and held them over the water instead, taunting her for a moment before ripping them to shreds and letting the pieces fall into the sea.

  “No!” the girl shrieked, breaking from the steward’s grasp and frantically reaching over the rails as if she could catch the scraps fluttering down to the ocean. “No!”

  “You have nothing!” Lucy’s father snarled. The girl turned back to him. Her cheeks were wet, and as the reality of his words sunk in, her face crumpled completely.

  “Nothing,” Lucy’s father repeated before looking to the steward. “This gutter rat is no daughter of mine. Take her back to steerage where she belongs before I have you fired for falling for such a ridiculous ruse.”

  Lucy felt Abigail’s hand still gripping hers, and they watched in horror as the steward yanked the girl in the coat toward their hiding place.

  “You don’t understand,” the girl said, pleading with him and trying to pry his hand off her arm.

  “I understand that you won’t ever make a fool of me again!” the steward hissed, pulling her ever closer to Lucy and Abigail.

  Lucy was frozen in place, but felt Abigail pull her out of the steward’s path. She watched, transfixed, as the large man dragged the girl down the stairs. The scene felt like it wasn’t real. Like it couldn’t be real. Lucy was still staring after them, when the girl suddenly stopped pulling at the steward and turned to look up at her, as if Lucy had called her name. She hadn’t, of course. She hadn’t even the slightest idea what her name might be!

  Lucy locked eyes with the girl and the world slowed. She had the same feeling of recognition she’d had the first time she’d set eyes on her, and it sent a shiver up her spine. The girl’s mouth opened, filled with an unspoken … something. They continued to stare at each other as the girl was dragged away, and Lucy knew deep inside that she was not the only one who saw it. They each recognized something in the other—the familiar way she held her mouth, the shape of her eyes, the slight turn of her nose. They both understood that something had been taken from them, and against all odds they had just found it.