Unspeakable (10 page)

“I thought you'd like a place to call your own.”

I jumped at the sound of his voice as he came from behind the forward mast.

“Jim! You just about gave me a heart attack.”

He smiled and the pounding of my heart increased, but not from fright.

“Close your eyes,” he said, moving toward me. “I've got another surprise for you.”

I paused.

“Come on, Ellie,” he teased. “Don't you trust me?”

“Do you think I'd be here if I didn't?” The truth was, I felt completely safe with him. I covered my eyes. “What's this about?”

“Just wait. And no peeking.” He stood behind me, his strong hands on my shoulders, and guided me toward the forward mast.

“You're not about to make me walk the plank or anything, are you?”

About thirty feet away, we stopped on the far side of the mast. “All right,” he said. “Open them.”

And there on the deck sat a table set for two. White linen. First-class china. Silverware. Flickering candles on either side of a great domed serving tray. It was as though someone had transplanted it from the first-class dining room.

“But how—”

“What? You think all my friends are boiler monkeys?” He smiled. “I have connections, you know.” He lifted his hand and whispered behind it. “But you may have to tell me which fork is which.” He held out his arm and I slipped my hand through it, blushing as he escorted me to my seat.

The doorway was less than fifty yards away. I glanced back. “But what if—”

“Already thought of that.” He looked up and waved to the sailor in the crow's nest. “I slipped John a few chocolate bars. He said he'd keep an eye out for us. But if you hear him whistling, you're to run like the devil.”

“You did all this?” I couldn't believe it. No one had ever done anything so thoughtful for me.

“Don't get too excited,” he said. “The setting's first class”—he smiled at me—“and so is the company, but, sadly, the food is not.”

He lifted the silver dome of the serving dish to reveal, not the
canard à l'orange
served earlier that evening, but rather a
smiley face made of sliced apples, with a small pot of melted chocolate for the nose.

“I made it myself,” he bragged. “Old family recipe.”

The face on the tray blurred as my eyes watered and I looked away, embarrassed.

“God, I'm such a stupid arse!” His smile dropped as he looked at the tray. “Here you are wishing for a real meal and not to be eating like some horse in a stall … and what do I give you? Apples. Bloody apples. Hell, why don't I just feed you sugar cubes off my palm?”

“No, no.” I gripped his arm. “It's perfect, Jim. I love it. All of it.” I wiped my eyes. “I've just never … I've never had anyone do something like this for me before.”

“And I daresay, you've never had anyone feed you sugar cubes either.” He looked at me sideways. “But that doesn't mean you want it.”

I laughed, then.

“I know it's not exactly what you pictured, Ellie. I just wanted to do something nice for you, you know, to thank you for what you did … for my arm.” He shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck.

“And a bit of vandalism just didn't seem to be enough,” I teased. “Larceny, then? Stolen silverware?”

“Borrowed,” he corrected, and just like that, his grin was back.

“How did you know I would even be coming tonight?” I asked.

“Well, now, you've been at that rail every night since you started back in January.”

I blushed. So he had been watching me.

He held out my chair and I sat. “Tuck in there, Miss Ryan. I've to get this lot back in thirty minutes.”

We dipped our apples first with our forks and eventually with our fingers. What a mess we made of the linens, dripping globs of chocolate from the pot to our mouths. I'd never tasted anything so sweet. As we leaned in with the last few slices, something fell from above into the chocolate, splattering it all over the table, all over us, like a slapped mud puddle.

“Shite!” Jim whispered, looking at John, who was waving and frantically pointing behind. “Someone's coming!”

Jim grabbed my hand and pulled me from the table, up the deck and around the hatches and vents to the very front of the ship, before dragging me down behind what looked like a huge steel spool. My heart thudded in my chest.

From our darkened hiding spot we could see the electric torch beam scan the deck and stop on the table. “What the devil—? You'd better get Gaade. He's not going to like this.”

The shaft of light travelled up the deck close to where we hid and we crouched lower. In the beam, I saw a great chocolate handprint from where Jim had been leaning. He saw it too and clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh, leaving yet another handprint across his face.

Maybe it was all that chocolate, or the fact that I was so overtired, maybe it was nerves—what would happen when Gaade found me like this? But even that sobering thought only made me giggle all the more.

The ray of light drew closer and so did the footsteps. And just when I thought we were done for, a thud on the far side of the deck drew them away.

“Come on!” Jim whispered, and glancing at John way up in his crow's nest waving us down the left side of the mast, we scurried from shadow to shadow.

“What is it?” Gaade's voice snapped on the other side.

The night steward stood. “A chocolate bar, sir.”

“Looks like I owe John a few more,” Jim whispered.

“Yes, well, I can see that, man,” Gaade continued, “but the question remains, how in the blazes did it get here? And who the hell put this table—”

We bolted for the doors and slipped through them into the dimly lit hall, our chests heaving. Jim eyed me and smiled. “You're a mess.”

“You should talk.” His devilish grin was splattered and smeared with chocolate like a child caught licking the cake bowl.

He ran a finger down my cheek and popped it in his mouth.

“You look good in chocolate,” he said. “It brings out your eyes.”

I punched his shoulder.

“Well, unless you want to get caught brown-handed, you may want to get moving before Gaade is back inside.”

“Thanks, Jim. For everything.”

He smiled. That smile. God, my very heart felt like melting chocolate.

“I think,” he said, heading for the stairs down to his quarters, “I may just stick with the sugar cube thing next time.”

Next time
.

I tiptoed down the hallway, careful not to touch anything
as I entered the lavatory. Jim was right, I was a mess. I cleaned my face, spot-washed my coat, and left it hanging on the back of the door. On my way back to my room, I ran into Gaade.

“Ellen?” He seemed shocked to find me in my nightgown in the hall, hair still wet from where I'd washed my face. “What are you doing up?”

“Um, upset stomach, sir. I didn't want to wake the girls.” I'd been seasick a few times on our first runs. But that was weeks ago. I wasn't sure if he'd believe it, but he seemed too frazzled from the nighttime capers to be worried about my upset stomach.

He glanced down the hallway. “Did you see anything … unusual tonight?”

Like a chocolate-covered stoker?

A giggle bubbled up and I gripped my mouth in panic before running back to the lavatory. Slamming the door shut, I leaned on it, heart pumping, leaving Gaade wondering exactly what kind of a ship he was running.

Gaade never did discover who had moved a first-class table and chairs to the deck that night, but at the next muster roll, he'd given us all a warning to keep a level eye out for anything unusual and threatened us with severe consequences for assisting. “No tip, no bribe is worth losing your job.” Clearly he'd assumed it was the work of some first-class passenger with more money than sense. Gaade made it quite clear that he ran a tight ship. “For the
Empress
is no place for shenanigans.”

But our shenanigans continued.

Every night after, I'd find Jim at our rail. Or he'd find me. With Gaade's diligent watch, we had to be more cautious, settling for furniture already on the deck. Some nights we lay side by side in our deck chairs watching the stars that speckled across the dark dome of sky. It made me feel small and invisible and at the same time filled me with such awe. Most of the time we just stood at our rail. We didn't talk much about anything important. Though he did like to tell me about the
Empress
—how fast she moved, how safe she was, and all the lifesaving equipment she carried.

“Did you know she has 2100 lifebelts?” he'd say. The sound of his deep voice more of a comfort than any silly statistics. “Twenty-four collapsibles, extra lifeboats for a total of forty boats to carry 1960 people, more than we ever have aboard.” He mentioned that a few times, and I was never quite sure if he said it for my comfort or his own. Or if it was, in fact, some kind of secret obsession with safety or dark fear of drowning. I didn't mind. To be honest, I just liked being near him, wrapped in the warmth of his words.

Sometimes he talked about the stoker's life. Or I vented about that of a stewardess, but never about anything before it. I let him think I was a maid—not a disowned heiress. What did it matter? Neither of them was truly me. Truth be told, Jim and I were decks and worlds apart. But none of that meant anything while we stood together those nights at the rail with darkness before and behind. Our secrets didn't matter. Neither past nor future existed for us—only those moments together seemed real.

It was enough to just be there. Together. Breathing.

Timothy and Meg shared words—but we shared silence. A knowing. A simple presence. I looked forward to just being with him, side by side at the rail as the
Empress
rushed headlong into the unknown, its wake disappearing in the dark.

And for the first time in my life I felt, I don't know, accepted. I felt known. For the first time, I felt like myself.

THREE DAYS BEFORE

May 26, 1914

Quebec Harbour

Chapter Twelve