The Glass Ocean

by Beatriz Williams

  “How . . . ?” This time she did meet his eyes, expecting accusation but finding only contrition.

  “I should never have spoken to you the way I did last night at dinner. I allowed business matters to sour my mood even before I sat down. And then that woman . . . that artiste.” He said it with the same inflection one might use to say the word “Kaiser.” “I won’t take back my disagreement with her, but I should never have allowed myself to be goaded by her and then to take out my anger on you. I love you, Caroline. I would never wish you to feel as if you didn’t matter to me. Will you ever forgive me?”

  She kept her gaze on their clasped hands as betrayal, love, anger, and every emotion in between tangled in her head like seaweed. Softly, she said, “That’s the thing, isn’t it? You say you love me, and you buy me things to show this, but I can’t say you’ve ever made me feel as if I mattered to you. There are things a woman needs. . . .” She let her voice trail away, aware of a stiffness in the fingers that laced hers.

  He let his hand slide away from hers. “You know I don’t like to talk about those things, Caroline. It’s not my way.” He knelt by her chair and took her hand again. “But I want to try. I want to be a better husband.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “When this . . . business deal is finished, I’ll be able to clear my head and focus on other things. Like you. Us.” He gripped her hand more firmly, as if to show his conviction. “We’ll go somewhere—somewhere far from this war. Like a distant island. Just you and me. Or maybe we’ll do all the things you’ve always wanted to do back home in New York. I know how much you love going to museums and plays—we’ll go to every single one, on opening night so we’ll be the first. And we can take rides in Central Park just like you’ve always wanted but that I’ve made you go with your friends on because I was too busy. It will be different, Caroline. I promise. I just need to get through this one business matter.”

  She tried to suppress the stirrings of hope. “It all sounds like exactly what I’ve always wanted our marriage to be, Gil. What I’ve always prayed for. But they’re just words. I need you to show me you love me. Show me that you respect me and my opinions. That what I think is important.” She leaned closer. “Tell me about this business matter. I won’t presume to be able to have the knowledge to solve anything, but sometimes just telling a sympathetic person can help. And perhaps I can reassure you that you’re doing the right thing.” She smiled. “It would be a true partnership. I don’t think I was ever intended to be put on a pedestal and admired from afar. I want to share your life. Even the unpleasant parts, and what you might think are boring business dealings. I want to know everything about your life.”

  The light in his eyes dimmed. “You don’t know what you’re asking, Caroline. There are things I can’t possibly share with you. Trust me, it’s for your own good.”

  Anger flared in her chest as they stared at each other, each seemingly determined not to be the first to look away. Gilbert glanced down at their hands before abruptly letting go and standing.

  “Please, Gil. Nothing will change if you can’t tell me what it is that is so preoccupying you.”

  When he didn’t say anything, Caroline stood, too. “Your silence tells me that I don’t matter to you. That all of your plans for us mean nothing. Just some smoke and fog.” She was on the verge of tears, yet she wasn’t sure which part of the last twenty-four hours was tugging hardest on her heart.

  She walked past him to leave, but he held out his hand to her. “Caroline, please. Don’t.”

  She waited for him to say more, but when he didn’t she kept walking until she’d reached her bedroom. Jones was still there, tidying it up and making the bed. Caroline had intended to have a good cry in the privacy of her room, but had to swallow back her tears. Jones already knew too much about her private life as it was.

  “May I get anything for you, ma’am?”

  Caroline managed a smile “Just my box of stationery, please. I think I will retire to the writing room and write a few letters.” She hated writing letters, yet it was the first thing she could think of that would make this day seem normal. And because the reading and writing room was the sole domain of the fairer sex, it was also the one place where she’d be guaranteed not to run into Robert. She couldn’t bear to face him now, especially not after her conversation with Gilbert.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The maid opened the door of the satinwood armoire and pulled out a small box from the top shelf.

  “Thank you, Jones. I’ll be back to dress for lunch.” Caroline took the box then turned to leave.

  “Mrs. Hochstetter?”

  “Yes?”

  “If there’s anything you need, or anything you need to confide—anything at all—you can trust me. Discretion is one of the requirements of being a good lady’s maid, and I’m one of the best.”

  Caroline regarded her coolly, wondering why she’d never noticed the woman’s eyes before. How cold and appraising they seemed. Not the eyes of a lady’s maid at all.

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Jones. Thank you.”

  It wasn’t until much later, after she’d written letters to her mother and Claire that said everything about the ship and the voyage and nothing of what was in her heart, that Caroline remembered Gilbert’s parting word. Don’t. She spent the rest of the day wondering what it was he didn’t want her to do.

  Chapter 18

  Tess

  At Sea

  Thursday, May 6, 1915

  “Don’t get too close!”

  Strong hands grabbed Tess from behind, dragging her out of the way of a rapidly unraveling coil of rope.

  Dry-mouthed, Tess turned, finding herself chest to chest with a furious Englishman with a night’s growth of beard on his chin. In that startled moment, she had to resist the urge to lift her hand to his chin, to feel the prickles against her palm. She had never seen Robert Langford anything but perfectly soigné, but here he was, looking as though he’d just tumbled out of bed, his hair rumpled, his chin shadowed, smelling of sleep in the gray, cold dawn.

  He looked different. Dangerous. The sort of man who could fight dirty in a dark alley, who could level a man with a fist.

  Stay away from Robert Langford.

  Robert took her by the shoulders and shook. “What were you thinking? Do you want to be knocked overboard?”

  Tess wiggled out of his grasp. “Not particularly, no. I just—” She had been staring, transfixed, as the ship’s crew had heaved and hauled the lifeboats from their places on the Boat Deck, cursing and sweating, ropes tangling, boats bumping. “I’m not used to, well, ships.”

  “I gathered that much,” said Robert dryly, and Tess belatedly remembered that he was. And why he was.

  No wonder he had grabbed her like that. No wonder he looked so wild-eyed. He’d seen his brother swallowed by the sea and been able to do nothing to save him.

  Unless that was a lie, the same way everything she had told him about herself was a lie.

  Tess swallowed hard and turned pointedly back to the blunders of the crew, watching Robert out of the corner of her eye. “Are they supposed to be like this? The lifeboats, I mean.”

  “Do you mean, are they meant to be out like that? Yes. We’re only a day from the Celtic Sea. I gather it’s a standard precaution.”

  “If it is standard,” said Tess, “you’d think they would be better at it.”

  Nothing about what was going on looked standard to her. Some of the men weren’t sailors at all, but waiters from the second-class dining room, porters, and other staff, presumably pressed into service. On the Boat Deck, the ill-formed crew tried and failed to get the boats into position, the captain getting redder and redder in the face, and tighter and tighter in the lip, as the exercise progressed. The rising sun only illuminated the crew’s clumsiness and the expressions on the faces of the gathered passengers. Nobody looked impressed.

  Robert’s lip curled. “It doesn’t precisely fill you with confidence, does it?”

  Some
thing in his voice made Tess look up at him sharply. “Are we going to get off this ship?”

  Robert shrugged. “One way or another.”

  His voice was grim. He might have been a different man entirely from the one who had burbled to her of love yesterday, who had conjured a feast from thin air. There was something rather disconcerting about the transition, that he could change his skin so entirely.

  Tess frowned up at him. “That’s a bit gloomy for a man who was—how did you put it?—drinking the nectar of the gods?”

  Robert turned abruptly away. “The fountain has run dry. The tap appears to have been shut. The lady won’t see me.”

  The term “lady” was debatable in Tess’s opinion, but she decided to leave that one be. “Won’t or can’t?”

  “Does it make a difference?” Robert paced rapidly toward the other end of the deck, Tess tagging along behind.

  “I should think it would.”

  Robert stopped so suddenly that Tess nearly skidded into him. “I should think that if one really wanted something, one would make a way.”

  And what was it that he wanted, really? Caroline Hochstetter’s love? Or the plans she carried in her safe?

  “Isn’t that a bit medieval of you? Setting tests for your ladylove’s devotion? Also, I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. Aren’t you meant to be proving yourself to her?”

  “I would be if I could bloody well get near her,” he snapped, and again Tess wondered what it was that he wanted to get near. The lady? Or her waltz? He didn’t sound like a man in love. Not that she knew what a man in love sounded like, not really.

  Tess backtracked a bit. “So I take it you haven’t been able to infiltrate milady’s chamber?”

  Robert glanced down at her, his brows drawing together. “‘Milady’s chamber’? What sort of novels have you been reading?”

  “It isn’t a novel; it’s a nursery rhyme. Upstairs, downstairs and in—oh, never mind.”

  “There I met an old man who wouldn’t say his prayers / I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs. Are you suggesting I boot her husband down to C-deck?”

  “I’m suggesting—oh, I’m not suggesting anything. I was simply trying to lighten the tone.”

  So much for subtle. How did one introduce the topic of espionage? Pardon me, but are you trying to get into Mrs. Hochstetter’s drawers or her drawers? No, she didn’t think that would go over well. Tess could feel crazy laughter welling in her throat. She was just a good, honest thief. What did she know of spies and plots?

  And if he was involved, who might he be working for? Not with Ginny, not if she wanted Tess away from him. For the British, then? Hochstetter was an American; whatever it was that the German navy wanted might be up for grabs to the highest bidder, with everyone trying to nab it first.

  But Hochstetter was heading to London, which would seem to imply that he was working with the Brits. In that case, where did Langford come into it? There were other agents on board, Ginny had said. Other Germans. Were there rival groups at work?

  Or was he just a man in love?

  Trying to work it out made Tess’s head ache. She needed coffee, a gallon of it.

  Wandering back to the rail, Tess flapped a hand in the air. “What do you see in Caroline Hochstetter? Oh, I know she’s pretty enough and she’s accomplished, but why this sudden urge to go slay dragons for her?”

  “It’s not sudden,” Robert said woodenly.

  “Oh? You’ve been behaving like this for years, then? Let me put it this way. You’ve been in love with her for years, you say, but you’ve never done anything about it. Why here? Why now?”

  Robert shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because we’re here now. Isn’t that reason enough?”

  “That’s one of the least gallant things I’ve ever heard. You want her because she’s here?”

  “That’s not what I said. You make me sound like a—”

  Tess folded her arms across her chest. “Like a what?”

  Robert sketched a frustrated gesture. “Like an opportunist. No, that’s not the word. A fraud. Someone only playing at love when it’s at hand.”

  Tess looked at him sharply. “Well, you don’t seem to have spent the past decade repining.”

  “Maybe it took me this long to realize that she might be more than just a distant dream. Maybe I—oh, I don’t know.” Robert glowered into the eastern sky, streaked with rose and gold. Slowly, haltingly, he said, “There’s something about her. Something—like a rose furled under glass, just waiting for the glass to be broken so it can bloom properly. . . . What? I never claimed to be a poet.”

  “You’re not doing too badly.” Tess couldn’t figure out if the words were stilted because they were wrung from his heart or because he was making them up as he went on. She cocked a hip. “Go on, convince me.”

  Robert looked away from her, out at the waves. “She’s so well bred, so reserved, but there are times . . . There are times when you can feel the real Caroline, underneath it all, just waiting to be freed. The night before the ship sailed . . .” He took a deep breath, paused, and started again. “The night before the ship sailed, there was a party at her husband’s house. Caroline and I found ourselves alone, in the music room, playing duets. She has a manuscript, an unpublished waltz by Strauss. . . . The way she looked as she played it, the magic of it—I can’t describe what it was.”

  He didn’t have to. Tess had seen it, seen them together, lost in the magic. Or so she had thought. But was it romance she had seen, or strategy? Curious that he had brought up that manuscript, that manuscript that was something more than music and something more deadly than magic.

  That was the first time she had seen him, seeking Caroline Hochstetter out in her music room. Now that Tess thought about it, it was increasingly suspicious. First the music room, then lurking outside the Hochstetters’ stateroom, then watching Caroline from the balcony—in fact, all the same places Tess had been, at the same time. Possibly for the same reason.

  Craftily, Tess asked, “Will she be performing the Strauss piece in the talent show?”

  Robert glanced down at her, his expression inscrutable. “No. It’s kept under lock and key, I gather. Much the way her husband seems to be keeping Caroline.”

  “Wouldn’t you if you were in his shoes? He’s probably seen the way you look at her.” Mustering her courage, Tess gave him her cockiest grin. “Come clean with me. She’s the reason you’re on this ship, isn’t it?”

  “What makes you think I’m not heading back to do my bit for old Blighty?”

  Tess raised her eyebrows at him. “Do you really expect me to believe that?”

  “No, I guess not. Not a wastrel like me.” Robert’s voice was clipped, at its most British. She had, Tess realized, offended him. “If you must know, I’m going home for family reasons.”

  And if she believed that one, she’d also buy a bridge. “I thought your family didn’t want you home.”

  “Et tu, Miss Fairweather? Sometimes it doesn’t matter whether you’re wanted or not. There are some things that one must do, regardless.” Abruptly, he asked, “If you knew that someone you cared about was involved in something unsavory, what would you do?”

  Ginny. But no. He couldn’t know about Ginny, could he?

  Carefully, Tess said, “It would depend on the person, I suppose. And why he was doing it.”

  Robert’s face gave nothing away. “Say the person was being blackmailed. For an indiscretion.”

  Robert Langford, for example? Ginny didn’t share all the details of her exploits with Tess, but she knew her sister was no stranger to blackmail. The threat of the Tombs still hung over Tess’s head.

  Not that Ginny would follow through on it, her own sister, Tess hastily assured herself.

  But Robert Langford? He would be fair game. Just another mark, just the sort of man of wealth and birth Ginny despised on principle. She would think it a virtue to wrench the silver spoo
n from his mouth.

  His father was a mucky-muck in government, he had said. If Robert had been involved in an indiscretion, it might threaten the family position, the family Robert mocked but clearly cared about, more than he would admit. She had heard it in his voice when he spoke of the portraits of his ancestors. However much of a lie they might have been, they mattered to him all the same.

  And Ginny would know how to take advantage of that.

  It would certainly explain why she had warned Tess away. Sending Robert to get the manuscript from Caroline, that would be insurance, just in case Tess didn’t come through. Tess hated the idea, but it rang painfully true. Ginny was a big believer in insurance.

  And she didn’t, after all these years, totally trust Tess. To Ginny, Tess was, and always would be, that girl with scabbed knees and scraggly blond braids, to be made use of in her fashion, but never a full partner.

  Keeping her voice carefully neutral, Tess said, “By an indiscretion—I’m assuming you mean something of a personal nature?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Couldn’t you—I mean, that person—just tell the blackmailer to go hang?”

  Robert’s hands flexed at his sides. “What if there were larger stakes involved? What if it might bring down a man’s name and career? What then?” He looked at Tess, and the bleak look in his eyes cut her to the bone. “What if the price were worse than the original sin?”

  “I would run,” she said, without hesitation. “Get out. Get away.”

  “There’s no outrunning Nemesis. Say you can’t run. What then?” Robert didn’t wait for her to answer. He laced his fingers together, pushing them backward until the knuckles cracked. “There was a story my father read to me when I was a boy, back before . . . It was called ‘The Lady or the Tiger.’ Do you know it?”

  “It sounds familiar.” It sounded like a sideshow at a fair. “But . . . no.”