Perfect Romance

by Duncan, Alice

  A PERFECT ROMANCE

  By

  Alice Duncan (writing as Anne Robins)

  Book 2 in the “Titanic” series

  A Perfect Romance

  Copyright © 2005 by Alice Duncan

  All rights reserved.

  Published 2005 by Kensington Corp.

  Zebra Books

  Smashwords edition March 15, 2010

  Visit aliceduncan.net

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Chapter One

  April 14, 1912

  Even after the ship left Southampton, Loretta Linden firmly believed she’d been put on this earth to save it from itself.

  Once the enormous liner, the largest ship the world had ever seen, had been sailing through Atlantic waters for a couple of days, her beliefs suffered a dramatic change. It became depressingly clear to her that she wouldn’t be able to save even herself, much less the rest of the world.

  When the unsinkable Titanic scraped against the legendary iceberg shortly before midnight on April 14, gashing a 300-foot hole in its side, Loretta’s only reaction was gratitude that the ship’s rolling and rocking had ceased. She actually prayed the cursed ship would sink; at least she’d be out of her misery. Later, this reaction would shock her, as she’d been in the habit of considering herself an optimistic, unselfish sort of person, and not one to wish disaster on anyone.

  “Miss Linden!”

  Loretta turned over in her berth and attempted to focus on the door, an action that made her head hurt and her stomach lurch. Miss Marjorie MacTavish, the stewardess who had been seeing to all of Loretta’s wants and needs, in spite of Loretta’s best efforts to resist her, stuck her head in the room, looking considerably less serene than usual. Loretta recalled the crunching noise, lurch, and overall ship-shudderings of a few minutes previous, and deduced that Miss MacTavish had come to reassure her that things were peachy with the vessel.

  She intended to say something like, “Yes?” or “What is it?”, but could only manage a groan that lifted slightly at the end.

  To Loretta’s surprise, Miss MacTavish rushed up to the berth and commenced shaking her shoulder. The sensation was most unpleasant and Loretta frowned at the intruder. If she’d been stronger, she might have struck her.

  “Ye mun rise, Miss Linden! The ship has duffed agang an iceberg. She’s foundering and ye mun get to a lifeboat.”

  Loretta’s eyelids hurt when she blinked at the woman. The ship had duffed agang an iceberg? She’d never heard Miss MacTavish in so Scottish a mode. “You mean we bumped into something?” She croaked the words, but the stewardess understood.

  “Aye! That’s what I’m tellin’ ye! Get up and gang aboon!”

  Aha. So that’s why her stomach had quit heaving. How gratifying—although Loretta wasn’t sure what ganging aboon entailed.

  With a great effort of will, she said, “Don’t mind me. I’ll just rest here for a little while.” Rather she die now and get it over with than attempt to make it to a lifeboat and resume her dreadful seasickness. Anyhow, Titanic was unsinkable. All the advertisements had said so.

  Miss MacTavish’s lips pressed together. Loretta was amazed to note that the stewardess could express anger—and to a first-class passenger, at that. She might have been pleased with this demonstration of humanity on Miss MacTavish’s part had she not then grabbed her by the arm and begun tugging.

  “No, please,” Loretta whimpered, fearing for her stomach.

  “Stop your fittering and get out of bed this instant, Miss Linden! Quit daidling! You mun come immediately! The ship is foundering!”

  “Nonsense. The newspapers all call the R.M.S. Titanic unsinkable.” While Loretta knew better than to believe everything she read in the newspapers, she’d yet become accustomed to regarding the ship as perfectly sound.

  Another yank, this one so hard Loretta’s upper body slid off the berth. In order to prevent herself from crashing to the floor, Loretta swung her legs around and braced herself with her feet. “What are you doing?” The question was more or a whine than she’d intended it to be.

  “Saving your bluidy life! Rise up and get ye to a lifeboat now!”

  Loretta blinked at Miss MacTavish, whom she had never heard use bad language before. She noticed that the other woman’s cheeks were flushed, her hazel-green eyes blazed with some passionate emotion, and her hair, usually impeccably dressed, was falling out of its bun and making her look younger than she generally did.

  “Where’s your cap?” Loretta had become well acquainted with Miss MacTavish in the four days the ship had been on the water. She knew full well that the stewardess never went anywhere unless she was scrupulously groomed, complete with starched white apron and chaste white cap.

  Miss MacTavish’s hand flew to her head and she patted wildly at her fiery red hair for a moment before she shouted, “Och, what does my bluidy cap matter? Scutter up now or ye’ll croak in your berth, and then who’ll carry Mrs. Pankhurst’s torch?”

  When she and the stewardess had first met, Loretta had come away with the impression that she had rather annoyed Miss MacTavish by endeavoring to enlist her in the cause of women’s suffrage. Miss MacTavish, although irked, had not overtly demonstrated the least indication of her feelings. Until this minute, Loretta had not understood that Miss MacTavish could succumb to sarcasm. Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst was one of Loretta’s heroines.

  The stewardess’s words stung, but they also served to jar Loretta into an understanding of the present crisis. If Miss MacTavish could lose her temper, something was definitely amiss. Loretta couldn’t make herself care.

  “Here!” Miss MacTavish snapped, sounding much less Scots now that Loretta had obeyed her at last. “Don your spectacles. Ye’ll be of no use to anyone if you canna see.”

  Be of use. The words sank into Loretta’s fuzzy head and ignited the process of waking up. Be of use. Yes. That’s what was important now; not her seasickness. She might be of use to someone else. Loretta’s primary aim in life, and not merely because it annoyed her parents and her other stuffy relations, was to be of use to her fellow human beings on this earth . . . at least the female half thereof. The males could cursed well take care of themselves.

  Hooking the gold eyepieces over her ears, she bucked up minimally. “Thank you.” Her cabin came into such clear focus that she had to close her eyes for a moment and allow her stomach to settle and her head to stop swirling. To her amazement, both cooperated for the first time in two days.

  “Here. Don your shoon. It’s frightfu’ bluthrie up there.” Miss MacTavish hurled Loretta’s shoes at her.

  “Where are Mrs. Golightly and Eunice?”

  Before she had become so very ill, Loretta had decided to make a special project of the poor Yorkshire woman, Isabel Golightly, and her six-year-old daughter Eunice, whom she’d met on the dock at Southampton when Eunice had stumbled and scraped her knee in Loretta’s vicinity. Eunice was a charming girl and an intelligent one, and Loretta judged Isabel to be among the more downtrodden women of the world. She had figuratively rubbed her hands in delight at having such a worthy cause to occupy her thoughts and actions during the voyage to America.

  That was before she’d succumbed to mal de mer, a malady Loretta had assumed she’d be above, since it hadn’t plagued her on the crossing from New York to
Southampton several months earlier. Showed how much she knew about ocean travel.

  “I dinna know. They’re probably doon aboot in third class.” Miss MacTavish’s voice was hard and she added a sniff to the end of her sentence. She didn’t approve of Loretta’s having deliberately descended into steerage and consorting with the poor immigrant families crammed in down there. She more particularly didn’t approve of Loretta’s interest in Mrs. Golightly and her daughter.

  She’d told Loretta—politely, of course—that a woman of her high social standing, even if she was an American, had no business mingling with the hoi-polloi. Loretta had set her straight, or tried to, in no uncertain terms.

  Miss MacTavish, being a tough nut and firmly attached to her native British class distinctions, had remained unconvinced by Loretta’s impassioned lectures and her forward-thinking egalitarian principles.

  Feeling minutely stronger, Loretta stood. She did so cautiously and braced herself with her fingers on her night table. Her stomach didn’t rebel, which she considered a positive sign. After taking two deep breaths, she ventured another question. “Did the ship really hit something?”

  “An iceberg.” Miss MacTavish had gone to Loretta’s small closet. She reached in and grabbed a woolen coat. Turning, she tossed it to Loretta, along with a life preserver. “Put those on and come wi’ me. Get ye some gloves, too. Everything’s tapsalteerie up there, and it fleeful caud.”

  “Yes. Of course.” Loretta stuck her arms in the coat and wished ladies were permitted to wear trousers, which must be more serviceable in an emergency than the skirts fashionable in 1912 that bloomed around the hips and narrowed toward the ankles. She had long believed that Mrs. Bloomer had the right idea. She only wished now that she’d acted on her beliefs regarding rational dress and brought some split skirts with her aboard the ship.

  If Miss MacTavish was correct, and Loretta saw no reason to doubt her . . . yet . . . the passengers on the “unsinkable” Titanic were in deep trouble. And, while Loretta sincerely doubted that anything truly bad could happen to Titanic, which was brand new and built according to the latest views on safety and sound construction techniques and was equipped with some sort of special hull that could resist anything, she saw it as her duty to assist others, even if that only meant soothing rattled nerves or helping youngsters and the elderly to lifeboats.

  “Are ye able to walk?” Miss MacTavish eyed Loretta doubtfully.

  Loretta was a trifle doubtful herself, and not merely because of her narrow skirt that made her feel more like a duck waddling than a woman striding purposefully toward her future. “Yes. I believe so.”

  “Good. Then come abeen a’ me.”

  Miss MacTavish hurried out the door. Picking up her skirt, Loretta followed her and was appalled to see a small trickle of water slithering down the hallway. “Good heavens! We really are in trouble.”

  “We’re sinking.”

  The words had been uttered as a flat statement that struck Loretta as horrifying. She stared at Miss MacTavish’s back for only a second. Sinking. Titanic? Sinking? Impossible.

  She glanced again at the trickle of water. Perhaps it wasn’t impossible. “Are you sure you don’t know where Mrs. Golightly and Eunice are?”

  Miss MacTavish had already knocked on the door of the cabin next to Loretta’s. “I have’na idea.” She didn’t wait for anyone to answer her knock, but jerked the door open and leaned inside. “Everyone out! The ship is in trouble. Grab your life preservers and get aboon—er, above, on-deck!”

  A rustle and a couple of squeaks greeted this peremptory message. Loretta had met her next-cabin neighbors, two elderly sisters, a couple of times before confining herself to her own cabin.

  “Is anyone helping those below in third class?” she called to Miss MacTavish, who had hurried along the hallway to the next cabin door.

  Before knocking at that cabin, she turned and cast an exasperated glance at Loretta. “I dinna know. Probably the stewardess and steward. For mercy’s sake, just get yoursel’ aboon and into a life boat!”

  But Loretta knew she couldn’t do that. Not until she had determined that dear Eunice and her mother were safe.

  “I’ll find Mrs. Golightly first!” she called back to Miss MacTavish.

  “No!” the stewardess shrieked, staring at Loretta in alarm.

  Loretta paid her no heed. She waved a wool-clad arm in Miss MacTavish’s direction. “Go back to warning the passengers.”

  Then, because she’d made it her business to discover how a first-class passenger could descend into steerage, in spite of the White Star Line’s prohibition against intermingling of passengers, she dashed to the service door at the other end of the hall.

  “No!” Miss MacTavish screamed at her back once more. “Save yoursel’! For the love of God, Miss Linden, ye canna—”

  But Loretta, who had never believed she couldn’t do anything, ever, didn’t wait to hear what Miss MacTavish believed she couldn’t do. She knew she could. And she did.

  Chapter Two

  October 1914

  Fog slithered under the door jamb, adding a dampness to the room and mingling with the odors of thin soup, stale sandwiches, unwashed male bodies, and the vague Ecclesiastical scent of incense that Loretta Linden would forever associate with the Ladies’ Benevolence League’s soup kitchen and the nuns who helped run it.

  The subdued murmur of voices provided a counterpoint to the far-off, melancholy warning of the foghorn sounding from its island in the Bay. In short, the room fairly pulsed with charity and benevolence, and even though Loretta was far from popish herself, she loved it. She counted the hours she spent here as some of the most fulfilling in her life. She dipped her ladle into the big iron soup pot, and her heart brimmed with love.

  “It was the Moors done it.”

  The ladle in Loretta’s hand checked in its forward progress for only a second. She focused more closely on the man holding out his bowl to her. He was a scruffy object, and he looked as if he’d been in a brawl recently. Unfortunately, his appearance wasn’t unusual in the soup kitchen.

  “The Moors,” the man insisted. “They was the ones. They come in and took over.” He shook his dirty gray head. “Poor damned Spaniards didn’t have a chance.”

  Deducing that the man’s comments were not directed specifically at her and that she didn’t need to respond, Loretta finished filling his bowl and again dipped her ladle into the huge pot of bubbling soup.

  The Moor man moved down the line toward another woman who was handing out sandwiches; and the man behind him, who had seemed to be listening intently, nodded as he held his bowl out for Loretta to fill.

  Working in the soup kitchen was often dispiriting, sometimes discouraging, and always interesting. Loretta knew in her heart that it was also vital. These men would have no food at all, unless they stole it, if not for the good ladies of the San Francisco Ladies’ Benevolence League and the nuns from the Sisters of Charity. If the ladies and the nuns left it to the men of San Francisco to feed the poor, the poor would starve.

  “The Moors,” repeated the first man. “They was the ones.”

  “Yeah,” said the man behind the Moor man as Loretta filled his bowl. “But they don’t serve soup as good as this.”

  “It was the Moors.” The Moor man nodded at the man behind him, as if pleased to find someone who shared his opinion.

  “This place has good sandwiches, too. Them ladies at the Salvation Army place don’t make good sandwiches.” With filthy fingers, he lifted the piece of dark bread covering the insides of his sandwich. “It’s got meat.” His voice was filled with wonder.

  “Damn Moors.”

  “Real meat. And cheese.”

  Loretta watched the two men shuffle off and sit together at one of the splintery tables against the far wall of the soup kitchen’s dining room. They continued talking around and past each other between bites.

  As she filled more bowls held out to her by more dirty, ragged, impoverished
men, she wondered what caused some people’s minds to wander so far from reality as the minds of those two men seemed to have done. Had they been touched in the head at birth? Had their brains been ravaged by accident or alcohol? Were the alienists correct, and could miserable childhoods and poverty and violence induce insanity?

  Some of the men served by this soup kitchen, she knew, had been laid low by drink, but many more of them, especially those of color, only needed an opportunity. And an education. Loretta deplored San Francisco’s educational deficiencies, even for white children, which sent her mind reeling in another direction.

  Her blood boiled when she considered her yellow sisters and their offspring. The Chinese Exclusion Acts were products of the devil, in Loretta’s humble opinion, and fostered terrible abuses and inhumanity, especially, as ever, to female Chinese. If women ever got to take their rightful places in the polling booths, the fat politicians who passed such monstrous legislative acts would be voted out of office in no time at all.

  Her indignation caused her ladle to tremble, and she spilled soup on her next customer, who jumped backward. “Jeez, lady, I didn’t do nothing.”

  Embarrassed, Loretta murmured, “I beg your pardon,” and refilled the man’s bowl, vowing to keep her mind on what she was doing. She almost succeeded. She only wished there were more people in her great city who recognized the need to rectify society’s wrongs—and who would do so according to Loretta’s school of thought.

  # # #

  “It gets dark earlier and earlier these days,” Loretta muttered as she struggled to lock the door.

  “It is autumn,” Marjorie MacTavish replied in her even, musical Scots burr. “The days are always shorter in autumn.”

  Loretta slanted a glance at her secretary. She sometimes suspected Marjorie of veiled sarcasm. “Of course. Help me here. Push against the door, if you will. The recent rains have made the wood swell.”