But when Elizabeth took him by the hand and forced him to turn around, everything changed. He never forgot the past, but he put it down. And for the first time in many years he lived in the present. With her.
But now that wasn’t enough; today wasn’t enough. He wanted tomorrow and the day after that and the year after that—with her.
Now, she was pregnant with Charlotte, someone who only existed in the future, and he would give everything he had to see her. She and their life together felt as real and whole to him as his own hands. He could see as clearly as the room he was standing in, the moment he saw her smile at him for the first time, the moment he let go of her hand at kindergarten drop-off, the moment he wondered how they were going to get that tree sap out of her hair without shaving her bald. These weren’t wishes. These weren’t things he imagined. They were memories. Memories of things yet to be.
It was illogical, but he knew they were real. Perhaps some sort of temporal wash from the watch. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. For one of the few times in his life, he simply believed something.
Elizabeth mumbled “don’t tell the tadpoles” in her sleep and rolled over.
He laughed quietly then watched her for a moment longer as she settled back into sleep. It was a remarkable gift. The woman could sleep through anything. No worry kept her awake. They were on the bleeding Titanic one night away from its sinking and she still managed to fall asleep seconds after her head hit the pillow.
He’d given up hope of any sleep tonight as soon as they’d set foot on this ship. In less than twenty-four hours, they would be fighting for their lives. It was a strange sensation, knowing that. There was no panic in him though. No desperation. He felt not quite calm, but resolute.
He’d played out scenario after scenario, planning, calculating. In the end, he was only certain of one thing—fifteen hundred people were going to die tomorrow night, but they were not going to be among them.
Chapter Twenty-One
ELIZABETH LOOKED UP AT the clock over the mantel in the lounge for the tenth time in as many minutes. Time seemed to be intentionally dragging its feet. There was nothing like a looming disaster to distort perception of time. Dread made the minutes slow and the hours unbearable. The morning had dragged on and on like one of Simon’s operas.
And, in what had to be one of the saddest, most ironic twists of their journey so far, the scheduled lifeboat drill was canceled so people could go to Mass instead. From what Simon had told her about what was to come, neither would be of much help.
After the morning deigned to pass, midday finally came. But it was in no hurry to pass either. Like an unwanted relative or bad fish, it lingered and generally stunk up the place.
Finally, it got out of the way and afternoon came. But it was apparently feeling lazy and just lay there hour after hour. The evening hadn’t been any better.
She’d tried to fill the time with eating, always a good idea, but even her stomach was working against her today. And they were usually such good friends.
Today was different, though. Everything about it felt different. By all outside estimations, it was a perfectly pleasant day. The weather was good. The seas were smooth. The murdering German hadn’t murdered anyone. All in all, positive. And yet, it had been some of the most unpleasant hours she’d ever spent.
Every face she saw, every conversation she had, every person near her had no idea that one out of every three of them would be dead before the sun rose again.
Her stomach turned at the thought and she put her hand on it.
“Something wrong?” Simon asked.
He’d been extra virgin olive oil solicitous, even for him. He was normally attentive in the extreme, and now that things were worse than ever, he’d found a whole new level of hover.
He hadn’t left her side all day. She was pretty sure he’d actually lingered outside of the ladies’ room earlier today. The thought of him trying to be nonchalant about it as he stood there brought a smile to her face.
“Elizabeth?”
She turned to him and shook her head. “I’m fine.”
Normally, she would have told him not to worry, but he was right to. They’d survived the San Francisco earthquake, Jack the Ripper, and Katherine Vale, but this was different. This was—
A sudden chill came over her. Gooseflesh rose on her arms and she shuddered. She looked over at Simon and could tell from the look on his face that he felt it, too. The temperature had dropped, quickly and drastically. She let go of the breath she’d held and it floated in an icy cloud before dissolving away.
She glanced toward the windows that ran along the outer side of the lounge, but all she could see was darkness. Beyond that darkness was ice.
The great ice flow from the north was not-so-slowly floating into their path, and instead of slowing in the face of the obstacles, the captain had ordered the ship to speed up, to outrun the ice. It was one of many fateful decisions made that night.
She caught Edmund’s eyes as she turned back. He looked worried for a moment and then smiled with the brash confidence reserved for young men. He rubbed his hands together and blew on them in a joking way, assuming that was why she’d been frowning.
He and Niels had done as they’d promised. They’d listened to Simon’s request that they stay near without question. After being joined at the hip for most of the day, the four of them had now been sitting in the lounge for nearly two hours.
The clock on the mantel inched forward taking them another minute closer to disaster.
Elizabeth closed her book with a sigh. Even Mark Twain wasn’t helping, and Simon had been on the same page of Great Expectations for the last hour. Poor Pip hadn’t even gotten to London yet.
She put her book aside and sighed again. Pre-empting the inevitable “Are you all right?”, Elizabeth spoke first.
“I can’t just sit here.”
Simon put a long finger in his book to mark his place, although he’d probably read it half a dozen times, and leaned back. “What do you propose?”
“I don’t know.” She looked around the lounge. It was moderately full, as it was after dinner, but she felt as though she’d tried everything imaginable to pass the time already.
Simon looked past her and narrowed his eyes before nodding toward the table that had grabbed his attention. Mrs. Eldsworth sat alone, playing Solitaire.
“Cards.” She grinned back at Simon. “You are a genius.”
It didn’t take her long to get a good poker game going. Simon, as usual, was content to watch the show. Sadly, Margaret Brown was nowhere to be found. Despite that, there was no problem filling seats. She’d already finished off Colonel Gracie and was just about to send Robert Sheridan cryin’ to his mother. The flop had been kind to her and all she needed now was one more jack for four of a kind.
“And up the river we go,” she said as she turned over the last of the community cards and the jack of hearts smiled back at her.
Sheridan must have a decent hand because he raised twice as the others folded. Finally, it was time to show their cards.
“I’m sorry to do this to a lady, but full house,” he said, clearly not sorry at all, as he turned over his hole cards. “Fives full of jacks.”
Elizabeth fought down her smile. “That is a good hand.”
He laughed, trying hard not to sound like a pompous ass and doing a terrible job of it.
She waited until he reached for the pot.
“But,” she said, relishing the moment, “not quite good enough.”
She turned over her two hole cards—jacks—and saw the flash of anger in his eyes. He caught himself before he said something he might regret.
“Aren’t you lucky?” he said.
“I am,” she said as she raked in the pot. “But also pretty damn good.”
The rest of the men at the table laughed. Sheridan wasn’t so amused. “Yeah, well, I think I’ve had enough.”
Elizabeth managed not to offer a snarky reply to that.
Barely.
As he left, Dr. Hass came up to his empty chair. “Do you mind?”
She shook her head. “Not at all. I’d like to add a few marks to my collection.”
He chuckled and took his seat.
“Why don’t we change it up?” she said as she shuffled the cards. “Some good old five-card draw?”
The men at the table nodded and anteed up, the doctor joining in after he’d sussed out the right amount.
“So Doctor,” she said as she began to deal, “I’ve been meaning to ask you. What did you think of the Ritz?”
She wanted to catch him off guard; maybe he’d let something slip.
Instead, he seemed focused on his cards, which he picked up one by one delighting or despairing as each was revealed to him.
“Hmm?” he said.
“The Ritz hotel, just wondering what you thought of it.”
He glanced at her briefly before returning to study his cards. “Oh, I have never stayed there. I hear it is nice.”
Either he was a hell of an actor or he was telling the truth. Just then she felt someone watching her and turned to see Kimball staring right at them both. She held his eyes for a moment and the chill from earlier came again, but it wasn’t the temperature this time.
His usual broad, careless grin never came and the cold, calculating look in his eyes sent a shiver up her spine. He held her gaze for a moment then turned to the people he was with, smiling and laughing again as he excused himself. He glanced over his shoulder one last time as he left.
Oh, my God, Elizabeth thought. She had to talk to Simon. Now. She put her hand to her temple and winced.
“Are you all right?” the doctor asked, concerned.
Simon came to her side.
“I’m fine. Just a bit of a headache. Maybe someone can sit in for me this hand?”
She found a volunteer from the small crowd that had gathered and let Simon lead her away.
“Get Niels and Edmund,” she said. “It’s Kimball. The German is Kimball.”
~~~
“Are you sure?” Simon asked.
Elizabeth nodded.
“I do not understand,” Niels said.
She and Simon had pulled him and Edmund away from whatever it was they were doing and found a quiet corner of the lounge to talk. Elizabeth scooched forward in her seat.
“He was lying about the Ritz. There was no way for him to know you stayed there, unless he was there, too. And then to cover for himself, he tried to put the focus on Dr. Hass. But the doctor swears he’s never stayed at the Ritz.”
“And you believe him?”
“I do.”
Edmund frowned. “Kimball was the one who told us about the Rivets moving their room.”
“Making sure our attention was focused on them and not anywhere else,” Simon said.
Elizabeth gasped. “Remember the night Mr. Personality tried to throw Niels overboard?”
“Vaguely,” Simon said.
“Do you remember who kept us from leaving the lounge that night?”
“Kimball.”
“He was blabbing on about some party, but what he was really doing was keeping us busy to give his partner time.”
Simon shook his head. He still wasn’t convinced. “It’s still circumstantial. Hardly a smoking gun.”
“Simon, I know that look,” she told him. “I’ve had people who’ve wanted to see me dead before and the look in their eyes isn’t something you forget.”
That was all he needed. She could tell by his expression that it pained him to know she was right and, more importantly, why she was right.
He shook his head again. “Why didn’t I see it before?”
“He’s clever,” she said. “He had us all fooled.”
“But now,” Niels said, “he knows he has made a mistake and is caught out.”
Edmund whistled. “And that’s not good.”
Simon agreed. “It makes him that much more dangerous.”
“We shall have to be all the more vigilant,” Niels said.
The thought was deeply troubling, but not more so than what was about to come. Simon caught Elizabeth’s eyes for a moment. Vigilance wasn’t all they would need tonight. He drew her attention to the clock over the mantel—11:40 p.m.
His expression was grim as he turned back and took hold of her hand.
She held on tightly. “Don’t let go.”
Their eyes were locked onto each other when it happened. There was no crash, no sound of metal rending, just the slightest tremor. Anyone who wasn’t paying attention, which was nearly everyone, barely noticed it. The few people who remained in the lounge gave no sign of having felt anything at all. And yet, just twenty feet below the water line, six different compartments had been ripped open by the jagged edges of a massive iceberg. All of them were already flooding. The fatal blow had come and no one even knew it.
The Titanic was sinking.
Chapter Twenty-Two
SIMON HELD HER HAND and they sat together in silence. The rest of the ship, the rest of the world faded away. It was just the two of them. Then the thought came suddenly, like the water rushing into the ship, cold and powerful; it could be their last time together.
“Simon.”
As if he could read her mind, he shook his head. Don’t even think it.
Niels was a keen observer, though, and whether from the sensation itself or from their reaction to it, he knew something was wrong.
“What has happened?”
Before either of them could reply, they heard a raised voice outside of the lounge.
Simon gave her hand one last squeeze and turned back to Niels. “I think we’d better find out.”
They left the lounge and headed out on deck. The voices were one deck up and they hurried to the stairs. When they emerged on A Deck, three men were standing by the starboard railing as close to the bow as they could be.
They were talking excitedly, but they weren’t worried.
“I swear I saw it,” one of them said. “Fifty feet high over the deck.”
“Look at this,” another added, as he picked something up off the deck and held it out. Ice.
“Do you know what happened?” Edmund asked.
“Didn’t see any other ships,” one replied.
The other shook his head. The third was about to speak, but then suddenly stopped. And listened. They all listened. Elizabeth was confused at first, she didn’t hear anything. Then it struck her, that’s exactly what they were listening to—silence. There had always been a gentle or not so gentle hum of the engines depending on where on board she was, but now, there was nothing. The engines had stopped dead.
“Maybe we threw a blade,” one of them suggested. “Let’s see what we can find out.”
The three men went back inside, leaving the rest of them nearly alone on deck. One couple walked down the deck, arm in arm, oblivious to what had happened.
Edmund bent down and picked up a small chunk of ice.
“Do you think we hit an iceberg?” he asked.
“It appears so,” Simon said, in an infuriatingly calm voice.
Niels leaned over the railing, but there was nothing to see. The night was clear, and even though there was no moon, the stars were bright. The water was as still as glass.
“Well,” he said, “I’m sure we will be fine.”
“Right,” Edmund added. “A little ice against this ship?”
Simon took the ice from his hand. “You might be surprised.”
“But still, it’s the Titanic.”
“He is right,” Niels said. “The watertight compartments will keep us from any real danger.”
“And if too many of them have been breached?” Simon asked, handing him the ice.
Niels’ eyebrows went up as he considered that. “We will sink.”
Edmund shook his head. “That’s not possible.”
“Nothing is unsinkable,” Simon said. “Nothing.”
~~~
&n
bsp; They went back inside and started to make their way back down to their rooms. They heard murmurs along the way about the post office being flooded and the men working there to save the mail. No one seemed to have any idea of the importance of what had happened. Some people stood in the corridors, roused from sleep, but overall the passengers were relaxed and unworried.
They asked their steward what he knew, but he seemed to be as much in the dark as the rest of them.
As they went into the sitting room of their suite, Elizabeth could feel the tension coming off Simon. From the looks of things, she wasn’t the only one. Edmund’s usually easygoing expression was knotted in worry.
Simon walked over to the fireplace and turned back. “Remember I asked you to trust me, to listen to what I had to say, regardless of how strange it might seem?”
Niels and Edmund nodded.
“That’s never been more important than it is right now.” He paused and looked over at Elizabeth. She nodded once and he continued, “The ship is sinking.”
“How do you know that? They don’t even know,” Edmund said.
Simon frowned and looked toward a glass of water on the table. The liquid inside was sloshed up against one side. The ship was already beginning to list.
“That does not necessarily mean—” Niels started, but a knock on the door interrupted him.
Simon crossed to answer it. A steward stood on the other side, looking a little pale, but keeping his composure.
“The captain has requested everyone put on their life belts. Just as a precaution.”
“So we are sinking?” Edmund asked as he came to Simon’s side.
The steward tried to smile and shook his head. “It’s just a precaution. Do you need any assistance with them?”
“No,” Simon said. “Thank you.”
“Please go on up to the Boat Deck once you have them.” The steward tipped his cap and moved on to the next cabin. Simon closed the door behind him.
Voyage in Time: The Titanic (Out of Time #9) Page 20