by Lori Bond
“You don’t mind?” Jerry could not begin to fathom the intricacies of the lady’s mind. “If you were content to be romantically linked with me, why couldn’t we have been married like I wanted?”
“You turned down a viscount?” Olive’s jaw nearly grazed the ground when it fell open. “I can see refusing Mr. Bickle, but Lord St. David is a catch. And you at least like him. Are you that opposed to marriage?”
Caroline’s face had flamed redder than a Guy Fawkes effigy on Bonfire Night. Her flushed cheeks sent a warm glow through Jerry’s chest.
“Pretend marriage,” Caroline clarified.
Olive turned a scandalized glare towards Jerry. “Well, of course you couldn’t have done that.”
The subject seemed closed.
Wellburn cleared his throat, breaking the tension that had been building in the room. “I believe you wished to discuss a strategy for this evening, my lord?”
“Yes,” said Jerry refocusing on the task at hand and not on Caroline’s rosy cheeks. “Let’s devise a strategy.”
Chapter 12
That evening they paired off to put their plan into action. Olive and Wellburn would attend the dinner in the Second-Class Passenger’s Dining Room to socialize with the other servants and the few merchants traveling cheaply. Like Caroline and Jerry, their task was to gossip and observe and see if anyone might be suspicious. Caroline was pleased that Olive had managed to convince Jerry not to write off the Second-Class passengers completely. Olive agreed that the agent had been a member of the gentry in London, but that didn’t mean that the person couldn’t be hiding in Second-Class on the boat. After all, there was still the second name on the list, Harold Bryce, that hadn’t been accounted for.
Caroline took Jerry’s arm and allowed him to escort her into the main Dining Room on the top floor of the ship. Like the General Parlor and the First-Class staterooms, the main Dining Room had been furnished along opulent lines. Rows of round tables were evenly spaced under lovely crystal chandeliers that swayed in the ocean swells. China as fine as anything that could be found in Grosvenor Square sat on the tables, waiting for the ship’s staff to bring out the delicacies the ship’s Cook had been preparing. Since Jerry was the highest ranking member of the aristocracy on board, he and his cousin had been seated at the captain’s table. Technically, Lady Caroline as daughter of an Earl was the second ranking member on board; there was no one else higher than a Baron on this particular crossing. However, since no one knew her true identity, she was only welcome as a member of the viscount’s party.
Caroline found the captain to be a jolly American with a fearsome beard but a friendly smile. He was like a jolly pirate who had reformed and now ferried people instead of doubloons across the ocean. Having never met an American before, Caroline had expected the man to be a coarse barbarian with indecipherable speech. Instead, he was a cultured man who sounded much like the farmers back on the Wickshire estate. He had served as a lad in the American Navy during the earlier war with Britain, but he didn’t seem to hold a grudge even when a passing passenger made a reference to British soldiers burning down the American president’s home.
Three other passengers had also been seated at the captain’s table. Mrs. Turnton turned out to be married to an American, one of the owners of Northern Lights Shipping and Construction. His firm had built the boat beneath their feet. The couple sat on the other side of the captain. Between Jerry and Mrs. Turnton sat Miss Lucy Hayes, the famous actress. From the dinner conversation, Caroline gleaned that the captain was a great admirer of Miss Hayes’s dramatic works.
Most of the dinner involved the typical sorts of conversation Caroline might have suffered through at any typical meal back home. There was a brief discussion about the captain’s and Miss Hayes’s favorite plays. The Turntons did not favor the theatre, but they were voracious readers and introduced the subject of literature during the fish course. Finally, a bored Caroline saw her opening. Mrs. Turnton had just finished discussing one of her scenes in her favorite military history. There was a small lull in the conversation as the fish was replaced by large slices of aromatic beef. The very sight made Caroline’s mouth want to water, but she knew this was her chance.
“But is war really like that? My brother is a member of the Light Brigade under Lord Cardigan,” Caroline invented. She knew of course that the brigade had lost nearly all of its members in a poorly organized attack. She had seen the dispatches printed in the Gazette, and she had no doubt the other members of the table had as well. “From his letters, I’m not sure the war in Crimea is anywhere near so picturesque.”
Conversation at the table ground to a complete stop. “What?” Caroline asked all wide-eyed, positively oozing ignorance. “Are we not still at war?”
“Your brother was in the Light Brigade?” asked Miss Hayes, she glanced down at her food, and when she looked back up, she was positively green.
“Yes, why?”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Turnton, “has your mother not told you what happened?”
“Happened?” Caroline opened her eyes even wider, the picture of lost innocence. “Has something horrible happened?”
“Cousin,” Jerry said in a gentle tone as if he had some horrible news to break to his nitwit cousin, “perhaps we should talk after dinner.”
“Something has happened to Ronald,” Caroline cried. “I can tell. If only our country had some weapon that would allow us to win this war like a better riffle or shells or a bayonet. Poor Ronald,” she added for good measure.
Across the table, Miss Hayes had been staring at her beef ever since it had been sat in front of her. “I’m sorry,” she said, pushing her chair from the table. “I feel myself unwell.”
The gentlemen all politely stood.
“Do you need aid?” Mrs. Turnton asked her.
“No,” Miss Hayes said quickly. She shook her head and placed a hand on her midsection. “No, thank you. Please do not trouble yourself.” Without waiting for a response, Miss Hayes hurried from the room.
She had positively leaped from the table at the word “bayonet.” Caroline glanced at Jerry and he gave a slight nod back. He had noticed the odd behavior too.
“I am sorry for your brother,” said Mrs. Turnton, “but it is entirely possible he came through just fine.”
“Oh, I do hope so,” said Caroline, trying to maintain her persona. “I would hate to go back into mourning again after having just come out. I am so tired of black.”
Based on the way Mrs. Turnton consciously did not roll her eyes meant that Caroline’s goal to appear as shallow as possible was working.
Chapter 13
Caroline hadn’t been all that subtle in her reference to the missing bayonet, but Jerry found it interesting how alarmed Miss Hayes had become. His eyes followed her retreating figure. He wished he could follow the actress back to her room, and not for the usual reason a gentleman might wish to spend time in that chamber. He was convinced that woman had left to secure the drawings she was smuggling to the United States.
Once Miss Hayes had exited, Jerry and the other gentlemen resumed their seats. Jerry took the opportunity to scan the room once more before he would be forced to pay attention to his table’s dinner conversation. He spotted the Kimbleys at one of the more distant tables. Across from them sat Mr. Bickle.
Jerry clenched his fist under the table so the other guests wouldn’t see. He wished he was as cold-blooded as the Russian agent they sought. That individual would think nothing of tossing an inconvenience like the loathsome Bickle over the side railing or arranging some other “accident” to befall the man. Besides being a distraction from their current mission, Bickle presented a very real danger to both girls.
The little Olive was most vulnerable. Having been educated by tutors at home, Jerry had been shocked at Cambridge to discover that a number of his peers regarded “dallying” with the servants to be an enjoyable sport—and that it didn’t matter if the girls wished to participate or not. The co
nsequences that often befell the girls were not even regarded as an inconvenience. Olive’s troubling account of her trip on the train with the unsavory Bickle showed the man to be of a similar cut to those peers that Jerry had distanced from himself.
Caroline’s status as the widowed Mrs. Wickingham and under the heir of Danvers’s protection provided her with a degree of safety, but it did not make her invulnerable. If the repugnant Bickle was determined to force an alliance with Caroline, no matter what persona she portrayed, there were various compromising acts he could contrive to force a marriage.
At that moment, Bickle turned his head slightly and caught Jerry staring at him. Bickle raised his glass in a mocking toast. Jerry did not make any move, only continuing to stare. Bickle tried to stare back, but Jerry’s unblinking gaze seemed to disconcert him. His smile wavering, Bickle turned back to his dinner companions and made a comment Jerry couldn’t hear from such a distance.
Jerry turned back to his own companions, satisfied for the moment. Nothing was quite as off-putting as a continuous blank stare. Jerry had learned the technique from Wellburn.
Caroline hadn’t seemed to notice either Bickle or Jerry’s distracted manner. She was busy charming stories out of the captain about the exciting places he had sailed. She seemed to have a natural enthusiasm for exploration that was contagious. Even the Turntons were now discussing the possibility of taking an extended tour of the Southern Americas when earlier at dinner they had been pleased that they had no more travel planned for the foreseeable future.
“What about you, my lord?” Caroline asked, turning her bright smile on him. “Do you wish to travel more once your business in New York is complete?”
“My father has sent me to New York to evaluate some of his business holdings there,” Jerry explained to the table, using the official excuse his father had concocted for arranging this trip. “He feels it’s time I start preparing for my future.”
“The Danvers’s holdings are vast and international, I understand,” Mr. Turnton said. “If your family is interested in diversifying into ship building, I would be happy to discuss the business with you. Our firm is always entertaining prospective investors.”
Jerry thanked him and promised to visit the Northern Lights New York office.
Mrs. Turnton, though, was focused on Caroline although she managed to throw a bemused look at Jerry. “I don’t understand, dear. Aren’t you travelling with his lordship? Does he not allow you some say in the itinerary?”
“Oh, no.” Caroline did one of those big wide-eyed stares that was so devastatingly effective. Every time she looked at him like that, Jerry wanted to step between her and the rest of the world before something out there could hurt her, dimming the enthusiasm normally found in her eyes and smile. It was interesting to see a similar instinct raised in Mrs. Turnton. “Lord St. David is only escorting me to New York. Mother couldn’t go to chaperone me, and Uncle Gerald said that as long as his lordship was already making the crossing I might as well go along,” Caroline said, handily crushing any elopement possibilities in one well-crafted sentence. “I call Lord St. David’s father Uncle Gerald,” she added, “even though he isn’t really my uncle, but more like a third or fourth cousin. Uncle Gerald has always been most fond of Mother, she’s a distant relation to the Danvers just like Mr. Wickingham, and at the wedding the duke insisted I call him Uncle, of course, since Mother always has even though the duke is only a few decades her senior.”
“The duke attended your wedding?” Mrs. Turnton seemed duly impressed.
“Of course. It seemed only fitting since he was the one to arrange it.”
Jerry choked on the wine he had just sipped nearly spewing it all over the dishes set in front of him. The entire table fussed over him until he had recovered, the captain even going so far as to summon a deckhand to pound Jerry on the back.
“I take it you did not know about the arrangement,” Mrs. Turnton asked in a dry voice. The keen eye she had been favoring him with until Caroline’s announcement that he was merely her escort had returned.
“No.” Jerry most certainly hadn’t known. The duke’s participation hadn’t been part of the story they had concocted for the fictitious Mr. Wickingham.
“Why would you?” Caroline asked him. She took a sip of her own wine. “You were off at school, Eton, wasn’t it?”
“University,” Jerry corrected, embarrassed she would think him so young. “I would have been at Cambridge then,” he clarified for the rest of the table.
“Isn’t that all the same?” Caroline asked with the tilt to the head that made her seem like a child not yet ready to leave the schoolroom.
No one bothered to correct her.
“I’m a Harvard man myself,” Mr. Turnton told them, and from there the group moved on to discussing the merits of various universities. To Jerry’s relief no one asked Caroline why she had needed to be escorted to New York. He could only imagine what outrageous lie her fevered brain might have concocted.
Chapter 14
After dinner, Caroline and Jerry joined the other passengers in the Grand Parlor for drinks and conversation. Mrs. Turnton had been correct that etiquette on a ship differed from on land. There had been no withdrawal from the dinner table by the ladies while the men lingered over cigars and spirits. Instead, the captain had excused himself to his duties on the Bridge, and the rest left as a company.
Caroline only managed to sit through one hand of whist with Jerry and the Turntons before she could bear it no longer. She had been on edge all evening, from the moment she had caught sight of Mr. Bickle at Mrs. Kimbley’s table. Caroline wondered if it was a coincidence that Mr. Bickle happened to be at the same table as two of their suspects or if he had some sort of previous relationship with the couple. He and Mr. Kimbley had seemed to be in deep conversation for most of the night, perhaps even discussing the stolen bayonet drawings. Although Caroline couldn’t picture Mr. Bickle as a Russian agent—agents in the novels she read were dashing, and Mr. Bickle was a dud—she could see Mr. Bickle committing treason for a high enough price. He seemed that kind of man.
When she realized that Mr. Bickle had not joined the rest of the company, Caroline felt a compulsive need to check on Olive. She mentioned visiting the Second-Class Parlor, and the rest of the party tried as one to dissuade her.
“Highly irregular,” said Mr. Turnton.
“My dear, that just isn’t done,” said Mrs. Turnton at the same moment. She didn’t seem scandalized, at least, so Caroline assumed she hadn’t suggested anything more than a minor faux pas. Well, Caroline had been striving to seem slightly eccentric so she could push the boundaries of etiquette in just these ways.
Jerry didn’t bother to argue. At least the little lord seemed to have realized the futility in trying to talk her out of something. “Are you worried for some reason about your maid?” he asked instead, showing a surprising amount of perception.
“That man from dinner, the one who mistakes me for Lady Caroline, hasn’t come to the Grand Parlor. I worry with him loose on the ship.” She turned to Mrs. Turnton, who sat next to her. “I’m just so concerned for the poor girl.”
“My man Wellburn is with her,” Jerry reminded her. “I’m sure he will keep her safe from that Bickle fellow. Besides, I doubt he’s prowling the Second-Class corridors, and I told her myself to keep your stateroom’s door locked at all times.”
“I would feel better to set eyes on the girl myself, and besides,” Caroline added with a brightness she didn’t feel, “I’m curious to see how the Second-Class Parlor compares to this one.” She waved at the wood paneling and wall of bookshelves with their funny little railings designed to keep the books from tumbling down in rough seas.
“Harold,” Mrs. Turnton said to her spouse, “when was the last time you inspected this ship in its entirety?”
Mr. Turnton looked startled. “Fanny, you know I don’t inspect ships. I’m no engineer.” He turned to Jerry. “I’m more of a money man, you see
. I handle the financing angle.”
Mrs. Turnton seemed to have come to a decision. She stood, and of course, the gentlemen at their little whist table stood as well. “Then it’s high time you took a look around this ship. What if there was a flaw endangering us all?”
“Then we’re doomed,” Mr. Turnton retorted. “It’s not like I’m going to be able to spot it.”
“I doubt you would find a catastrophic flaw in the Second-Class Parlor anyway,” Jerry said with a smile. “I believe that is the area of the boat you wife wishes to tour.”
Caroline stood and grasped Mrs. Turnton’s hand for a moment. “Oh, you are too kind.” She let go of Mrs. Turnton’s hand and took the arm Jerry had offered her, so he might escort her out the room. “Isn’t she too kind?”
Jerry took his free hand and placed it on top of the hand Caroline had resting in the crook of his arm. A rosy warm feeling flushed through her from her toes to the top of her head. It was bit like that time last year when she and Olive had snuck a snifter of her father’s brandy to Caroline’s room. The same slow burn had coursed through her system then as well.
Caroline smiled at Jerry, and he gave her a fond grin, one Caroline thought just might be genuine. He turned to Mrs. Turnton, who had been watching them through slightly narrowed eyes. “Yes,” he said to the woman, “Mrs. Turnton is very kind.”
Chapter 15
Jerry and Caroline followed the older couple from the Grand Parlor to the grand staircase that led down to the staterooms reserved for First-Class. Jerry set the pace until the two of them had lagged behind the Turntons enough that they might converse without being overheard.
“Did you see Miss Hayes at dinner?” Caroline asked. The Turntons had begun to descend the plainer stairs that led to the floor with the Second-Class public rooms, but Caroline and Jerry lingered for a moment at the top.
“I noted her odd reaction to the mention of bayonets, yes,” Jerry said, but that was not the subject he had in mind. “What on this earth possessed you to bring my father into your ridiculous wedding tale?” he asked. “My father would rather relinquish his title to a Frenchman than arrange a marriage for a child bride. I can’t think of any reason why my father would countenance, let alone arrange, such a thing.”