Day Seven

SS Majestic

At sea

At exactly twelve minutes past six o’clock in the morning, Penelope pounded on the door of Stateroom A with the kind of fury usually reserved for accusations of adultery.

“My dear,” said the duke, opening the door, “do cease this ungodly rumpus. I haven’t yet swallowed a drop of coffee, fortified or otherwise.”

“You put a guard on my door!”

“Yes, of course. Now come inside, before somebody sees you.”

“I don’t care if—”

But he was already pulling her into the room, and by the time she realized he was still in his dressing gown, that a towel lay around his neck and his cheeks were still pink and damp from the razor, it was too late. He had closed the door behind them and turned to her with a kind of triumphant look, like a spider that has caught a particularly choice fly in his web. He dabbed his cheeks with the towel and walked to the tray that rested on the sitting room table. “Coffee?” he said.

“No, thank you. Back to the guard, please.”

“I had no choice, my love. I couldn’t be in two places at once, and as you so rightfully pointed out, I was already delinquent in giving chase to your persecutor.” He poured her a cup anyway, added a splash of amber liquid from a suspicious decanter, and handed it to her.

“I said I didn’t want coffee.”

“It’s not for the coffee.”

She glared and drank, and the most extraordinary flavor warmed her mouth, spreading a glow through her chest and down her limbs. “What is this?” she said.

“Amaretto.”

“It’s lovely.”

“I’m glad you like it. The last of my personal stock, I’m afraid. I’ll have my dealer secure us a dozen new bottles when we reach London. Shall we go on deck and discuss the matter further? I feel myself in great need of a bit of fresh air.”

Ten minutes later, he was opening the door to the cold air of the promenade deck and a wondrous red sunrise. Penelope caught her breath. “Isn’t it beautiful!” she said.

Olympia took her arm. “Storm on the way.”

“How do you know that?”

“Red sky at morning, sailor’s warning.”

“Oh, an old mariner’s rhyme,” she said.

“Trust me, my dear. The old mariners have an interest in the weather. About this guard.”

“I ordered him away, and he wouldn’t move.”

“Of course not. He’s there under my express orders.”

“He followed me upstairs. I saw him on the landing.”

“Good man. I’m afraid I was unable to trace last night’s intruder—”

“I’m not surprised.”

“—but I’ve instructed Mr. Simmons to post every available crewman at all the key points in the ship.”

“We reach Liverpool tomorrow morning, according to last night’s bulletin.”

“So tonight is her last chance to act. We’ll be ready.”

A steward approached them. “Deck chairs this morning, sir?”

Olympia turned his face to Penelope, and so did the steward. Waiting. Respectful. Attentive.

The duke lifted his other hand and pressed it against her arm. “Well, my dear?”

“No, thank you,” Penelope said. “I’d rather walk this morning.”

So they walked, and the remains of Penelope’s annoyance settled back into contemplation. This wasn’t such a setback, after all. Not such a hindrance to her plans. And it was rather nice, for once in her life, to have someone so deeply concerned for her well-being.

Or at least the well-being of the papers in her possession.

“In the first place,” the duke was saying, “we may eliminate Mr. Langley, who already knows that the papers now rest in the ship’s safe.”

“Why on earth are you speaking as if we’re partners in this matter?”

He looked surprised. “Aren’t we?”

“Of course not. You’re not getting your hands on those papers. They are not intended for the attention of the British government.”

“The British government means no harm whatsoever to the concerns of either the Americans or the French,” he said with dignity.

“Ha.”

“Ha? This is your considered response to a matter of complex and delicate international diplomacy?”

“The British government serves no interest except that of Britain. I’m here to ensure the interests of the United States.”

“But how do you know you’re doing that? How do you know that your dear friend de Sauveterre is a faithful American, and not simply using you in a transaction of which you have absolutely no knowledge whatever?”

She smiled and turned away to lean her elbows on the railing. “I think you’re wrong about a storm,” she said. “The ocean looks perfectly easy. We could almost swim to Liverpool in a sea like this, don’t you think?”

***

The gentlemen’s smoking room of the SS Majestic was a thing of extraordinary invention, but the Duke of Olympia spared not the slightest regard for its elaborate plasterwork and embossed leather walls, nor even the naval paintings set at intervals in the wall panels. He sucked instead on his cigar, from the comfort of an overstuffed chair, and said sternly to the man sitting opposite, “No, I am not satisfied, Mr. Simmons. Not at all. There is a burglar on the loose in the first-class cabin, a female burglar of limitless ingenuity and elusiveness, and I must say, for a man whose business is to secure the safety of the White Star Line passengers, you’re acting remarkably unconcerned, Mr. Simmons. Remarkably unconcerned.”

“But sir! I assure you, we’re doing all we can!” said poor Mr. Simmons, nearly bursting at the seams with pained earnestness. His concern, in fact, stained his cheeks and the tips of his ears, and threatened to run out the corners of his mouth. “We’ve posted men at every possible corner, every man who can be spared from the running of the ship, and they have seen nothing untoward.”

Olympia jabbed his cigar in the direction of Mr. Simmons’s navy chest. “It is all because you refused to vouchsafe Miss Morrison’s papers to me, Mr. Simmons. That is all. Had those papers been entrusted to my care, the ladies might never have been in danger.”

This was possibly not quite true, for the mysterious thief would have had to have known that Simmons had transferred the portfolio into Olympia’s possession, and this particular thief evidently hadn’t even known that the papers had gone into the ship’s safe to begin with.

But the duke liked to strike thunder into the hearts of the innocent, particularly in situations such as this, when a little extra thunder might mean the difference between a thief captured and a thief triumphant.

“Possibly, sir,” said poor Simmons, “but I must stand by my decision in that case.”

Good man, thought Olympia.

“A very reckless decision, Mr. Simmons, and now we see the results. A lady—a saloon passenger, Mr. Simmons—is attacked in her own stateroom, and the perpetrator continues to elude you.” Olympia rose slowly, not because his joints were stiff, but because the spectacle of six and a half ducal feet unfurling themselves in the manner of a giant bean stalk never failed to impress in his audience the proper spirit of submission. He put the cigar in his mouth and inhaled the fragrant weed to the limit of his lungs. “It is now half past six o’clock, and the dinner service is about to begin. Every first-class passenger will be seated in the grand saloon for your inspection. By the time the dessert is laid, I expect your men to have apprehended the person responsible for the invasion of Mrs. Schuyler’s cabin. In the meantime, I will be enjoying my dinner.” He stubbed out the cigar in a fine enameled ashtray. “Good evening, Mr. Simmons.”

The first officer rose. “One more moment, sir!”

“What is it? The gong is about to sound.”

“It’s about Mr. Langley, sir. You asked me this morning if the crew has noticed any particular behavior on his part. I gathered together the second-class stewards directly and queried them on the subject. He has been, it seems, a model passenger, keeping mostly to himself. But there is one curious detail, which I thought you ought to know. You may, of course, decide for yourself whether it is at all significant . . .”

“Out with it, Simmons.”

The first officer drew in a massive breath. “It seems Mr. Langley has not sat down to a single meal in the second-class saloon.”

***

The dinner gong had sounded some time ago, and still the Duke of Olympia had not arrived in the main saloon: an event so unprecedented that all three tables rocked with the news.

Or maybe that was the ocean, Penelope thought. She hated to admit that Olympia was right, but the waves had taken on a certain amplitude in the hours since luncheon, steep and slow and covered with messy foam. Even the decks of the mighty Majestic had begun to tilt, ever so slightly, in rhythm with the sea. She picked up her menu card and pretended to study the contents. FAREWELL DINNER, proclaimed the elegant script at the top, followed by a list of dishes so rich and extensive it might have supplied a royal banquet for a week, let alone the dining saloon of a ship that was now developing an unmistakable lurch, which everybody pretended not to notice.

“I hope he has not fallen overboard,” said Mrs. Morrison, sotto voce.

“Heaven forbid,” said Penelope. “Imagine the trouble of finding another duke.”

“WHAT’S THIS?” said Miss Crawley, on her other side. “THE GREEK HAS JUMPED OVERBOARD?”

“So it would seem, I’m afraid. I can’t imagine any other reason why the Duke of Olympia would commit so irredeemable an act as arriving late for dinner.”

“PROBABLY COULDN’T SEE ANY OTHER WAY OUT OF MARRYING THE MORRISON GIRL!”

Ruby dabbed her eyes. “I shall weep forever.”

“There, there.” Mrs. Morrison reached across the table and patted her daughter’s hand. “I’m sure there’s another explanation. Maybe he’s fallen on the stairs.”

“Or perhaps he’s cut his throat with the razor,” Penelope said cheerfully. “Old hands can be so shaky, can’t they, Miss Crawley?”

“I NEARLY SLIT MY WRIST WITH A LETTER OPENER ONCE!”

On her other side, Miss Harris muttered something unintelligible, which might have signaled regret.

“You see, my dear? Everybody’s hoping for the best. And there are advantages to a convalescence, I always say. More time to arrange your trousseau, for one thing. I had the distinct feeling that His Grace was eager to complete the formalities—and who could blame him, at his age, and Ruby so alluring—but a nice healing spell should allow us a little more time to—”

“Madam—” said Penelope.

“—to shop and make arrangements, and perhaps to see to the decoration of His Grace’s house in London, which I’m sure—”

“Mrs. Morrison, I think—”

“—is grand and lovely and all that, but maybe not all that modern in the way of plumbing and draperies,” Mrs. Morrison went on, heedless of the settling silence around her, the hushed expectation, except for the clatter of the serving dishes and the grind of the engines and another sound, a persistent rushing roar, which Penelope realized was the wash of water along the sides of the ship. “And I always say that a young bride shouldn’t be afraid to take the bit in her mouth and arrange things to suit herself, because—”

“Because her bridegroom might soon expire?” inquired the Duke of Olympia, standing politely behind his chair, the object of all that reverent silence.

Mrs. Morrison leapt in her seat, an action cut short by the proximity of her neighbors. “Your Grace! I—well, I—what a shock.”

“Evidently.” He took his chair. “I apologize for my late arrival. A matter came up at the last instant, which required my immediate attention.” His gaze turned to Penelope, thick with meaning.

“You have only missed the salted almonds,” she said, and returned her attention to the menu card, as if unable to decide among the five different preparations of potatoes.

In fact, not one of them appealed to her, nor the littleneck clams, nor the green turtle soup, nor the sweetbreads Macedoine, nor the braised capon or the golden plover or the filet of beef. Six days and nights of impossibly rich and plentiful food had rendered her insensible to French sauces and rare meats. Like they were geese being stuffed for foie gras (of which there was plenty on board already). As if a butcher awaited them on the Merseyside, sharpening his knife.

But she had to eat. If she didn’t turn her attention to her food, she would invariably fall under the glance of the Duke of Olympia, which was presently attempting to snare hers by the principles of magnetic attraction. She allowed her plate to be filled, again and again, and when she was not picking at the contents she did her best to converse with Miss Crawley, or rather to converse with Miss Harris across the bridge of Miss Crawley’s nose.

“Thank God,” twanged Miss Harris, when at last the dessert was laid, and she reached for a pear.

“It’s really too much, isn’t it? Especially when the ship is pitching like this.”

“FAR TOO MUCH FOOD!” said Miss Crawley.

Miss Harris picked up her knife and began to slice the pear in expert little strokes, and for some reason the action caught Penelope’s fascination. She handled the knife with such ease. Not for Miss Harris the elegant hands of a lady: she kept the nails cut short, almost to the quick, at the ends of her large, capable fingers. So large and capable, in fact, they were almost . . .

Mannish.

The blood began instantly to thud in Penelope’s neck. She glanced at Ruby and at the duke, who had given up trying to win her attention and was now sharing a remark with Miss Morrison, perfectly at ease except for a certain heaviness around his eyes.

The steward came around with coffee. “Yes, please,” she said, and she reached for the nearby fruit and took hold of the closest object: a bunch of grapes. As she lifted the vine from the bowl, she risked a glance at Miss Harris’s profile, and the firm jaw that was now slowly at work on a slice of pear.

My God, she thought. We are all fools.

And then: Poor Ruby.

She popped a grape in her mouth and ground away carefully until she could be quite sure of speaking in her usual voice.

“Miss Harris,” she said, “I was wondering if perhaps you might take a turn with me on deck, after dinner.”

Miss Harris shrugged. “As you like. Peach?”

***

Just like that, she was gone.

He’d been trying to fix Penelope’s attention throughout the interminable run of courses—farewell dinners, the bane of modern steamship travel—to almost no effect at all. Just a fleeting glance, near the end, as if posing a question, and then she was back to that damned odd-fish pair, Harris and Crawley. All he could do was admire the seashell curve of her pink left ear.

And it was a pretty ear altogether, and in any other circumstance he would have enjoyed the admiration of it, but he had something important to communicate! For God’s sake! Couldn’t she feel the urgency boiling beneath his starched white waistcoat while he traded inanities with the Morrisons?

When at last his fellow inmates began to rise, he nearly overturned his chair in his haste to reach her. “Mrs. Schuyler, a word,” he said, as loudly as he dared, but she was turned the other way, and he was on the other wretched side of the endless refectory-style dining table. He looked briefly at his companions—the angular Mr. Morrison, silent in submission; the doughy Mrs. Morrison; the gleaming Ruby—and said “Pardon me, but I really—”

“Oh, but you must join us for the orchestra. Mustn’t he, Stewart?” Mrs. Morrison turned to her husband.

“If he likes,” said Morrison, offering Olympia a shrug of commiseration.

“Our dear Ruby will be heartbroken if you don’t. Your observations on the music are always so—so—”

“Apt,” said Ruby. Her eyebrows arched in an especially energetic way this evening, an expression that could only be described as anticipation. “But His Grace looks so exhausted, Mama. Perhaps he would like to retire instead?”

“Yes, I would. Very much indeed.” He patted his stomach. “A trifle dyspeptic, you know. The curse of old age. Isn’t it, Mrs. Morrison?”

For the first time in six days, she looked displeased with him. “Why, I’m sure I don’t know.”

He bowed swiftly, before Mrs. Morrison could fall back into love with him, and extracted himself from the party. But when he turned and looked at the gap on the opposite side of the table, which Penelope had filled just a minute ago, he saw only her empty plate and a peach pit.

He searched the length of the table, the mingling figures near the entrance.

“Has Mrs. Schuyler left already?” he asked Miss Crawley, who sat complacently in her wheeled chair and sucked on an orange.

“WENT OFF A MOMENT AGO WITH MY HARRIS! THICK AS THIEVES! NEVER MIND LEAVING ME BEHIND TO FEND FOR MYSELF!”

“The villains. I don’t suppose you know where they went?”

“ON DECK, I HOPE! SERVE ’EM RIGHT IF THEY GO OVERBOARD!”

At that instant, the Majestic made a lurch to starboard, nearly jolting Miss Crawley from her seat. Olympia caught himself on his chair and levered away to stride down the long length of the table to the grand doors at the opposite end.

“THAT’S RIGHT! OFF YOU GO! NEVER MIND ME!”

He could pretend not to hear. There were stewards aplenty to push Miss Crawley to the safety of her room. What was more, they were paid to perform the service, whereas Olympia would likely receive nothing but shrillness and abuse for his act of chivalry.

But a man is not steeped since birth in the sauce of British civilization without its having some sort of effect on his natural instincts. Whatever his training as an intelligence agent, whatever his boiling urgency regarding Penelope herself, he could no more refuse a plea from an elderly female invalid than he could refuse to maintain a pulse.

On the other hand, the tables were so damned long.

“Very well, Miss Crawley,” he said, and he placed one hand on the table, called his once-agile limbs to duty, and launched himself over the white tablecloth, between a silver candelabrum and a pyramid of fruit. “I am at your service.”

“YOUR NECKTIE IS LOOSE, YOU BARBAROUS GREEK!”

He straightened the offending article and swung around to grasp the handles of the chair. “Where is your cabin, Miss Crawley?”

“STATEROOM TWENTY-TWO! THE SALOON DECK!”

He knew that already, of course. He knew exactly where the Crawley stateroom lay, and Miss Harris’s adjoining cabin. They were just around the corner, in fact.

He pulled her free from the table. “Hang on.”

“YOU CRAZY OLD FOOL!” screeched Miss Crawley, not without delight, as they drove down the main saloon in the manner of a rugby wedge and burst through the well-dressed crowd lingering around the entrance. Heads swiveled toward them, frozen in expressions of appalled alarm, but not one of those faces contained a pair of inquisitive dark eyes and a chin that was entirely too sharp for comfort.

“I’m going to kill her,” he muttered.

“WHAT’S THAT? YOU’RE GOING TO KILL ME?”

“Now there’s an idea.”

Outside the main saloon, the corridors lay empty. He propelled the chair around the corner of the main staircase, toward the staterooms. The wheels creaked under the abuse, but not enough to drown out Miss Crawley’s indignant observations on his parentage, nationality, and overall manner of birth, breeding, and education. He pulled up before the door to Stateroom 22 and held out his hand.

“Your key, Miss Crawley?”

“HA! NOT LIKELY! NEVER TRUST A GREEK IN MY BEDROOM!”

“Quite sensible.” He bowed and turned away to walk briskly back to the main staircase. Just as he turned the corner, he glanced back to see Miss Crawley catapulting herself backward, chair and all, through the door of her cabin: a picture of vivid American capability.

But Olympia had no time to admire Miss Crawley’s spirit. He bounded up the stairs like a young soldier, hardly noticing the effort, passing a steward as he reached the landing on the final deck. “My good man! Did you see a pair of ladies pass by, in the past several minutes? Heading for the promenade?”

“Why, no, sir. Too dirty a night for that, I’m afraid. But there are two ladies presently occupying the library.” The steward pointed a clean white arm at the library doors, a few yards away.

The library. Of course. Olympia wheeled about and threw open the door.

At what instant the puzzle clicked into place, he never quite remembered. Perhaps, if Penelope hadn’t been facing away from the door, forcing his attention to fall first on the face of Miss Harris, he wouldn’t have guessed.

And if Miss Harris hadn’t happened to be standing next to one of the electric lamps, which cast a harsh shadow across her cheek and jaw—if Miss Harris hadn’t already removed her hat and her bottle-thick spectacles, and bent her face in fierce conversation with Penelope—the startling familiarity of her features might not have struck his eyes with the force of a revelation.

He found himself starting forward almost before he knew what he was doing, shouting at Penelope to get down and take cover, drawing the small pistol from his inside pocket and aiming the barrel directly between the plain bombazine rib cage of the shocked Miss Harris.

***

Penelope picked herself up from the sofa cushion. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

The Duke of Olympia did not waver so much as an eyelash. He stood a pair of yards away like an avenging silver-topped titan in dinner dress, legs braced, arms raised, sleek black jacket gleaming in the electric light. The lethal little pistol in his hand remained sharp and steady, pointed into the heart of the person with whom, an instant ago, Penelope had been sharing a most satisfactory tête-à-tête.

“I am saving your life, Mrs. Schuyler, since you have the goodness to ask,” the duke announced.

“Nonsense. You’re interrupting a private conversation.”

“Am I? How terribly inconvenient for the both of you. But were you aware, Mrs. Schuyler, that the person with whom you were conversing so amicably is, in fact, none other than our good friend”—he reached around his opponent’s neck for the straggling ash-brown chignon and gave it a good yank, so that it fell away in his hand, together with the rest of the wig—“Mr. Robert—”

“Langley? Yes, of course. Why do you think I asked him to meet with me?”

“Look here,” said Langley, rubbing his scalp, “we’re wasting time!”

“You knew?” Olympia looked rather dashed. “How long?”

“Since dessert. Well, I had always suspected something. It was his voice, you see. Miss Harris’s voice, I mean. No Hellenic graduate would be allowed out of the gates with a voice like that, even at night, so I knew she wasn’t whom she claimed. But until I noticed those hands slicing the pear at dinner tonight—”

Langley brought his gloved palms in front of his face. “My hands?”

“Yes, Mr. Langley. There are certain features that even the most studied tricks cannot disguise.”

Olympia’s pistol remained pointed at Langley’s heart. “But if you knew who he was, why are you here with him? Why the devil didn’t you find me first?”

“Because my business with Mr. Langley has nothing to do with you.”

“Hasn’t it, by God! He means to take those papers off you. He might have killed you right here! My God! He’s been sniffing at you for months, while pretending to sniff after Miss Morrison.” The duke’s eyes narrowed. “Now why would he be doing that?”

“I think I can explain,” Langley said modestly.

“Yes, I think you’d better!”

Penelope put her hands on her hips. “Will you please put down that damned pistol! There’s no need whatsoever for violent measures. I’ve already ascertained that Mr. Langley isn’t the enemy.”

“Yes,” Langley said eagerly. “She’s already offered to hand over the papers—”

“You’ve what?”

“Offered to hand over the papers,” Penelope said, quite calm, despite the steady lurching of the ship beneath her feet. The air inside the library was warm and heavy with dread; the books thumped in their shelves at every pitch. “After all, he needs them in order to determine the true nature of the threat.”

“What threat?”

“Oh, sir.” Penelope shook her head. “Six days on board the Majestic, and you’ve concentrated so much of your formidable mind on the problem of the papers in my possession, you haven’t begun to see the larger picture.”

A shadow passed over the duke’s face, or perhaps it was a hardening of the muscles under his skin. He motioned the pistol in Langley’s direction. “You. Sit down in that armchair behind you—yes, that’s the one, steady now—and start from the beginning.”

“But there isn’t time!”

“I said”—almost a whisper—“sit.”

Langley sat, without the slightest pretense of femininity. His black skirts hung loosely about his spread legs. “In the first place, the American government does not remotely appreciate the summary way in which you’ve dispatched a rogue agent of known subversive tendency into our midst.”

Olympia shrugged. “Merely returning an old favor.”

“Regardless.” Langley straightened his back, gathering what meager dignity he could manage in a black bombazine dress, false bosom, and matted head. “We’ve naturally had Dingleby under the closest observation, especially as regards her association with that public nuisance de Sauveterre.”

“Oh, I quite agree with you there. The wretched mischief-making socialist.”

“That will be quite enough,” Penelope said indignantly. “Margot is a very dear friend of mine.” The closest she really had to a dear friend, anyway.

Langley nodded. “Which is exactly why I was assigned to investigate you. I’d managed to convince Dingleby I was a sincere follower of the cause and offered myself up as her acolyte, so we were able to keep track of her comings and goings pretty well. But she didn’t trust me at the highest level, the planning level; all I knew was that she was thick with de Sauveterre. So we had to find another way in.”

“And I was that person?”

“We considered a number of her other friends and associates, but none of them was suitable. Not discreet enough. You were the only one who might actually get something out of her. The only one she might actually trust. Of course, we knew it wouldn’t do, my trying to approach you directly. No one would possibly believe I had fallen in love with you. Least of all Dingleby.”

“How flattering.”

“But Ruby! Who could help falling in love with her? I told Dingleby I was in it for the money, that we would use the dowry to pay for our plans, and she thought it was a terrific idea. And naturally a man’s best hope, in my position, is to ingratiate himself with the girl’s chaperone. Which I believe I did pretty well.”

“Oh, yes. You had me perfectly fooled. No one could have been more besotted.”

“Well, the sweet darling gave me everything I needed. So trusting and forthcoming, and what’s more, she has a trick of knowing everyone else’s business, so I was right at the nexus of it all. I just couldn’t get her to give me the papers themselves.”

“How disappointing for you.”

“Yes, well, I’m getting ahead of myself. A few weeks ago, Dingleby told me she was plotting something big, a major strike on French soil, to trump even the Tsar’s assassination—”

“Propaganda of the deed,” murmured Olympia. “Damned anarchists.”

“—and that she would be taking passage to Europe to accomplish it, with the expert help of a French national to assist her in her scheme.” Langley looked at Penelope.

“I assure you, I had nothing to do with these plans. I am quite, quite shocked to learn that I’ve been made an innocent party to such a deed. Whatever it may be.” She looked down modestly at her dress.

“And appalled at the perfidy of Madame de Sauveterre, I suppose?” growled Olympia.

“That too, of course. So naturally, once we recognized our respective roles in this affair, I offered the papers to Mr. Langley for his inspection.”

“To Langley? You offered the papers to the American?”

“Because he’s the one who seems to know what’s going on, that’s why. Although I’d like to point out that if he’d made his objectives clear from the beginning, we might have avoided a great deal of trouble. Mr. Langley,” she said, turning to the American in question, “what do you propose we do next? Can I be of any assistance?”

“Just the papers, Mrs. Schuyler.” He smiled in relief. “Just the papers, if you please.”

“Look here,” said Olympia. “We are not giving Mr. Langley any papers, Mrs. Schuyler. My God. One doesn’t simply take a man at his word in this business, simply because he’s young and good-looking and puts on a fine performance.”

“Why not? You’ve taken me at my word, and I’m neither young nor good-looking.”

“You are extremely attractive, Mrs. Schuyler, as you well know—”

“But not young.”

“Not young? Then what the devil does that make me?”

“As ancient as the hills, I’m afraid, and I can’t imagine why I find you so thrilling, except that—”

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” Mr. Langley said, a little bewildered, “but the situation remains extremely urgent, and I’d like to—”

“Urgent?” said Olympia. “Why urgent?”

“Because, sir. While our original plans called for me to hand over Dingleby to the authorities in England, together with the papers that would incriminate her—”

“Oh, I see. That way she becomes our problem, not yours.”

“Exactly. But since boarding the Majestic, I have come to believe that she doesn’t intend to wait until she reaches the Eiffel Tower at all—”

“The Eiffel Tower?”

“Yes. You know, that awful skeleton the Frogs put up a few years ago, for the great Exposition.”

“I know the tower, for God’s sake. What is it, then? She means to blow it up?”

“That’s what we thought, in the beginning. But it seems she had another object in mind all along.”

“Another object? What? Out with it, man!”

Langley coughed, making his bosom jiggle beneath the bombazine. “The ship itself.”

At that moment, the floor below them, which had been pitching back and forth like a child’s rocking chair, tilted backward with such unexpected force that all three of them lurched with it. Langley had to grip the arms of the chair to keep from falling out, and Olympia grasped a stumbling Penelope around the waist. She moved to break free, but he said Wait, and sure enough, a few seconds later, the floor changed direction and they were falling, hurtling down the opposite side of the wave, until they reached the bottom and began the climb again, a little less steeply, and the room returned to a more recognizable angle.

“I’ll be damned,” said Olympia, as if nothing had happened. “And how the devil did you come across this information, Mr. Langley? Where, may I ask, is the redoubtable Dingleby hiding herself this . . .”

And then his face changed expression, and his words trailed off to dangle in the air. His left hand, still tucked around Penelope’s waist, dug into her flesh as if to pin her to his side.

He whispered, “My God, I am an idiot.”

Then he whipped around and ran from the room.

***

He shouldn’t have been surprised that the cabin was empty. Miss Dingleby was nothing if not efficient. The wheeled invalid’s chair sat in the corner; the wig and spectacles were tucked inside her capacious steamer trunk, along with the other accoutrements of her disguise: padding, greasepaint, glue. He muttered oaths to himself as he went, inspecting the lining and the false bottom, finding nothing, not a clue, not a single damned sign of what, exactly, she meant to do.

And a whole colossal steamship in which to do it.

“Olympia?”

He turned. Penelope stood in the doorway, cheeks pink and eyes bright with exercise. Her chest moved quickly, as if she’d been running. “Go back to the library, do you understand me? No. Not the library. Go to your cabin and lock the door. I’ll find you when—”

“It’s too late!” she gasped. “She’s on the promenade deck, going after a lifeboat. Robert’s trying to catch her, but—”

Olympia was already off, pushing past Penelope on his way back to the main staircase. By God, he was too old for this, too old to be running up and down stairs, pistol in hand, as if he were still twenty-five years old and desperate to rediscover some purpose in life, some reason for rising out of bed in the morning when you knew that God could simply snap His immortal fingers and take away whatever it was you loved most. By the time he reached the final flight, his strength was beginning to give out, but he pushed on regardless. He had no choice.

“Port or starboard?” he called out, knowing that Penelope was right behind him, bless her, curse her.

“Port!”

He wheeled to the left and burst through the door to the promenade deck, into a blast of frigid wind that robbed his breath. Shouts rang out from above, on his right side, near the lifeboats hanging on their divots above the awning, and he ran down the deck to the open air, where a stairway led from the promenade deck to awning deck, forbidden to passengers except in case of emergency.

By God, this was an emergency.

“Stay down,” he ordered Penelope, over his shoulder, and he climbed the stairs and ducked under the rail.

The awning deck wasn’t lighted. He could only make out the shadows of the objects around him, cast by the ambient glow of the electric lights from the decks below and from the small deckhouse at the forward edge of the platform, nestled against the first of the two massive funnels that erupted from the bowels of the ship. Around them, the vast ocean heaved and swirled, a drop of at least thirty feet.

She’s mad, he thought. She can’t possibly think to launch a boat by herself, to navigate herself safely to shore in a sea like this.

A shout floated out from the darkness ahead. “Olympia! Look out!”

Out whipped his pistol. He squinted at the shadows, and as his pupils constricted, he made out a shape, separating itself from the lifeboats, heading down the deck toward him.

“Dingleby!” he roared, and the shadow stopped.

“Make another move,” she said, “and I’ll kill him.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why not?” She laughed, actually laughed. “You’ve seen me do it. You know I can hit a target at any distance. You’re the one who taught me, Olympia.”

“Not for this, Mary.” He used her first name, as he hadn’t done for many years. Mary Dingleby, once his protégé, then his colleague; occasionally his lover. He had formed her himself, had taught her how to ply this exacting and reckless trade, had thought he knew her perfectly. Then she had betrayed him, and now she betrayed him again, except that this time he was expecting her. This time he felt no pain as he timed the rhythm of the ship, took aim, and squeezed the trigger.

Crack.

The shadow jerked and released a shot of its own, which went whistling past his left ear, so close he felt the draft of its passing.

“You shot me!” she said, outraged.

He started forward. “You missed me. I expect, in your haste, you forgot to take into account the motion of the ship.”

“I’ll shoot again.”

“No, you won’t. I’ve hit your shoulder, and I’m afraid your aim will suffer for it, especially in this Stygian darkness. My God, what a night. What were you thinking?” He kept talking, walking steadily, watching the shadow for movement.

“I have planned every last aspect of this mission, down to the last detail.”

“Except for me.”

She hesitated. “You were a surprise.”

He had almost reached her. She was waiting for him, he knew; all this talk was only to distract him. He felt her warmth. He smelt the copper of her blood. Along the perimeter of the deck, he sensed movement. Penelope, he thought. What the devil was she up to? He didn’t dare call out. His heart cracked in fear against his ribs. Penelope. He had to finish this, and fast.

“What have you done, Mary?” he asked softly. “Tell me, before a thousand innocents are killed.”

“They will have died for a good cause, which is more than one can say of their living.”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“It’s very simple. Millions exist in poverty, while you and your ilk dance the night away in your opulent saloons, eating your turtle soup and your filet de—”

“I don’t mean the cause, Mary. God knows I have spent enough hours reading the lunatic ravings of your philosophers. What I don’t understand is how a sensible woman like the Mary Dingleby I trained could possibly bring herself to believe in it. To believe in it so forcefully, she would destroy a monument, or a ship filled with women and children.”

Where was Langley, by God? Why wasn’t Langley creeping up from behind? Was he going to have to fix the whole damned business by himself? A flash of movement appeared around the corner of the deckhouse. Penelope?

“What’s a thousand tourists, when millions suffer?”

“This is not the way to relieve their suffering. Tell me what you’ve done.”

“With pleasure. I have set a device of considerable explosive power—Mr. Langley, I’m sure, can tell you what an expert I’ve become in such matters—in a part of the ship that, upon the bomb’s detonation, will cause her to founder immediately, and to sink within minutes. I had hoped to release all the lifeboats before the ignition of this device, preventing any escape, but I expect this will now prove impossible. No matter, however. These poor idiots are unlikely to reach the boats in time, let alone contrive to launch any.”

“Ah! Now I understand. You intend to go down with the ship?”

“Of course. I thought I might as well, since my dear Mr. Langley has arranged to have such an extensive party waiting on the docks to welcome me back to England.”

“How disappointing when one’s colleagues betray one.”

“Isn’t it, though?” But her voice held an edge of pain. He had taught her how to resist torture, but you never knew, did you? You never knew until the pain actually began, and you had to endure it. Maybe she would crack.

“Tell me where you’ve hidden the bomb, Mary.” He crouched on the deck a few yards away, keeping his pistol trained on her heart; it was easier to balance that way, while the waves tossed them about. “This is useless. It will cause great suffering, and do nothing for your cause.”

“Do you know something, Olympia? I really don’t think I give a damn.”

She launched herself so suddenly, his shot went wild. He caught her by the shoulders, making her cry out, but the force of her attack sent them both sprawling on the deck while the ship rocked wildly beneath them. His head struck something hard. He saw a flash of silver, and then a sharp point nestled into the hollow of his throat, and he went still.

Hell. Hell and damnation.

“That’s right,” Dingleby whispered. “Don’t move, there’s a good chap.”

His head swam. What the devil had he hit? One of the rings on the deck, probably, securing the rigging from the funnel. There were two Dinglebys in front of him. He focused hard, and they resolved into one. He hoped he hadn’t concussed himself. Nuisances, concussions. And the pistol had fallen out of his hand, damn it all.

Penelope, he thought.

“If you must kill me,” he said pleasantly, “do it swiftly, I beg you. And for God’s sake, defuse that bomb. You can’t refuse the last request of a dying man.”

“I can do whatever I damned well please, Olympia. I’m the one with the knife. No, no. I wouldn’t move, if I were you. One more flicker of those giant muscles, and I will slit your throat from ear to ear.”

He couldn’t see her eyes, not in this gloom. But he heard the sincerity in her voice. No, not sincerity. Worse than that: a kind of fanaticism, the sound of someone with nothing left to lose.

Very well, Lord, thought the Duke of Olympia, who never prayed, take the life of this old sinner, since it appears you have me at your mercy, but preserve your servant Penelope. Preserve Simmons and Langley and every damned fool on board, even the Americans. A bad bargain—one old soul in exchange for a shipful of lives—but I’m afraid it’s all I have to offer.

He parted his lips. “My throat, Mary? Tsk, tsk. How could you? Remember all the times you kissed this throat.”

The point dug deeper.

“Dear me, Olympia,” drawled Miss Dingleby. “Poor chap. Did you really think I cared?”

Crack.

Her body made a stunned jerk and slumped against him.

For an instant, he thought he’d shot her himself, though his pistol was several feet away. A miracle. God had actually answered that prayer.

“Caught beneath a woman,” said Penelope. “I suppose it’s not the first time. Nor, I expect, the last.”

The Duke of Olympia closed his eyes and thanked his Maker.

***

“Now then,” the duke said, when he had extricated himself from the clutches of Miss Dingleby, “where the devil’s Langley gone?”

“To find the bomb, I believe.” She stared down at the body before her, unable to believe that she had done this. Taken Robert Langley’s pistol and shot a woman between the shoulder blades. Her father had taken her hunting when she was young—there were no sons, and he was a notable eccentric, as old money usually was—but she hadn’t fired a weapon in decades. Funny how it came back to you, when you had gone past conscious thought and had only the thrill of fear coursing through your limbs and your brain. When someone laid a knife against the throat of someone you loved.

Loved. Was that the word for this? This relief so powerful, it made her dizzy. Made the shock of having killed someone somehow bearable, if no less horrible.

“Damn it all,” Olympia said.

“I’m sorry. I know you cared for her. But I had no choice—”

“No. I mean she can’t tell us where the bomb’s hidden.” He picked up his own pistol and replaced it in his waistcoat pocket, which was speckled with dark blood. “Did Langley say where he was going?”

“No. But it doesn’t matter. I know where she’s hidden the bomb.”

“What? How the—”

“The devil do I know? Think a moment, Your Grace. I’m sure your nimble brain will come up with the answer. In the meantime, I’m off to save the damned ship. With or without your help.”

She tossed Langley’s pistol into Olympia’s surprised hands and raced down the deck to the stairway.

“It’s the papers, isn’t it?” he called after her. “The damned papers!”

“Clever chap. I knew you could do it.”

But she didn’t stop. Oh no. Her blood was high, her mind sharp. Everything had come clear, and now she had only to play her part, exactly as Madame de Sauveterre had intended.

Dear old Margot.

She picked up her skirts and hurried down the stairs and around the corner, then up the promenade deck to the deckhouse entrance, holding the rail as she went. The air was full of salt spray, the wood slippery beneath her ruined slippers. Olympia reached around her to force open the door, which had fixed stubbornly in the wind and wet.

A steward came out of the library and looked at them as if they were lunatics. “You shouldn’t be out!” he said, but Penelope was already running down the staircase, one deck after another, until she arrived at the saloon deck and turned down the corridor that led to Stateroom 22.

“What are we doing here?” called Olympia.

“She’s got the papers. She took them last night, when she burgled my cabin.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me, you fool?”

But she didn’t answer. She had no time for his withering ducal indignation. She flung open the cabin door—unlocked, thank God—and flipped on the electric lights.

“But I’ve already searched the cabin! We’re wasting our time!”

She cast her gaze around the sitting room—nothing—and proceeded into the open door to the bedroom.

A male voice called out behind her, and Robert Langley bounded into the room, red-faced, having discarded his wig but not his dress.

“The papers! They’re not in your room!” he said.

“I wish,” said Penelope, marching across Miss Crawley’s bedroom to the invalid’s chair in the corner, “the two of you would simply be quiet and allow me to work in peace.”

She turned the chair around, reached under the seat, and pulled out a sheaf of papers.

“Good God.” Olympia snatched them from her hand. “Deck plans.”

“So it seems. Dear me. Of course, I can’t make heads or tails of it, but no doubt you gentlemen, with your superior strategic brains, can understand the meaning of that notation in red ink on the main deck, just beneath the first-class saloon.”

***

By the time the main saloon had been discreetly evacuated by a remarkably calm Mr. Simmons, and by the time device was located and defused—Mr. Langley had just completed a course in explosives, and was eager to demonstrate his newfound knowledge in practical application—and the tea poured out in the library, it was nearly midnight.

“I must say,” said the Duke of Olympia, accepting his tea from Penelope’s hands, “you have displayed a singular sangfroid throughout the evening’s events. I might even go so far as to call it a natural aptitude for this line of work.”

“Do you think so? How flattering.”

“I don’t suppose you would consider a more regular association? Nothing so dramatic as this, of course, but perhaps a spot of simple eavesdropping from time to time.”

She sipped her tea and studied the wall of books to her right. She looked as serene as ever, as if she hadn’t just saved a shipful of innocent souls from plunging to the bottom of the ocean. As if she hadn’t just witnessed a man disable a device of prodigious explosive power with a borrowed hairpin and a wad of tobacco. Her hair winged back softly from her temples, and her too-sharp chin caught the light so beautifully, he wanted to kiss it.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “After all, your previous protégé appears to have come to a very bad end indeed.”

“You are not Miss Dingleby.”

“But I might be.” She turned and smiled, the kind of smile that transformed a woman’s face from quite ordinarily attractive to irresistible. “How do you know I can be trusted, after all? You trusted her once.”

“My instincts are rarely mistaken, Mrs. Schuyler. And when they are, I do not repeat the error.”

“Very wise.”

He picked up her hand and examined it, tracing one vein softly with his thumb. “It’s a shame she’s gone, however. I do dislike those dangling threads that remain when one’s opponent isn’t around to answer questions.”

“Such as?”

“Why your friend de Sauveterre sent those deck plans with you instead of simply giving them to Dingleby before she sailed.”

Penelope gave the edge of her teacup a thoughtful tap. “Perhaps she didn’t trust Mr. Langley, and wanted to be sure he wouldn’t find the plans.”

“Then why not communicate her suspicions to Dingleby?”

“Who knows?” She stifled a yawn with her fingertips. “Maybe you should ask Mr. Langley in the morning. He’ll have more answers than I do. I’m just the mule, aren’t I?”

He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “You are a great deal more than that, my dear.”

A faint blush stained the edges of her cheekbones, and he was just rising from his chair to make it worse when the library door burst open to rebound against the wall in a thunderous bang.

“I can’t find her!”

Olympia, already out of his chair, turned in a slow and exasperated half circle to where Robert Langley stood at the library entrance, dressed respectably at last in trousers and jacket, wearing an expression of shattered panic that had been wholly absent from his face during the entire episode with the hairpin and the tobacco plug.

“Find whom?” he asked.

“Ruby!” The anguish in his voice shook the books in their cases, or perhaps it was the storm, still raging fitfully outside. “She’s not with her parents, or in her room. My God, if she’s gone on deck and been swept away—”

Olympia stared at the man in rising horror. “Mr. Langley. Do you mean to say that you have actually fallen in love with your source?” As he might say, been boiled in broth and eaten with a pinch of sage?

“Yes! God help me. She is the dearest angel—”

“I am appalled, Mr. Langley, appalled. Is this not the acme of errors, in our line of work? I suppose one should always expect this sort of unprofessional emotionalism from Americans, but I, for one, would never—”

Penelope placed her cup in her saucer with just a faint chink of civilization. “Mr. Langley,” she said kindly, “I believe you’ll find Miss Morrison in Stateroom A.”

“Stateroom A?” he said, bewildered.

“But that’s my stateroom!” said Olympia.

“Of course it is. They can’t possibly meet in mine.”

“Meet?” said Langley.

“Yes, meet.” She smiled. “I believe Miss Morrison plans to conceive a child tonight, and I sincerely hope you’ll be there when she does.”

Olympia felt his mouth drop open.

Langley sounded as if he were choking. “Sir—that is, madam—”

“Go on, now. You’ll find the door unlocked. You’d better hurry, or Miss Morrison may have drunk all the champagne herself, which would render her incapable of—well.”

Without another word, Langley bolted from the room, slamming the door behind him.

Penelope said brightly, “Well, that’s that! Everything tied off neatly, if I do say so myself.”

The Duke of Olympia closed his mouth and watched in wonder as she finished off her tea, dabbed her mouth with her napkin, and straightened her skirt in preparation to leave.

“Not quite,” he said at last.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Not quite everything tied off neatly. There is the small matter of my stateroom, which is presently—my thanks to you—occupied by a young couple in the throes of clandestine and possibly drunken concourse, and therefore uninhabitable by its rightful owner.”

Penelope rose from her chair and placed her fingers at the edge of the table. Her bosom was right at the level of his eyes, so transfixing that he forgot his own manners and remained seated, in his auspicious location.

“My dear duke,” she said, “you are quite right. May I offer you the use of my own stateroom, as restitution? I am, after all, without a bedmate.”

A curious sensation grew and spread within the Duke of Olympia’s enormous chest. As if the sun had risen from behind his heart, full and warm, to usher in a wondrous day.

He drew himself up to his regal height and looked down into the quiet symmetry of her face. Her wide-awake eyes, her otherworldly skin, now touched with more pink that perhaps she realized.

“Mrs. Schuyler,” he said, “how kind of you to suggest it.”