Samuel stared into the amber depths of his glass, unable to bear the weight of the disappointment in Amelia’s dark brown eyes. He mentally willed her to leave him to wallow in his self-serving pity. To keep his neck tight in the noose that his mother’s neediness had pulled taut enough to choke his dreams. Just as it always had and, no doubt, always would.
But Amelia didn’t leave. Instead, she raised her hand to the barman. ‘A lime cordial, please.’
Samuel closed his eyes, his hand gripping his glass. ‘Can’t you join me?’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘In a proper drink, I mean.’
She raised her eyebrows, her gaze challenging. ‘Why? Will it make you feel better?’
He swallowed as shame threatened before he lifted his chin, feigning arrogance. ‘As a matter of fact, it will, yes.’
Her gaze wandered over his face to linger a moment at his lips before she faced the bartender. ‘Excuse me? Sorry, could I change my order to a glass of white wine?’
‘Of course, miss.’
Samuel bounced his foot against the footrest on his stool, his moroseness giving way to embarrassment. ‘I didn’t mean to talk to you like that. When you came into the bar, I mean.’
‘I know you didn’t. Thank you.’ She accepted her glass of wine from the barman and sipped. ‘Why don’t you tell me what your mother said?’
‘She’s begging me to return home. My sister is pregnant, and I can only assume the father is nowhere to be seen.’ He pushed his hand into his hair. ‘How in God’s name can I abandon them now?’
Concern shadowed her gaze. ‘I see.’
‘On top of that, how can I realistically go on here when I have no idea what I’ll do until I get paid. I can probably afford another three nights at this hotel, at a push, or else six days somewhere cheaper.’ He stared at her, his fingers itching to touch hers. ‘I don’t want to leave, Amelia, but I don’t think I have a choice. I thought we’d have at least two weeks together before you decide whether or not you want to stay. Now it seems I could be leaving before you.’
Her eyes never left his as Samuel’s heart beat out the seconds, willing her to say something… say she’d come back to England with him if that’s what it would take for them to be together.
She exhaled a shaky breath and lifted her drink. ‘Tell me how you got on at the station. Did you get a job?’
Confused by her change in subject and how Grand Central even mattered anymore, Samuel frowned. ‘I did, but I don’t see—’
‘Then you shouldn’t be so hasty in your urgency to abide by your mother’s bidding.’ She took a long sip of her drink as though fortifying herself. ‘I spent a couple of hours walking around RH Macy’s department store today. It was mesmerising.’ Her eyes immediately glittered with excitement as her mouth curved into a wide smile. ‘Like nothing I’ve ever seen before.’ She gripped his forearm where it lay on the bar. ‘You have to see it, Samuel. I thought Pennington’s was the most glamorous place on earth and it probably is, but RH Macy’s has an… energy, a pulse. People were just running around as though afraid they might miss something. Children laughed and played. Friends joked and nudged one another. Even the elderly seemed perfectly content to be jostled amid the madness. It was intoxicating.’
Samuel’s gut clenched with trepidation. Had she even heard that he was leaving? Or had her trip today turned her mind to staying in New York regardless of anything or anyone? He sipped his drink, sickness rolling through him. For all his persuading, had he unwittingly lost her? This wasn’t the serious woman he’d met on the Titanic. A woman intent on doing the job she was sent to America to do. To impress her employers and rush back to report her new ideas for Pennington’s future. Now, Amelia wore the look of fascination that surpassed the intention of leaving everything she knew behind. Was everything he’d wanted, everything he’d been determined he and Amelia do together when they reached New York now lost to him because he had little choice but to return home?
Selfishness and frustration simmered inside of him and Samuel drained his glass, hating the way he was feeling. ‘Which means what exactly?’
‘It means you were right. New York is a place where anyone can start again. Where anyone can be whoever they want to be.’ She sipped her drink. ‘It’s a land of freedom, just like the Statue of Liberty represents. If any of the other stores here have half the excitement of RH Macy’s, I cannot see myself returning home.’ She laughed a little hysterically. ‘Although how I’ll ever tell Elizabeth that I’m not sure. And which department captured my fascination most firmly? Go on, guess. You’ll never believe it.’
Darkness shrouded him and Samuel looked away from her bewitching gaze, ignoring her question. ‘If you stay, you’ll be staying alone. Clearly, you haven’t listened to what I told you about my mother and sister. I have to go home.’
The ensuing silence pressed down on him, and with each passing moment he sensed the joy slipping out of her. His tone and words had slashed at her happiness like knives dipped in poison. You’re a bastard, Samuel Murphy. A useless, selfish bastard.
She drained her glass and carefully laid it on the bar. ‘So, all that talk about making our own lives, doing all you can to carry out your friend’s plans for you, are finished because of your sister’s pregnancy? Doesn’t your mother understand that you have survived what I think will be one of the worst nautical disasters the world will ever see?’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Don’t insult me.’
He winced at the sharpness of her tone, the fire in her voice.
She leaned closer to him, her cheeks red and her eyes angry. ‘You have no idea who I am, Samuel, no idea at all. You don’t know what I’ve endured, and the things I’ve triumphed. If I stay here, I risk hurtling back to the poverty I once knew, the loneliness and days of being so unsure of myself that it was sometimes hard to drag myself out of bed. I was raped. Raped by a man I should’ve been able to trust. Raped, used and discarded. Yet, here I am, in New York, sitting beside one of the most amazing men I’ve ever met and drinking sweet white wine. If you, or anyone else, thinks they can extinguish the certainty, the absolute euphoria, I felt in that store today, you are sadly mistaken. I am still undecided if I will stay here or return to Pennington’s, but I will take these two weeks and wring every last drop of happiness out of them. Then, and only then, will I decide what I want to do next.’
His heart beat fast.
She was raped? His Amelia? Some bastard had hurt her, violated her…
Anger turned his vision red, his heart breaking inside his chest as he fought to take his next breath.
He looked deep into her eyes, words to comfort her, to love her, flailing helplessly on his tongue. ‘Amelia…’
‘Don’t.’ Her eyes blazed with fury, tears teetering on her lashes. ‘Don’t say anything.’ His breaths turned harried as their eyes locked, every person in the room seeming to vanish, the noise surrounding them now eerily muted.
When he’d been rowing away from the Titanic, he’d sent up a prayer that he’d be able to get Amelia to safety and see her running towards a new life with abandon. Yet now, all his wants and dreams for this beautiful woman had been replaced with anger and revulsion towards the monster who had attacked and violated her.
He gripped his glass, his shoulders tense. ‘Amelia…’
‘Don’t say a word about what happened to me. I only told you to make you understand who I really am. Who the woman is you’ve been spending time with.’
Sadness squeezed hard around his heart. ‘You say that as though that woman is someone to be avoided.’
‘Would you really have treated me so wonderfully all this time if you’d known I’d been raped? Well?’
‘Of course I would.’ He reached out to touch her, but she moved sharply back. ‘I am so angry for you. Furious, in fact. I want to go back home and hunt down the scum who attacked you. This isn’t me about me not wanting to be with you now I know—’
‘Well, whether that’s true or not, I cannot understand why you would listen to your mother, or change your plans for your sister, when you have already looked after them for so many years. Our lives are own, as are theirs. We are young and without children. Why should we answer to anyone after what we’ve been through? We don’t owe our families our lives, Samuel. We owe them respect and love, but that’s it. You have a job here now. You have to try. We both have to try.’
He looked across the bar. ‘If I don’t go back, I have no idea what will happen to them.’ He turned, sorrow knotting his gut. ‘I promised my father I’d look after Ma and the girls. How can I just forget that?’
She stared at him before inhaling a shaky breath and slowly releasing it. ‘Fine. Then go.’
‘Amelia—’
But she was already off her stool and marching towards the bar’s doors. Samuel clenched his jaw, every muscle in his body tense. Now what? Did he follow her? Leave her? He couldn’t stay in New York. Yet, deep inside, he knew he couldn’t leave Amelia here on her own either. Especially now he’d seen the deep, deep hurt in her eyes; knew the burden and suffering she’d most likely carried in silence for months, maybe even years. They were set on this path together and his gut told him that they were supposed to end their journeys that way, too.
She’d been raped.
Red-hot anger rose bitter in his throat and he lifted his gaze to the barman. ‘Another.’