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A Starry Night
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JAKE BREATHED DEEPLY as he curled a hand around the rail. It was a beautiful night, crisp, fresh with stars. And he should be enjoying it. Or asleep. Except he couldn't relax.
Maybe it was the shock of seeing a man leap to his death. Maybe it was the knowledge that his cousins were involved in some sort of deception. Maybe it was both. He raised his glass of whisky to his mouth, sipped, and looked east.
Walker. Major Stoughton Walker. That was his name, and all Jake knew about the man who'd jumped overboard, forcing Captain Turner to grind the Mauretania to a halt. The search lasted over an hour, and came up empty. Jake wasn't surprised.
Cold as the ocean was this time of year, it would have sucked the Major's breath from his lungs the moment he hit the water. Almost as quickly, his muscles would have seized. He'd have been lucky to stay afloat a few minutes, a lot less time than it took to turn around a 30000-tonne ship travelling at 26 knots. And no sooner had the man disappeared, the rumours started.
He fell.
He was pushed.
He was drunk.
Insane.
But the truth was far more unsettling.
The crystal glass chinked as Jake rested it on the metal rail.
Major Walker had appeared sober and well-coordinated when he calmly breached the top rung and jumped into the sea, leaving those who'd witnessed his fatal plunge to wonder what could drive a man to commit such an incomprehensible act? Jake exhaled slowly.
He knew. Pushing the memory away, he focused on the North Star.
Somewhere, over a thousand miles southwest of him, his mother slept under the same glittering beacon, and three days out, on the ocean ahead of him, his cousins raced him to New York. He should be excited by the prospect of their move to America, the chance to get to know William, learn more of their mutual ancestry, and yet...The girl.
Despite his desire to believe his cousin acted honourably, Jake couldn't help feeling nothing good would come of William's decision to harbour her.
He tossed back the last of the whisky. The fiery liquid crystallized as soon as it hit the cold knot in his gut.
He couldn't wait. He had to confront William in New York. The sooner he knew what they were about, the sooner he could decide about their continuing on to the ranch.
William wasn't the only man with a woman to protect.
~~~
FRIGID AIR SLICED INTO Dianna’s windpipe as she stepped on to A Deck, sending her lungs into paroxysm. No one paid her coughing fit any mind, however, preoccupied as they were with their own troubles.
“Upstairs, downstairs, no one seems to know where we're supposed to go,” a woman muttered.
“You there,” a man bellowed. “What in bloody hell is going on? Where are we supposed to go? Or is this someone's idea of a sad joke, rousing us from our sleep to play Red Rover?” It was the man in striped pyjamas she'd seen earlier. And on second look, the woman who'd commented on the lack of direction, was his wife.
Keeping a hand cupped over her mouth to help warm the air before she breathed it in, Dianna wiped the tears from her eyes with her free hand and tried not to let the fear underpinning the quarrelsome couple's comments stoke her swift-rising panic.
Someone touched her elbow. She whirled.
“Excuse me, Miss.” A young, uniformed ship's officer offered her a strained smile. “I need you to move aside, so I can prepare this boat.”
“Yes, of course.” Dianna stepped back, and watched as the officer, with another man's help, unlocked the cables that secured a small white craft to the ship, and swung it over the rail. The young officer motioned to her.
“I'll help you in, Miss.”
Dianna shook her head. “I'm waiting for someone.”'
He leaned close, murmured, “There's no time to wait, Miss. This is one of the last boats. The rest are away. You need to go now.”
“That can't be possible,” Dianna exclaimed. “There are hundreds of people yet aboard.”
“Please, Miss,” he said and darted his gaze around. “Not so loud—”
Dianna pushed through the agitated crowd, scanning faces. The Stewarts had to be here by now— “Oh,” she said when she collided with someone.
“Excuse me. But I must get him to safety.”
“Yes, yes, of course—oh. It's you.” The woman with the child wrapped in the rug. “Here, let me help you.” Dianna turned around, and elbows winged out, shoved through crowd. “Woman and child. Make way for this child.”
A few people shambled aside, but more ignored her. The deck underfoot had shifted ever so slightly, and everyone who'd loitered in confusion, now clamoured for a spot in one of the remaining rafts.
Teeth clenched, Dianna angled a shoulder to the task and with her other hand kept a firm grip on the woman's coat sleeve. The young officer overseeing the loading of lifeboats was hoarse from shouting and ordering men to step back.
“Women and children only, I said. Woman and children only!” A shot rang out, and the desperate forward surge of bodies abruptly rolled backward, as dozens of people—mostly men—retreated, leaving gaps in the wall of lifebelts, coats and hats. Dianna shot through an opening, the woman and infant in tow.
“Here,” she yelled to the officer. “Take them.”
He locked eyes with her, and then nodded to the man who was helping him. The man bent and swept both woman and child into his arms. Relieved, Dianna turned away, and squeaked in surprise when a pair of strong hands seized her.
“No!”
But the officer ignored her protest.
Pain ricocheted through her hip as she landed in the lifeboat. Gasping, she scuttled upright, and forced herself to inhale rather than scream each time another woman or child landed in the small craft, making it sway wildly. The infant in the woman's arms was less inhibited; its shrieks tore at Dianna's heart.
“Hush, little one.” The woman rocked the child. “Hush. I've got you.”
One end of the raft dipped abruptly.
“Oh, Heaven,” Dianna whispered, fighting the impulse to add her voice to panicked screeches as the small craft jerked, and wavered.
“A knife.” A man's shout broke above the cries of terror. “Someone give me a bloody knife!”
The raft abruptly levelled off and plunged, eliciting a chorus of terrified wails that ended in a crescendo of grunts and groans as the lifeboat hit the water with the force of brick chucked from a second-story window.
Hunching, Dianna clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a cry of pain as her teeth cut her tongue. When the pain receded enough to permit her to swallow the blood pooling in her mouth, she rasped, “Is he all right?”
“Yes. I think, so.” The woman tugged at the rug, forming a cocoon around the shrieking child. “Just scared out of his wits.”
“Aren't we all,” muttered a different woman. “Aren't we all.”
“Row out a hundred and fifty yards,” a man demanded, “but keep your eyes on the lights of the other boats. We don't want to collide with any of them.”
Swiping at the ice forming on her lashes, Dianna looked round. Sure enough, yellow smudges of lantern light circled randomly in the nearby darkness. She pushed to her knees facing the voice.
“Wait, we can't leave. My...my employers are still on the ship. We have to wait for them.”
Other voices joined hers with pleas of aid for relatives and friends left behind.
“We're overloaded. We cannot take more.” The speaker was a male silhouette near the craft's stern. “Row away, now. Now, I say!”
Plaintive, panicked voices echoed in the darkness, but the repeated splash and drip of oars did not pause. Dianna's stomach heaved and hoed with each pitch and yaw.
“No,” she whispered. Mr. And Mrs. Stewart—She lurched, and barely got her head over the raft's side, before her stomach unleashed its steaming contents into the icy sea.
~~~
DIANNA STARED UP THE sheer steel cliff that was the Carpathia's hull.
“If you're afraid to climb, Miss, you can wait for the sling, and be pulled up, easy like.”
The sling was being used to lift those too old, or young, or weak to climb the netted rope slung over the rescue ship's side. The crewman from the Carpathia who'd clambered down it to guide her and others to safety, offered an, It's Nothing to be Ashamed of, smile.
She reached for a rung. “I can manage.”
One hand, one foot... She didn't dare look down, but focused on making her numb fingers curl around the thick hemp, and her feet find their way by feel, without hooking a toe in her skirts. By the time a different crewman helped her on to the Carpathia's deck, she almost collapsed from relief. And exhaustion.
The crewman caught and steadied her by her elbows. When he released her, a woman wrapped her in wool blanket.
“Go with him,” she said gently.
Dianna stumbled after yet another crewman on feet as frozen and cooperative as chunks of petrified wood. They rounded a corner toward the centre of the ship, and her throat tightened.
Dozens upon dozens of hollow-eyed women and children leaned against any solid object, including each other, their different faces registering almost identical looks of stunned disbelief, and wretched sorrow. A few women moved frantically through the dazed collective, peering at faces, calling names.
A woman approached and wordlessly handed Dianna a mug. Steam coiled from it, along with the rich scent of coffee. She preferred tea. But she'd drink hot petrol right about now.
She took a sip, hissed in a startled breath. The contents were far hotter than her numb gloved hands led her to believe. Cradling the mug gingerly, she weaved a careful path through and around piles of blankets and humped coats, hope sinking with each step. She was about to turn and retrace her path when she glimpsed a tuft of red curls rising above the edges of grey wool. The slight figure contained within the blanket was slumped against an older woman.
Dianna moved closer, leaned to see the face—coffee scalded her wrists as she scrambled to set the mug on the deck. “My God. Mrs. Stewart. You're alive. Thank God, you're alive.”
The green eyes peeled open, stared blankly at Dianna. Or one eye did. The other was a mere blood-shot slit in a reddish-purple mass swelling the left side of her face like an angry, tumorous growth. The eyelid was so taut and shiny red, her auburn lashes jutted from it like tiny orange spikes.
“Oh, Mrs. Stewart.” Dianna gently touched her cheek. “What happened?” She glanced around, but none of the nearby men was familiar. Something in her chest clenched, a sense of knowing, without knowing. She looked back at Mrs. Stewart to find she'd closed her eyes without lifting her head from the shoulder of the woman on whom she leaned.
“It's no use,” the woman offered. “She's been like that all night, ever since he struck her and tossed her in the lifeboat.” She was heavy-set, and older, but exactly what age was hard to tell. She lacked the lines and crevices of truly advanced age, despite her hair being almost white, while her eyebrows retained the deep brown of her youth. Somewhere between fifty and seventy if Dianna had to guess; what she didn't have to guess was to whom the woman referred.
“He hit her. Why?”
“She wouldn't go. Least not without him. He set her next to me, asked if I'd watch over her...” She swallowed, shook her head. “When she woke up, and she realised what he'd done... Poor lass. She's not spoken a single word, since she stopped screaming.”