Unspeakable (8 page)

I looked at him now, the stoop of his back, the tremble of his wrinkled hands as he reached his shears into the white
rose bush. He seemed so old. So frail. What would become of him, of us, without Aunt Geraldine's direction and Meg's help? He snipped a rose, dropped it beside the other two on the ground. They'd be on Aunt Geraldine's grave within the hour. She would have liked that. Then Bates turned his attention to the foxglove by the gate. Its vibrant purple bells rustled in the breeze, carrying its sweet scent through the open window. Meg loved foxglove. No doubt her grandfather would have cut her some, would have brought a bouquet to her grave, had he known where she lay. Like Jim, her body had never been recovered. I never saw either of them in a rough-hewn coffin, lined up among the hundreds of others. Husbands. Wives. Children. I closed my eyes.

No
.

I never saw them because they weren't there. Jim and Meg were listed as “lost at sea.”
Lost
… not dead, and something lost might still be found. For weeks now, I had clung to the withering hope that there had been some kind of mistake. That one day I'd see Jim on the docks, see Meg coming through that gate. Bates had told me it was time to let go, but I just couldn't. I saw her struggle and gasp. No matter how my numbed hands tried to hold her up, no matter how I kicked my leaden legs, she kept slipping away, and all I could do was watch her terrified eyes disappear beneath the black water.

I wouldn't let go of her. Not again.

“—as a stewardess? … Miss Ellen?” Steele's voice bobbed on the edges of my darkness and I gripped it like a lifeline, letting him reel me back to here and now.

“Sorry?” Once again, I found myself apologizing to the very man who was keelhauling me through the depths.

“Well …” He scanned the pages, flipping back through the many notes he'd made this morning. “We've got when you started, what you did, where, and with whom. Mainly Meg, right?”

I nodded, in slight shock at his callousness. Bloody journalist. His cold detachment contrasted with my wild emotions. He was calm and rational while my mind galloped and my heart bucked. Yet somehow he tethered me to the present. Gentled me, I suppose. I didn't know whether to be angry or grateful.

“This is good. Really good stuff.” He put his pencil to his lips. “But one thing I don't understand is
why
.”

“That's the question, isn't it, Mr. Steele?” I returned to my seat, drawn by his sympathy. “Why? Why do these tragedies happen? Why do we lose people we care about?”

He flipped the page. “No, I mean why were you even on the ship?”

Once again, his bluntness caught me off guard.

“You're Ellen Hardy,” he continued. “Daughter of Joseph Hardy—sole heir of Hardy Estates, one of the richest stables in County Wicklow.”

My face burned and I shut my mouth, only just noticing it was hanging open. Clearly, he'd done his homework. Any gratitude or connection he'd evoked in me were gone. How dare he? How dare he bring up my father! I wondered how much he already knew. Not all of it, not if he was asking.

“I don't see what any of that has to do with the
Empress
.” I tried to keep my voice neutral, though I knew my face betrayed me. My very thoughts flushed up my neck and across my cheeks. I'd never been a good liar.

“Why would someone like you be living a second-class servant's life?” He squinted as if trying to read me more clearly. “What made you do it? Now,
that's
exactly the kind of story that sells.”

My mind raced. “It was for a story, of course.” I scrambled for an answer to stop up the truth I didn't want to spill. If I let it out, even a little, I knew the whole of it would gush forth. “That's exactly it. Aunt Geraldine needed some research.”

His eyes darkened as a frown settled over them. He wasn't buying it.

“For her new book,” I added. “About a stewardess. Who works on a steamship.”

He tapped the pencil on his lips, sounding my story for truth. “It's just, I can't see G.B. writing about something that mundane. A stewardess adventure—I mean, come on, who'd want to read that?”

I arched my eyebrow and clenched my jaw. “Indeed.”

He smirked at the irony, and his eyes brightened once again. He relaxed into his chair. “So why not just send the maid, Meg? Why both of you?”

“Have you met my aunt, Mr. Steele?”

“I wish I had.”

“She was a perfectionist who lived and breathed her books. Her characters were more real to her than … than I was.” The words came easier the less he doubted. Plus I spoke the truth. Aunt Geraldine simply wanted to write my life. To control me like some secondary character in her bloody novels. “I wanted to get away from her overbearing ways. I wanted … an
adventure
of my own.” I chose my words carefully, using what little I knew about the man before me. If we were
going to play this game, I needed to know more about him, a lot more. “Besides, surely a writer such as yourself would know that two sources are better than one.”

Lily knocked and entered with tea. I'd made it clear before he came that Mr. Steele would not be staying. I'd given him the whole morning, enough for one day. She seemed embarrassed when he noticed the tray held tea, soup, and buttered soda bread for one. Aunt Geraldine would've been disgusted by my actions. But my lack of hospitality was the least of the many ways I'd disappointed her.

He caught Lily's eye and winked as he flipped his notebook shut. “Well, I guess that's my cue.”

Lily blushed and set the tray on the table before me. I don't know why, but her obvious adoration of him irritated me. He was toying with her. Didn't she know?

“I'd stay,” he continued, as if he'd been invited, “but I want to get back to my boarding house and pound out a bit of this while it's still fresh in my mind. My editor said he wants a draft as soon as possible.” He shoved his pencil and pad inside his leather satchel before standing and shrugging it over his broad shoulder. “Same time Monday?”

“Aren't you forgetting something?” He was going to make me ask, make me beg again. But I wouldn't. He couldn't play me as easily as Lily.

“Oh, right.” He pulled out Jim's journal and ripped out another few pages. He tossed them on my tray.

His indifference infuriated me and I bolted to my feet, driven forward by emotion. “Damn you, Steele. Can't you just give me the whole story?”

He held my stare. “Can't you?”

The tension crackled blue fire between us, hot and electric like a Tesla-coil globe. I'd seen it at London's 1912 World's Fair, a great orb of electricity exploding into a hundred blue veins when the scientist brought the wand closer. As Steele's intensity was somehow doing now. It lasted seconds, but in that moment I knew. I knew he held the wand and all its power. I knew he could, and would, draw whatever he wanted from me and I could do nothing to stop him. We both knew it. Without a word, he left, and my energy went with him. All my anger and outrage. My fury and purpose.

All drained away, leaving nothing but a transparent globe, empty, ready to shatter.

FOUR MONTHS BEFORE

February 1914

The
Empress of Ireland,
somewhere on the Atlantic

Chapter Ten