Note: This is a very much longer chapter, but I hope you like it and review.
Disclaimer: I still, unsurprisingly, own nothing
No, we are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.
What a stupid thing to say. Did you ever think to ask me whether or not I thought that this was a good idea? I could have used that life jacket, thank you very much.
Robert felt guilty for thinking such disloyal thoughts, as he followed Mr. Guggenheim across the large, decadent room.
"But we would like a brandy."
Hah! I doubt very much whether I'll be getting one, Robert thought, lapsing back into disloyalty with an ease that was worrying.
Could use it too, on a night as cold as this…
Robert drifted awake at about six o'clock in the morning and, groaning, got to his feet and stumbled around until he located the water basin by stubbing his toe on it. Remembering that Madame Aubert was most likely sleeping in the next room over, he refrained from howling out a few expletives as he hopped around his small bedroom clutching his foot.
After splashing his face a few times with cold water and struggling into a light brown suit, he felt that he looked civilized enough to go help Mr. Guggenheim get dressed. No time for a shave; he'd slept in much too late for that.
He found Mr. Guggenheim wearing his dressing gown and sitting in the comfortable chair by the bed, reading a book.
"Good morning, sir," Robert said, doing his best to sound alert instead of still half asleep.
Tea. Must drink cup of tea.
"Good morning, Stratford," Guggenheim said, closing his book and getting to his feet "The white suit today, I believe, with the matching tie."
Robert managed, after a few tries, to get the wardrobe door open and remove the specified clothes.
"Will you be requiring a shave this morning, sir?" he asked, brushing some dust off the suit's lapel.
Please say no. Please. Because I just know that if I try to do it now, I'll end up getting arrested for cutting an upstanding citizen's throat in cold blood.
"No thank you, Stratford. Just the suit and tie, if you please."
Robert began the long process of helping Mr. Guggenheim into his suit, and a thought struck him.
"Has Madame Aubert already risen, sir?" he asked his employer, and derived that familiar pleasure from watching the expression of slight guilt cross the man's face.
Discretion, Robert. Remember. It's his own business who he…associates with.
"Yes, she has," Mr. Guggenheim replied, a touch too gruffly to sound natural "Her maid is dressing her in her room."
The whole matter stood between them; an impassable void as wide as the Grand Canyon, as Robert finished twitching the white suit into the proper position.
"Very well, sir," he said, carefully making his tone as light as possible "Would it be all right with you if I have the morning off? I have made arrangements to meet a friend, you see."
Mr. Guggenheim frowned, and his valet could see that he was struggling not to inquire as to whether this 'friend' was female.
No offence, sir, but are you really in a position to ask that?
"Well, I suppose you may have until…" there was a pause "Half an hour before dinner."
Half an hour before dinner? That was even more time than Robert had dared hope for!
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," he said, gratefully "If I may, I'll go right now, sir.'
And it's not just because I'm anxious to see Elizabeth, even though I am. It's because I don't know if I can stand seeing your dear Madame Aubert again, because my memories of Mrs. Guggenheim's kindness to me when I was younger, and the knowledge of exactly what you're doing might just overwhelm both my discretion and my loyalty…
"Hey, you can't be down here!"
Robert groaned and turned to frown at the crewmember who had stopped his progress . He really didn't have the patience for this, at six forty five in the morning with a cracking headache and so far, no tea.
"Well, obviously I am down here, so that statement is not, in fact, true," he snapped, feeling too wretched for politeness.
"Yeah, well, you'd better turn around and go back to wherever you came from, mate," said the man, pointing back down the way Robert had come.
Robert opened his mouth to say mulishly that nothing was farther from his intentions, and that if the crew member objected he could go to hell, when Elizabeth's voice issued from the open door on his right.
"It's all right, Steven, you can let him in. He's a friend."
Never before had Robert heard more welcome words. He slipped past the crewman, pausing only to give him a triumphant grin, and ducked through the open door and into the room.
The first person he saw was Elizabeth herself, balanced precariously on a chair with her mouth full of nails and a large and dangerous-looking hammer gripped tightly in her hand. From the look of it, she had been engaged in hammering a series of coat pegs into the wall.
If the sight of her engaged in such unusual tasks surprised Robert, it was nothing to the staggering amazement he felt at seeing what she was wearing. Specifically, a pair of rather too large overalls and a baggy cotton shirt, which were both apparently, made for a man, and one several sizes bigger than her, at that. Her hair had been stuffed into a messy braid, which hung over one shoulder.
An assortment of other crew members were sitting around a white painted table, holding mugs tea and watching Elizabeth with a variety of emotions which ranged from admiration to disbelief, to disapproval.
"Hello, Robert,' she said cheerfully, through her mouthful of nails as soon as she saw him "How do I look?"
"Er…" Robert said, aware that he was staring rather rudely at her.
There were a few chuckles from the other occupants of the room, and Henry, who was sitting nearest to Robert, muttered something behind his hand to his friends.
"Odd, I know," Elizabeth said, answering her own question "But one of the boys in the engine room lent these to me, and it seemed like such a shame to risk getting my dress dirty or torn or something."
"Er, should you be doing that?" Robert asked, finding it the safest thing to say. He was finding himself distracted by the fact that despite the eccentricity of her outfit, Elizabeth looked strangely good in it.
"Well, Mr. Andrews was doing it," Elizabeth explained, grinning and spitting the nails into the palm of her hand "But Mary lured him into the other room with a cup of tea and a biscuit, and I decided to try and finish the job before he gets back. Poor man, he does too much around here. Anyway, I'm the self-appointed President In Charge Of Nails and Hammers. You don't look very well, Robert; have you shaved this morning?"
Robert was so startled by this abrupt change of topic that he answered 'no', almost instantly.
"Well, somebody bring him a basin and a razor, all right?" Elizabeth declared to the room at large "It's indecent to go around unshaven."
"You aren't really in a fit position to go on about 'indecent'," Henry commented, never the less bringing over the requested items and laying them on the table "Sit down here, mister."
Robert did so, still somewhat bewildered by the rapidity of events, and no sooner had he settled down in the nearest chair, Anna leaned over and placed a steaming cup of tea at his elbow.
"Bless you," Robert said humbly, already beginning to lather his chin and neck with suds, and everyone else laughed, not unkindly.
"I still say it's bad luck," Henry said, sitting back down and evidently continuing a conversation that had been interrupted by Robert's arrival.
Elizabeth jumped off her chair to give him a pitying look "Don't be stupid," she said, flatly "Women being bad luck onboard ships is nonsense."
"No, Henry's right," a steward who Robert didn't know put in "It's awfully bad luck to let a woman onboard."
"But," Anna explained, to a chorus of laughter from the other stewardesses "There'd be women onboard anyway, even if we weren't here. This is a passenger ship."
"Yeah, but it only counts if you have women working onboard ship," Henry said quickly, changing tactics "That's the worst luck of all. They cause shipwrecks, see."
Elizabeth coughed something that sounded a lot like 'The Oceana', and the laughter returned as Henry made a face at her. Most of them had heard of the british ship which had sank the previous month, and had certainly had no women working onboard.
Though Robert, by then shaved and enjoying his cup of tea, surmised that Elizabeth and Anna had won the argument, there were apparently no hard feelings held between the two sides, and Henry got up, grinning and patting Anna on the shoulder.
"I'd better get back to work," he said "Tell you what, why don't you give us a speech first, Bessie?"
"Yeah, go on," agreed a few other stewards, and everyone leaned forwards, as if in anticipation.
Elizabeth turned slightly pink but nodded and shot Robert a private grin, rolling her eyes.
"Which one do you want?" she asked, hopping back up onto her chair and facing the room "Woman's Voting Rights? Or Equality Between Classes?"
"Woman's Voting Rights," Anna put in, and indeed, the general consensus seemed to be in favor of that speech.
"Right," Elizabeth said, clearing her throat loudly and slipping her hand between her overalls and her shirt in a manner very reminiscent of Napoleon "Friends! Romans! Countrymen!"
Robert, who had studied enough Shakespeare to understand her reference, smiled into his tea cup, and though many of the others clearly did not, they never the less seemed to be enjoying themselves.
"It is imperative that our noble leaders, worldwide, make the decision to give the right to vote to women. Is it not true that women are indeed human beings? And is it not true that the right of every human being is to have a say in the governing of our countries?"
Watching her speak, Robert noticed that as her confidence grew and her arguments became more eloquent and persuasive, she became startlingly beautiful. The imperfections of her face; the mottled pink birthmark just above her jaw line, the slight unevenness of her eyebrows, the way that one side of her mouth curled up a little more than the other, all seemed to disappear.
He had seen beautiful young ladies promenade past him upon many occasions; their bearings erect and their faces powdered and made up to perfection, but Elizabeth was beautiful in a different way. She was more alive, more real.
Most of the men in the room were shaking their heads in an amused, what-will-she-think-of-next fashion, and the other stewardesses were either nodding in approval or looking uncomfortable. Robert felt a surge of irritation that no one was on their feet applauding.
He certainly felt like doing that himself.
Grinning from ear to ear, Henry brought his hands together with the index fingers pointing outwards, as if he was holding a revolver.
"Bang, bang," he said loudly, pointing his 'gun' towards Elizabeth.
"She's been shot!" Steven yelled, also grinning, from his place by the door "Our noble suffragette has been shot in the middle of her speech. Cut down in the prime of life!"
Taking her cue from this, Elizabeth clasped her hands to her chest in a theatrical fashion and staggered sideways off her chair. Robert, out of genuine concern for her well-being, jumped to his feet and caught her seconds before she hit the ground, stumbling slightly under her weight.
This elicited enough cheers and whoops that Robert was surprised that passengers up on the promenade decks didn't start coming around to complain.
"My hero," Elizabeth joked, grinning at Robert, and twisting out of his arms "All right, you lot've had your fun, now you'd better clear off and get back to work."
Muttering appreciatively, the crowd began to disperse, heading out to perform their various duties.
"Shouldn't you go too?" Robert asked Elizabeth, worried that she would say yes.
"No, it's not my shift," she replied, casually "The rest of the girls can manage. Anyway, I didn't invite you all this way just to make you have a shave and subject you to a piece of amateur dramatics."
"Ah," Robert said, feeling a grin begin to spread across his own face "I see. So, what are we going to do?"
Elizabeth laughed, wrinkling her nose as she did so in a way that Robert found quite, well, entrancing. Which was a stupid thing to think.
Really.
"Whatever you want," she said, shrugging.
"Well, how about we have another cup of tea, for a start?