Thank you to all my readers and reviewers - you don't know how relieved I am to see you all still here with me! :) To my lovely guest reader: you are so sweet for your beautiful and kind words! The emotion is just getting started (although maybe not so much in this chapter) so hang on! Sam: Thanks for the recommendation about 'Sea of Glass'! I have consulted it many times when I was writing the sinking chapters; it was one of my most reliable and thorough references. I especially appreciated the authors' fair and balanced analysis of Ismay's actions, and the detailed description of the evidence concerning the possible officer suicide that night. And yes, I do plan on writing another Titanic fic once W&S is done, although it's going to be very different from this one ;) I'm still a long way off from it, though! And dear Rosie: thank you for all your lovely ideas, emails, encouragement - and most of all for being my biggest supporter :)
A/N: The next two chapters don't have any action - there's a lot of Harry/Corrine interplay, but because of her condition it necessarily takes the form of conversation and story-telling. It might seem like filler, but I'm slowly building to something, and the groundwork has to be laid first; hence the slow pace. Besides, I need to take a break from angst for a little while :)
Corrine slept for some time, but was eventually awakened by a doctor coming into the room. He was there to check her progress, he said. Apparently she was suffering from severe exhaustion and a sprained shoulder, and in addition had narrowly avoided having her legs amputated; the frostbite was at first thought to be so severe as to be irreparable. However, a second opinion from the Hungarian doctor on board convinced him to take a more conservative approach.
"And he was right," admitted Dr. McGee, after examining her now. "The tissue looks much healthier today. You may end up keeping your legs after all." He gave her a disapproving look. "You might need them to run away from that man outside your door, miss. He has been quite adamant about your care. And, I daresay, none too polite about it either." He sniffed. "I'm only supposed to be attending to the first-class passengers, but Officer Lowe has bullied me into taking on you as well. Not that I'm unwilling," he hastened to add, at her look of chagrin. "It's a very fascinating case, after all."
She gave him a halfhearted smile, hoping he'd just go away. Eventually, to her relief, he did. "Just eat as much as you can, and move your legs and arms whenever possible. Vigorous circulation will keep the limbs in good repair," he advised as he left.
As if on cue, Harry stepped into the room. He was carrying a mug of hot tea and a bowl full of something that looked and smelled like soup. He rolled his eyes at the door as he closed it. "That man hates my bloody guts," he said by way of explanation.
Corrine laughed. It felt good to do that again, despite everything. And it reassured her that Harry seemed to have returned to his usual irreverent self. Seeing him so emotional, so vulnerable, had upset her deeply. She never wanted him to experience unhappiness or torment, even for a minute - and especially not on her account.
He weaved his way over to the bed and pressed the cup of tea into her hands. "Drink," he ordered. She raised one eyebrow at his tone, but did as he instructed. It was heavenly: fragrant, warm, and soothing. She had no idea how long it had been since he had had anything to eat or drink, and she found she desperately needed the nourishment. Just a few sips invigorated her, and she discovered she was finally able to pull herself into a sitting position.
"How are you feeling now, my brave girl? Better?" he asked, eyeing her closely.
She nodded, and a look of relief flashed over his face. He sat in the chair and watched as she greedily slurped down the tea.
Finally, she drained the last few drops and sat back with a satisfied sigh. Quickly, he reached out to take the empty cup from her hand. "Don't you dare try to read the tea leaves. I don't want to know," he said. His tone was light, but his eyes were serious. She furrowed her brow in confusion, but he waved her off. "Never mind that. Are you taking that wanker's advice and exercising your legs?"
In reply, she wiggled her feet under the covers and then pulled her legs up to her chest, giving him a smug look.
He grinned. "I daresay you'll be dancing a jig again in no time, Miss Donnelly." She pushed her legs back down until they were lying flat again, stretching them out. To her surprise, he reached out and began rubbing them through the covers, massaging from her knees to her feet. "Vigorous circulation," he said, and winked at her.
Oh, her circulation was vigorous now, all right. Her heart was pounding and her blood was racing - and he wasn't even touching her skin, for goodness sake! She took a deep breath and tried to appear unaffected by the feel of his hands on her body; she knew it was purely therapeutic, but she didn't want him to stop - and he probably would if he knew what he was doing to her insides.
He paused a moment to hand her the bowl of soup, and then continued his ministrations, kneading and rubbing slow circles up and down her legs - but never going higher than her knees, she noticed. It was just as well, she thought; she would probably dump the soup all over herself if he did. As it was, she had to force her hands not to shake. Luckily, as focused as he was on his task, he didn't notice.
"So-" she started, her voice coming out like a squeak. She tried again: "So, I forgot to ask you earlier - where are we bound?"
"New York," he said, still rubbing. "Captain Rostron originally thought to take us to Halifax, as it's the nearest port, or to the Azores, his original destination, but decided instead that it would be best if we returned to New York so that the survivors could receive medical treatment and meet up with their families."
She nodded. So she would still be going to America after all - just not in the ship of dreams. Her heart lurched, but she didn't have time to dwell on the sorrow, because another thought suddenly superseded it. "And what about you, Harry? How long will Titanic's crew be in New York?" she asked tentatively.
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she felt a cold dread in the pit of her belly. They both knew that she was asking how soon he would have to leave her. Before Titanic sank, when she had pledged herself to him the night of the hooley, his inevitable return to England had not seemed such a terrible prospect. Assuming he stayed with Titanic as its fifth officer, he would travel the Southampton to New York route regularly; she could establish herself in New York, find a boarding house and a job close to the docks, and see him every other week for a few days at a time. The short interludes that he would spend in New York would never be enough, but she knew that long stretches of loneliness and worry were the price a woman paid for loving a sailor - and she'd gladly pay it for a few precious hours per month in his arms. She had even begun to fantasize that he could stay with her while he was in the city - a thought that had made her tremble with anticipation. But now... everything seemed uncertain. How long would he stay in New York before returning to England? Would he even want to stay, or would he want to go home immediately? Would he be reassigned to another route somewhere far away - maybe even Australia again? The thought made panic rise in her throat. She couldn't be separated from him that long... not now, not after what they had gone through...
Her thoughts were interrupted by his measured reply. "I don't know," he said. His hands had stopped massaging her legs, she noticed. "I suppose we'll have to wait and see - although hopefully they'll give me a little time to... well, get things sorted."
If her brain hadn't still been so foggy from exhaustion and the emotional effects of the catastrophe, she might have noticed the uncharacteristic and peculiar nervousness in his demeanor, which was at odds with his words. As it was, she breathed a small sigh of relief at his reassuring if somewhat dismissive response. At least it didn't seem as if he wanted to bolt back over the pond at the earliest opportunity. And she assumed that his enigmatic reference to needing a little time meant that he was hoping to be able to spend that time with her, maybe help her settle in New York. She decided not to press the issue for the moment, though; there were still too many uncertainties, and it was too soon after the disaster to plot out definite plans for the future, she supposed. "Let's not think on it now, Harry," she said softly.
He nodded, looking somewhat relieved, and resumed rubbing her legs again. "I should know more in a day or so, once we get closer to America, and then we'll talk about it again," he said. His tone had a certain finality to it, and she knew that the discussion was closed for now.
During the short pause that followed, she decided to lighten the conversation a bit by turning it to her favorite subject: him. "Tell me, other than seemingly waiting on me hand and foot, what have you been doing in your forced confinement? Have you been navigating this ship as well?" she teased.
He laughed. "Well, I've taken a few turns to relieve the Carpathia's officers of watch and watch, but for the most part, they have enough capable men already - including the one who gave up his room to you, Mr. Bisset. He's Second Officer here, and a capital fellow - offered this cabin without a second thought when I asked the captain about finding a bed for you."
"Please thank him for me," she said demurely. She had a feeling that the man's generosity had more to do with Harry's position as an officer than with her condition. Still, she thought it was noble that ships' officers looked out for one another, even when they worked for different lines - and she knew that on a ship this crowded, she was very fortunate to have a private room.
"I already have - numerous times, believe me," Harry assured her. "And as for what I've been up to... well, I've been mostly been keeping busy by going among the survivors, taking names, talking to those who were in my boat; we were all brought together so suddenly, and there's a sense of... I guess you could deem it friendship."
She nodded in understanding. "I'm sure they were terribly grateful to have both a boatman and a sailor to protect them from danger that night," she prompted with a smile.
"The danger was in getting them off the ship, Corrine. I thought for sure the whole lot of them would shoot out the bottom of the boat, especially when those men..." His face hardened, and she knew he was thinking about Thomas and his friend. Cold fury rose in his eyes, but then he glanced at her face, and his expression smoothed, though not without effort. When he had mastered himself, he took a deep breath and continued, "But once we were in the water... well, everything was smooth as glass then. It couldn't have been a calmer sea."
She pushed down a wince and resisted the urge to wrap her arms around her upper body. She remembered the sea that night very differently: the churning, the splashing, from hundreds of people stranded in the water... Luckily, he hadn't noticed her momentary distress, and he amended, "Well, that is, until the morning, when the wind came up. In fact, we arrived at the Carpathia under sail."
"Really?" She raised her eyebrows at that.
"Naturally," he said breezily. "I wanted to get the survivors to safety as quickly as possible. And when I found you, that task became even more urgent," he finished quietly.
"But what about you, Harry? Did you ever worry about your own life or safety that night?" Because that's all I thought about, she finished in her own head.
"Not at all," came his immediate reply. "I'm used to risking my life," he added carelessly.
As much as it made her insides quake with fear to hear that, she couldn't resist the bait; she recognized the makings of a good yarn when she heard it, and by the twinkle in his eyes, she thought he might be willing to share. "Do tell, Harry," she said, raising one eyebrow and smiling at him. "I'd love to hear about some of your adventures at sea."
"If you drink your soup, I'll give you a tale or two," he nudged, and laughing, she agreed to his terms.
And so, with a good-natured shrug, he agreed to tell her about some of his more memorable - and coincidentally dangerous - exploits. It seemed that whenever a ship's captain needed a courageous man to undertake a particularly difficult task, Harry was the first to volunteer. He told her of a time on the Nitrate Coast where his ship ran up close to the shore, and they thought they were hulled. "The sea was turbulent, but someone had to be lowered over the side to check... and so I took off all my clothes and-"
"You what?" she spluttered.
"Well, I didn't want to get them wet," he said primly. "Anyway, there's no room for modesty on a ship full of men." He grinned as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "In fact, there was indeed a small hole in the hull, and I had to go back over once the crew fothered a sail, to plug the hole and stop the leak. We were able to limp into port - and save the cargo of coal, fortunately."
Surprisingly, another one of his daring sea adventures involved mortal danger - and nudity - which privately reinforced her opinion that sailors were only a semi-civilized lot. On a trip homeward from Japan, the captain needed a volunteer to mount the rigging in the eye of the storm. Harry jumped at the chance, glibly declaring that he could die from the yard as easily as from the deck.
She threw him a look of reproach at his wanton recklessness, and he shrugged. "Skylarking was my favorite way to pass the time anyway. That was in the days of sail, of course - before I switched to steam." A note of longing and nostalgia had crept into his voice, and she realized with some surprise that he probably missed the time before steamers - and passengers - came to dominate his life. Then his eyes cleared, and he smirked at her. "It would have been enough to give you the vapors, Corrine. Just imagine frolicking above, in the riggings and tops, a hundred feet above deck, and all the while the ship is swaying back and forth below you." He snickered at her horrified expression. "It was second nature to me, though; I used to get up as high as I could and then hang upside down with my legs woven in between the ropes to see how long I could stand it... Anyway," he said casually, as if he hadn't just scared her to death, "I figured I might as well put my talents to good use when the necessity arose, so when the captain called I ran up the ratlines quick as you please and did the needful. And somehow or other I managed to stay on the ship when the storm blew up again while I was on the yardarm." Again, though, his distaste for wet clothing made him strip down before he went aloft: "I only had one pair of dry clothes left; the quarters on that ship were always damp," he explained rather sheepishly.
She was trying to act nonchalant and sophisticated about it, but the thought of Harry running about without clothes was a bit titillating, if she were being honest. She had to forcibly suppress a silly grin and a blush at the images her overactive - and curious - mind was creating. "So that's the way seamen handle crises on ships? Just... disrobe, and go about their business?"
He laughed. "Well, not always. Sometimes there's no time for that. Once we had a man slip and fall overboard while we were out at sea. I thought he might have been ill, or hurt, so I leaped in after him straight away to make sure he didn't drown." He shook his head. "That time I was soaked straight through," he admitted regretfully.
"But did the man live?" she pressed.
He waved his hand airily. "Of course. I'm an excellent swimmer, and I kept his head above water until we were both pulled in."
An excellent swimmer; no surprise there, she thought with amusement. Was there anything this man could not master? She remembered the feel of his lips on hers as they kissed that night on Titanic's deck. Oh, yes, he was an expert in that area too, she thought giddily. I wonder where-
"All right, Corrine?" he asked, breaking into her thoughts. He was looking at her oddly, and she schooled her face into an expression of neutrality.
"Er, yes, I- I was just thinking of... of the passengers. Whatever did they think of all this nudity?" she countered.
He laughed. "Well, obviously, I had to learn to be more modest once I started working on ships with passengers aboard. No more baths with the deck hose, either - which was a shame, because I did like to stay neat and dapper during those long voyages."
He paused, and a glint of amusement rose in his eyes. "Of course, that reminds me of another story about naked swimming..."
Shaking her head in exasperation, she demanded that tale as well. This one occurred when he was a boy, before he ran away from home. One night, he climbed down a tree that grew right outside his window and met his friends for a late-night swim. Only his friends decided to hide his clothing on a lark, and he was forced to walk back home, starkers and soaking wet, to face his father's anger and disapproval.
"I got the belt for that," he admitted ruefully. "It was a painful lesson." He lowered his eyes and began picking at a thread on the blanket covering her bed. "Almost as painful as the beating I got when I poured all the alcohol in my father's liquor cabinet down the loo."
The room quieted for a moment as he paused, letting that sink in. And although her mind was still not working properly, once she was able to finally put the pieces together, she knew exactly what he was implying: like her own father, Harry's father drank too much.
The lighthearted conversation of a few moments ago was gone; Corrine read the tension in Harry's body and the serious expression on his face quite clearly, and her heart went out to him. She realized that he was trusting her with a very painful and personal part of his childhood, one that had deeply affected him. It was a feeling that she knew all too well, and she wanted to let him know that he was not alone, that he shouldn't be embarrassed. "Oh, Harry..." she said softly, voice filled with empathy. "I tried that trick also," she said, putting her hand on his. "It didn't work for me, either."
He looked up at her, dumbfounded. "You mean, your father is... fond of the bottle, too?"
She nodded.
"That's the real reason you left home to live in Southampton," he said slowly.
She nodded again as another realization dawned on her. "And it's the reason you don't drink - and why you ran away, isn't it?"
He sighed. "Yes. Well, that, and I really didn't want to be apprenticed; I meant what I said, and that was that. My father, though... he was demanding, and insistent, and disapproving of everything I did - a right bastard sometimes, honestly." He looked ashamed at the admission, but when he glanced warily at her and saw her understanding and supportive expression, he immediately relaxed.
Painfully, hesitantly, they began to open up to one another about their childhoods. Corrine's father's condition had been out in the open, so she was used to discussing it matter of factly, but Harry's father had hidden his problem behind closed doors, and so it took a little more time to draw him out, make him feel comfortable talking about what to him was a dirty little family secret. Otherwise, they found eerily similar parallels in their early lives, and they found that being able to commiserate together over having an unreliable and sometimes cruel parent was liberating. And the fact that both had made plans to escape the disease that ruled their lives, and had become hardened and strengthened in the process, was not lost on them, either.
A few differences emerged, too. During the course of their conversation, she learned to her surprise that Harry had escaped a life of privilege, rather than one of deprivation, as she had originally thought. She had always assumed, given his impetuous nature and his colorful language, that he had grown up poor and working-class like her. But his fathers' home was large enough to serve as a hotel, and he had grown up with servants, a good education, and all the material comforts he needed. It made her realize that conditions in his house must have been quite miserable for him to want to leave such luxury.
As their heart-to-heart progressed, she realized that although she had felt an immediate connection with him, she still hadn't known much about the man she had fallen in love with until today. As with all things Harold Lowe, she was fascinated by his complicated nature and his many layers - and she had likely not even scratched the surface yet. Every story, every shared confidence, was a revelation. And the more she learned about him, the more her heart opened to him.
It was during a lively discussion about Harry's escape to Portmadoc to find his first ever berth that she yawned quite involuntarily - and he noticed immediately.
He took the empty bowl of soup - she must have finished it at some point during their conversation, although she was so caught up in him that she had barely noticed - and wagged a finger at her. "You need to rest some more, Corrine," he said firmly. "You're not out of the woods yet. Another night's sleep will help set you right."
"I'm not-" she began, as her words were swallowed by another giant yawn, "-tired," she finished a bit sheepishly.
He looked at her pointedly, and she shrugged, admitting defeat. She settled back down into the bed, and he tucked the covers in around her, making sure she was warm and snug.
Maybe it was the feeling of intimacy that had taken root during their conversation - or the casual but possessive way he had touched her earlier - but she suddenly felt bold... bold enough to find the courage to make the request that was on the tip of her tongue.
"Aren't you going to lie down next to me again?" she prompted as she gazed up at him, heart suddenly racing.
He froze, and then blushed bright red, something she hadn't seen him do in quite awhile. "You... you were awake, then? I thought you had already fallen asleep..."
She shook her head slowly, eyes fixed on him with an expression of hopeful anticipation.
He swallowed noisily. "I can't," he said stiffly. "It was inappropriate... I wouldn't want to... I mean, I might... and you..." His babbling ceased suddenly, and he looked away, running his hand through his hair. He seemed uncomfortable - and utterly mortified.
Corrine took pity on him. He had kept the pain at bay, and she needed him... but he obviously felt awkward, and she didn't want to push. Besides, his refusal wounded her a bit, if she were being honest. "It's all right, Harry... I was just teasing anyway," she said, forcing a laugh and shrugging dismissively.
The tension in his face eased, and Corrine hid her dismay at his obvious relief. "But I'll stay here, right beside you, until you fall asleep," he said resolutely. He sat in the chair and gazed into her eyes. "I won't leave you again, Corrine," he said softly.
She could still feel his dark eyes upon her as she finally surrendered to sleep.
Some of the stories that Harry tells Corrine - rescuing the man overboard and mounting the rigging in the eye of a storm, for instance - were reported in Inger Sheil's biography of RealLowe. I have embellished some of the details for Corrine's sake ;)