A/N: Before you begin Chapter 6, let me just say I am blown away by your attention to my story. Thank you so much for, in just five chapters, getting us to over 200 views. I appreciate that so very much. If it wouldn't trouble you, if you enjoy it, please leave me a little review and say anything you like! They're the only pay I ask for!
I hope you enjoy, my darlings!
13 April 1912
The light of the morning was bright and the day looked promising at the first waking glance. The ocean was gleaming like a thousand diamonds caught by the most precious light and a gentle nipping breeze dancing around in a fluent waltz, and yet the faces of the man and woman seated in their private promenade were contorted and the tension between them was so thick the lady wanted to take her butter knife and slash through it. Not a single word had been spoken in the near half-hour since they had been seated, and the inharmonious silence was interrupted only by the tapping of Trudy's heels as she walked to and fro, pouring coffee and serving as needed.
"Coffee, sir?" She sweetly asked to which Cal shook his head, eyes never moving from the tip of his cup.
It was the most Rose had seen out of him that entire morning. She dared steal a glance up at him from under her raven eyelashes, biting the inside of her lip. The spoon she was stirring in her coffee ominously stilled on her hand's own accord, waiting with bated breath for action.
When her fiancé finally returned her gaze, his eyes were dark, threatening, and Rose thought when they caught the sun and shined like a jewel that it was a strike of lightning in his thundercloud of a being.
She refused to fear him and lifted the cup daintily to her lips, sipping slowly and averting her eyes, trying to ignore the sizzling of unrest as it could only indicate an approaching impasse.
"I had hoped you would come to me last night," his lips tilted in what could only be described as a cheap imitation of a warm and husbandly smile.
The insinuation of his words was not lost on her and she stiffened, squirming in her chair as she looked to her drink again. "I was tired."
There. Not the whole truth, but certainly not a lie.
Cal hummed. "Your exertions below decks with Andrews were no doubt exhausting."
Her shoulders tensed so forcefully she could feel them brush against the bottoms of her ears and she glowered, squeezing the saucer in her fingers until the tips of her thumbs were as white as the foam beating against the ship beneath them. The nerve of him, spying on me like some recalcitrant tot!
"I see you had that undertaker of a manservant follow me. How typical," Rose scoffed with a sour and indignant simper, placing her cup back on the table like punctuation to her speech.
He ignored her daring comment and smiled as if readily expecting her compliance. The lightning struck again, brighter, a pulsing bolt, jutting out like knives to cut her to pieces. "You will never behave like that again, Rose. Do you understand?"
With absolute confusion and a strange pinch of melancholy, she identified the tightening in her chest as a feeling of disappointment.
Why in the world was she disappointed in Caledon Hockley? She knew just what he was; what he did and how exactly he did it, what he wanted and to just what lengths he was willing to go to get it.
Perhaps I was hoping that for once, just once, someone would be true to me; that if the man who had stolen my heart could betray me then perhaps Cal would finally fall into place and the reason for which there was one for everything would be revealed with startling and unmistakable colors. But no. No, the tragic pattern continues, of me, Rose DeWitt Bukater, never finding a single human upon this cursed earth who does not disappoint me. If Thomas Andrews could disappoint me so greatly that I feel as if I've been beaten black and blue, then all hope is lost for me for finding anyone of the sort. It's just as well that I am bound indestructibly to Cal Hockley.
Rose pursed her lips. "I'm not a foreman in one of your mills that you can command. I'm your fiancée!"
His attention was caught and all was calm before the volcano angered and erupted. "My fiancée? My fian—my fiancée?!"
He stood in fuming glory, standing above her as if in charge of her Holy Judgement, expounding upon her every sin she had ever committed, incredulous that she had the gall to come before the gates of Heaven expecting entry.
"Yes, you are! And my wife," with the cursed word he took a careless hand and flipped the table, china and all, with a loud and magnificent shatter. He hovered over her, gripping the arms of the chair tightly as if by doing so he could inflict the pain on her somehow, "in practice if not yet by law, so you will honor me."
Rose trembled like a leaf in the wind. She had never known herself to be completely, earnestly, bone-chillingly afraid of Cal until that moment.
"You will honor me the way a wife is required to honor a husband, because I will not be made a fool, Rose. Is this in any way unclear?"
She jerked her head back and forth. "No."
"Good," his face was placid again, sober; back he was to the veneer of charming Caledon Hockley that no one ever saw but her. It was the very reason why when she screamed at the top of her lungs nobody looked up.
Of unsound mind was the woman who challenged a gentleman's integrity and good name.
"Excuse me."
He sauntered from the room and Rose sat, trying to regain her breath, as weak as Cal and her mother wished her to be. She cried out as Trudy ran over, immediately kneeling to the pile of shattered china and spilled coffee.
"W-We had a little a-accident," she tried to speak over gasping breaths which did nothing to calm her. 'It's alright. It's alright, Miss Rose."
"I'm sorry, Trudy. L-Let me help you," she reached a single trembling hand to the pile, lifting the rose that had theretofore sat elegantly and innocently in its vase, but was now wilted and torn, collateral damage in a consequence of a dilemma not at all its own. No wonder I had been named after the flower, she mused. They are as much of a martyr as I am.
Trudy caught her arm and she could immediately feel the love flowing from her palm to her. "It's alright, Miss."
It was only when Trudy spoke those words with as much firmness as her timid nature would allow and kept her loving and soft hand on Rose's arm that she allowed herself to collapse to the floor, unbridled, and cry.
The tightening of her corset, the armor suit which transformed her into the lady she was required to be every day, felt like featherlight kisses compared to the battle waging in her head. Even as Trudy yanked with all her might until the air was forced from her, she did not wince nor cry out or even truly notice, for her mind could not be pulled from the clutches of Thomas Andrews.
Had she been a good deal younger and still believed in such things, she would have imagined and half-believed his spirit had escaped his being unnoticed and made a home within her mind where her thoughts resided. She would have imagined it tugging on her thoughts like the leash of a dog whenever they longed to wander and crooning with an Irish whisper, No, Young Rose. You shall never be free of us, if not of body then I shall stay here in your mind forever.
It would have been just as well if such things were possible, for within the mind of the man himself, beyond barriers over which Rose had no physical reach, he solemnly surmised that should Rose DeWitt Bukater be robbed from his life then he would rather be without a soul altogether.
So caught up was she in her thoughts of him—Trudy's iron grip upon her laces the only thing keeping her from breaking into hysterical sobs and burying herself in her bed, damn who might see—that she did not hear her mother open the door and send the maid away. She only cared enough to bring her attention back to her chambers when she felt her pillar of strength melt away as Trudy released her. Her mother seized her corset laces in cold and unforgiving hands and pulled with a ferocity which displayed unmistakably a brutality which could only be allayed and masked as the binding her daughter's corset without garnering her the reputation of being an abusive parent.
With her mother as her dresser, she was unable to imagine Mr. Andrews speaking a complete sentence before she drew her bindings once again and Rose was ripped from her reverie with a pinch of her ribs or a crush of her lungs so all that occupied her mind was pain and her lack of breath. For once, she was grateful for her mother's anger and resentment.
"Whatever it is that is transpiring between you and the shipbuilder, it ends now. You are not to see that man again. Do you understand me?" With another fierce tug that nearly had Rose flying back and knocking them both over, Ruth raised her voice. "Rose! I forbid it."
Her daughter rolled her feisty eyes. "Oh, stop it, Mother. You'll give yourself a nosebleed."
No sooner had the last breathless word slipped from her lips that her mother snatched her by the shoulders and whipped her around with enough force to bring a throbbing pain in her head.
"This is not a game. Our situation is precarious. You know the money's gone."
How could she forget, when it was just that which brought upon the miserable existence that was to become her life? When her lack of the blessing of choosing her own husband and her damnation to a loveless and vicious marriage was the denouement of their family's fall from grace and riches? How could she forget it when it and its consequences superintended her conduct no matter how vehemently she shoved it away from her and her mind? When it was the only reason she did not kiss Mr. Andrews the night before and kept her from telling him she lo—
"Of course I know it's gone. You remind me every day!"
Ruth leaned in closer, lowering her voice to a vicious whisper. "Your father left us nothing but a legacy of bad debts hidden by a good name. That name is the only card we have to play."
Rose leaned away from her mother, suffocating on her every word as if they all turned to cloth and were shoved down her throat until breathing was impossible.
"I don't understand you. It is a fine match with Hockley. It will ensure our survival."
"How can you put this on my shoulders?"
"Why are you being so selfish?" Ruth cried out, eyes widening, looking at her daughter as if she were an offensive stranger.
"I'm being selfish?" Rose indignantly snapped.
Ruth went silent, letting glassy tears coat her eyes. They were tears with whom Rose was well acquainted, and there were many a day in her childhood when her mother would use those same tears to make her feel guilty until she succumbed at her feet. She winced and looked away.
"Do you want to see me working as a seamstress? Is that what you want?" Ruth's voice nearly failed her as the glass became thicker and thicker. "To see our fine things sold at auction? Our memories scattered to the wind?"
She covered her mouth with her hand, trying to ward off sobs of which Rose could not assess the authenticity, turning from her daughter as her body began to tremble. If Rose knew her any less than she did, she would have thought her fragile. Even as her mother composed herself quickly as she always did, as women were expected to do, she could not bear to antagonize her any longer, for her inexorable daughter's love to her mother overflowed within her.
"It's so unfair," she whispered with a huff.
Ruth whipped around, the glass still gleaming but the features and body steadfast and resolute once again. "Of course it's unfair. We're women. Our choices are never easy."
Rose squeezed the bedpost beneath her fingers. "And yet you insist on making my choices impossible. They're not choices at all anymore."
Her mother pursed her lips. "I am doing what is best for our family, for us, since your father failed to do so. I am only trying to make you happy, no matter the cost."
She scoffed, anger surging red hot in her once again. "I see. And forbidding me from associating with Mr. Andrews whose only crime was to offer me his friendship is supposed to make me happy, is it?"
The gap was quickly closed as Ruth stepped ominously towards her. Rose could tell her teeth were clenched behind her closed lips. "He is a married man, Rose, and he is at least twenty years older than you are, probably not much younger than I am. And he is not a gentleman, no matter what he may claim. He may be a shipbuilder but he is still Irish from humble beginnings with no claim to aristocracy besides his viscount uncle and his father as a member of the Irish Privy Council. He is nothing."
Rose could not tell what she wanted to do. She wanted to scream, she felt sick enough she nearly wanted to vomit, she wanted to cry until her eyes pained her and her ducts were run dry. She wanted to find Mr. Andrews wherever he was and kiss him until they fainted from lack of air. She wanted to box his ears one hundred times for letting her go on and give her heart to him when his own was already possessed by another.
Oh, she did not know what to do.
"He is not nothing, Mother. He is a gentleman, if not by your ridiculous standards of wealth than by my own of conduct. You may disapprove of it all you like, the world may disapprove of it all it likes, but I lo—"
She caught control of her speech just before an irreversible confession fell from her mouth to Ruth who would be free to do with it what she pleased.
A gentle laugh escaped her mother's lips, like that of a sympathetic parent to an injured child.
It was not a laugh that had ever come from Ruth DeWitt Bukater.
Her cheeks were grasped in her mother's frigid hands and no matter how she tried to squirm free Ruth's grip was tight and unrelenting.
"You have known him all of three days, Rose. Do you think I'm a fool? Do you think I don't know what you're doing?"
The younger woman's thin brows furrowed. She remained silent.
"I know what your game is. I know you would do absolutely anything to rebel against what I expect of you. You do not love Mr. Andrews. I'll wager you don't even bear any sort of affection for him. You've simply chosen him to latch onto because you know he is the very opposite of what I would want for you."
Rose was ready to shout, to claim like an insolent and naive girl that she did bear affection for him, that her mother would never understand. But after a moment, her face softened and her skin went pallid in horror. Could she be correct? Could she have tricked her mind into thinking she was sweet on Mr. Andrews simply to spite her mother? No, it couldn't be. And yet the feeling of fear and disgust with herself would not fade from her chest. Her mother was right; she must be. How stupid she had been, how cold and heartless. And to sweet, gentle Mr. Andrews, of all people!
She did not know she was weeping until her mother brushed away cold tears with her thumbs. Brought back to reality, she barely registered her pressing a kiss to her cheek, masked as affection, and the satisfied smile on her lips. As pliable as clay in the wake of her distress and disgust and heartsickness, she allowed Ruth to turn her around again and she did not notice, not once, the lack of air, and she delighted in the pain against her bones when it came, wishing her mother would pull harder so she could be hurt so much worse for hurting him.
The tour began in the Gymnasium where Mr. Andrews and the instructor, a Mr. McCauley, introduced his contemporary exercise machines. They were all foreign to Rose and she hardly understood a word that was said to her, for she spent most of the time trying desperately to avoid Mr. Andrews's gaze which she felt on her nearly always.
Forget these newfangled contraptions! All you need is a man who you don't want to be around in a small room with you and you get plenty of exercise avoiding him!
It was all going splendidly and the ache within all her bones seemed to relax somewhat until Mr. McCauley kindly offered her mother a turn rowing on the stationary rowing machine and she sneered at him, sticking her nose in the air and refusing him, leaving the poor man flustered and without a response. It was then that Rose felt obligated to give an apologetic look to both him and Mr. Andrews.
That was her first mistake.
When their eyes locked, she was reminded forcefully of just why she dared almost say she loved this man, even if it was a fallacy. He looked down at her like she was his saving grace, like there had been a war of one hundred years and he was finally returning home to her. There was sorrow in his dark eyes, swimming hand and hand through the waves with something she could only describe as adoration. She figured her eyes were the perfect mirror image of his: affection, need, desire, want, all with no other destiny but love, strangled from blossoming into its true form by everything in the world but themselves who fought against it unarmed and outnumbered.
No, she thought. Mother was right. Even if I don't mean to I'm just using him. He deserves better than that. He deserves the wife that is waiting at home for him back in Ireland. The one who gave him love and a home and a daughter. I will never hold a candle to her and I have no right to try. I do not deserve to try, either.
They were next carted along to the bridge and the chartrooms, and Mr. Andrews was explaining the use of two steering wheels to an uninterested but pious Ruth as the Captain stood nearby, smiling with pride when Harold Bride traipsed over to the group. He cast a repentant glance over all of them before handing a telegram to Captain Smith.
"Excuse me, sir. Another ice warning. This one's from the Baltic," he said with a tinge of direness to his voice.
When Rose dared look up at Mr. Andrews, she could see him biting the inside of his lip, trying to hide it, and she suddenly felt slightly perturbed.
"Thank you, Sparks," Captain Smith replied, barely giving the note a shred of genuine attention. He looked up to see both Rose and Ruth with slightly furrowed brows and pinched lips and he smiled.
"Oh, not to worry. Quite normal for this time of year. In fact, we're speeding up! I've just ordered the last boilers lit."
By their own volition, Rose's eyes carried themselves again to the man standing to her right, and she noticed the gentle glare and the scowl he was emitting towards the Captain, disapproving and uneasy.
That was her second mistake.
No matter what had transpired between them, whatever grievances she bore towards him, she trusted his logic and opinion regarding Titanic even more than the captain's no matter how experienced he was. She could not help but become uneasy, too.
He motioned the group towards the door, leading them away as he gave one last glance to Captain Smith, just as Officer Lightoller and Officer Murdoch turned to each other just nearby.
"Did we ever find those binoculars for the lookouts?" Lightoller asked with a hushed tone.
"Haven't seen them since Southampton," replied Murdoch with a shrug.
No binoculars for the lookouts and multiple ice warnings. Those do not seem like a good mix, thought Rose. She squeezed the strings of her bag in her hand and noticed with dread that Mr. Andrews was doing the same to his beloved notebook, hollowing and scuffing the leather beneath his fingertips.
As the hour of luncheon approached, the group found themselves on the starboard boat deck, just along a row of lifeboats, which had just been explained by Mr. Andrews to a bored Cal and Ruth and a fascinated Rose. She walked quietly along, her mother and her fiancé treading behind them, clearly satisfied that Ruth had shamed her straight from the arms of the Master Shipbuilder as they engaged in idle chatter.
"Mr. Andrews, forgive me," a light spark of pleasure erupted just below her heart at seeing the shadow flash across her mother's face at her addressing him. "I did the sum in my head and with the number of lifeboats times the capacity you mentioned...forgive me, but it seems that there are not enough for everyone aboard."
"About half, actually," he spoke to her for the first time since their exhibition the night before, turning and smiling on her with pride with a shake of his head, wonder evident in his eyes. "Rose, you miss nothing, do you?"
A gasp was heard just over her shoulder as her mother was doubtlessly scandalized by his use of her Christian name, and she gave him a small smile of appreciation.
"In fact, I put in these new type davits," Mr. Andrews turned and looked lovingly on them to the disturbance of everyone but Rose. "which can take an extra row of boats inside this one. But it was thought, by some, that the deck would look too cluttered, so I was overruled."
The resentment in the tone of his voice she had never heard for anyone save one person, and she knew within an instant that it was Ismay who had overruled him. Rotten thing! All headlines and image and no practicality!
"It's a waste of deck space as it is on an unsinkable ship," Cal battered a lifeboat as he passed it with his walking stick, causing his fiancée to roll her eyes.
"Sleep soundly, Young Rose. I've built you a good ship, strong and true. She's all the lifeboat that you need." He smiled on her, but the look in his eyes displayed a sense of urgency, a need, a desperation that rendered her frozen before him even as life turned along around them. I must talk to you.
"Mr. Andrews," she raised her voice, far louder than was required, but it caught the attention of Cal and her mother just as she had planned. "Tell me more about these davits. I'm very interested."
A glint like the shooting star they wished on the previous flying through his irises and a tilt of his lip told her that he understood.
"Really, Rose. We must be getting on," Ruth said, unabashedly annoyed and impatient.
"Really, Mother," she mimicked her tone like an insolent child. "I want to hear more about the davits! You don't have to stay. We will catch up to you."
"Rose, this is unseemly!" She snarled, taking a few steps toward her.
She rolled her eyes. "Mother, we're out in the open! There are people fore and aft! I promise you, my virtue will still be intact when he is done explaining them to me!"
She did not miss his chuckle as they both watched Ruth pale and nearly fall over at her daughter's brazenness, bereft of words until Cal walked over and took her arm.
"We will meet you in the Engine Room. Don't be long, Rose. I have things to do, you know."
They walked off and Rose raised her voice again, "So, Mr. Andrews. The davits…"
"Yes, Rose, well, if you look just here you'll see…"
They both dared glance and the two offenders, the human barriers forcing their way between them, were far out of earshot. He wasted no time pulling her between the lifeboats, pressed between him and the bulkhead, buried from the real world as she so often was in his presence. Already she felt herself losing her grip on her resolve like it was ice melting through her fingers.
"Mr. Andrews, surely you know how ridiculous this is," she whispered.
"Be that as it may, I could not go another minute without you knowing the full truth, Rose. At least grant me that," he entreated her, daring to grasp her forearms in the ghost of a touch.
She did nothing but blink, looking down between them and ignoring the burning of her heart, feeling it enliven once again, and waited.
"I'm sorry, Rose, that I didn't tell you I was married. But there is more to it than that, I promise you."
"How could you keep something like that from me? How could you when all the while you knew that we were—that I was—" tears began to well in her eyes and her voice failed her.
"It was foolish of me, I know. It was foolish and selfish and reprehensible of me and I am so sorry, Rose. But there is more to it than that."
"Then tell me. Tell me now of your own accord before someone else gets the chance."
He leaned towards her, closer than they had ever been. It was intimate and mixing with the whipping bitter winds like oil and water was the heat of their unkempt desire, making them both lightheaded from the contrast.
"Ever since I was commissioned to build Titanic, my marriage has faltered. My wife, she...she never understood my passion for architecture or shipbuilding. She knew who she was marrying, what she was marrying, but I suppose she thought she could change me into whatever she wanted me to be. She thought my dedication to Titanic was absurd and never failed to tell me so. Even after seeing her, my dream made into reality, she disparaged her and me and refused to come with me on this voyage. She refused to condone the thing that she hated so much and could not change in me.
"I've tried, Rose. I've tried to be the husband she wanted, for there was a time when I loved her so much it blinded me. I bought her what she wanted, I cherished her in all the ways I knew how, I gave her a child. I gave her Elba and it still wasn't enough. How could I ever have succeeded when she hated in me one thing that is most true, the one thing I have within myself that is my own and nobody else's? I was doomed to fail her, Rose. I do not blame her for wanting me to be different from what I am and I despaired in not being able to change, but the fact remains that I was doomed to fail her. She and I were doomed to fail."
He spoke desperately as if pleading himself to a court where he was charged with high treason. His grasp upon her arms became tighter but she did not care. Her heart, her mind, her soul sang nothing but the melody of Thomas Andrews, and should he have delved his fingers until they were beneath her skin, she would have rejoiced.
"Word has spread of my failure. The entirety of the First Class looks at me as if I'm deformed or degenerate because I'm a man incapable of pleasing his wife. I dreaded the moment you would look at me just the same, but that was before I knew the real you, Rose. Surely you know by now that I am not a forward man, and yet I've known you for three days and I haven't any trouble telling you that I feel as if I've known you my entire life, that you know my mind and I know yours. She doesn't understand me, they don't understand me, but you do, Rose. Don't you see? You understand me, Rose, and I understand you."
Rose could not speak. She had forgotten how and was robbed of any coherent thought that could form words had she been capable. No one had ever been so candid with her, no one had truly confessed feelings that were not hidden behind flowery and circumspect speeches that did nothing to excite her heart. Mr. Andrews—shy, modest and reserved, ingenious Thomas Andrews—had just laid his heart, disassembled and bare, in her palms willingly with more trust than she had ever seen in anyone before.
He was unbound from the suppression and illiberality of fashionable society. He was divested of embellishments and was pure human while everyone around them was adorned like royalty with de minimis baubles and ideas. He was real.
Her mind could not be shunned from its shouting from the peak of the mountain of her hopes that everything she had been made to endure was all on the weary path to him. It believed he was her liberator, her rescuer to a life she could not bear to live.
And yet, her mind lied to her. It wanted to believe a more ideal version of herself rested just beyond the spoiled brat on the surface who was blasé to life no matter how much she hated such a quality in herself. You do not love Mr. Andrews. I'll wager you don't even bear any sort of affection for him. You've simply chosen him to latch onto because you know he is the very opposite of what I would want for you.
There was too much of her mother in her to truly love him for what he was and what he offered to her, but there was enough Rose in her to want to save him from her.
"Mr. Andrews…" she croaked, letting the tears finally drip from her eyes and down her soiled cheeks. "This cannot be. This can never be. You...You must have misinterpreted all of this rather dreadfully."
His eyebrows fluttered together for a brief moment, the brightness of his eyes falling like waterlogged clothes in the rain. Rose could nearly hear the crack of his heart as she held in her evil hands the weapon by which it shattered to pieces.
"No, Rose. I won't let you pretend. Everyone else might overlook how you feel, but I will look up in the room when you're screaming at the top of your lungs. I hear you. You cannot lie to me. None of this is a coincidence. I don't know exactly what these past three days mean, but they mean something, Rose."
"No. They mean nothing. Nothing has occurred here besides two people enjoying each other's polite company."
He frowned, leaning away from her but his grip remaining tight on her arms.
"Don't attempt to tell me, Rose, that if I had kissed you last night you would have pushed me away."
"Of course I wouldn't have. But that's only because we've been in a dream, Mr. Andrews. A wonderful, wonderful dream that I've loved being in, but I must wake up now. We both must. I have a fiancé whom I love very much and I'll be married when we reach America. And you, you must return to your wife and daughter. We'll never see each other again once we reach New York so there's no sense in prolonging this. Please, let us just get back to the tour. And for both of our sakes, after it's over, please leave me alone."
Half of her wanted him to refuse her rejection, to not take no as an answer and seize her away from the choice to which she was confining herself. But the bigger half, the more important half, was glad of what she had done. She had freed him from his affection for her. She had freed him from being disappointed in her when he realized that she was truly unworthy of him. She had done the right thing. She was certain of it.
After a long silence, after he had drunk in her words like a foul liquor that was forced down his throat, he caressed his fingers down her arm to her gloved hand and raised it to his lips in a kiss. With her words, she had cornered him and held a gun to his head, teased him with death, and the kiss was his surrender.
If I made the right decision, why does it feel like my heart is bruised beyond repair and cursed with a terminal misery?
The engine room was reached and Rose was glad to find that her mother and fiancé, for once, kept their churlishness to a minimum, for she was certain neither she nor Mr. Andrews would have been able to bear it. Was it God showing some mercy upon their suffering souls, or was the anguish flowing like shattered glass within their veins so evident that even the two most coldhearted people she knew were rendered sympathetic?
The tour ended with the bugle for luncheon and Rose marveled at how Mr. Andrews hid his pain beneath the surface and displayed his kindness even to the two who had played such a large hand in the ruin of whatever it was they had. As the group separated to dress, with a thudding heart, she dared look up at him in amazement. When she did, the tears pooling beneath his pupils glistened in the noon sunlight with a poignant beauty. Thinking himself alone, he squeezed his eyes shut, the tears escaping and coursing down his beautiful face and beyond. Grief stripped him of his strength and he fell against the gunwale, gripping it with hands like iron vices. His shoulders began to shake with sobs to which only the sea and his beloved Titanic bore witness, and even as tears of her own welled up within her, still she stood and watched him.
That was her third mistake.