Across the wooden decks, her treacherous shoes tap the familiar rhythm of her urgency. Outside her head these steps must sound much as they did that last time she ran, just as her tears of relief can be relied on to be salty. Amused at her own secret, Rose careens forward, her mind set on this great ship's bow as it leans towards the future, just as she plans to.
For so long the engagement was her horizon, the path to it paved with those delicious private liberties that Cal's courtship allowed her, handed out like precious trinkets her eager mother pretended not to notice: the deep, masculine smell of his coat hugging her shoulders; the warm whisper of a private joke in her ear; the soft graze of his lips over her cheek, her mouth. Rose can barely remember now if any of the jokes were funny. It is hard enough to believe that there was a time before she learned to guess his mood as soon as he enters a room, or when his sheer physical size evoked a refuge rather than a threat.
Her thin shawl comes untucked from one elbow and flaps freely behind her. The wind nips at her skin, licks her hair wild, and she finds that she likes how it teases and rumples her, the way she used to think a lover might, before proven wrong. The realization drops from a great height, sinking down low in her belly just as she takes the stairs to the forward well deck: there must be other ways of loving, other ways of being loved than the one she was shown. There must be, still, some hope of finding out.
That rush of excitement and the speed it lends her steps reach a tipping point. Fabric swishes over her chest when the thin shawl catches the handrail, and when she turns instinctively a shoe slips, an ankle falters, and she tumbles down that last step.
Her glance darts towards the bow, but Jack is out of her line of sight, which thankfully means she is out of his. Rose wants to laugh at herself and finds that she can't, not yet; at least she seems to have been spared any witnesses. She lies splayed on the ground, a huffing mess of skirts and red hair, until a disembodied voice calls her name.
"Miss DeWitt-Bukater! Miss DeWitt-Bukater! Rose!"
He's at her side in a moment, kneeling gallantly where she lies only barely more collected than before. She bides time by looking down, hands searching her hair as if she cared a great deal what shape the braids form on her head, and he's courteous enough to pretend not to notice her dab at her tears and the makeup they smeared. A hand is offered, and despite intending to accept it only nominally she relies on its strength to pull her up.
"Terribly slippery, these stairs. An oversight on the part of the builder, I'm afraid." The lilt in his voice is more energetic than usual, and when she looks up his handsome features are pinched in a frown she has not seen before. "I trust you're not hurt."
At no point does it cross her mind to question how he materialized there, unseen. In three days on this ship she has noticed that it is a magician's trick of his to emerge unbidden from doors disguised as walls and other even less likely places. Each time, rather than bow for applause, he touches his hat and hurries along, expecting the world to be as unfazed by him as he appears to be by it.
Upright again in a more dignified position, Rose plasters on a practiced smile. The high walls around the strangely empty well deck make the space seem discomfitingly private. The sky above them is in evening dress, wearing scandalous colors.
"Mr. Andrews." Her tone is flawlessly flat, politeness sharpened to a point and weaponized. It pains her to use it on this man, but he is part of the world she aims to leave behind, and now is not the time to be sentimental. She adds an almost-cruel flourish. "What a delight to see you."
Thomas Andrews surprises her by laughing.
It begins as the slightest insinuation of tension, the crinkle around his hazel eyes at odds with the thin line of his pursed lips. But now his shoulders shudder slightly, and now the corners of his mouth quiver. It is rare that people notice her faking, or perhaps simply that they care; her curiosity blooms into amusement as it climbs her chest like a vine, and when he audibly snorts they both come apart, untrained actors finding the lines they memorized too ridiculous to perform, let alone believe.
His grin only widens as he pulls his ever-present notebook from a coat pocket and makes a great show of writing in it.
"Test stairs…" he says in a stage whisper, squinting as if in great concentration, "...with high heels and long skirts, at full speed."
Her laugh comes freely this time; the rules and conventions are far away, a joke played on someone else.
"Were you intending to explore the forecastle deck?" he asks, more seriously. "Most of it is off-limits to passengers, I'm afraid. But I'd be pleased to escort you."
His hand, they both notice, is still at her elbow. When he drops it politely she remembers herself and glances nervously towards the bow again. Jack is still perched there, defiant in proportion to his smallness. The shipbuilder gives no sign of noticing.
"I was…" Rose falters. His laughter has made her honor-bound to honesty, and hence deprived her of her usual arsenal. She offers a small, unconvincing smile. "I very much wanted to see the bow."
The agitation she noticed earlier returns in a frank look of concern. "Alone?"
Her temper flares. Enough vignettes of this man's life have circulated in the dining room for her to know that he has no particular interest in preserving marks of class or wealth — he is known, apparently, for mixing with the workers on the shipyard, carrying beams, climbing scaffolding. Yet he bears those marks, as they all do: Cal, and Mother, and every other person in first class who sees her stubborn sparks as blackmisthery's inevitable byproduct.
A gust of wind crumbles the skirts against her legs and Rose wrestles with them, the delicate shoes momentarily visible under the hem.
"I hardly mean to impose on your time, Mr. Andrews. I'm well aware of what high demand you find yourself in."
Her tone is cold again, this time sincerely, but he seems warm enough as he replies, "If you insist on being called Rose, you must also call me Thomas."
Impatience tightens her corset and makes her breath shallow. She looks to the distance again, without attempt at discretion. His lingering, she decides, is impertinent; even rude.
"Thomas, I will be delighted to accept your offer at a more opportune time."
Her tight smile is fool's gold, but the man is no fool. The ship, she has already determined, is not the only target of his painstaking observations. He moves as if to leave, but doesn't. The frown on his face deepens, past concern into compassion, and the way he looks at Rose unsettles her. The wind catches the skirts again and she swats them abruptly, annoyed.
"Are you quite alright, Rose?"
Without even a moment's consideration to the question she nods in response. In the back of her mind, a voice asks if the reason why she has not been heard might be that she has not screamed.
When he reaches forward and touches her arm, she feels herself float away, back to that place where convention is contemplated rather than taken part in. Thomas Andrews, she begins to think, dwells there most of the time.
"If ever you were not," he says, gentle in manner as well as in tone, feigning interest in her dancing shawl to spare her the indignity of being looked upon when his words have stripped her naked, "would there be someone you could tell? And if that position was vacant, would you forgive my presumption if I expressed interest in it?"
And then it dawns on her, the simple truth that for all this time he has hidden so skillfully while she fancies herself an actress. At no point in all their encounters have his eyes betrayed it, but now, with his hand firmly wrapped around her arm and the emotion obvious on his face, she understands. There is a reason why a man who is always in a hurry chose to linger, hesitant to leave this woman who was running towards the railing of a ship, with tears in her eyes — and alone. Her footsteps, after all, would have sounded the same.
"You saw."
His posture changes as he lets go of her arm and the weight of the secret leaves him. "I'm so terribly sorry," he says, sheepishly. "I had no intention to ever mention it."
"Where were you? I never saw you."
"Returning from the steering gear room," he says, as if she had some hope of knowing where that might be. "Close enough to see that there was no need to come closer. The young man who assisted you, Mr. Dawson…" He pauses, wrestles with something, smiles as he conquers it. "He was rather skillful. And discreet, naturally."
"You must understand—"
"You mustn't explain," he counters, hand jumping as if to touch her again. "Not for my benefit. Of course, if it was for yours, then that would be a different matter."
Rather than seek her arm his hand hovers mid-air, in that charged space where good manners wedge themselves between people. Rose feels cold all of a sudden; even through the sleeve of her dress, his touch felt noticeably warm.
He looks away from her then, for the first time, in the direction her eyes have sought with every furtive glance. He squints at first, leaning almost imperceptibly. Even in the distance, perched as he is on that furthermost railing, Jack's blonde hair and lanky build are discernible enough. Rose notes the moment when recognition shines on his features, and winces.
"Of course," he mutters.
A desperate, illogical urge blooms in her chest to bridge that in-between space, reach for him with bare hands and explain that this is not as it seems. That she has not been saved, not yet.
Instead she says, "Mr. Andrews, I assure you—"
For the first time his friendly demeanor is a mask in itself, and Rose realizes that of the two of them she may be the transparent one, after all.
"The crew must be distracted by their tea, to be so inattentive to the whereabouts of passengers. One might even imagine climbing over the breakwater to the bow without being seen." He looks down to where her shoes would be visible, were the long dress not hiding them. His tone turns stern, but humor crackles in his eyes. "Rather cautiously, of course." Moving to the side, he points the way. "If anyone asks, tell them Mr. Andrews was escorting you when he was pulled away to an urgent matter, and you are awaiting his return to exit safely."
The painless prick of his unassuming smile deflates her more completely than the sharpest accusation. With the fog of urgency lifted, the entire plan snaps into focus and seems childish. Go to Jack — and what? Dance and drink and laugh, as if it might absolve her from tomorrow? Hide in a corner of this ship like a child? Betray her word to Cal (whom Rose had her chance to deny, as her mother never lets her forget) when he asked for it so sweetly, with a hundred dozen roses in every corner of her London hotel suite?
"I feel rather foolish."
"A state, I've learned, that rarely afflicts the true fool."
Around his eyes she imagines the faintest suggestion of sadness, but his smile carries that same wink of mischief that rewarded her Freud joke at the Palm Court. That may very well have been the first time a man has ever laughed at something she said, rather than the fact that she said it.
"I know what you must be thinking," she mutters, more penitent than she feels.
But he shakes his head. "I've found that thinking too much on people has a limiting effect on the mind."
"You prefer, I suppose, to think of ships?"
"Those are thoughts of a very different quality."
"A higher quality, you seem to think," she teases.
He shifts, leaning towards the plain orange barriers around the deck with visible intention before falling in place again next to her. Rose imagines herself to have offended him and moves reflexively to summon an apology — Cal's acquaintance has taught her that it is preferable to back into one than let herself be cornered there — but upon closer inspection Mr. Andrews' face is untroubled. She takes a tentative step, indicating her willingness, and they walk the short distance to the edge.
"I express myself clumsily, unaccustomed to being held accountable." The wind is harsher here, but he makes himself heard. His hands curl around the top of the barrier, large and tanned, their strength visible now that she has felt it. He touches the ship as if it were a person. "But I see that around you more is required of me, Rose. May I try again?"
There is a charming smirk on his face, and she giggles before tipping her chin haughtily. "You may, but do not expect another chance."
They both look towards the sea. From here, with their intended destination still days away from being visible, it is hard to believe that it ends. Every person in this ship is hurtling towards an unseen future, bound together by blind faith in the audacity of the enterprise.
"One thinks up a ship, plans it with square and compass, puts pencil to paper in calculations that will bring her to reality in the yard."
"And nails loose boards," she needles, smiling. "Or so I hear."
His head lowers with a chuckle. "A man whose only contribution can be singled out as a curiosity is hardly a contributor worth mentioning," he says, as if every line in this ship had not been drawn by his pencil. His gaze drifts again. "Ships are designed, you see? The entire object of the endeavor is to avoid surprise, and assiduous thought polishes away all the cracks where it might hide. But people…"
"People surprise you."
He turns to her and her heart riots, races, rattles against her chest with a violence that until now she has only associated with fear. The intimacy is unbearable, and she looks away before he does.
"Our expectations can guide us, or fool us," he continues. "Ships are designed, forged, bent under a man's will, but a person? A person has no angles to be measured, only curves to be traced by the inquiring touch of a hand." Her gaze moves to his hands and then quickly away, sensing danger. "People are not designed, but discovered. They cannot be planned but only known. On rare occasions, understood. We make ships, but we discover people. A ship can never surprise me, but a person can, and to think too much on my own expectations would be to close myself off to the thrill of it."
"I can think of some who would disagree," she points out, a bitter taste in her mouth even as she tries for nonchalance.
He seems to notice; the tenderness in his voice sounds and feels like velvet. "Then there are great joys in this life that lie entirely out of their reach."
Rose turns her back to the ocean abruptly, overwhelmed. It all seems too vast, too grand — the bleeding sky, the pleading sea — and she finds comfort in the smallness of the space, in the high walls that make the world appear manageable.
All around them in the dying light, the ship glows as if gilded. Even here, in the well deck whose design caters to function more than form, something much like beauty sings to her, and she recognizes it as purpose. This man has built this ship — and not in the way Cal can be said to "produce steel," in and out as it suits him, playing business behind a desk that is little more than a card table when the senior Hockley's shrewd decisions have ensured that his son's will never matter. No, this man has made something. Mr. Ismay pointed out to them a board that the master builder nailed himself. He may very well be the most interesting person in any room they have found themselves in, and yet not once has he ever talked about himself. He humbles her.
"If someone is waiting for you, Rose, pray don't let an old man's rambling keep you."
The kindness in his eyes makes the whole world seem benevolent. She wants to tell him that nothing about him makes her think of an old man; not the lines on his face and not the silver threaded through his hair.
Jack is still out there, his hair wild in the wind, back turned to them. Is it Jack that she wants to discover? Or is it simply herself? For so long she has felt watched through a porthole, but now it seems as if she may be the one trapped on the inside.
The sea air animates her, making it easy to be decisive. "There is no one waiting." And then, without even a moment's thought, she extends a hand. "Your offer stands?"
One might think a smile is but a smile, and yet on him that same upturn of the lips and lines around the eyes seem to rearrange each time into new meaning, like colored glass at the end of a kaleidoscope. Has she missed this before? Are other people, too, this ever-changing sea of meaning, should one simply take the time to observe?
He gives her his arm, but they have barely left the spot when she misjudges a step and an impractical heel turns again under her foot. His hand is at her waist as she fumbles for purchase, gripping his arm out of instinct.
"I apologize." She pauses, rattled, righting her foot inside the shoe. "One would think these fussy shoes and skirts are specifically meant to trick women into thinking they can't move except on the arm of a man."
His laughter rings in the cold night, laps against her like the waves. She has never realized before what a rush of power it is to make another person laugh, perhaps because it requires surprising them.
"Rose, if I may be so bold, I can hardly imagine a woman like you would need the arm of a man to get anywhere." Music he must have been trained to keep out of his voice rises then in a crescendo. "There's a fire in your eyes as bright as any furnace in this ship."
His flattery lands on her cheeks, pink and warm. They both hear footsteps; on the far side of the deck, Jack leaps down the stairs, slowing when he notices his company. Mr. Andrews nods a cheerful greeting, but Rose finds herself turning a deeper shade of red as Jack's eyes seek hers, half-puzzled, half-amused. The afternoon's memories drift towards the edges of her mind, passing ships she may never see again. When Jack finds his stride, her heart seizes for a moment, making her voice small.
"Fire can be rather delicate, can't it? A splash of water and it's put out."
He merely shakes his head, as if to say he's unconcerned. "Not all the water in the Atlantic could put out the fire in you, Rose." Another turn of the kaleidoscope. "Doubt it if you must. I'll believe it for us both."
In unspoken agreement they wait for Jack to reach the top of the stairs before moving. This time, he withholds his arm. She finds that she misses it — or perhaps simply the warmth and faint whiff of wood and tobacco that radiates when he stands close enough — but makes no attempt to regain it. Under her garments the extravagant, brand new shoes threaten yet another revolt.
Rose pauses abruptly, offering no explanation. No person she has ever known would hold back a question, but he waits in silence, watching. She crouches down, unladylike, digging under the inner petals of her dress to undo the ties around her ankles. The wood of the decks feels welcoming through her hosiery, still warm from its prolonged sunbath. She stands with a triumphant grin, shoes dangling from one hand and a fistful of fabric bunched in the other.
Thomas tosses his head back and laughs, reaching for her shoes without ceremony. Their fingers brush together as he collects them in his hand.
"Much more interesting than ships," he declares.
They walk aft, side by side, bound together by blind faith in something yet to be discovered.