"I say," the officer did protest. "That's manners for you, that is."

Because so caught off guard was he by the lady's inelegantly gruff command that James swore he misheard it.

"Look, it's late," she sighed. "And I got enough to do without you jerks making things weird around here. Don't make me spell it for you."

"I've got no trouble at all with spelling, thank you."

"Then you should have no trouble at all dumping the T.R.A.S.H trash," she informed him. "And since you're here, you might as well roll the mop bucket back to the closet on your way out to the dumpster. Lazy bums should make yourselves useful around here."

James's jaw hung slightly open. His ears ringing with the beating of his heart all aflutter

Speechless.

Confounded.

Right maftin' hot.

If this mardy stewardess were anymore domineering, she'd be a sailor!

"Well, chuffin' 'eck, who died and made ye captain?" he remarked. "Sorry to cut yer down from your horse, your highness, but I'll have ye know that this lazy bum happens to be a 6th. And not to go on braunging about mi'sen, but as an officer at least, I've earned more rank than to be lorded about by one sour-appled stewardess."

"Did you just..." Emily tipped her pretty bewildered head slightly. "...call me an apple?"

"Why, I suppose I bloody did."

"Then I suppose the feeling's 'bloody' mutual," she threw back her answer. "Leave the trash bin by the register when you're done with it. And you have a nice day."

"Eh, so you're orderin' about my day now? What authority you think you have in such matters, I'm afraid to imagine," he objected. "But with all due respect, miss, 'nice' is no way I'd put it. If by my fair day you mean washed up by 'eck into this mare's nest, or well-nigh done in by a beast for a motorcar, I'd say we differ much in our opinion, so far as nice days go."

"Aw. There, there, darling. Were you assigned any restroom check duties?" she challenged him. "Then shut up."

"Now way'up just a moment, miss-"

But James's protest was abruptly cut off when Emily swooped the rolling mop bucket his way, forcing him to catch the handle of the mop just before it crashed into his chest.

"Oh, and the men's restroom trash needs dumping too, so you better hurry up," she reminded him. "I clock out in 10 minutes."

And then she promenaded on around him, leaving him standing there dumfounded with the mop handle still poised in his hands.

Blooming hell, what had he walked in on?

She was a cracked kettle pot, if ever he saw one.

And how had any sound manager trusted her with the duty of superintending this office, being a lass so gradly delusional about even the simplest of things?

There wasn't a flyspeck of logic about her.

And if there be some grand misunderstanding between them, how was he to put into plain English his turn of events?

Where should he even start in explaining to her how he came about there, when he hardly understood it himself?

"As sure as eggs is eggs, we're plainly misknowing each other," James persisted, swooping down to pick up her trash bin by the register and balancing it on the squeeze top of the mop bucket as he trolleyed it along with him after Emily.

Determined to make his case with the lady, despite the maid ignoring him as she closed the window security shutters, decidedly done with the man.

"As I said before, I've Greenwich time on me, but it's no longer right here. You see, this fellow I met on the dock with his devilkin dog swore I'd come to New York. And judging by the celestial fixes I can observe, my dead reckoning falls in with his say that I've reached America. Though I can't say all right that I've come to New York, as it looks nowt like the place I know. Pray can ye tell me which house this is, so that I might know soundly where I am?"

Millie sighed deeply.

Indeed, the heart does go on.

But for how much longer would it go on before this guy took the hint?

"Oh God, for the love of-Here! I'll tell you the secret to that problem of yours, if you promise to get out of my shop. Deal?" she bargained with him, standing on tip-toe until her fingers barely reached the top shelf behind her register. "Your world-class day just got classier."

And setting a miniature Titanic grand staircase clock down on the counter, with two winged female figures facing each other on either side-"symbolizing honor and glory crowning time", its retail box read-Emily leaned toward him with a smile, elbows to counter, palms to chin.

Making it impossible for him to miss how much those amber eyes of hers reminded him so much of dying embers from the candles alight in the windows of a lighthouse.

Inspiring in the officer a soul-deep longing for the Scarborough he left behind. A homesickness that he suddenly remembered his fellow officer, Harold G. Lowe, describing to him once in Welsh.

Hiraeth.

Indeed, there lay an indescribable allure about her face that stirred something recognized in him. A comfort almost remembered about the sandy freckles dusting her lightly bronzed cheeks that introduced a starry sky to the sunset hues in her eyes.

And in that instant, a part of James felt like he knew her.

That it wasn't the first time he'd gotten lost in contemplating a face much like hers.

The name he wanted to call her was right on his pursed lips. Frozen at the start of that first syllable. His heart racing to say it out loud, but his weary mind staggering to catch up with him.

And every time James tried to recall how they might've been acquainted, all that came to mind again was the music of cold raindrops on a windowglass and a basket full of sky-blue flowers, which yielded no rational connection whatsoever between them.

If only his barmpot for a heart would be still a moment, and stop making a fuss out of nothing about her, he could at last logically think this all through!

Because there was no good reason at all that this raving stewardess should invoke anything in him she didn't deserve.

'Pack it in, Jim, and take hold of yourself,' he talked himself back into proper sense. 'She's pretty, is all, but nothing to go write home about.'

And perhaps, if he squinted hard enough, he might've found her to be quite a belle à croquer indeed, if she wasn't such a damn blessing to meet.

That any 'pot of bliss' such as herself could claim such fine eyes as that was just plain and simple James's hard luck, as of late.

Because for a basket full of this-and-that reasons, he was rather vexed to wonder how a boatswain with an even keel like himself, could in a matter of minutes, let a stewardess like her fire him up so Melton hot.

And with more sass than James cared for, she pushed the golden timepiece across the counter toward him.

"This, sir," she lowered her smoky voice to an almost-whisper that unwittingly dragged a prickling rush across the back of James's neck. "Is a clock."

James's eyes fell away from the forest fire in hers and set on the quiet tick-tock of the timekeeper between them.

Was she trying to make a berk out of him, or did she really assume he was as lost as he damn well looked?

"Yes, is right, miss," he answered awkwardly. "I can see that a clock it is...But what's that got to do with anything?"

"Well, seeing that you're obviously in need of a new one," she tempted him. "This one happens to be on sale today for an unbeatable price of 10 percent off...But for you?"

Her sparky peridot eyes scanned the navy man down and back up again.

Slower, the second go around.

It was just cosplay, and Emily knew it.

But damn, did he look good in that uniform?

Shining up like a new penny polished with that "good-boy magic" in the valiant way he carried himself.

From the neat line up of his polished dress shoes, to his squared and disciplined shoulders, to the careful uprightness of his starched collar, to the soft fullness of his lips, and finding home in that Ryan-Gosling-From-The-Notebook cornflower gaze.

Stirring in Millie an unconscious ache of nostalgia almost-remembered.

Because though she'd dismissed his noble performance as posh and overdone, Emily slowly picked up on a natural social grace in the way he moved, the assuredness in which he carried his posture, the revering way he held her in his attention when he spoke to her, even in discord between them. A command of etiquette that was hard to come by and even harder to fake, even after intensely rehearsing for some low-pay museum gig.

And recognizing that stalwart honesty in his eyes, Emily sensed a gallant spirit in him that breathed more like a Lancelot than a rip-off of Caledon Hockley.

And somewhere living in that spirit was a chivalric romance at which his hard-lined sense of duty made a smoldering love affair with the hidden poetry whispered quietly behind his eyes.

At least, that was Millie's guess, as she lingered in the daylight of his gaze for a fraction of a second longer than was necessary.

Unable to guess yet what that sonnet about him had to tell, or how a simple necktie and rain on the windows had her all but fantasizing about a complete stranger.

But if she could only remember the name of the noun she was looking for...the perfect rationale for why he made her feel so unexpectedly warm, she'd never again have anything to fear of the cold.

"Aye, lass?" James's beckoning was breathy and soft. "You were goin' to say?"

"Hm?" a mind-wrecked Emily murmured dumbly in return.

"You were goin' to say more about the clock, I believe. And I expect I won't get a word in until you do, so you may as well have your say," he humbly gave her the floor. "Or am I to believe that only now are you at a loss for words?"

"I can give it to you for 15 percent off," Emily dragged herself back to her senses, as she went on haggling him. "A whole two extra dollars you get to keep. Because let's be honest, for 14 dollars an hour, nothing beats that employee discount."

"Miss," he said, ever so patiently. "I've not come here to buy a clock."

"Well, might I tempt you with a pair of our state-of-the-art porthole sunglasses then?" she tried her next pitch, modeling the googlely eyed frames against her own nose as she looked up his towering height. "Very trendy."

"Some other time, love," he dismissed them. "I've only come because I was told I might find a White Star Line office here. An unimaginable incident has happened on my crossing while I was at sea. I wish to report it to the superintendent immediately."

"Superintendent?...As in...the HR department?" Emily guessed uncertainly, looking ever daffier with those portholes on her eyes. "Well, you could try emailing them."

Email?

What the dickens was a blasted 'email'?

Was that just another word he hadn't picked up yet that Americans liked to call the post?

"I reckon the post might take several weeks," he muttered, lost for why she'd even mention it. "You would suggest that I write them instead?"

But what was the point of even trying to explain to her how irrational that sounded, when nothing so far had worked in making her understand him?

Like barking at a knot, this undertaking was.

"It seems we're only going around in circles, and there's no help for it," he said to her. "But then again, you are American, I suppose, and that always muddles things up a bit, doesn't it?"

"Says the guy who thinks he can tell the time by the stars."

"Well, I don't tell you how to do the mopping, stewardess," he remarked. "And you won't tell me how to do my navigating."

And being a modern, post-suffrage woman of the 21st century, that remark sat disastrously out of context between them.

"Funny how that English accent makes you even more of a smuggy asshole."

But in James's book, being called an "asshole" scarcely compared to the unforgivable insult of being called 'smuggy'.

And being a wellborn sailor of the 20th century, repeatedly told that his rank as an officer was "paid for by daddy" and not by his own dues, Emily's remark tumbled tastelessly out of favor into a centuries' old cow-pie of hellish rivalry between classes with James caught in the middle of it.

"Kindly, love," James went on, with the proper measure of restraint expected of a gentleman. "Is there anyone else here I might have a word with?"

Though he couldn't resist signing off with, "Anyone but a whooperup for a stewardess, that is."

"This 'whooperup for a stewardess' is as good as you're ever gonna get, love," she mimicked his word saucily. "And you have a nice day."

But there was no way James could reckon seriously with her anymore.

Not with those blasted porthole spectacles on her face.

He bit the inside of his cheek to restrain a smile, reminding himself that she looked rather peevish, and that none of this was at all funny in the very least, so help him God.

And now was certainly not the time for these cockamine harlequinades.

"Just hear me out, woman, pray you, for God's sake. I came upon the White Star flag upon your window," he said, her absurd spectacles dragging him to the brink of his own wits. "Would you have the goodness to just tell me which company house this is and I'll be on my way?"

"This is the Titanic Shop, where every customer is treated First Class," Emily went on sassing him with a forced smile to match. "Our key chains and refrigerator magnets are buy 3, get 1 free, mix and match. Everything else in the store is 10% off. And just so you know, our restrooms are out of order and we now close in approximately," She glanced at the grand staircase clock between them. "3 minutes."

"Fancy a world in which any of that made any sense!" he marveled. "Would you mind repeating that first bit again?"

"Key chains," she reiterated through gritted teeth. "Refrigerator magnets. Buy 3, get 1-"

"Aye, yes, very good. Get 3 for the price of 1, and pay only 75 percent of the sum. I figured so much," he said. "But what the bloody 'eck is a refrigerator and why would I be in need of one at a time like this?"

"And it's 5 o'clock," she said in relief, powering down the register and untying her apron as she walked from behind the counter.

Making James do a wide-eyed double take of her eccentric choice of footwear peeking out from underneath her skirt.

"Like bats in a belfry," he whispered to himself, shaking his head hopelessly. "When does this all start to make sense?"

"I'm clocking out now," Emily announced to him. "So, I suggest you leave before you set the alarm off. Have a nice day."

"What is it with you and clocks, eh?" James questioned her. "I've never known a woman to be so obsessed with the bloody time."

"Well, I've never met anyone who was so obnoxious."

"I believe flippant is the word you're after," James insisted, it being the only idea he was certain about since he arrived. "As by far, you are the cheekiest stewardess I can ever imagine."

"And who the hell do you think you are, exactly?"

"James Paul Moody, that's who I bloody am," he answered back. "6th Ship Officer of the RMS Titanic, and master mariner."

"I meant your real name."

"Oh? Must I spell it out for you likewise?" he remarked. "J.A.M.E.S. M. Double O. D. Y-Moody-And I would ask your name in return, and that of your superior, so I can report your loutish conduct straight away."

"Emily Amberflaw," Millie snatched her porthole glasses off, her Converse now toe-to-toe with his shiny dress shoes as she air-stabbed his chest with her glasses in emphasis of every letter. "A.M.B.E.R.F.L.A.W. Amberflaw. And there's the number to customer complaints. If that's what it takes to get you out of my shop, knock yourself out."

But this so-called "6th Officer James Paul Moody" wouldn't budge an inch.

Knowing that as the last surviving officer of Titanic's bridge, this was no time to putter around.

"I can not do that, miss. Not when so many people will deserve an answer as to what became of their loved ones. Until I've a word with the superintendent, I'm afraid duty to them would have me stay. And so, I much fear that you'll have to bear the brunt of my company a bit longer, as I've ineludible questions that require immediate answers," he told her stoutly. "Albion House. Can you reach the White Star head office from here or not?"

"You're in a gift shop. What part of 'gift shop' don't you understand?" she tried to reason with him. "White Star Line doesn't actually exist anymore!"

"You're making a bad joke of this, and I won't stand for it," he declared. "Won't you understand what I'm trying to tell ye? The R.M.S Titanic has foundered!"

"Yeah," she nodded at him slowly. "You're right, it sure has."

But nothing he said seemed to get past that perpetually confused look on her face.

"Right," James tried explaining very carefully to her again. "I know it seems I can't tell you who's which from when's what, but I swear what I'm telling you is the truth. As I remember it, I was on my watch aboard Titanic when she struck ice. We officers were ordered soon after to get the boats away. I went down with the ship...anno it was so...But that's all my memory of it. The last I remember is waking up adrift at sea, though I can't tell you how it was I got there. Have you any news of Titanic since yesterevening?"

"Titanic?" Her concerned gaze glistened with skepticism. "As in the literal Titanic?"

"Blimey, don't tell me you've never heard of her either," he sighed, lost for why everyone here seemed so surprised when he mentioned it. "This is White Star, God rot them!"

"This. Is. A. Shop," she broke it down for him. "That sells gifts."

"Yes...I...am...well acquainted with...what...a...shop...is," he doubled her tone and hand demonstrations. "But what's that got to do with anything?"

"Nothing I can help you with, I'm guessing," she answered.

"It goes without saying," James sighed resignedly, placing his cap back on his head and tipping it to her in good-day. "Many thanks for your time, love."

"Same to you, love. And I hope you have a nice-"

"For God's sake, miss, I beg you, don't say it!"

But just as James turned to take his leave, he stopped.

Making Emily stop too, following his gaze to the jewelry case underneath his fingertips. His eyes drawn to the blue heart-shaped necklaces dazzling on display within the glass.

"Hang on a moment," he said, removing his cap again. "What is all this?"

"The Heart of the Ocean," Millie answered, stunned that out of all the things she'd tried to sell him thus far, it was this that caught his interest almost instantly. "You've never seen one of these things online before?"

James studied the row of necklaces closely.

"Imitations, aren't they?"

"Just Swarovski crystal. Nothing close to the real thing...Some people think the real Hope Diamond is cursed though," Emily told him. "Weird things seem to happen wherever it is. The theory goes, anybody who owns it dies in some tragic and mysterious way. And it seems to like disappearing on its own. First, after the beheading of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, and then again when the Titanic sank. They say it went down with the ship, but it's just a movie, right? The necklace itself didn't really exist back then. Still, who doesn't love a good ghost story?"

And for a moment, James seemed to freeze there in time, his cerulean eyes haunted and lost to a faraway sea.

As the only thing stranger than her implausible otherworldly tale were the images and voices invoked by it, watching a ghost of himself in his mind's eye.

James turned away from Lifeboat 16, just as Officer Wilde took his place directing the boat's launch.

"And lower away easy! Steady now! Lower away evenly, lads!"

"Please tell me I'm not too late, that she can still be saved," a passenger was pleading with James, his face blurred indistinguishably in his memory. "My God, James, I beg you to help me."

But James rushed pass him, moving aft toward the First-Class Promenade, as Titanic descended from under him.

Desperately trying to make it to some place he knew he was running out of time to get to, though he couldn't remember exactly where that place was.

Until by happenstance, James heard screaming coming from one of the boats being lowered over the ship.

"Rose! What are you doing?"

"Stop her! Someone stop her!"

Worried that another lifeboat might be coming down on top of the other, James backtracked from the First-Class promenade to investigate the reason for the panic.

With only a split second to jump into action.

The white glow of a sea rocket lit up the promenade A-deck, as James fell on the railing, throwing his arms out to pull a female passenger back over while she hung off the side of the ship. Just after she'd jumped recklessly onto the railing out of one of Lightoller's lifeboats.

But James never even had a chance to take in her face properly, before the hysterical woman ripped free of his grasp and bolted away down A-deck toward the First-Class dining saloon.

Seemingly oblivious or untroubled by her belonging that had fallen out of her coat pocket at James's feet.

James scooped the sapphire blue diamond necklace off the wooden decking.

"Wait, miss, I believe you dropped your..."

But when he looked up again to search for her in the crowd, the merlot-haired woman was gone.

James reached into his coat pocket.

His fingers brushing up against the cold smooth object that he'd only just remembered was on his person.

His stomach turned, as he realized the horrors of his last night at sea were undeniably true.

"A gift shop, you say?" he murmured to Emily, as the realization slowly hit him.

Had he only just taken a wrong turn through her shop door...or could there really be something more sinister here going on?

Something "mysterious", as she put it?

"If this truly is a ghost story, Ms. Amberflaw," he hesitated to make himself name it. "Then I wonder which of us is haunting the other?...You...or I?"

Because that very idea would wreck everything they both mutually understood about the universe.