"James!'
Emily searched his face intently for any sign that he was still with her.
The seashell-white arched Georgian doors of the earl's guest parlor now a bygone dream to the plain-spoken apartment door in front of him. The number just under the peephole reading 401. Making it the only telling distinction between Miss Amberflaw's door and all the other numbered identical doors queued up around hers.
"Come back to me, James," she brought the officer home to his senses. "You haven't fallen asleep on me yet, have you?"
James gave his eyes a good squeeze, no longer finding his father there but his unintended hostess-whom, for all her airs-only came up to just shy of his chin.
And out of an unsettling loop of frankensteined remembrances, Miss Amberflaw became the one constant he could again come back to.
So long as she was real and fixed in front of him, James knew he was real too, and not losing his head to the rough sea of unreal within him.
Strangers as they were to each other, James found in her face a comforting reassurance that many a sailor found in the North Star.
Polaris, guiding him back from the far dark sea of his mind until he lay anchor again in clarity.
"I thought I lost you," Emily teased him. "You had me worried for a minute."
"I'm still here, miss," James muttered softly.
Though the striking familiarity in those words made him hang back guardedly in thoughtful pause.
Had they not spoken something like this to each other already?
Or was he only losing arm over his wits again?
He swore he'd had this conversation before, almost to the exactness of every letter.
What was it about the Miss and those words in that moment that left him so haunted with a strange feeling of recollection?
Knowing again that chilling rush he'd felt when he first saw her through her shop window, stirring up his instinct that there was something recognized in her.
Something reminiscent in the way she joshed him with that smile under the golden glow of her verenda porchlight.
Had Titanic damaged his spirit so irreparably, that he'd never overcome these cruel illusions of Déjà Vu?
Or was Miss Amberflaw some breed of ruinous siren, triggering in him one shattered memory end on end, on end, on end...
Why was it every time they accidently ran into each other's gaze, everything about it felt so remarkably...uncanny?
James was hard put to find an explanation, though he supposed, it was simply that theirs was a rather uncanny circumstance. He couldn't expect to understand everything about how this whole time-drama worked.
But to wonder if he'd ever heard Miss Amberflaw speak those words before was one for the birds.
"I'm right off the mark, far and way," James whispered. "I've only just met you."
"Sorry?"
"That is," he went on thinking aloud. "I was wondering...if you wouldn't mind saying that last bit again, please?"
"Oh...I said I was sorry in advance my apartment isn't anything Downton Abbey, or Titanic, for that matter, but at least it's a roof over your head," she restated, as she rummaged for her house key on its split ring. "Let me guess. I lost you at the part about the cat and the blender?"
And assuming that it was most definitely the blender that had derailed the baffled Edwardian man, Emily enlightened him as she went hell-bent-on winning against her front door.
"Sorry, I keep forgetting this is all still new to you. A blender is an-uh-thingamajig...A lot like a cup we use nowadays to mix a bunch of things together. It has a what-d'you-call-it attached to the bottom, something like the uh, uh-uh, the uh-uh..."
Her finger pinwheeled around and around in little circles, as she tried to remember the exact word.
"A propeller?" the puzzled James took his guess at her meaning.
A ship's rudder being the only what-d'you-call-it he could think of that went uh-uh-uh-uh in circles like that.
"Right! A propeller, thank you," Emily gladly borrowed his word, returning to her fight with the key lock. "Anyway, it makes your food go round and round really fast, like that, until it's basically nothing but gravy."
"Extraordinary," James remarked, though unquestionably, still very confused. "What a funny way of taking one's meal. Is that always the order of things here?"
"In this house, it is-And by this house, I mean Wentworth's. I'm always at work anyway...Wow, I've never actually had to explain a blender to anyone before. It's alot harder than you'd expect," she said, finally looking as if she was making progress getting the lock to take her key.
"But don't worry, it'll all make more sense when we get inside. If I could just get this damn door-to budge!-Haven't got around to fixing the damn lock yet...Every time it rains, it jams up on me. The only thing you really have to remember is that Captain Wentworth won't take his Fancy Feast without homemade gravy of beef broth, steak, and shrimp poured on top of it. He gets fed twice a day at 8 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon. Asks for snacks at 12, 3, 5, and 7. That's all you'll ever need the blender for. Oh, and under no circumstance should he ever be left with said blender alone-You'll learn that the hard way-He naps most of the day, but isn't allowed in the window before 5, or else the landlady will charge us for the cat. Oh, and he shouldn't be let outside either, because he pees all over the neighbor's strawberry plants. Tries to kill her parakeets at least 10 times a week. Other than that, just keep him busy until I get off, and everything should be..." She fell on the door with one last, good hearty push. "Fine!"
Finally, the door gave way.
Allowing the Miss time to catch her breath, as she turned back around to conclude with one last rally of courage for her new cat-sitter.
"The blender thing won't be half as bad as it sounds, I promise."
"It's not your food propeller machine, miss," James told Emily quietly. "It's just..."
Just what was he meaning to ask her, exactly?
You remind me of someone I know I remember but can't remember how I know the someone you inspire a reminding of in me?
No doubt that would make it all clearer to her.
And besides, who would contend that the little jig his heart did every time she passed him a glance was none other than heartfelt gratitude?
She did, after all, save him from the rain.
So, naturally, Moody felt a small bit of warmth for the whimsy Miss in offering him a room, as any grateful guest would.
But was it really any small measure?
Never before had gratitude felt so much like it was bubbling over.
"Howbeit," James continued. "I can't seem to stop thinking about you-I mean, us-I mean-"
He let up a moment to breathe and order his words in tow before going on.
"The state of things is off-kilter, shall we say...It's almost as if you and I have already..."
James broke off again.
Only this time, it wasn't his own clumsy wordiness that held him back.
The porchlight glowing behind Miss Amberflaw caught his eyes, flickering eerily in fits and starts that stole his train of thought.
Buzzing brighter and white hot, before it dimmed to a hellish orangey glow, and then gradually illuminated to its natural gold color again.
But there was nothing natural about the way the drab masonry of Miss Amberflaw's apartment steadily brightened to panels of beautifully carved white wood.
Her porchlight now one of the many gilded lamps and glittering chandeliers along a lengthy corridor.
The rain puddles under his feet on the porch felt like they were riptiding over his shined shoes. Rolling gushes of a raucous ocean threatening to bring the rococo white walls down upon him.
And just over Miss Amberflaw's shoulder were dishes clinking restlessly in their curios. Rows and rows of white dinner plates, trimmed in Cobalt blue and gold, silver-plated napkin rings, silverware, copper cooking pots, teapots, and many alike.
Only it wasn't Miss Amberflaw beside him anymore, but a pale and shaking stewardess who appeared to be bleeding. Her face hidden behind a veil of dripping blood-tinged curls come undone from their pins.
James remembered her hand and the neat buttoned white cuffs of a maid's long dark sleeve. The sublte glimmer of a fine gold chain with a naked spring ring, only just visible underneath her cuff, as though the bracelet were missing its pendant. How tightly his freezing fingers squeezed around her equally numb ones. Hoping she still had enough feeling in hers to realize he hoped to reassure her, and steady her trembling hand. But Gor blimey, there was so much blood ruining her freshly laundered apron.
If I go, it's with you or not at all. That's what I've decided. You or nothing.
James tried desperately to remember the face those words belonged to, but try as he might, his mind guarded him from what he had most to regret of Titanic.
Had there been someone else with him when the lights went out in that food service passage?
"James?...That we've already what?" Millie beckoned him to finish, ripping him out of the memory.
The deafening roar of a remorseless sea stopped ringing in James's ears, and so did that unsettling flicker of the Miss's porchlight.
Am I going completely mad?
Her brow perked curiously at him.
"What were you..."
Emily's eyes followed Moody's fixed gaze up to the porchlight glowing behind her, in search of whatever it was that had him so spooked.
And finding nothing there but the herky-jerky light, and the gentle rocking of her mermaid wind chime in the after-rain breeze, Emily made nothing of it.
Save for their mutual exhaustion over a perpetually exhausting day.
"I've been meaning to fix that too, since the landlady won't," she explained to Moody. "The wiring's all wonky in the back, so when the wind blows, the lightbulb turns that creepy satanic color. This whole apartment is falling apart."
Sighing, she pushed her stubborn door open wider to admit them both.
"Shall we then?"
But James remained outside her door as he allowed her the right of way first.
His polished shoes firm on the doormat reading "Beware of Cat", as he glanced around at the tiny nook that Miss Amberflaw called her "studio flat".
To his surprise, it was only yeigh larger than a sea captain's living quarters.
A sum of space that wouldn't have even been enough room for a pet bed-and-breakfast.
And yet, Miss Amberflaw seemed resolved to fill every corner of that pocket-size space with a lamp of some fashion. Table lamps, desk lamps, standing lamps, overhead lamps, night lamps, torchères. All of different sizes, colors, character, and luminosity.
"Do you require much light, Miss Amberflaw?" James asked her.
"That's gotta be the politest way anyone's ever told me I have OCD," she said, unzipping Wentworth from his cat carriage.
"It's a charming collection, to be sure."
"Charming...until you realize it's not just me being some crazy-lamp-lady," she answered. "I'd be lying if I said I can sleep without a light on. I hope that doesn't bother you?"
"You're frightened of darkness?"
"Not the dark itself. Just what the dark turns me into," she explained. "Don't worry. Nightmares aren't contagious. And luckily, not uncurable. It hasn't gotten bad for at least a year now. Besides, when you make as many quilt orders as I do, light is your friend."
James had been meaning to ask her about the quilts. And her peculiar choice of furniture.
From the doorway, he looked in on a sitting room of some fashion, with an oak baluster bench that served as a sofa, a hand-tied tartan quilt thrown over the arm, and a few fluffy pillows to spruce it up for comfort, dressed with elaborate hand-knitted navy blue patterns. There were two golden baroque chairs set out for extra seating, which were an eyesore to James, as they were in desperate need of polishing, and therefore, unsuitable for guests. But Miss Amberflaw proudly let him know that "distressed" was a fashion niche, and they were a lucky "thrift store find". One that paired well with her stacked wall hangings against the sitting room's brick walls, covered in art inspired by the classics tastefully placed around a small fireplace-electricity-powered, James marveled. The Miss favored an olden, dark academian style, with moody florals, Louis-Carolesque rabbits in waistcoats, and ladies of the romantic Victorian era in flowing gowns, leisurely reading novels.
In another corner, next to the balcony windows, was a chaise lounge dressed with bed pillows and blankets, and a candle warmer lamp cozily lit up next to a small library of books and potted Pothos.
And hugging a mason jar of wooden paint brushes was a small white sea-bear with a navy sailor's cap reading, White Star Line.
"Ioan bear", she called him.
An endearing little fellow she'd brought home from work at the museum.
And there was something comfortable about the tall glass doors that let in the golden streetlights from the Miss's balcony.
Small touches that made it a snug wee home of organized chaos, that seemed to stop and take a breath while the rest of the modern world raced on outside.
And to James, it nearly felt like...home.
The other half of her sitting room appeared to be broken off from a seamstress's shop.
A sewing machine sat atop a writing desk, next to a green banker's lamp, and a hanging curio of rows and rows of wooden spools of every color James could imagine. Blue, being the one Miss Amberflaw adored, as she owned every shade of it on the color wheel, from the palest sky blue to dark as a moonless ocean.
Opposite that was a mahogany carved armoire, oddly placed for a sitting room, but with such limited space, Miss Amberflaw had put it to good use.
With everything but her actual wardrobe, that is.
Save for the few handknitted gray cardigans and scarves hanging over the armoire's open doors, the shelves were lined with porcelain ball-jointed dolls in every stage of creation. Some had no heads. Some were faceless with a sickly phantom white color, as if they'd just come out from a furnace fire, waiting to be painted. Others had big brown eyes under wispy lashes, but no hair. Some had been sewn a miniature petticoat or evening dress. Their yarn hair pinned and curled in styles James easily recognized; the Gibson Girl, the Side-Swirl, the Pompadour. They were all styled with such impressively elaborate detail, they could almost pass for real ladies.
And how many socialites of his day would kill to have a hairdresser who could doll up just about anything?
It was so particular, in fact, that he wondered where the girl learned it all.
"Before you call me psycho, I promise there's a perfectly sane explanation for that," Emily forewarned him, as the officer stood perplexed before her collection of faceless and amputated dolls. "I have an Etsy shop."
"Duly noted," James answered. "Managing a shop, battling locks, repairing lamps, lending yourself as a doll's personal lady's maid...The only thing you don't mention is sleep."
"Sleep?" Emily mused. "What's that, exactly?"
"I hoped you might tell me," James answered. "We officers get none too much of it."
Emily's smile came easy then.
Following Moody's eager gaze as he inspected her little dinette with its stools set for two. Wishing again to see the world as new and shiny as he did. Because there were so many things she loved about this place but had forgotten.
And after delighting in the existence of a little pull-out drawer underneath the dinette, filled with Emily's secret stash of "Skittles"-as she called them-James came upon the art nouveau designs of swans and pink roses wrapped in the emerald borders around her latest quilt.
Tracing the many whimsical garlands of English Ivy, stitched into a garden of some sort, with two charming little quilt-people facing each other in the middle. Their faces were merely arbitrary scraps of patchwork, but James noted a man in his charcoal gray dinner blazer, and a woman in a simple white day dress with a basket full of azure blooms.
"This idea's been haunting me for months now," Millie said. "I just never have time anymore to finish it."
"It's stunningly detailed work, it is," James commended her. "Do you intend to sell it?"
"Not this one, no," Millie said quietly, tracing her fingers lightly along the stitched seams of her quilt. "I dream alot about this one. There's something personal about it...Something very tragic, in a way...But I own it...I don't really know how to explain it...I just know if I ever got rid of it, I'd feel like I was throwing away a piece of myself."
"You dreamt about all of this?"
"I dream very vividly."
"Do they mean anything to you?" James asked of the couple in the middle.
"Sometimes, I feel like they do...But really, it's just abstract work," Millie said, carefully folding the quilt away by each of its corners. "I guess you can say I'm a little obsessed with it lately. I'll work on it all night when I can't sleep...Some dreams I just can't get out of my head."
"Do you always dream so beautifully, I wonder?"
"Not always," she admitted quietly. "I guess that's why I'm so enamored with these two. They're the only dream I wished I never woke up from."
And as James wondered what other dreams haunted this quirky-albeit warm-hearted-Miss, the grandfather clock above the sewing machine chimed strong and true on the 8th hour.
"Anyway, you're welcome to my couch-bench or a sleeping bag," Millie offered him. "It's not much, but we'll make room. At least it's enough that we won't feel like we're sleeping together."
"S-sleeping to-together?" James stumbled over the words. "In this room alone, you mean?"
"There's a bathroom down that way, and a walk-in storage closet across from it," Millie pointed it out. "Otherwise, me and Captain Wentworth sleep here on the lounge."
"You don't even have a proper bed for yourself?" James asked, astonished.
"I couldn't even get one in here, if I tried," Millie said. "Welcome to New York."
"I'm sorry, miss, but I'm afraid I can't bedwell here," James excused himself. "I have taken careful note of where to find your eh-um...bothy cottage...and can now safely wish you goodnight. I will report promptly in the morning for my nannying duties, before you're off to work...Though you should know, I am ready to take full responsibility for this terrible misunderstanding."
"What do you mean?" a puzzled Millie asked. "You didn't do anything wrong."
"But you couldn't have meant that you wanted me to...to stay here with you...Unwed...In the same room alone...Going to bed together, that is?"
Millie cocked her head suspiciously at him.
"Wait, is that where you thought this was going?"
"N-no! Of course not. What I meant is-when you said room and board, I assumed-well, I didn't know that you only meant, eh-um, just a 'room'? I suppose I had a rather different idea," James went on stumbling. "That is to say, a man has no business in an unmarried woman's boudoir, lest he should risk her reputation or agree to marry her first."
"Trust me, Lancelot, I don't need anyone's help risking my reputation. The art of reputation-risking is what we do in the future," Millie winked at him. "Besides, it's not like letting you borrow my couch for a few days means I'm gonna ravish you. You're a little old for me. I mean, technically, you could be my great-great-great-great grandfather."
"Ah, now that's throwing me overboard," Moody defended himself. "Ah'm nobbutt 24."
"You were born in 1887."
"And I died in 1912. That makes me only 4 and 20."
"One hundred years ago, you mean," she pointed it out to him. "And that's called catfishing."
"My age's got nowt to do with fishing."
"It's not the same thing," Millie sighed, shaking her head hopelessly. "Forget it. We're getting nowhere."
"I can't agree more," James concurred wholeheartedly. "How is it you always make mention of the barmiest of things, as if we're-"
-"Never gonna have a sensible conversation."
James and Millie finished with each other at the same time.
And pausing only a moment to exchange the 'evil eye' with each other, they rushed on to speak again.
-"Might I just finish what I was meaning to say first-"
-"Will you just finish what you were gonna say first-"
James cleared his throat.
Millie nodded her oblige.
"It's not that I underappreciate your proposal. It's just I fear what could happen to you, if anyone were to find out we'd slept here together," James explained his deepest concerns. "Would you not be ruined because of me?"
"Things really aren't like that here."
"All the same...How can I not proceed in the utmost caution, after you've showed me so much generosity?" James told her. "I hold your virtue in the highest regard, whether you are a woman of the future or a lady of my own era. And I expect that the gentlemen of 2022 wouldn't treat you otherwise. Because it is the future, after all, and one should expect we've made progress in the manner in which we conduct ourselves?"
"Lancelot," Millie whispered in biting melodramatics, her brandy-hued eyes brimming with her deepest condolences. "I'm so sorry."
"But 100 bloody years, it's been," James insisted. "Apart from that magnificent motorcar outside, what can men say for themselves now?"
"I don't know, James," Millie sighed. "But if you don't want the couch-bench, maybe there's a sheet or something around here you can tie up and make a hammock. That's all I can say."
"Yes," James whispered, nodding as he came to accept the alternative. "Yes, I s'ppose that'll do nicely. The posts upon your balustrade will make an excellent support to hang one."
"On my balcony? You know I was joking, right?"
"And it's a capital idea," James declared. "There's plenty covering out there to keep me dry from the rain, and the old man can come and go to me as he pleases. There will be no reason for me to ever disturb your rest."
"Thank you, but I don't need you to defend the honor of my rest, on top of everything else," Millie assured him. "It's not like I'm gonna freak out if I accidently hear you pee."
"Christ al 'mighty," James breathed into his realization. "I hadn't even thought of how I'd go about that with a lady present."
"Not an issue."
"On the contrary," James countered. "There's hardly any room here for a lady. I wouldn't dare steal away your comforts. And what's more, I would not wish to lead you on with any misunderstanding, knowing we have no intention of becoming man and wife."
"Fine," Millie said. "There's only one way to solve this little problem of ours. If you need a wife for us to get some sleep here, then I'll fake be your wife for a night, if it'll get you to stop beating yourself up about it."
"Oh, that's lush."
James snorted into a laugh, as Millie brushed pass him to get to a stack of boxes she kept in her hall closet.
"Were you the last drop in the spout, I wouldn't take you for tea."
"Come now," Millie checked him, sending James's heart a-jigging away for that impish smirk of hers. "Is that any way to speak to the woman you love?"
"Very funny, you are," the officer gave in. "Right then. I'll take the hammock. Though after tonight, I will seek out alternative lodging and a private lavatory."
"Fine by me," Millie's answer was slightly muffled, still buried and hidden away in her storage closet looking for an extra blanket.
But struck by afterthought, she turned around again and leaned out from behind the closet door to ask him one more thing.
"Is one pillow enough?"
Catching herself within inches of crashing into Moody on the other side, having not realized that the officer was standing so near to the closet.
James's quick reflexes stopping the door between them just in time.
"Alright, miss?" he apologized for not warning her sooner that he was upon the closet door. "It'll be quite the contest, not knocking into each other perpetually in this boxy dollhouse of yours."
He supposed Millie had finally learned what she was in for, having a statuesque gent for a guest.
...Or was there some other reason why she'd gone unexpectedly silent in front of him?
"Why do you keep looking at me like that?" she asked Moody.
"Pardon?" he matched her soft hushed tone. "How do you mean, miss?"
"I don't know," she said. "Like you've lost me and would go up against the world to get me back."
It was James's turn to mimicry her impish smirk.
"How else should I go about looking at you, my darling wife?"
Millie knew it was only payback, for all the roasting she'd served him earlier.
But fucking hell, did he have to say it exactly in that way?
Like he was cutting straight into her heart.
"Look, Lancelot," Millie was ready to deaden it at last. "The so-called 'Good society'-or whoever you think is watching-can come up with whatever story they want. I've got my own reasons for helping you. And besides, you agreed to be my cat butler, remember? So, if anyone should ask...if anyone should believe you've ruined me irredeemably after tonight...you were only here for the cat and nothing else. Got it?"
"Very well. As you like it, miss."
"Bathroom is that way," Emily said, tossing him an old T-shirt and pajama pants from the closet. "Door to your left."
As Emily waited for James to reappear from her bathroom, she sat cross-legged on the floor and went to work on wrapping up his rain-battered officer's greatcoat in a plastic grocery bag.
Her eyes catching the dark discoloration around the neck of James's coat collar.
Was that...blood?
Examining it more closely, she caught a faint but distinct scent of sawn wood on the wooly fabric...and a hint of fresh paint?
So faint, in fact, that it might've gone easily unnoticed by anyone but Emily.
Her stomach turned a flip.
Strong scents like burning wood and paint varnish had always agitated her nose a little...but this smell...why did this one make her body react so strangely?
Like she was being tossed around a boat at sea, or had just run a marathon with someone threatening to pull a gun on her if she ever stopped.
That's the way her heart sounded in her ears.
But it was more than just her being anxious for no apparent reason.
She felt hopelessness, like a crushing weight on her chest.
She wanted to cry.
Caging Moody's buttoned coat in her hands, Millie felt the most profound sadness she'd ever known in her life.
Bringing to mind strange images of herself in a strange place, with pristine white hallways lit up by chandeliers, glimmering like fallen stars, and long elaborate red and gold-trimmed carpeting.
A wooden crate cradled in her arms, filled with freshly cut red and white roses, as she turned to a door with a golden number plate above the frame.
B-54.
There was a parlor room inside, and it looked exactly like walking into the Palace of Versailles. The walls a deep Mahogony and carved with gold ornate designs.
Setting the crate of roses down, she began putting the roses in white vases with angels sculpted all around them on the mantel.
A mirror and a clock matching the mahogany and gold theme of room reading a quarter past 1 in the afternoon.
There was a woman dressed in white pinstriped dress with red hair in the reflection of the mirror...and a lady's maid in her standard uniform. She was helping the red-haired woman unpack paintings from a box.
Picasso.
They were setting them all around the room against the tables and sofas...Until a man in a white waistcoat with dark hair joined them.
'God, not those fingerpaintings again. They certainly were a waste of money.'
'The difference between Cal's taste in art and mine is that I have some,' the red-haired woman replied. 'They're fascinating. It's like being inside a dream or something...There's truth but no logic.'
Emily didn't know it when James's coat fell out of her hands, gradually softening from her grip.
Her head still dizzy with dreamy white hallways and the smell of roses, that she barely felt something lightly drop out of Moody's coat.
A small brown leather journal fallen open from the officer's innermost pocket.
One word-written in Moody's rather flamboyant handwriting-flowed across the middle of the page on her plank wooden floor.
ICE.
Curiously, Emily scooped the journal up, finding more of Moody's scribbled notes on the other side.
'April 14th: 9:00 hours, Caronia reports bergs and growlers, 42 North, 49-51 West.'
'April 14: Lowe reports off watch a progress of 45 miles, and a speed made good 22.5 knots.
'Called down to engine room for report of 75 revolutions per minute at start of 10 p.m. watch. Clear night. Sextant readings and star charts confirm coordinates of...'
The smudges that followed were indecipherable, badly water-damaged and bleeding into the next page.
But Emily could just make out a page where Moody appeared to be keeping a running tally of lifeboat launches from the ship.
'12:10 a.m. Captain orders 'All hands on deck...Women and children first'
'Lifeboat 6 launch 12:55 a.m., Hichens-24 aboard.
'Lifeboat 8, 1:10 a.m. no officer, 27 aboard.
'Lifeboat 10 launch 1:20 a.m., no officer, 57 aboard.
'Lifeboat 12, able seamen Clench, Poingdestre, 1:25 a.m., 41 aboard.
'Lifeboat 14, 1:30 a.m., Lowe, 40 aboard.
'Lifeboat 16, 1:35 a.m...'
It was here that Officer Moody's writing stopped.
Falling eerily silent for the remaining pages of his personal officer's log.
Emily flipped all the way to the back of his journal, just to make sure, finding nothing but blank, unused, silent space.
A sobering end to a promising young man's life.
It wasn't until Millie reached the last flyleaf that she accidently discovered a handful of torn pages folded and hidden away under a small incision in the journal's aft binding.
The first one reading, 'Branson-Hang that bloody chauffeur and his Lady Mariella! It was Millicent, for God's sake!...Damn me to hell, her name was Lady Millicent Crawley.'
Emily raised a questionable brow at Moody's pining frustration.
So...Lancelot had a past.
Another theory to the last scribbles of ambiguous words across the remaining pages.
'Stay.'
'Forgive me.'
'Stay.'
The bathroom door opened at last.
James's ghostly bare feet stepping out into the hallway, drawing Millie's attention from his log.
"Well, one thing is sure. You won't like introducing me to a dinner party, but it's damn good cozy, I'd say," Moody approved cheerfully. "The chaps at Artic Monkeys make a champion sleeping suit."
His formal Cracker-Jack-Boy suit now traded over for the loose fit of navy plaid pajamas that dressed his sturdy thighs and the relaxed though affluent swelling tucked away beneath his button fly, now unstricken by his discarded long underwear. His officer's cap and starched dress collar no longer hiding his extraordinary height, or any endowed part of him made a secret by White Star Line's strict company rules.
But it was his hands that Millie couldn't stop bedding with her eyes.
Sculpted with beautifully prominent veins entwining from his wrists to his fair knuckles.
His broad shoulders relaxed in the slim-fit, light gray Artic Monkeys T-shirt that outlined his hardy chest and solidly athletic core. Speaking well for himself and a profession marked by all things "able-bodied". His forearms toned with muscle lines conditioned hale and hearty to last. Typical of a sea-bred lad built for rope work, repairing masts, hauling rigging, climbing rigging, and precariously hanging off some matter of rigging like the devil with might and main in a sea-storm. A brawn not developed from prowess alone, but of being quick-to-adapt, and cunning enough to build a range of focused control, with hands that made him master of both brute strength and gentle-detailing.
An old-world able-bodied sailor with a strong constitution of old-world self-command.
Leaving Emily at a loss for words–and partly jealous–for what that gray T-shirt did for the soft mariner-blue of his eyes.
With respect to tea-taking, Lancelot was dumb hot!
"Why do you look at me like that, miss?" Moody brought the cashier girl back home to her senses.
"What, sorry?"
"Dunno," he beamed suavely. "Almost as if you've lost me and never stopped wanting me back?"
Millie snorted into a laugh, letting her eyes wander away from the unexpectedly coy officer.
"As many times as I've tried getting rid of you today, I'm 100-percent-absolutely-sure-beyond-all-doubt that isn't it," she remarked rather uppishly, snapping out a folded bedsheet for his hammock. "But I'm sure Miss Millicent Crawley will require her finest fainting couch, once she finds out you've been missing for 100 years."
"Millicent?"
Emily pressed the page with Lady Millicent Crawley's name written on it against his anchor-hard chest, and walked on.
"If you're looking for a way to get back your memories," she said. "You can start there."