Am I going crazy?
Emily wondered driving home, replaying her mopping route over and over in her head, trying to remember if she'd missed some staff memo in the break room somewhere about Moody's portrait being moved.
Maybe it had just been taken down for cleaning or some other perfectly logical and mundane reason.
It was, after all, just a picture, and not the sunny sailor himself.
Other than leaving a strangely empty void in her workday upon learning of its mysterious disappearance, it wasn't anything to really make a fuss about.
She had bigger waves to cut through.
Like the walking-talking-breathing subject of said missing portrait.
And as lightning trailed like white sea rockets across a sapphire evening sky rolling like the Atlantic in the harbor, Emily figured now was as good a time as any to drop in on her shipwrecked officer.
Even so, if the cashier girl felt any remorse, taking the long way home in this storm was the last lingering regret on her mind.
It was James she couldn't help thinking of as she waited at the stoplight.
Knowing she couldn't just go home empty-handed.
The guy had, after all, watched her cat.
And who would she be if she didn't return the favor, making one more pitstop on the way home to bring back a little thank you for him.
For as her new cat-butler, she couldn't sit well with allowing the man to keep walking around in his pajamas like that.
Had she not decided to stop at Target and pick up a couple of men's trousers in various sizes for a 6 foot man–based on her seamstress guesstimations of Officer Moody's uniform–Emily might've beat the worst of the rain driving home from work.
She gripped the driver's door of her car, catching her converse from slipping into a split on the oily rain puddles that had flooded her car park.
"Dammit, forgot my umbrella at the register again."
And so, veiling her frizzing wet locks with her peacoat instead, she bent back into her car to grab the Target bag with James's new trousers and her phone buzzing madly on her seat.
Hoping that it was one of the hospitals finally calling about Pax, she quickly put the phone to the rain-dampened tresses around her ear.
"Yes, hello?...I'm sorry, what?...Cat-sitting?...No, I'm sorry, you got the wrong number again...Of course, I'm sure that I'm sure...Well, I don't know how you got this number, but it's still the wrong one, I'm very sorry. Good luck though!"
The puzzled Millie hung up straight away.
Unsure as to why she kept getting all these strange calls lately about cats.
But she wasn't getting any drier wondering about it, so she dropped her phone back into her white work apron for safekeeping.
Only to pause again suddenly on the flooding sidewalk, when she felt something else clink against her phone at the bottom of her apron pocket.
Pulling out James's sapphire diamond cupped in her palm, as it glimmered in the falling rain and car park lights above her.
Shit.
She'd been running so late to work after dropping off James's officer suit to the dry cleaners, that she'd completely forgotten to stop by her work locker and leave the necklace there when she clocked in for her shift. And she wasn't due back to work until the day after tomorrow, which meant she'd be juggling around the responsibility of a terrifyingly jinxed and mortifyingly expensive diamond until then.
But even that would have to wait for the rain.
Dropping the Heart of the Ocean safely back into her maid's apron, she fumbled around for her keys to begin her nightly battle with the door lock.
And just as she jammed the key in-
"Excuse me?" a woman appeared lost as she approached Emily from the sidewalk. "Is this Moody's Cat Hotel? My sister dropped my cats off here earlier and I couldn't get ahold of anyone to pick them up. A woman answered the phone and said I had the wrong number, but my sister swore the number belonged to a guy with a hot British accent."
"Moody's Cat Hotel?" Emily repeated, curiously tilting her head, as little by little, the mysterious cat-and-mouse game with her phone started to make sense.
"Yes, I was told this is where I pick up my cats."
"And this guy with a British accent told you that?"
The door opened unexpectedly, as none other than Officer James Paul Moody peeked out and looked about the porch, as if he were expecting someone special who hadn't turned up yet. Holding Captain Wentworth fast against his side, who appeared to be caked from head to toe in gravy, with the sound of the blender hacking away somewhere from the inner kitchen to the chorusing of cat meows.
And when James's searching sky blue eyes finally looked upon the raised brow of Miss Emily Amberflaw, his baby blues widened considerably.
"Miss Millie," said he.
"James," said she.
"I've been waiting all the while for you," the astonished officer informed the astonished cashier girl. "Any longer, and I would've worried. And look at the state of you. If you were any wetter, I could rig a sail on you."
"Thanks, James," Emily remarked, as her own gaze took in his much spiffier outfit than the one she'd braved the storm to pick out for him at Target. "Apparently, you haven't done too bad without me either."
And by that, she meant dressed to the vintage nines in a green-gray pullover plaid wool jumper, with a freshly ironed gray collared dress shirt underneath, a pair of sophisticated dark brown slacks with the golden chain of his pocketwatch-still jammed on 2:20-and a sweet matching necktie. On each of his broad shoulders was a kitten, two in his pockets, and still more batting about his shined shoes as he dodged around them to make himself presentable before the ladies.
Making sure his hair was in order with one or two pat-downs, James joined them on the porch.
His eyes yet captured by Millie, and his heart that swelled like a high tide upon seeing his employer standing there with her arms crossed over her chest in her maid's skirt, her hair twirling in romantic wet curls around her hazel eyes.
A fine thing, she was...and even finer while wet.
"James," Millie brought him back to his senses. "I believe this woman is here for her cat."
"Right. Good evening, Madam. I'll go and fetch him."
James turned around into the apartment to do so, only to stop again before a house full of boxing kittens...and reverse his steps back to the confused girls still waiting for him at the door.
"I say, madam, which one did you come for?"
"Flotsom and Jetsom."
"Oh right, these lads here," James peeled their tiny sewing needle claws from either of his shoulders. "Here you are, Madam. Fit as a crumpet."
"Did they mind their manners?"
"Yes, madam, no trouble at all. That one there would start a fight all with himself, though, should ye turn yer back on him. He'd make a fine brevet for one 5th officer I know," James told her lightheartedly, passing them both over for her pet carrier. "Right then, thank you for choosing Moody's Cat Hostelry."
"This is for you," she said, tipping him 40 bucks. " And I'll be calling again next week."
And then Millie and James stood on the porch together, both waving and smiling after her as she went.
James's smile being of his usual warm and sunny aura, and Millie's, well put on for a customer service girl.
"James. Explain."
"A long story, it is," he muttered back to her. "Oh, and you should know, duck, we're fresh out of milk."
"You were supposed to go out for milk, and now you're running a cat inn?"
"Hostelry," Moody corrected her. "It's the branding that counts, Miss Millie."
And Millie knew she shouldn't encourage him...but couldn't help but ask him nonetheless.
"How much have you made from cat-sitting, exactly?"
"Ah sure look!"
James reached into both his fancy trouser pockets, and pulled out a hefty stack of bills.
"With a few cats here and there-reckoning in the cost of my new day suit, hat and gloves-and my inherent business expenses-"
"Business expenses?"
"Aye, miss. It's a promising venture, cat-sitting, but all the same, an investment. And with each kittlin wanting his own box, and toys, and blenders...I'd say I've made at least 3 hundred American dollars today."
"Three hundred?" Millie whispered in disbelief. "Are you sure?"
And noting the stunned look on Emily's face, James asked her worriedly, "Blimey...don't tell me I've still not enough money to buy you a proper dinner?"
But before Emily could give him an answer, another customer of his was already at their door.
"Hi there, is this where I pick up my kitty? I tried calling ahead, but this crazy lady answered saying I had the wrong-"
"No, you're in the right place! Welcome to Moody's Cat Hostelry," Emily greeted him more keenly. "Which kitten are you here for today?"
"Mr. Jack Sparrow."
"Aye, very good, sir. The orange fellow with one eye," James turned to go look for him. "Right away, sir, I'll fetch him for ye."
And once the busy cat-sitter got a moment in between passing kittens out the door, James finally caught his air long enough to sweep up the little yellow gift bag he'd left waiting on the table for Millie.
"Er, um, anno it's not much for allowing me to room on your balcony, but this is for you, miss," he said, presenting it to his hostess.
And Millie peeked into the bag like a child on Christmas when she saw the jumbo tin box of tasty Costco Belgium dark chocolate salted caramels with Macadamia Nut Clusters.
"I love these things! How did you guess?"
"I didn't, truthfully," he admitted. "They were my favorite of the lot, so I thought you should have them."
"I got you something too," Millie said, offering him the Target bag now dripping with rainwater. "I know I can't really pay you much for cat-sitting, but I thought you might like these. I had hoped to surprise you first, but looks like you beat me to it."
"Ah, kegs!" he noted with delight, upon peeking in the Target bag. "You've no idea how I sorely wished for these only this morning. I'm grateful you took the trouble. Thank you, Miss Millie."
"And you, Mr. Moody," she nodded to him with her new tin of chocolates in hand.
"Not so bad then, my first go at Costco? Champion people, they were," James told her, ever so pleased with himself. "Though, I'm sorry to say, I did not understand the American penny well enough to prepare you a meal in time. Even so, I am a man who aims to please."
And then the officer offered her his arm.
"Miss Millie," he said to her. "I've prepared us a table on your balcony, served with the finest sample hot chocolate Costco has to offer. Would you do me the honor of your company tonight?"
—-
After returning all the kittlins to their rightful owners, and Emily had changed into something more comfortable, James and she spent the evening out watching the rain fall and enjoying to their heart's very content the many free Costco samples the officer had put away for her.
And with the Bailey's Irish Cream half gone, the table dusted with hot coco mix, and a small brandy bottle Millie kept in her cupboard for such life-is-beautifully-short-so-let's-celebrate occasions, they were halfway to tipsy off their 3rd cup of hot coco.
James sat across from Millie on her balcony table, taking turns roasting jumbo marshmallows with her over a miniature tabletop fire pit.
A "s'mores roaster", she had called it. A wee delightful nibble that regretfully hadn't been invented until the 1920's, well after James's time.
And as Millie's brandy to hot coco ratio became more relaxed as the night went on, her fleeting glances at James steadily became more deliberate. Her eyes dewy and soft against the curling happy ginger flame between them.
"You're like a fairy tale, James," she said suddenly. "Straight out of a dream, even."
And though he knew she wouldn't like being called Millicent Crawley, James still felt that he had always privately saw dreams in her too.
It was she who belonged in a fairy tale, with her likeness to the heiress at Downton, and he who had always been a common nobody hopelessly in love with a dream he could never have.
Though she believed herself to be no more than a Cinderella in this grim version of reality, James couldn't stop seeing the long-held beauty in her, deserving only the gilded world she'd left behind.
Perhaps it was better then that they both agreed she was not Miss Millicent Crawley.
Like the fall from grace that had become Titanic, it would be evermore rueful for James to imagine the real Millicent trapped in this markedly dimmer world.
"You mean to say, you do dream after all, miss?" he teased her, as he got his own marshmallow nice and golden, with a little crusted burnt around the edges.
Just the way he liked it.
And apparently, just the way Wentworth liked it too, as the cat kept clawing at the roasting stick with one penny eye on the prize, and one on James to make sure the officer was too distracted by Millie to take notice.
"I mean, without it sounding completely weird or anything," she said. "There's something about you I can't figure out. I'm not even sure what to call it, honestly...I just know I love it about you."
And the corners of James's marshmallow-coated lips turned up rather bashfully after that.
"Well then," he said. "I must endeavor to give you more of that."
And with the hot coco mix gone, and their Costco pickings nearly finished, James still wasn't ready to let go of such a cozy night, with such comfortable company.
"Ah, I reckon I've had bed side table, drawers and wardrobe by now, as chuffed as I am for what I've eaten today...Tell me more about your day, miss," James beckoned her, eager to keep their chat going a little longer. "I want to hear everything."
"Work was work, as expected...And oh, come to think of it...I did notice your portrait in the museum went missing today," Millie told James, as she used her pinky to catch the little bit of melted marshmallow creaming from her graham cracker. "I swear it was there my last shift."
"Do you mean that limey portrait I had taken for the Oceanic?" he asked, his iceberg for a complexion blushing a little warmer. "You mean to say that for the last century of existence, the entire world has remembered me only by that singular photograph? Ah, bugger hell. My ruddy nose looked massive from that angle, it did."
"I really don't think anyone was looking that hard."
"It's no small wonder they didn't chuck it away sooner. It is still very much indeed a poor portrait, but it is the best the camera could do with its difficult subject," James sighed. "I told Christopher to hang it in poor light or stow it away altogether. It was really so ugly that I didn't want to inflict it on more people than possible. However, I see now that he'd done the exact opposite, which I suppose, is the way of older brothers."
"How are you this hard on yourself?" Emily asked him. "Your nose is fine. If anything, I think it makes you more hot."
James's brow rose.
"Hot?" he repeated her odd little way with words. Not entirely sure what she meant by comparing him to a boiler room or a tea kettle, but liking the smokey way she said it nonetheless. "Do you, now?"
"I mean generally speaking," Emily tried to untangle herself from the sail of his wild imagination she'd gawkily sent off. "As far as pictures go, it's an aesthetically pleasing selfie."
"I gathered well enough what you meant, miss," James said, grinning. "You think me divine?"
"Now don't get carried away."
"That I am nobbut a man, but a lovesome fanciable bastard with a massive nose?" James went on teasing her. "I rather imagined it myself, ere you ever said a word."
"Well, your memory may not be good, but your hubris is still going strong."
"Ah, well, a sense of humor ne'er costed an American penny, miss," he had her know.
Emily snorted a laugh.
"What?" questioned he. "Are you still heckling me about the supermarket?"
"No," Emily smiled. "It's just, you got something on your..."
She indicated the spot for him on the corner of her lips.
"Is my face hacky with marshmallow?" He wiped it clean with his big sailor's hands. "Blimey, were you ever going to tell me?"
Emily passed him a hand towel to wipe it with, still smiling to herself as she took another nibble of her s'more.
"Have you remembered anything yet?" she asked him.
"Not quickly enough, I'm afraid," James told her. "While I was out fetching your milk, I learned about a man who tried to steal a diamond from a museum, much like the one I have...It struck me down...He looked like a man I knew as Patrick Crawley."
"Patrick Crawley?" Emily questioned that she was hearing him right. "You mean, the heir of Downton?"
James stilled at her unexpected recognition of the old name.
Hopeful.
"You know of Patrick Crawley?"
"Um, sure, about as well as I know a TV character," Emily said. "He's a character on Downton Abbey."
"Beg your pardon, miss? A TV character?"
"Oh, you know, a TV. You watch dramas on it," Millie informed him. "The story goes, Patrick and his father die on the Titanic, as the last heirs to the earldom of Downton, and that's what starts the whole main plot of the show."
"Oh," James answered, taking his hope down a peg again. "You meant a moving picture."
"I never finished it, honestly," Emily said. "Something about the show just really...got under my skin. All the rules and traditions and things, I guess...But Patrick is only mentioned a couple of times in the show. He doesn't actually make an appearance until later on, and even then, the man who claims to be 'Patrick Crawley' is unrecognizable. I'm surprised you recognized the actor."
"I don't believe we mean the same Crawley, miss. He wasn't any actor," James said. "Patrick Crawley was the man who left my life in ruin, as well as hers. And there really was a Downton in Yorkshire once. I can't say what's become of it now. And if I'm honest, I don't feel there's any part of me that cares. Had it not been for that damned place, she might've..."
James's voice broke off with the stirring, unsatisfied resentment in his chest, as he distracted himself by the rain falling in softer mists around the balcony.
"She might've lived a full, happy life," he finished quietly. "Had they left her alone to it, she would have been happy."
"You really loved her, didn't you?" Emily asked him gently. "The maid you knew on Titanic."
"If I had loved her," James said. "I had a swell way of showing it in the end, didn't I? Even in that moment, our last night on Titanic...I couldn't tell her exactly what she wanted to hear. I was already losing her."
"Do you think she'd still want to hear you say it?"
"Whatever the case...I would hope that what I say to her now is somewhat different than what I intended to say before," James answered her. "The world here is rather a different place than the one we knew together. Even as an officer, I wasn't free to love her as I wanted...Though, maybe in this world, I might've done it fully."
"And if you could go back...knowing what would happen...would you have done it any differently with her?" Emily wondered quietly. "If it meant going back to Titanic and dying the same way as before, would you still do it?"
"The truth of it is, Miss Millie, if given that chance, I can't say that I wouldn't," James confessed. "No matter how it should end, I wouldn't change even a footstep, if it showed me away from hers."
"Then she's a lucky girl."
"And what would you choose for yourself, Miss Millie?" James returned the question. "If you loved someone so deeply...would you leave your world behind for them?"
"You mean, would I jump back on the ship?" Millie dared him with a smile. "Absolutely."
"Well," said James. "Let's hope the man who loves you is strong enough to throw you back over."
"Then he'd better be ready to come overboard with me," she countered. "I'd make you fit on the door, I don't care."
"Sorry, what door?"
"Never mind," Millie changed the subject. "What I'm trying to say is...Remembering her seems really important to you...And I think I just thought of a way to help you remember your lost love."
"Have you?"
"Mind you, I got this idea from 50 First Dates, but just hear me out," she told him. "The female lead has this thing called Goldfield Syndrome, which makes her lose her memory after every date, and her romantic interest has to find new ways to make her fall in love with him over and over again...Maybe if we role-played one of your memories with her, it'll help you remember more."
"Goldfield Syndrome, you say?" James considered it thoughtfully. "Well, I say there's no harm in trying it. How exactly does this experiment of yours work?"
"Oh wait!" Emily stopped him suddenly. "Hold that thought. This is absolutely my favorite Ed Sheeran song!"
Millie slid out of her seat to grab her phone resting on the rim of her potted French Lavender, cranking up the volume of her Spotify, as she sang along, "She played a fiddle in an Irish band, but she fell in love with an Englishman."
And then a puzzled James watched as the jolly little Miss and her adorably fuzzy pink house slippers jigged around in merry circles to the swingy tune, her let-down sandy waves twirling around with her, in what James could only describe as something like the Turkey Trot of his day.
As if the sunlight never left her, come what may of the rain.
And gradually, James's puzzled smile relaxed into the bittersweetness of a torn heart, as he watched Emily dance merrily alone all by herself.
'I should say...she was right,' thought he. 'She is very much happier with her life here.'
And by the time the song got around to that part of it she seemed to love the most-"Kissed her on the neck and then I took her by the hand, said, 'Baby, I just want to dance' with my pretty little Galway Girl."- Millie grabbed James's hand and pulled him into the jigging frenzy with her.
And just like that, as the Titanic Officer and the Miss helped each other remember the steps to a dance they'd both forgotten, James wondered if this was how it had been for that Miss from 50 First Dates. To fall in love with someone all over again, and learn still another reason why it was always meant to be this way.
And thank the heavens that the same couldn't be said about brandy and those fuzzy house slippers of Millie's.
Because had Miss Emily been wearing the proper shoes for a happy dance like hers, James might've saw no other chance to pull her safely into his arms, just as she'd hesitated her next step.
And when he had her steadied against his firmly fixed chest at last, James didn't let go.
Not even when their song shuffled to the next, to something a great deal more melancholy but nonetheless, as beautiful as the falling star he'd caught in his arms.
But you stood by my side
Night after night, night after night
You loved me back to life,
We're lovers again tonight.
Whatever doubt she had believed about herself before, James only held her longer through all of it.
His baby blue eyes swearing some unsaid everlasting promise she didn't feel she'd earned, even as some quiet instinct in her realized this is what she'd meant about loving something in him all along. And left irreclaimably captivated by the pull of his warmhearted nature, Millie didn't bother letting go of James either.
And as he adored the art of light and shadow on her face, the ghostly Titanic officer felt that it wasn't until now that he'd truly come back to life.
"I know your face," James whispered to Millie, as his caged knuckles reverently traced down her brow to her chin. "I've missed you, love."
And knowing that they were only role-playing to bring to life his broken memories, Emily reminded herself again that he didn't actually mean her, but Miss Millicent Crawley.
Even as Emily's beating heart left her breathless when the officer said it, she had to remember that it was only just an exercise between them.
"There's something you remember about us like this?" she asked him softly.
"Aye...I do believe we've been here once before," he told her. "May I show you how I remember it?"
Millie nodded yes.
And James's numbly cold fingers entwined with the trembling warmth of hers, as he drew her closer to him.
Rather tenderly, she thought, as if she were everything in this world that meant anything to him.
In a way she'd never been loved before, even in her most yearning imaginings.
Only...It was another girl's love story that she saw in his eyes, and it would always belong to that girl.
But though Emily had walked into this experiment ready for the unexpected, nothing prepared her for the gentle way James rested his chin against her shoulder, his nose lightly grazing the crook of her neck. And having no predetermined plan for a gesture so achingly intimate, Millie followed her heart into it instead. Her eyes fluttering closed to the buzzing warmth sweeping over her, with every part of her body that surrendered to his as James carried her away with him into a slow waltz.
How effortless, it was, remembering with her.
And as they danced on, James believed he could've spent his whole second lifetime dancing with her like that.
But like the one he'd left behind in 1912, James knew again that aching heartsickness for those ephemeral moments he could never hold onto, as their song came to an end.
Slowly, he glided with Millie into a stop. Neither of them realizing that the silence left behind by the music was one more reason they should let go.
"Miss," James whispered into the hoodie of her grey hand-knitted cardigan.
"Mhm?" Millie's murmur came sleepily against his soft jumper.
"Forgive me...but your gramophone has stopped playing."
"Mhm."
"And it's gotten a bit parky out. I won't have you catch cold," he said quietly, glancing up again at the chilling rain all around them. "Though...if you would allow it...suppose we might stay a little longer like this? Before you go in for the night."
"Mhm," came Millie's content little mumble.
So, James went on holding her in his arms.
Closing his eyes and breathing in her violet perfumed hair, damned to ever let himself forget it again.
Desperate to commit to memory every word, every touch, and every breath of her with him like this, as if he knew how different things would be when they awoke in the morning.
When the brandy and hot chocolate lost hold of them, how quickly they would once again go back to being Miss Emily Amberflaw, the shopgirl, and Mr. James Paul Moody, the cat butler.
Much to the anguish of James's heart.
"Don't you know me, my love?" he whispered to her. "What must I do to get you back?"