The Titan Drowns: Time Travel Romance by Nhys Glover (highly recommended books .txt) 📕

not realise just how attractive he was to the opposite gender. As if he was unused to conversing with women.

‘Do you have sisters?’ she asked him, following through on that thought. It may well be that he did not have much opportunity to associate with women.

‘Sisters? Why, no. I had a brother once, long ago. But he died, as did my parents.’

‘Who raised you?’

For a moment, Karl looked rather puzzled, until he put the pieces together. ‘They passed after I was grown. I am older than I look.’

She studied his unlined face with its square jaw, straight nose and broad forehead. A stray lock of brown, undressed hair fell across that brow and she had the strongest urge to stroke it back out of his eyes. He looked to be no older than twenty. How old could he be to have been fully grown when his parents passed long ago?

‘What do you see when you look at me that way?’ he asked her softly, leaning in so their faces were only a foot apart. His warm, brown eyes seemed to engulf her and she bathed in them, soaking up their heat, allowing them to heal the pain and fear of the last year and more.

Looking at him like this, Peabody and his painful attack seemed like it happened to another girl. No one who looked into these brown eyes could be as besmirched and unworthy as she’d felt herself to be for the last five months. It was as if, in these precious moments, she was reborn, her agonising past wiped away. Once again, she was the light-hearted girl she’d been at College, before that fateful train accident took away her past and future.

‘Lizzie?’

‘Hmm?’ she had completely forgotten what he’d asked her.

‘What do you see when you look at me with such concentration?’ he repeated.

‘I… I do not know. I just find your visage appealing. You look young… younger than me, and yet you seem to be so mature. So calm and collected, as if you have seen so much and weathered many storms. Yet you have emerged unscathed. That sounds silly, I do apologise.’

He took her gloved hand and held it between his own. ‘No. It is not silly at all. I have never met anyone who could read me as you have just done. I have spent a very long time mastering my demeanour so that others cannot see my thoughts. My father did not approve of emotions. It feels good to be seen…’

‘My father could be a hard man, too. It was their generation, I think. But I believe men feel just as deeply as women, and it seems unfair that you should be forced to hide those feelings just because you are a man.’

‘It was not about being a man for my father. It was about being an intellect. Emotions dulled the intellect.’

‘What is your career path?’

‘I am a medical researcher. A physician.’

‘But you are so young!’ she said with stunned amazement.

‘As I have said, I am older than I look. And my education was accelerated because of my intellect.’

‘Is that why you have trouble talking to girls, because you were always around people older than yourself?’

He looked at her in astonishment and then gave a soft hoot of laughter. ‘Do I have trouble talking to girls? I thought I was doing very well with you, Mrs Jones.’

‘Oh, I do apologise. I did not mean it as an insult. You have been very good company. But I just sense that this is new to you, this level of… intimacy, for want of a better word, which we have developed so quickly. I like that you are ill at ease with my gender. If you are, of course. I may have that entirely wrong.’

‘No,’ he admitted with a slow shake of his head. ‘You do not have it wrong. I talk quite freely with colleagues who are women, but do not quite know how to converse socially. And yet, you are right. That does not seem to be the case where you are concerned. I feel like I have known… never mind.’

‘Like we have known each other for a very long time? That is how I feel, too.’

‘You do? Is that what you meant when you said you thought you knew me?’

‘Yes. Never mind, that was the ship’s horn. Shall we go out on deck and wave to the people?’

Karl stood and helped her to her feet. ‘Yes, let us go aft on the B Deck promenade. We should see those on deck and those on the shore quite well from there. I have friends in steerage I would like to see, just to know they boarded safely.’

Later, after the madness of that tearful departure was over, she went back to her stateroom alone to freshen up before luncheon. At the door, she met an angry-faced woman with faded blonde hair who had to be Mrs Duncan.

‘I suppose you were the one who commandeered the bottom bunk. Well, I am sorry my dear, but you are to be disappointed. I will be sleeping in the bottom bunk.’

She saw that her bag and night attire had been removed from the bunk she had left it on and placed on the divan. Her mouth fell open in astonishment. For a moment, she was lost for words.

However, Lucy came to her rescue, appearing in the doorway with a knowing, compassionate glance. She placed blankets and linen on the divan before turning to Lizzie. ‘Never mind, Madam, I will make up the divan for you. Can’t have you clambering about in your condition, can we?’ I’ll make it up while you are at luncheon. Then if you feel like a little rest in the afternoon, you will be able to do so.’

‘Where am I expected to sit, may I ask, if she takes the only seat in the room?’ demanded the middle-aged blonde imperiously.

‘Your cabin is for sleeping, Madam. There are plenty of places to sit quite comfortably around the ship,’ Lucy replied cheerily.

Lizzie was so grateful to the young woman she could have kissed her.

Hurriedly, she left the stateroom and made her way down the corridor to the water closets. Then, at the sink, she washed her face and brushed back stray wisps of hair that had escaped the knot on the top of her head after she’d removed her hat.

The twinkle in her eyes was new, she realised, as she studied her face in the mirror. And her lips seemed to be turning up at the ends without her conscious thought.

This was what it felt like to feel romanced, she realised wonderingly. After everything she’d been through, finally her life had turned along a new and exciting path. Suddenly, she felt young and dizzy. Not even her obnoxious roommate would be allowed to spoil her new-found pleasure.

 

Chapter Eleven

 

Eilish

 

The walk up the gangway into the bowels of the Titanic was one of the most memorable moments in Eilish’s long life. The noise and the chaos, the smell of the sea mixed with the acrid smell of coal smoke, unwashed bodies and fresh paint, all melded together to imprint itself indelibly onto her memory. She wished she could be sharing the moment with Max. It was an ache in the centre of her chest just knowing that he was somewhere nearby and yet she could not go to him. What would his first impressions be of this mighty liner?

They had not slept at all last night, desperate as they were to make the most of their time together. He was as passionate and greedy as any teenage boy. Her own reactions to their closeness continued to amaze her. She hoped to get an opportunity to talk to Jac or Julio about what was happening to her. It would have been better if it were Faith so she got the female perspective, but the men on this mission were the only ones here who knew what it was to fall in love after hundreds of years in a sexless, clone body. Getting Luke’s second-hand impression didn’t really help.

She glanced back at Luke, who was following her up the gangway. He looked so young! It was such a shock. And the worry lines that had been etched so deeply into his face were gone. Although, if he kept frowning as he was doing now, they’d be back fairly quickly. But for all the frowning, he seemed oddly light, as if the decision to change bodies had lifted a huge weight off his soul. Not only did he look younger, but he seemed younger now, too.

A child began to cry a few passengers ahead of her and she gritted her teeth, as the sound jarred her nerves. They were all tired and fed up with the delays of the process, and the children were having the hardest time with it; no wonder so many of them were whining and crying. The medical exam, or what passed for one, had been insulting and cursory. The most that they could say about their health was that they ran no fever and had no head lice.

It was even more insulting to know that the first and second class passengers didn't have to go through the health exam. Heaven forbid that anyone should suggest that the upper classes might be diseased. But, keeping in mind the times, they had all borne the poking, prodding and combing in patient silence and moved on to the next checkpoint.

Now, hours after reaching their designated area at dockside early that morning, they were finally getting their chance to board. Eilish took a quick smell of the flower she had been handed at the start of the gangway. Every person boarding was being given one, and though the carnation was wilted after hours out of water, its scent was still fresh. She couldn’t remember reading anywhere that flowers had been given out on this maiden voyage; it was a little detail that seemed like a glaring omission.

They stepped through the companionway and down off the wooden gangplank into the interior of E Deck. For some reason she noticed the new linoleum tiles under-foot. Not what the first class passengers would be walking on, she was certain of that.

Stewards in white coats were yelling instructions as they looked at tickets and pointed off in different directions.

‘Keep moving. Have your tickets ready. That’s right, keep going straight ahead…’ the closest one was yelling. His voice was already raspy from yelling over the chatter.

She, Luke, Bart and Pia were on the one ticket under the assumed names of Mary, Ryan and Michael O’Riley and their cousin Petra Yohansen. They were allocated a four-berth cabin in Area K, which Luke told her after studying the deck plans at home, was on E Deck. Cara, Jac, Jane and Julio were on the other ticket as Jan and Hilda Braun, and Jane and Peter Davenport. They had a four-berth cabin just near theirs. It was going to take some getting used to using their aliases and accounting for their odd mix of nationalities. Karl had been lucky. They’d found a Karl Langman listed on the second class passenger list who had no paper trail. It meant that he didn’t have to try to answer to any but his own Christian name.

The passenger list hadn’t included all cabin allocations, so she knew from planning discussions that they had decided to get cabins close together for ease of communication. It might have been better to be spread out so they could mix more readily with their neighbours, but someone had pointed out that mixing was much more likely in the recreational and dining areas than in the corridors outside their cabins.

Eilish was glad they were all close together. It was somewhat frightening to be surrounded by so many strangers, all intent on finding their berths. More than a few women were now crying too. Female stewards were hurrying into their midst and gently helping them find