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

manage Catherine’s father’s large general store here in Queens, and I am kept busy with the demands of work and family.

We would like to invite you to join us here in New York, Sis. I cannot hope to make up for the last year you have spent alone, but I will try to right my wrongs. Come and live with us. Catherine is in need of feminine companionship, as her own dear mother died when she was very young and she has no sisters or close female relatives. You can continue your education if that is your wish. You were always much brighter than I, as I was constantly reminded by our father. However, what I lack in wit, I have made up for with hard work, and I am well pleased with the life I have carved out for myself here.

I have taken the liberty of wiring to the Western Union Office in London the sum of one hundred dollars, which should provide you with sufficient funds for a second class berth on a steamer to New York, as well as extras for the journey. Please let me know of your arrangements and I will be at the docks to meet you.

I cannot say often enough how sorry I am for my part in your travail in the last year. To be so young, destitute and alone during your time of grief is more than I can bear to think about. However, if you join us here, Catherine, Mary and I will be your family and you will never be alone again.

 

Your loving brother

Bertie

 

Lizzie wasn’t aware that she was crying until she felt the cold drops fall onto her hands. It was a dream-come-true. Bertie wanted her to come to New York and live with him and his new family. She would be able to continue her education after all.

Then the awful reality of her situation hit her anew. She was with child. She was unmarried and with child. There would be no further education for her. In the coming months, all her time would be occupied by the demands of motherhood. And even if she were to finish her degree, working was frowned on for those who held the important role of mother.

What would her brother think when he found out she was a fallen woman? Would he renege on his offer because her moral character would infect his females? If Bertie had been like their father, he would react in exactly that way. However, Bertie had always been rebellious and a free thinker. That was why America had seemed such a perfect place for him to go. Maybe that freethinking would extend to acceptance of a dishonoured sister.

Or, maybe not.

What if she were to write and tell him she was a widow? She could claim to have married a young man who subsequently died. But her brother named her as Elizabeth Faulkner with her employer’s address on the envelope of his letter. How could she then tell him such a tale if her parent’s solicitors had told him different?

Even so, the more she thought about it, the more determined she was that possessing a dead husband was the only way that she would be able to navigate her new circumstances. The idea of lying to her brother was repellent, but the idea of him rejecting her was even more repellent. And in America, there would be no one to say she had lied. She could start afresh as a young widow doubly weighed down by the grief at the loss of parents and husband.

A hundred dollars awaited her at the Western Union. That was about twenty pounds, if she calculated rightly. That would be more than enough for a second class ticket and the cost of accommodation in a nice place for the time it took to get a suitable steamer berth. For the first time in more than a year, Lizzie felt as if her life was finally looking up.

 

 

Chapter Two

Eilish

 

11 March 1912, London ENGLAND

 

When Eilish Cork stepped out of a darkened alley onto rain-soaked Bury Street, St James, with Luke Bedford on her arm, anyone awake at that late hour might have assumed some salacious business transaction had just taken place in that alley. By the time they reached the intersection where Bury Street met the more populated Jermyn Street, any person viewing the pair might have assumed they were a happy couple making their way home from a night out in the West End. When they turned into The Cavendish, a moderately priced hotel on Jermyn Street, where a night bell brought a groggy concierge and the hasty exchange of some Guineas to find them a room with no questions asked, an observer might have suspected that a romantic liaison of a clandestine and discrete nature was taking place.

None of these observations would have come anywhere near the truth.

‘What a night!’ Eilish exclaimed, as she tossed off her broad-brimmed hat and flopped backward onto the double bed in their small room. It didn’t offer much in the way of a bounce. But it was enough to knock some of her wild, black hair loose from its confines so it fanned out around her head like Medusa’s snaky locks.

‘Typical London weather. I remember what it was like here in the war. Raining one night, bombing the next. You eventually got ta preferrin’ the safety of the miserable, wet nights.’ Luke removed his overcoat and hung it neatly in the huge Victorian wardrobe.

‘It is rather exciting to be here at this time. So much earlier than any Jumps I have made previously. My god, did you see that old Tin Lizzie parked along the road? Absolutely ancient!’

She shifted to her side and stared at the broad back of her mission partner. They were largely strangers to each other, even though they had been part of the same team for more than four years. It felt odd to be sharing such close quarters with this larger-than-life hero for the first time.

It had taken her quite a while to get used to Jumping with a partner at all. In the past, they’d always worked alone in-situ. However, in the last six years the rules had changed, and the new Protocol required two Jumpers for every Target. In those six years, she’d mostly been paired up with women. Although she had Jumped with Julio Santa Catarina in the early days of the Child Retrieval Program before Jane became his regular partner.

Jumping alone had always suited her. However, once the restrictions such a partnership required were overcome, the advantages became apparent. Not the least of which was having a companion who could relate to her amazement and wonder at the sights they saw in-situ.

That her partner on this Jump was the infamous Luke Bedford had, at first, seemed like icing on the cake. However, now she was alone with him for the first time, she wasn’t sure how she felt.

It was known that Luke was only brought in on dangerous and complex missions. He was an ex-World War II Commando who was very good at his job. Everyone knew the story of how he’d killed three Nazis in less than a minute in 1942 Poland when he was rescuing Faith Lincolnshire. And, for all his wisecracking, amiable persona, Eilish had no doubt that beneath it was a cold, killing machine. Dangerous men were so foreign to New Atlantis that Luke had immediately become as much a novelty as a tiger on a lead would be walking down the streets of London.

Am I attracted to him? She knew he represented that Alpha Male type that was supposed to attract women. However, though he was undoubtedly handsome in a muscular, boyish way, she didn’t feel drawn to him other than as a friend and co-worker. Of course, that was only to be expected since she’d never been sexually attracted to anyone in her very long life.

And it was good she wasn’t since she knew that Luke had eyes for no one but his Faith. He was almost slavishly devoted to the gentle, unassuming woman who now worked exclusively with the children Retrieved by the program and her adopted son, Bart. She was the perfect mother, even though she could never bear children from her own womb, as no woman in their world ever would.

‘How long until morning?’ Eilish asked absently, shifting back so she could stare at the overly ornate moulding on the lofty ceiling above. Such a high ceiling in such a small room made the space seem even more restricted. She rubbed at what was left of her pompadour hairstyle, loosening more strands from the mound on top of her head. She would need to hire a maid to do her hair during the next month if she was to pass as a lady of the upper echelons of society.

‘We arrived at two and this is March, so I wouldn’t expect much activity before seven. Sleep if you want to. I brought a book to read.’ With a grin, he pulled a stained, yellowing Penny-Dreadful from his pocket. The title: Varney, the Vampire or the Feast of Blood, was arranged around a crudely drawn skeletal figure in a bat cape leaning over a sleeping woman. It was laughably awful and she wondered what archive Luke had raided to secure the thing. Most material in New Atlantis was kept on computer. There were few, if any, hard copies of books left preserved.

‘It was in Wardrobe. It’s probably a bit antiquated, even for this period, but it’ll attract little attention if it’s found. Unlike a Neville Shute paperback might.’

‘Neville Shute?’

‘A guy who wrote adventure stories during the early part of the twentieth century. I used to read his books on missions. There’s always a lot of boredom when you’re waiting around for something to happen.’

Eilish nodded thoughtfully at this gem of information. ‘A bit like our Jumps. I used to buy a book or two to read while I was grooming my Targets. You cannot be with them twenty-four seven, and after a few days of sight-seeing, most places are a bit “same ol’, same ol’,” as I think they used to say.’

She was starting to become aware the differences in their speech patterns. Luke still spoke like an American of the 1940s, while she used the formal speech of twenty-fourth century New Atlantis. Hers was far closer to the speech of this time than his was, she knew, even though he was born in this era. That was a relief for her, because it meant she didn’t have to try to adjust her language. Her linguistic downloads could do it for her, but it was still easier if she could just stick to what she knew.

‘You’ve been a Jumper for a long time, then?’ Luke sat down on the side of the bed, also seeming to be a little uncomfortable with their close quarters. She wondered if it was his background that made him consider it unsuitable for a couple to share a room when they weren’t married.

‘Since the beginning, I have always been a bit restless. I was only thirteen when the Last Great Plague wiped everyone out. Too young for a clone and too sick for manual labour. So they moved me to New Atlantis and put me to work in the Knowledge Centre. By the time I got my first clone, I was ready to DO something with my life. I did not want to be stuck in a mouldy old Knowledge Centre forever. I wanted to see the world – or what was left of it.

‘I was uncharacteristically restless, so I was told. Everyone else was shell-shocked after the LGP and for years afterward. All anyone wanted to do was knuckle down and work to survive. But I was never like that. I had been an Irish orphan living in one foster care home after another most of my life. I did not feel like I lost much with the LGP – not as everyone else did. And I had always moved around, so it was ingrained into me…