"They have not!"

"I a.s.sure you, they have. Two ladies told me today that there is a beautiful young woman who walks around the Promenade and won't speak to anyone, and she takes all her meals in her cabin."

"It must be someone else," she said, still smiling at him, sure he had made it up.

"Well, do you walk around the Promenade Deck alone? Yes, you do. I know, because I've seen you myself, and," he added jovially, "been run into several times by this very same beautiful young woman. Do you take your meals in the dining saloon?" He turned to her questioningly, and she laughed again as she shook her head.

"No, I don't. Well ... not yet ... but ..."

"Ah, you see! Then I'm right. You are indeed the mystery woman everyone is curious about. And I must tell you right now, people are imagining all kinds of exotic stories. One has you as a beautiful young widow, on your way to Europe to mourn, another has you as a dramatic divorcee, yet another has you as someone very famous. I'll grant you that no one has, as yet, figured out who, but undoubtedly someone we all know and love, such as, for instance," he thought for a moment as he narrowed his eyes and looked at her closely, "could it be Theda Bara?" She burst out laughing at the suggestion, and he smiled too.

"You have a wonderful imagination, Mr. Sparks-Kelly."

"The name sounds ridiculously complicated, doesn't it? Particularly when spoken in an American accent. Please call me Patrick. And as for your ident.i.ty, I'm afraid you'll just have to tell us the truth, and admit which movie star you are before everyone in first cla.s.s goes mad trying to guess. I'll have to admit, I've tried to guess all day myself, and I'm quite at a standstill."

"I'm afraid everyone is going to be very disappointed, it's just me, traveling to Europe to meet my sister." She made it sound a little more innocent than it was, but it was just as well, and he looked interested in even that.

"And you're only going to stay for a few days? How sad for us." He smiled, and she thought, as she looked at him, that he was really very handsome. But it was a purely clinical observation, which came from meeting so many movie stars with her brother. "How interesting that you're not married, though." He made it sound like a fascinating job, and somehow he amused her. "Americans are so good about that sort of thing. Somehow, they do that with style. English girls all panic that they'll never marry by the time they're twelve, and if they're not married in their first season out, their families bury them alive in the back garden." She laughed aloud at the thought, and had never considered her single state as either a virtue or a preference. In her case, it had been a fact of circ.u.mstance, and an obligation.

"I don't know that being single is such an American skill. Maybe we're not as easy to marry as Englishwomen. Englishwomen are much better behaved. They don't argue as much." She smiled, and then thought of her aunt Liz and uncle Rupert. "I had an aunt who was married to an Englishman."

"Oh, really, who?" He acted as though he should have known them, and perhaps he did, she realized.

"Lord and Lady Hickham, Rupert Hickham, he died several years ago, and so did she, actually. They never had any children."

He thought for a moment and then nodded. "I believe I know who he is ... or was ... I think actually that my father knew him. Rather a difficult sort, if that isn't too rude." She laughed at the understatement, and realized that he did know exactly who Rupert was, if he remembered that about him.

"It's not rude at all, but quite accurate. And poor Aunt Liz was afraid of her own shadow. He terrified her into submission. We went to see them at Havermoor ..." She had been about to say "eleven years ago," and then suddenly realized that she didn't want to say it. "A long time ago." Her voice was suddenly sad and husky. "I haven't been back to England since."

"And when was that?" He looked interested and seemed not to notice her discomfort.

"Eleven years ago."

"That's a long time." He was watching her face, wondering what had happened then, as she nodded. A terrible shadow had crossed her face, as he pretended not to notice.

"Yes, it is." And then she stood up, as though she had to get away again. She was tired of running from the past, and tired of dealing with the present. "I suppose I'll turn in. It was nice speaking to you, Mr. Sparks-Kelly."

"Patrick," he corrected. "May I walk you to your cabin, or may I waylay you briefly for a drink in the lounge? It's actually very pretty, if you haven't yet seen it." But the last thing she wanted to do was tour the ship, sit in the lounge, get to know the people, it was all too reminiscent of their crossing on the ship that had gone down. She never wanted to see another ship again, and she was only on this one because of Alexis.

"I don't think so, but thank you very much." She shook his hand and walked away from him then. But when she got downstairs, she found that she couldn't bear to go into her cabin either. It was all too oppressive, too familiar, too awful, and she couldn't bear the thought of going to sleep and living with her dreams, and her memories and her nightmares. She walked back out on deck then, just outside where her cabin was, and stood at the rail, thinking of what might have been, and how it had ended. She was so lost in her own thoughts that she didn't hear the footsteps, and all she heard was the gentle voice as he stood right behind her.

"Whatever it is, Miss Winfield, it can't be as bad as all that ... I'm sorry." He touched her arm and she didn't turn around. "I don't mean to intrude, but you looked so sad when you left that I was worried."

She turned to look at him then, her hair blowing in the breeze, her eyes bright, and he could see that there were tears on her cheeks in the moonlight. "I seem to spend all my time on this ship telling people I'm alright." She tried to smile, but she couldn't quite pull it off as she wiped her eyes and he watched her.

"And have you convinced anyone?" His voice was warm and kind, and she almost wished she hadn't met him. There was no point. He had his own life, and she had hers, and she was only here to bring back Alexis.

"No." She smiled at him. "I don't think I have convinced anyone."

"Then I'm afraid you'll have to try harder." And then, with the kindest voice she'd ever heard, he asked a difficult question. "Has something really awful happened to you?" He couldn't bear watching the suffering in her eyes, and she had looked that way since they'd left New York Harbor.

"Not lately." She wanted to be honest with him, without going into all the details. "And I'm usually not this maudlin." She smiled and wiped away the tears with a graceful hand as she took a deep breath of the sea air and tried to look more cheerful. "I just don't like ships very much."

"For any particular reason? Do you get seasick?"

"Not really." She was vague with him. "I just don't feel well on ships anymore ... there are too many ..." She stopped at the word memories, and then decided to throw caution to the winds. She didn't know who he was, but for that moment in time, he was her friend, and she knew she liked him. "I was on the t.i.tanic when it went down," she explained quietly. "And I lost my parents and the man I was going to marry." She didn't cry this time, and for a moment Patrick was stunned into silence.

"My G.o.d." There were tears in his eyes now. "I don't know what to say ... except that you're very brave to be on the ship now. It must be awful for you. Is this the first time you've sailed since?" It explained why she was so strained and pale, and why she so seldom came out of her cabin, as she nodded.

"Yes, and it isn't easy. I swore I'd never get on a ship again. But I had to come over to bring back my sister."

"Was she on it too?" He was fascinated now. He had known of people who had been on the ship and gone down, but he had never met any of the survivors.

"We thought we had lost her. She was lost when we were getting into the lifeboats, or we thought she was. Actually, she'd gone back to the cabin for her doll. She was six years old then." She smiled sadly. "The ship went down on her birthday. Anyway, we found her on the rescue ship, she was hysterical, and she's never been ... well, she's a difficult child because of what she's been through."

"Did you have any other family?" He was interested in everything, but most of all in her. She was, after all, what they had thought her, a beautiful, mysterious young woman.

"I had three brothers, and two sisters and we all survived. Only my parents, and ... my fiance ... went down. He was English too." She smiled at the memory as Patrick Sparks-Kelly watched her. "His name was Charles Fitzgerald." Her voice grew husky again as she said his name, and for an instant she instinctively felt for the engagement ring on her finger. But she hadn't worn it in years. She had offered to return it to his family, but Lady Fitzgerald had insisted that she keep it. But Patrick was staring at her now in amazement.

"My G.o.d ..." He looked as though he'd seen a ghost, as his eyes met Edwina's.

"I remember hearing about you ... an American girl ... from San Francisco ... that was ... oh, G.o.d, ten or twelve years ago. I was just married myself about then." And then he explained what he was saying. "Charles was my second cousin."

They stood in silence for a moment, thinking about him, and Edwina smiled again. It was a strange world, and it was odd that they should meet now, so long after he was gone.

"That was a terrible thing. Only son ... favorite child ... terrible ..." He thought about it and it all came back to him, he even remembered hearing about Edwina. "His parents mourned him for years."

"So did I," she whispered.

"And you never married?"

She shook her head, and then smiled quietly at him. "I was too busy after that. I had the other children to bring up. I was twenty then, and most of them were still quite small. My brother Phillip was sixteen and he tried very hard to be a father to them, but it must have been hard for him to be so young and have so much on his shoulders. And he went away to college a year later, in 1913. And George was twelve, Alexis six, my little sister Fannie was four, and the baby was barely two. They kept me amused for a few years." She grinned and he looked at her in amazement.

"And you did all that ... alone?" He was stunned. She was quite something.

"More or less. I managed. I did my best, and sometimes I threw my hands up in despair, but we've all survived it." ... except for Phillip.

"And what happened to them now? Where are they all?"

She smiled as she thought of them, suddenly missing the two younger ones she had left in San Francisco. "My oldest brother, Phillip, died in the war six years ago. And my brother George is the family hero. He dropped out of Harvard when Phillip died, and he came home, and eventually went to Hollywood and has been a big success there."

"As an actor?" Patrick looked intrigued. They sounded like an interesting group, certainly much more so than his own family in England.

But Edwina shook her head as she explained. "No, he's a studio head now. And he's awfully good at it. They've made some fairly major movies. And he just got married a few weeks ago." She smiled. "And then there's Alexis. The one I told you about. I'm meeting her in London," but she didn't explain why. "And Fannie, who is our homebody, she's fifteen. And the baby, Teddy, is thirteen now." She finished her account of them with a look of pride that touched him deeply.

"And you've managed them all single-handed. Bravo. I don't know how you've done it."

"I just did. Day by day. No one asked if I wanted to. It was something that had to be done, and I loved them all ..." And then, in a gentle voice, "I did it for them ... and for my mother.... She stayed on the ship to find Alexis. And then ... when they wouldn't let the men into the lifeboats, she chose to stay on with my father."

The thought of it horrified him as he thought of the children leaving the sinking ship in a lifeboat with only Edwina, and now she stared out to sea unhappily, remembering the night that would haunt her forever. "I think at first they must have thought there would be another lifeboat. No one ever really understood how few there were, or how dire the situation was. No one ever told us that we had to get off right then. The band just played on, and there were no sirens, no bells, just a lot of people milling around, thinking they had lots of time, and those precious few lifeboats going down. Maybe she thought she'd go later, or stay with him until other ships came...." But then, she turned to look at him, this stranger who had almost been her cousin, and she told him the truth she had hidden from herself for eleven years, and he reached out and took her hand as she said it. "For a long time, I hated her for what she'd done ... not leaving me the children ... but choosing to die with him, for loving him more than she did us ... for letting her love for him kill her. I think it frightened me for a long time ... it made me feel so guilty for leaving Charles, as though I should have stayed with him, too, just because she stayed with Papa." There were tears rolling down Edwina's cheeks now. "But I didn't ... I left in the first one, with the children ... I took them off and let Mama and Papa and Charles die, while we were all safe in the lifeboat." Just saying it released her from a burden of guilt she had carried for almost a dozen years, and as she spoke the words, she let herself drift into his arms and he held her.

"You couldn't have known what would happen then. You didn't know any more than they did ... they thought they would all come in another lifeboat, or that they would still be on the ship later and they wouldn't go down." It was exactly what she had thought.

"I never knew I was saying good-bye to them," she sobbed. "I hardly even kissed Charles ... and then I never saw him again." She cried in the night air as Patrick held her.

"You couldn't have done anything more. You did everything right ... it was just rotten luck that it happened at all. But you weren't to blame because you survived and they didn't."

"But why did she stay with him?" Edwina asked him as though he knew, but he could only guess, just as she had.

"Maybe she loved him too much to live on without him. That happens sometimes. Some women feel that way. Perhaps she couldn't face it, and she knew you were there to take her place with the children."

"But it wasn't fair to the children, or to me ... and I had to live on without Charles." She sounded angry now as she spoke her innermost feelings for the first time. "Sometimes I hated her because I had survived and she hadn't. Why did I have to live with the pain? Why did I have to live without him? Why did I have to ..." She couldn't go on, and it didn't matter now. They were all gone, and Edwina had lived through it, She had devoted her life to loving Charles and them and bringing up her parents' children, but it hadn't been easy for her, and as Patrick listened to her cry, he knew it.

"Life is so unfair sometimes." He wanted to cry with her, but he knew it wouldn't help anything. He was only very flattered that she had talked to him. And he knew from the way she spoke that it was probably the first time she had admitted most of it, particularly her resentment of her mother for choosing to die with her father.

"I'm sorry." She looked up at him finally. "I shouldn't have told you all this." She wiped the tears from her cheeks again, and he handed her a beautiful linen handkerchief with his crest embroidered on it, and she accepted it gratefully. "I don't usually talk about all this."

"I a.s.sumed that." And then he smiled down at her again. "I wish we had met twelve years ago, and then perhaps I'd have stolen you from Charles, and you would have led a much happier life, and so would I. You'd have kept me from marrying someone I shouldn't. Actually," he smiled as he went on, "I married a first cousin of Charles's, on his mother's side. A very 'handsome girl,' as my mother said, but I'm afraid I never realized until too late that she didn't love me."

"Are you still married to her?" Edwina looked at him as she asked, and blew her nose again. The thought of having married Patrick instead was an intriguing one, and she was sorry again that she'd never met him until their crossing on the Paris.

"I am," he said stoically. "We have three fine sons, and we speak to each other approximately once every two months, between trips, and over breakfast. I'm afraid my wife is ... ahh ... not overly fond of gentlemen, and she's far happier with her lady friends, her female relatives, and her horses." Edwina thought he had just said something rather important to her, but she was too embarra.s.sed to ask him to elaborate, so she didn't. Suffice it to say that he was married to a woman he didn't love, and who didn't love him, and perhaps what the "lady friends" meant was unimportant. But in fact Patrick had said what she thought he had. The only amazing thing was that in a very few attempts, they had actually managed to have three children, and that was unlikely to happen again, as the attempt was no longer made, nor desired by either party.

"Would you ever divorce her?" Edwina asked quietly, but Patrick slowly shook his head.

"No, for a number of reasons, among them my sons. And I'm afraid my parents would never survive it. No one in our family has ever divorced, you see. And to complicate matters further, thanks to a French grandmother, I am that rarest of all birds, a British Catholic. I'm afraid that Philippa and I are bound for life, which leaves things rather lonely for me, if not for her, and a rather grim prospect for the next forty or fifty years." He spoke matter-of-factly, but underneath it, Edwina could hear the loneliness and see it in his eyes as he described his marriage.

"Why don't you leave her then? You can't live like that for the rest of your life." It was amazing. They were strangers and they were sharing their innermost secrets. But those things often happened on shipboard.

"I have no choice," Patrick said quietly, referring to his wife again. "Just as you didn't when you were faced with bringing up your brothers and sisters. n.o.blesse oblige, as my grandmother would have said. Some things are a matter of duty as well as love. And this is mine. And the boys are wonderful, they're growing up a bit now, and, of course, they're all away at school. Richard was the last to go last year, at seven. It frees me up quite a bit now. Actually, I don't have to be at home at all, and most of the time I'm not." He smiled a boyish smile at Edwina. "I spend a great deal of time in New York. I go to Paris on business whenever possible. I have my father's lands to keep up. I have friends in Berlin and Rome ... you see, it's not as bad as all that." But Edwina was honest with him, as she stood close to him and he kept his arm around her.

"It sounds very empty and very sad." She didn't mince words with him, and he looked down at her honestly.

"You're right. It is. But it's all I have, Edwina, and I make the best of it. Just as you do. It's not a life, but it's my life. Just as yours is. Look what you've done, you've spent a whole lifetime mourning a man who's been gone for a dozen years. A man you loved when you were twenty. Think of it ... think of him. Did you really know him? Do you know who he is, who he was, if he would ever have made you happy? You had a right to so much more than that, so did I, but simple fact is, we didn't get it. So you make the best of it, surrounded by the brothers and sisters you love, and I do the same with my children. I have no right to more than that, I'm a married man. But you're not, and when you get off this ship, you ought to go find someone, someone you love, maybe even someone Charles would have liked, and marry him and have children of your own. I can't do that anymore, but you can. Edwina, don't waste it."

"Don't be foolish." She laughed at him, but he had said wise words to her, whether or not she knew it. "Do you know how old I am? I'm thirty-two years old. I'm much too old for that. My life is already half over."

"So is mine. And I'm thirty-nine. But do you know what? If I had another chance, a chance to love someone, to be happy, to have children again, I would jump at it in a minute." And as he said that, he looked down at her, and before she could answer him again, he kissed her. He kissed her as she hadn't been kissed since Charles had died, and she couldn't even remember having been kissed that way then, and for an instant what Patrick had just said crossed her mind. Was he right? Was Charles only a distant memory from her childhood? Had she changed so much? Would she have outgrown him? Did she really even remember? It was impossible to know now, and there was no doubt in her mind that she had loved him. But perhaps she had carried him for too long. Perhaps the time to let him go had come at last. And suddenly, as she kissed Patrick back, all else faded from her mind, as they held each other like two drowning people.

It was a long time before he let her go again, and they stood there holding each other close as he kissed her again, and then he looked down at her and told her something she had a right to know from the first. And he knew he had to tell her.

"Edwina, no matter what happens between us, I can't marry you. I want you to know that now, before you fall in love with me, and I with you. No matter how much I come to love you one day, I am a dead man. I will stay married to my dying day. And I don't want to destroy your life too. I'll tell you right now that if you let me love you, I will set you free ... for your sake, and for mine ... I won't hold on to you, and I won't let you hold on either. Do you understand?"

"I do," she said huskily, grateful for his honesty, but she had sensed from the beginning that he was that kind of person. It was why she had let herself talk to him, and why she already knew she loved him. It was absurd, she scarcely knew him, yet she knew she loved him.

"I won't let you do what you did with Charles ... carry the memory for years ... I want to love you, and send you on your way, a whole and happy person. And if you do come to love me one day, you'll marry someone else and do what I told you."

"You worry too much." She smiled. "You can't foresee everything. What if Philippa dies one day, or leaves you, or decides to move away somewhere?"

"I won't build my life on that, or let you do it either. Remember, my love, I will set you free one day ... like a little bird ... to fly back home from where you've come, far across the ocean." But as he said the words, it made her lonely for him before anything began and she clung to him and whispered softly, "Not yet ... please ..."

"No ... not yet ..." he whispered back, and then like a memory in a distant dream, he ruffled her hair with his lips, and whispered again, "... I love you ..." Strangers though they were, their confessions, and the link of Charles, had brought them together.

Chapter 36.

IT WAS THE SORT OF THING THAT ONLY HAPPENED IN BOOKS, OR one of George's movies. They met, they fell in love, and they existed suspended between two worlds, as Edwina discovered a life she'd never had, or had forgotten about in the past eleven years. They talked, they laughed, they walked for hours around the ship, and gradually she lost her terror that they would sink at any moment. He made sure to be with her at lifeboat drill, although in point of fact he belonged at another station. But the purser didn't object. And from the distance, other pa.s.sengers watched them with warm smiles and envious looks and silent cheering from the sidelines. They were discreet as they sought private spots and hideaways just to talk and kiss and hold hands. It was what they had both missed for so long, although Edwina suspected that Patrick had had it from time to time, although he claimed that he had never loved anyone since he got married, and she believed him.

"What were you like as a child?" he asked, wanting to know everything, every detail, every smallest bit about her.

"I don't know," she smiled happily up at him, " I don't think I've ever thought about it. Happy, I guess. We had a pretty ordinary life, until they died. Before that, I went to school, I fought with Phillip over our toys ... I used to love to help Mama in the garden ... in fact," she remembered now, "when she first died ... after we came home, I used to talk to her out there, clipping her rosebushes, and pulling weeds, and sometimes I'd get pretty angry. I wanted to know why she had done what she did, what made her stay with him when she had all these children that I felt she had deserted."

"And did you ever get any answers?" He smiled down at her, as she shook her head.

"No, but I always felt better afterward."

"Then it must have been a good thing. I like gardening, too, when I get the chance. Although it's not considered very manly." They talked about everything, their childhood friends, their favorite sports, and most-beloved authors. He liked the serious, cla.s.sical stuff, and she liked popular authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Dos Pa.s.sos. They both liked poetry, and sunsets, and moonlight and dancing. And she told him with tears in her eyes how proud she was of George and what he had done, and how much she liked Helen. She even told him about giving Helen the veil she had been meant to wear for Charles, and that time Patrick cried as he listened.

"I wish you'd have worn it for me."

"So do I," she whispered as she wiped the tear off his cheek, and that night, the day after they'd met, they went dancing. She bemoaned the fact that she didn't have a single decent dress, but miraculously, he had a stewardess find her one for the evening. It fit perfectly and had a label from Chanel, and all night she expected some irate first-cla.s.s pa.s.senger to tear it off her back, but none appeared and they had a wonderful time circling the floor in the first-cla.s.s lounge. Everything was perfect.

And the ship didn't sink, but it arrived too soon. It seemed like only moments before they reached Cherbourg and then Southampton.

"What do we do now?" she asked mournfully. They had discussed it a hundred times, and in her head she had rehea.r.s.ed leaving him, but she found that now she couldn't bring herself to do it.

He repeated it all for her again, "You find Alexis, and we have lunch or dinner in London to celebrate, and then you go home again and begin a happy life and find a nice man to marry." She snorted as he said the words.

"And how was it you suggested I do that again? I put an ad in the San Francisco paper?"

"No, you stop looking like a grieving widow, and you go out in the world, and in ten minutes there will be a dozen men at your front gate, mark my words."

"That's nonsense." And it wasn't what she wanted. She wanted Patrick.

She had long since confessed why she had come to London at all, and he had been irate at her description of the errant Malcolm. And he had already volunteered to help find the girl. Together they were going to comb the small hotels, and he had several in mind where actors stayed. He suspected that it might not be very difficult to find them. He was going to go to his office that day, settle some affairs, and meet her later that afternoon to begin their search, but as much as she wanted to find Alexis again, she didn't want to leave him, even for a moment. After being together almost every hour of the day for three days, it was going to seem strange now being without him. The only time they had left each other had been at night, by silent agreement. They had kissed and hugged and held hands, but he didn't want to take advantage of her and then leave her. And in a way she agreed with him, and yet in a way she wished that things were different. It was ridiculous, really. Her seventeen-year-old sister was having a wild affair, and she was returning to the United States, a virgin spinster. She laughed at the thought and Patrick smiled at her, seeing something in her eyes.

"What are you up to, you bad girl?"

"I was just thinking how incongruous it is, that Alexis is off misbehaving with that deadbeat, and I am being very circ.u.mspect. I'm not sure I like the scenario at all!" They both laughed, but had they wanted it to be different, it would have been. It had just been too soon, for both of them, and they didn't want to cheapen what they had. What they had, they both knew, was very rare and very special.

He took the boat train to London with her, and they sat quietly in the same compartment and talked, while he explained that Philippa didn't know or care that he was arriving that day, and he suspected she would be away anyway, probably at some important horse trials in Scotland.