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Wickham followed the steward to his first-class stateroom, a satisfied smile crossing his lips. The steward, however, didn’t smile. He ran a jaundiced eye over Wickham, no doubt noticing his waiter’s uniform, and wordlessly slipped the key into the lock and turned it.

It was then he spoke. “Are you sure this is your cabin? Don’t you belong below with the rest of us?”

“ Not that it is any of your business, but my life prospects have suddenly changed for the better.” Wickham, returning the scrutiny, ran his eye over the steward. “I’ll call you if I need you, my good man.” The steward huffed and turned on his heel.

One of Wickham’s life ambitions was to either be a kept man or, saving that, marry money.

Tonight, he accomplished the latter. The delicious irony of it was that he completed the task by marrying a nearly penniless girl.

He tossed back his head and laughed but snapped his head back at the twinge of pain.

His encounter with Darcy the evening before still left its mark on his throat.

He ran his fingers inside his collar. Almost a dead man to a man of wealth in the space of two days.

Ah, Wickham, the fates have smiled on you indeed.

It was past twenty-four hundred hours, and he was finally off duty, ready to commence his wedding night.

How many times before had his feet sunk into this lush carpet, while he, bent over a trolley, pushed comestibles to the high and mighty.

Now his days as a waiter were over… well, they would be over as soon as this voyage was.

He and his bride would return posthaste to London in style and present themselves to the firm of Huntley and Associates, where he would claim his bride’s “dowry”.

Until that fortune was firmly in his grip, he was beholden to the masters of this vessel and would retain his position.

It was safer that way. No point in burning one’s bridges. Still, what could go wrong?

He turned the knob and entered the stateroom. Oddly, no lights were on. Ah, perhaps the little minx was waiting for him, young and nubile and divested of her clothing, nestled in the four-poster.

“ Where are you, my dove?” he purred as his gaze adjusted to the dim light shed through the porthole by the crescent moon.

Blinking, he could scarcely believe his eyes.

The bed was rumpled but empty. Snapping on the lights, he found the sitting room and the bath empty as well.

He noticed it then. Silence. The noise of the throbbing engines that they all lived with from the very outset of the voyage had ceased for the second time.

When the noise stopped before, he thought perhaps he had imagined it, but now, he was sure.

Why were they stopping, and more to the point, where was his bride?

She must have left him a note or some clue as to her whereabouts.

He ran his hands along the sheets of the bed and inspected the mahogany nightstand.

Nothing. He looked again in the bath. Towels strewn across the floor, still damp.

She had bathed for him. Lovely. He picked one of them up and ran the plush cotton through his fingers.

Soft, thick, inviting, and even monogrammed…

“ RMS Titanic ”. He made a mental note to pack one of these towels in his suitcase as a souvenir of the night his fortunes changed. Draping it over the side of the bath, he resolved to go in search of his new wife.

***

Fourteen Months Earlier

“ I don’t know, Lizzy.” Jane let her gloved hand cover her sister’s as they jostled along in the train carriage towards the city, and Lizzy relaxed. “You are always so sure of yourself. I just don’t know. Perhaps we should have disclosed our plans to Mama and Papa.”

“ I have talked to Papa. He approves wholeheartedly.”

Jane gave a visible start. She touched a wisp of hair that came loose from her pompadour and tucked it under her flowered hat. “Really?”

“ Well, perhaps not wholeheartedly. He didn’t like the idea at first, of course.

” Elizabeth tried to gently revise her rather bold statement.

“It did take a bit of convincing, and I did tell him that, if we couldn’t find a position during our two-week visit, then we would be back to Longbourn like a shot. ”

Jane shook her head. “Working as a shopgirl in London… how you get Papa to go along with your schemes, I’ll never know.”

“ It’s merely a question of economics. He has five daughters and no sons and entailed property.

Entailment. It’s 1911… the twentieth century.

You’d think they would have done away with something so archaic, wouldn’t you?

” This attempt at changing the subject wasn’t working.

Elizabeth could read her sister’s expression like a book.

“You know, you can always go home if you want, but I won’t… and that is a fact.”

Jane’s expression became pained. “Is home so distasteful to you?”

“ No, of course not. I just feel… I just feel like a caged tigress: full of energy and nowhere to put it.”

“ You know, Father said you could further your education…”

Elizabeth squeezed Jane’s hand. “Yes, I could, but then what? Marry and have children and—”

“ Oh, I want to marry and have children, don’t you? Do you think if we follow your plan that we’ll never marry or have any children? Oh, Lizzy.”

She couldn’t help it. Elizabeth had to laugh.

“Oh, good gracious, Jane, we’re not entering a convent.

We are seeking employment. We are going to live on our own, the two of us.

We are going to make our own way in the world.

Once we have a taste of freedom, who knows?

It’s going to be wonderful. You’ll see.”

Jane’s expression, which varied between skepticism and outright terror, spoke more to Elizabeth than words.

Obviously, Jane didn’t share in Lizzy’s enthusiasm but was doing what she always did: lending her support to her younger sister.

“You can always go home if you don’t want to carry on. I can stay in London by myself.”

“ Absolutely not.” Jane put more force in her voice than before. “We will have this adventure together.”

Elizabeth had to smile. She patted Jane’s hand again.

“Besides, we always have the Gardiners to scoop us up if we fall.” That last remark seemed to settle Jane a bit and she relaxed back in the seat.

Elizabeth joined her. Jane leaned her head on Lizzy’s shoulder and whispered, “It will be an adventure, won’t it? ”

***

Aunt Gardiner was well and truly appalled at Elizabeth’s plan.

The shopgirls of London had a rather checkered reputation.

Elizabeth was sure that it was due to the fact most of these millionaire goods purveyors paid less than a living wage, and a girl needed to eat, one way or another.

Elizabeth, though, wasn’t about to be shut up in a dormitory, fed gruel, and worked until she dropped.

No indeed. She and Jane would start at the top.

She and Jane would apply for a position at Selfridges.

She remembered the first day, two years ago, she was taken by the arm by her uncle and shown the wonders of the Selfridge windows at Christmas time.

She had never seen anything so magnificent in all her life, not even at the theatre.

Not even at a London theatre. As they wandered up and down the aisles inside the store, she was treated to wonder after wonder.

This place was a fairy land compared to the stuffy little shops in Meryton.

It surpassed every store in London as well.

This place beckoned to her, and she would be part of it.

Within two days of their arrival at the Gardiners, they were standing in a queue of at least fifty if not a hundred young women vying for positions.

Judging from the conversation around them, many had worked in other places before—eating spoilt meat, living in on the store’s premises (and supervised at every turn like errant children), paying fines out of their meager wages for minor infractions.

Selfridges was an escape from all those things and they paid a higher wage.

It seemed to Elizabeth that every girl in London stood in that queue.

Soon after they gained admittance to the store, Elizabeth and Jane were busily writing on their applications.

A murmur of voices from nearby caught Elizabeth’s attention.

Several men, all having the look of floor walkers, celluloid collars spotless, murmured and gazed in Jane’s direction.

Jane was a beauty, and that fact didn’t escape their interviewers.

A middle-aged man, upright, balding, in a smart, grey gabardine suit, walked over.

Jane was still busy scribbling. He cleared his throat and Jane looked up.

Unlike a social occasion, the gentleman came directly to the point.

“ Have you any experience attending in a shop?” he asked, peering over his pince-nez in Jane’s direction.

“ No, sir, I am afraid not.” She looked over at Elizabeth in desperation.

“ We are willing to work hard for this enterprise,” Elizabeth said before the floorwalker strode away.

“And we do know how to speak to ladies of fashion and discernment.” How that had popped into her head, she would never know.

As their interrogator harumphed and walked away, Elizabeth observed the others. They eyed Jane.

After the applications were collected, they were told to come back tomorrow.

A list of those they would deign to interview would be pinned on the door.

Elizabeth’s thoughts swung from wild hope to crushing despair.

Why would they hire two young ladies from the provinces with no experience in waiting in a shop when they had scores of girls who could walk in tomorrow and know exactly what they were doing?

“ Oh, I ’ope they call me,” Elizabeth heard one of them say. “I ain’t too fond of me present situation. Can’t fairly breathe wrong there.”

“ And if you call any of these old bags ‘dearie’ see if you don’t pay a right great fine for it.”

Jane listened to all this banter as well and gave Lizzy a demure smile.

When they finally reached the street and were out of earshot of the other girls, she spoke.

“I do believe I am catching your enthusiasm for this adventure. We may not have any shopkeeping experience, but we certainly can speak well.”

Hope ascended in Lizzy’s heart. Selfridges had a reputation to maintain. Most of these girls were working class. Perhaps the education they received, which was not extensive but at least existent, and their growing up in the house of a gentleman might serve them well.

“ Well, there is nothing else for it now, dear sister. Let’s return to the Gardiners and tell them of our adventures. Perhaps we should bring some sweets for the children.”

“ Or some treacle tarts,” said Jane, her eyes twinkling. There was no end of wonders to be had in London.