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A terrific roar echoed across the empty blackness towards Lizzy: metal rent in half, explosions from red-hot boilers meeting the cold, impassive sea.

Lydia covered her ears. The stern of the Titanic , still fully lit, tilted up nearly vertical in the air, and looked almost as if a huge building suddenly jutted out from the bottom of the sea.

Lydia hid, burying her face in Lizzy’s shoulder.

They had stopped rowing, and gazed out onto the perfect night, the still calm waters, the blazing stars, and the death agonies of their unsinkable ship.

Tiny figures at the end of the upright stern clung to railings, then those who could not cling on slid down the deck and plunged into the sea. Cries went up from their small boat.

A steady hum almost like bees buzzing or locusts humming drifted over.

Lydia stared out at the horrific spectacle of the dying vessel. “What is that?” she asked, to no one in particular.

“ Everyone is screaming,” Lizzy said simply.

They cried out for mercy and rescue.

None came.

None was offered.

An explosion lit up the night from somewhere deep in the ship, and the lights that had shone so brightly and steadily blinked, blazed, and finally went out. With one final, terrific, shrieking roar, the ship tore itself asunder and plunged into the sea toward the bottom of the ocean.

Nothing but a calm, frigid starlit night remained. The world was suddenly still.

***

Darcy kicked his way to the surface, a thousand icy knives plunging into his body.

Forcing himself to take a breath, he looked up, but saw nothing but the black sea meeting the starry night at the horizon.

He began swimming the Australian crawl, thinking that would get him the farthest distance from the ship in the quickest amount of time.

As his head came out of the water, a steady buzzing sound assailed his ears.

At first, he thought the screaming cold had frozen his mind, but then he realized it was voices…

voices of the damned going down with the ship.

He never knew that cold could be so painful. He began to count , one-Piccadilly, two-Piccadilly, three-Piccadilly … When they rescued him, he could then tell them how long he survived in the water. If they rescued him.

A terrific sound of an explosion rent the air, and twisting around, he watched the Titanic ’s stern, now vertical and black against the starry sky, quickly plummet straight into the sea.

He swam in earnest away from the ship, forgetting to count.

A solitary wave rolled under him and swept him outward from where he determined the ship had sunk.

It didn’t crash over him, or swamp him, but pushed him gently on as if a friendly dolphin had let him ride for a moment on its back.

A sudden weariness overtook him, and he changed his stroke to the breaststroke he learned as a child. His eyes closed for a moment, and he forced them open. “ Help. Help . Can anyone hear me?”

The night was silent and sleepiness enveloped him again. Fighting to remain conscious, he realised he was freezing to death. It wasn’t unpleasant, almost welcoming…

He sputtered.

No, if he continued with breaststroke, he would surely drown.

Much better to lie on his back and freeze to death.

Rolling over, he stretched out his arms. It seemed as if he stretched them.

They were too numb to tell. Looking up into the starry sky, he blinked hard and fast. “Can anyone hear me? I’m over here. Please help.”

He watched as a rose petal fell on grass. He sat in a garden with Georgiana. Was she four or five? She played close by in the pond with their father, a pond their father had stocked with exotic fish after one of his travels to the east.

“ Georgiana, come away. You’ll fall in and spoil your pinafore… Georgiana.”

She turned to Darcy, holding a wriggling fish in her chubby hand. She tried to give it to him. He extended his hand and the fish dropped in.

“ It is so slippery, slippery. I can’t seem to get a hold.”

***

Elizabeth strained against the darkness, searching the night.

Surely, some ship had seen the barrage of rockets they had set off.

There was nothing they could do now but wait.

The night was so frigid she was afraid some of her fellow passengers might have escaped drowning only to die of the cold.

Attempting to keep both her herself and Lydia from freezing to death, she opened her coat as did Lydia and they huddled together.

They would survive, perhaps minus some fingers or toes, but they would survive if any ship was close enough to see their fiery cries for help.

Through the fog of her grief-stricken brain and her frozen limbs, the lights of a ship inched onto the horizon, but the darkness of the early morning made her question herself.

When the ship finally loomed above them, her legs were so stiff from cold and inactivity that she and Lydia had to be hoisted aboard in a sling.

All around the ship the sunrise caught shining monolithic icebergs floating like tall golden buildings catching the sun’s rays as they rose from the sea.

A beautiful, unforgettable sight, but one accompanied by the music of the sobbing and wailing of the women survivors.

Lizzy was swung onto the deck and deposited near one of the rescue ship’s lifeboats. Carpathia . As their rescue ship pulled to its bosom the floating survivors of the unsinkable Titanic, Lizzy tried to shake off the numbness that had overtaken her.

“ Come along, my dears. Let’s get some hot food into you.” Someone was speaking to Elizabeth. She had a kind face. Lydia was still clinging to her like a lost child. They followed the woman into a crowded dining hall and were served a bowl of hot porridge.

“ I don’t think I’m hungry.” Lizzy looked up at her.

“ It doesn’t matter. Eat anyway,” she said gently. “It will make you feel better.”

Lizzy dipped her spoon into the porridge. It smelled like her mother’s kitchen, and she burst into tears.

***

As soon as Wickham boarded the Carpathia , he sought to divest himself of a lady’s accoutrements.

With frosty air biting into his fingers, he reluctantly removed the black woollen coat with its fur collar and the velvet hat that did so well in hiding his face.

The lifeboat he was on was crowded and the occupants so immersed in their own misery that no one noticed him.

After rolling down his trousers to cover the long stockings on his legs, he sought shelter inside the dining salon, out of the cold morning air.

The crew of the Carpathia was doling out a meagre breakfast, but he was famished. After taking it to a secluded corner away from the rest of the survivors and the prying eyes of the Carpathia ’s passengers, he slid down the wall and sat on the carpeted floor.

Spooning the porridge into his mouth, he finally had time to take stock of his position.

He had survived, while many didn’t. An image of Darcy standing on the deck watching him as he escaped suddenly surfaced and closed his throat.

He dropped his spoon into the bowl. He fought to swallow down unusual guilt, but it kept resurfacing like a corpse.

He laid the bowl down and shut his eyes.

The image of the great vessel, upright in the still, black water, issuing the wailing of a thousand voices as they clung to her doomed deck, wouldn’t leave him be.

He’d survived. That was a good thing, wasn’t it?

Again he could see Darcy’s face as it receded with the descending lifeboat.

He’d left Darcy there to die. Darcy…Darcy…

stupid man. He could have escaped if he’d wanted to.

He was so bloody-minded, full of duty and noblesse oblige.

What if he, Wickham, had stayed on board?

He too would be at the bottom of the ocean or floating, blue and lifeless, on the sparkling surface of the now transfigured sea.

What good could that possibly have done?

He stared at his breakfast. Although still hungry, he couldn’t eat anymore.

Life must go on whether one had regrets or not.

He should search for Lydia and Elizabeth.

Lydia, the key to his fortune, and oddly, a comfort.

At least one person in this world cared whether he lived or died.

George fought to banish his maudlin thoughts, but they wouldn’t leave him be.

Maybe he really cared for Lydia. She was his wife now and the thought of her began to banish the cold that not only ate at his bones but gripped his heart.

He resolved then and there, he would try to be a better man, whatever that meant.

He reached inside his waiter’s jacket and felt for the papers.

From the moment of his marriage, he had not parted with them.

They could now be at the bottom of the sea, with the man who arranged for his fortune dead and unable to vouch for the wedding that had taken place on the bridge of the Titanic .

His fingers brushed over them, and he patted them to reassure himself.

As he rose, he began to concoct a reason for his survival that didn’t include a fur-collared coat and a lady’s hat.

***

By the time Elizabeth and Lydia finished choking down their rations, all the lifeboats that could be found had been hauled aboard.

Hoping against hope, Lizzy walked up and down the decks of the Carpathia with Lydia, in and out of the public rooms, searching for Darcy and Wickham.

Trying desperately to think clearly, Elizabeth tried to be systematic in her search, and came upon the idea of asking any groups of men that she found together to see if there was a chance that either Darcy or Wickham were among them, or if they heard any news.