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Chapter Twelve

I hasten to the card table where my companions are waiting for me.

I glance about for Lester, but he hasn’t come into the lounge.

Neither has Delia Finch. There are many places they could be, and they might not be together.

We resume our game. I win again. But I don’t feel at all triumphant.

There’s an anxiety growing in my belly. I recall Mrs Brown’s comment about Lester shouting at Glover before dinner and sense a drama building.

When Mr Rowland suggests we go back to bridge, I declare that I’m tired and retire to my cabin.

Ruby has turned down my bed. She helps me out of my dress and corset, and then leaves me alone.

I’m at a loss. I pick up Constance’s diary and decide to read as much as I can this evening.

There must be clues within its pages – after she left Broadmere, and before she boarded the Titanic .

But just as I climb into bed, I hear a strange sound in the corridor.

A muffled thump, followed by hushed whispering.

I put my dressing gown over my nightdress and open the door a sliver.

My heart is hammering against my ribcage.

I hover, uncertainly, behind the door. A moment later, I see two figures fall against the wall at the far end of the corridor.

The lights are dimmed in the ship’s corridors at this time of the evening, but I quickly recognise them.

Glover and Lester. They’re unsteady on their feet, holding on to each other for balance.

They’re like a pair of schoolboys returning from a dare, laughing into their hands.

They do not look like master and servant, but brothers up to no good.

I imagine they’ve been downstairs, gambling.

Their cheeks are flushed, their eyes shiny.

They’re enveloped in the whiff of cigarette smoke and alcohol.

Lester’s teeth are very white as he smiles unevenly.

I quietly close the door, barely daring to breathe, as they open Lester’s door and disappear inside.

My fingertips are still clutching the brass handle. I can feel the pulse throbbing at my temples. It’s nearly midnight. I wait for twenty long minutes, my back pressed against the door, until I’m certain that Glover must have left his master’s cabin after helping him undress.

Gingerly, I open my cabin door a crack. The corridor is now empty and silent.

Only the soft vibration of the engines deep in the bowels of the ship can be felt beneath my feet.

I step out and cross the corridor to Lester’s door.

I press my ear against the wood. I hear barely audible muffled voices.

Lester is not alone. My mind immediately springs to Delia Finch.

Can she be in there? Is Lester that reckless? Is she?

I feel a compulsion to go inside. I don’t know what I’ll say when Lester sees me. I suppose I could pretend I’m sleepwalking or in need of something to ease a headache.

For a moment I fear that he might have locked the door, but I needn’t have worried.

He’s much too drunk to think of that. I turn the knob and push it.

It opens easily. The small amount of light from the corridor spills into the room, throwing a triangle of gold onto the carpet. I quietly step inside.

There’s movement in the bed. Beneath the quilt a lump resembles a great beast rising and falling, a bulky shadow in the dimness. The beast groans and sighs. My eyes adjust and I realise then what it is. Not a beast at all, but two people. Lester and Delia.

I stare in astonishment. My mind is racing. How did she sneak in so fast? What will the consequences of this liaison be?

The quilt stills. Two pairs of eyes pop out and stare back at me, glinting like silver.

I catch my breath.

They do not belong to Lester and Delia, but Lester and Glover.

Lester and Glover are making love.

I’m rooted to the spot with shock. I cannot tear my gaze away. The two men, dazed with both surprise and intoxication, gape back. Then Lester breaks the tension. ‘Constance?’

Mortified, I back away and flee to my cabin. I close the door behind me and lock it with a shaking hand. Then I lean against it, panting as if I’ve run a marathon. My mind is racing with a dozen possibilities. The blood now pounds against my temples. Lester and Glover are lovers.

What have I done?

So, after all his flirting with Delia Finch on board this ship, it turns out that Lester is secretly gay.

I want to laugh at the absurdity of it – to think that I thought Delia Finch was a threat to Esme!

And that long white glove lying on his bedside table is not a smoking gun at all!

It must be Esme’s. A love token – one I don’t imagine Lester much cares for.

How wrong was I! Lester isn’t under Glover’s thumb. He’s his lover!

Everything is now falling into place. Glover wears Lester’s cufflinks not because he’s stealing from him, but because Lester gave them to him.

Glover isn’t pawning Lester’s valuables for himself, but more likely on Lester’s instruction.

The valet is overconfident and arrogant because he’s sharing Lester’s bed and has Lester’s ear and his affection.

But Lester is playing a dangerous game. Love – if indeed it is love – can very quickly turn to loathing.

If it goes wrong, the man could ruin him in a heartbeat.

In 1912, being gay is a crime. It isn’t decriminalised for another fifty-five years.

Does it go wrong?

Another thought springs to mind. If he’s in love with Glover, that might explain why Lester wasn’t that keen to travel to America to see Esme Aldershoff.

He kept putting it off with one excuse after another.

Who delays seeing the woman he loves because it’s the shooting season?

Perhaps he’s sabotaging his engagement on purpose by flirting with Delia Finch, because in his heart he doesn’t want to marry at all.

I feel sorry for him then. For both of them. Gay relationships are commonplace in my time; in fact, same-sex marriage has just been legalised in the UK. But now, in 1912, theirs is an impossible love – and I know what that feels like.

I feel as if I’m beginning to make headway at last. The drama that condemns Lester’s soul to remain earthbound must have taken place inside the Aldershoffs’ house.

That much is clear. The reason I slid back to this moment was to witness Lester’s relationship with Glover.

That is also clear. I sense I’m on the right track, but there is still much to discover.

And what of Cavill? What is he doing here?

How is it that Lester and Cavill are both on the Titanic ?

It must surely be because I’ve started something with Cavill that I cannot stop.

As the old traveller woman in Cornwall told me in 1895, ‘Love will always bring you back.’ Has the power of love brought us together again?

I slip into bed, but I’m far from sleepy.

My mind is frantic. I feel as if it’s a messy bundle of threads I’m striving to untangle.

I try to imagine how Constance would feel were she to have found her nephew in bed with his valet.

Pixie Tate thinks nothing of it, but Constance Fleet is a woman of her time.

She’d be horrified, I imagine, and fear for his engagement as well as his reputation were the truth to come out.

Having read her diary, I know that she’s concerned about Esme’s happiness.

Upon Esme’s happiness rests her own, because she has her sights set on the girl’s cousin.

If Lester hurts or disappoints Esme, Orlando will certainly not look favourably upon his aunt.

If the marriage doesn’t happen, where will Lester find the fortune to sustain Broadmere?

I decide to skim the diary to see if I can find out whether Constance had suspicions about Lester’s sexuality.

Would she really be so worried about his valet if she didn’t suspect theirs to be an unusually close relationship?

She might not write about it overtly in these pages – after all, would she use nicknames for her lovers if she didn’t fear someone might read it? But she might allude to it in some way.

I scan the entries, searching for the name Glover, or the letter G, which she sometimes uses.

There are many references to him. She spends a lot of time at Broadmere with Bertha and Lester, and Glover seems to be an ongoing concern.

For a man who has only worked for Lester for eight months, he’s certainly made his mark!

At last, I find one sentence that surely confirms my growing suspicion that Constance has known all along about their affair, and that that is at the root of her preoccupation with Glover. On the 10th of January 1912, she writes:

I walked past Lester’s dressing room. The door was ajar. I had a direct view of the two young men. There was something about the way Glover was brushing lint off Lester’s shoulder that gave me pause for thought. Sometimes one has to really look hard at something to see it for what it is.

Knowing what I know, how am I going to behave when I see Lester in the morning? How would Constance behave? Would she have it out with him and tell him their relationship has to end? Would she insist he dismiss Mr Glover? Or would she ignore it and hope that his secret would never come to light?

When I slip back to my time, Constance will remember nothing.

With that in mind, I decide it’s best to pretend that it didn’t happen. That’s the only way I can safeguard Constance. Lester’s secret must go down with the ship.

I awake to a resplendent dawn. The rising sun gently bathes the flat sea in a soft, cold light, and catches the tiny shards of ice that dance on the air and glitter prettily. I look out of the porthole and think of what is to come. When the sun rises again, this ship will not see it.

It could not be a more beautiful morning, or a more fateful one.