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Chapter Seventeen

I’m blindsided. I stand gawping at Cavill in stunned silence.

How could I have got it so wrong? How did I miss that Orlando was Cavill all along?

Why did I assume he was American? I have no time to process all the information, to replay the events of the six days.

One thing is for certain, however – this changes everything !

If Constance is in love with Cavill, then I am free to love him too! The revelation makes me dizzy with happiness.

Cavill greets me with a warm smile. No wonder he didn’t make a big deal out of parting yesterday.

He knew we’d be reunited today. ‘Miss Fleet,’ he says, and runs his eyes over my dress.

I feel self-conscious suddenly that I look dowdy.

I wish I had something more elegant to wear.

For the first time on this slide, it really matters to me how I look.

I laugh to mask my embarrassment. ‘Alice has kindly lent me some clothes …’

‘We are all lucky to be alive,’ he says seriously, and I realise that he couldn’t care less what I’m wearing. ‘To say nothing of the joy of being warm and dry,’ he adds with a grateful smile.

Josephine embraces me affectionately. Her eyes are damp from her reunion with her cousin Esme. ‘Oh, Miss Fleet, it is good to see you again.’

‘Josephine could not wait,’ says Cavill to Alice with an affable shrug.

‘I’m seeing everyone with fresh eyes.’ Josephine laughs. ‘I will never again take life for granted.’

Alice looks stunned. She can’t imagine why they’re making such a drama out of the reunion. She laughs in a slightly patronising way. ‘Goodness, what a delightful scene. Come, let us go into the drawing room.’

‘We want to hear all about it, Cavill,’ says Walter-Wyatt, putting a hand on Cavill’s back. ‘Lester says you were both in the water. I bet that must have felt like a thousand knives!’

Lester offers Esme his arm and she slips her small hand around it and gazes up at him adoringly. He turns to me. ‘What on earth has got into you, Connie?’ he whispers.

I shrug helplessly. ‘It must be shock,’ I reply, shaking my head. ‘I don’t feel myself at all.’

He sighs and walks into the drawing room with Esme. I follow, feeling massively discombobulated, but at the same time elated.

Constance and I love the same man! How can that be possible?

The drawing room is sumptuous and very large.

Vast windows are framed by flouncy crimson curtains that are trimmed with frills and tassels, and God knows what else.

Huge carpets are woven in gold and red, and the walls are panelled and painted to match.

The effect is stunning. I’ve never seen anything so grand, and so overdone.

Everywhere I look, I see dollar signs. I can’t help it.

A room like this in my time would cost a fortune.

I can’t imagine what it cost William Aldershoff.

I sweep my gaze around the room and wonder where the Potemkin Diamond is hidden.

It must be in here somewhere. However, there are a million places it could be.

The room is cluttered with furniture and objects, sculptures and paintings.

I imagine it’s hidden somewhere in the bones of the room, for William Aldershoff had secret compartments incorporated into the design of the architecture as well as into the furniture.

I don’t imagine he would hide such a valuable diamond in something that could be easily moved.

Therefore, it must be in a concealed cavity in the wall, or in the bookcase, or beneath a floorboard.

A cavity that requires a key to unlock it.

It’s intriguing, but I’m not going to waste any time on it.

I’m not here for Alma Aldershoff, but for Lester.

And, as far as I was able to tell with my dowsing crystal, the diamond is not in the Aldershoff Hotel, so it really is of no consequence whether it’s here now.

Music is playing on the gramophone. A man with a high voice is singing against the crackle of the record.

I have no idea who he is. We seat ourselves on French-style armchairs upholstered in crimson damask silk.

They are stiff and not particularly comfortable, but suit the people who sit in them whose corsets and formal clothing would make slumping in modern chairs impossible.

Alice settles onto an equally beautiful but formal sofa.

Maids bring pots of tea and cake on trays, and footmen hover, awaiting instructions.

They look comical to me in their livery and I want to laugh.

They’re so serious, like the beefeaters who guard the Tower of London.

It would be an amusing challenge to see if one could get them to crack a smile.

Josephine is far more confident in the company of her family.

Her words tumble out in a torrent of descriptions.

She tells them how sumptuous the Titanic was and how charming all the other passengers were.

She mentions the Astors’ dog and then her voice trails off as she voices her concern that many animals must have drowned when the ship went down.

Alice and Esme listen to every word, eyes wide with excitement and lips parted, riveted by each detail, however small.

Walter-Wyatt listens with mild interest to the descriptions of the ship itself and the people on it.

He grows animated, however, the moment Lester and Cavill take up the story and describe the moment the great hull scrapes the iceberg, then he gives his full attention to the tale, firing questions at them in his quest to experience vicariously every enthralling minute of the tragedy.

Cavill’s face is grave as he describes the drama.

He doesn’t mention Lester trying to bribe a member of the crew to let him board the lifeboat, and he keeps the information I gave him about the collapsible boat and the Carpathia to himself.

Only once does he catch my eye, and a tacit understanding passes between us like two violins playing the same phrase.

Cavill and Lester have bonded over their experience out there on the ocean.

As one finishes a sentence, the other picks it up in a seamless narrative.

When they reach the end of the story, the room falls into silence.

I think Walter-Wyatt and Alice are imagining that beautiful ship at the bottom of the sea with all the valuable and precious things that sank with it.

They’re visualising the wealth lost in the sand and marvelling at the extraordinary twist of fate that sent the supposedly unsinkable ship to its horrible end.

Esme’s eyes are damp, and she reaches out her hand and takes Josephine’s.

I’m touched by her compassion. She doesn’t get that from her parents.

I think of Alma then, yet to be born, and understand how she must have felt growing up with parents who were so unfeeling.

Parents who were disappointed that she wasn’t born a boy.

At length, Walter-Wyatt announces that he’s going to take Lester to his club, the Knickerbocker.

Esme takes Josephine by the hand and they set off for a walk in Central Park.

To my surprise, Cavill turns to me and invites me for a drive.

‘As it’s your first time in New York, Miss Fleet, I would like to take this opportunity to show you something of the city,’ he proposes.

I agree. After all, Constance is soon to be a part of his family. Personally, I want to get out of the house; Alice and Walter-Wyatt Aldershoff are dreadful.

Alice reminds me that her dressmaker is coming to the house at noon. ‘You mustn’t miss it or you won’t have a suitable dress to wear for Lester and Esme’s engagement party next week, or, for that matter,’ she turns up her pretty nose, ‘anything else.’

Cavill glances at his gold pocket watch, which hangs on a chain in his waistcoat. ‘That gives us plenty of time,’ he says with a wide smile. ‘I will make sure Miss Fleet is delivered back to your door with time to spare.’

A maid brings me a hat, a pair of gloves and a parasol. Alice looks me up and down and cannot disguise her distaste. Nothing matches. ‘The sooner we get you to a shop, the better,’ she says as I endeavour to put on the hat in front of the mirror.

‘I’m more concerned about what’s inside the clothes.’ I laugh, for what do I care, now I know that Cavill isn’t at all put off by my mismatching clothes.

Alice corrects me. ‘That might be so in England, but, here in New York, a woman’s clothes are of the utmost importance.

It says everything about her.’ She notices me fumbling with the pins and asks the maid to help me.

I’m not used to wearing anything other than a bobble hat.

Alice probably writes me off as an English eccentric.

Cavill summons one of the horse-drawn carriages that wait in a long line beneath the trees beside the park and offers me his hand so that I can climb in.

‘This is a good way to see the city,’ he declares, settling onto the leather seat beside me.

The driver sitting up on the box cracks his whip and the big carthorse sets off with a plodding gait.

The sun shines brightly onto the city and I put up my parasol, then turn to look at Cavill.

We are alone together at last and we are free to love each other without inhibition.

Constance, certainly, had no inhibitions in that department.

He rests his eyes on mine and smiles, a smile that is both intimate and open.

A smile that brings back to me those many precious moments at St Sidwell Manor when we were candid and honest about how we felt.

‘Welcome to New York,’ he says. ‘Now, allow me to show you all the things I love about it and then I’ll tell you what I miss about home. ’