The cold pulled at his ankles, drawing him down, into the maw of the beast. He kicked free, kicked away, but he felt its fingers burrowing into his skin, into his veins, tunneling up like weedy vines, wrapping around his calves, his thighs, his hips, thickening, tightening, cutting in. He kicked and kicked. Each time the beast pulled him deep into the cold, he kicked away. But he was tired, and the beast was relentless, finding its way into his belly, his chest, clamping around his heart.
He’d made a promise. He had to get out, had to find her. He had to be with her. Never leave her. Nora. Nora.
Nora.
“Nora!”
“I’m here. I’m right here.” Soft hands on his face, soft lips on his lips. He blinked and made his eyes see her. She was beautiful. Hair of gold, eyes of turquoise, skin of silk and cream. Freckles like tiny roses over her nose.
The cold was gone. The beast was gone. Had it been a dream?
“Nora.” Words seemed too far away to reach. He found one and spoke it. “Here.”
She smiled. “Yes, right here. With you.”
I’ll be with you. I’ll find you. I’ll never leave you. “With you.”
“Yes. Forever. I love you.”
“Nora.” The place where he was, with her, darkened. He held on lest he lost her again. “Stay.”
“I’m here.”
The world came to William as if through thick layers of gauze. There were things he knew, things he understood, things he felt, but he sensed them only imperfectly, incompletely. He comprehended the lack, the gaps and the distance, but had no idea what was missing or out of reach.
He’d been on the Titanic, and she’d sunk. The unsinkable marvel of seacraft had sunk on her maiden voyage. He’d been pulled from the water, frozen and on the brink of death, clinging haphazardly to a life vest. Nora was safe and well; she’d been on a lifeboat.
These things he knew, because he’d been told within the past few hours. What he remembered was dining on the ship, Nora wearing a gown of a pink so pale it made her seem nude, and he’d dragged her to their stateroom before the men at their table had made their escape to the smoking room. He’d barely managed to get her truly naked before he was inside her, sucking on the pearls of the choker he’d given her before dinner, feeling her nails in his back. His last memory was her contented sigh as she fell asleep in his arms.
Except for dreams of drowning and freezing, William had no memory of the ruin of the Titanic or his own slow slog toward icy death.
There was more than simply the sinking and the day after it that he’d lost. His whole life seemed to have been lived away from him, his memories of his own past as flat and disconnected as if he’d read them in the story of someone else’s life. They were there, but he had no strong connection to them, no sense of having lived them.
Until he looked at Nora. Her, he knew vividly. Every second he’d spent with her, every thought he’d had of her. His memories of her were so powerful and real that they illuminated the memories around them and made them real again.
“Short term memory loss is very common in a case like yours, Mr. Frazier—and frankly, if that’s the limit of your permanent losses, it’s not far short of miraculous. I can’t overstate how close to death you were.”
The doctor could overstate or understate, it didn’t matter. It had no impact on William, because he had no memory of the circumstance. But Nora’s hand clenched around his. It wasn’t the limit of his losses. He had trouble finding the words he wanted, or even realizing he needed to use them—he had trouble focusing when people spoke to him and knowing when they expected him to speak back. There was a gauzy screen between him and everything else. Everyone else. Except Nora.
The doctor put the cold disk of his stethoscope on William’s chest and back to listen to his heart and lungs. He had him stand and walk across the room unassisted—which was much more difficult than it should have been; his legs felt made of wood. That was the problem—he was made of wood and the world of gauze, and he couldn’t feel his place in it.
“Your lungs sound clear, but it’s important to be cautious. What are your plans when we arrive in New York?”
William had no earthly idea. They’d been headed home, to California. He knew he’d made arrangements, but they were too far away from him to remember what they might have been.
“Things have obviously changed since we made our plans,” Nora answered for him. “But we’d booked a suite at the Ritz-Carlton for two weeks. William meant to show me New York City before we travel across the country to California.”
Ah, right. He’d meant to show her everything about the grand city.
The doctor smiled kindly. “Certainly plans have changed, but I’m sure the Ritz is prepared to assist guests like you. I think it would be a very good idea to stay in the city for at least that time, but not to do much sightseeing.” He met William’s eyes. “You need your rest, sir. Your best chance for a full recovery is to respect the trauma you’ve suffered and let yourself recover from it. And you, too, my lady.”
“Me? I’m not hurt or sick.”
“No, but you’ve had an ordeal as well, and there will likely be effects. Be gentle with yourselves and each other.”
“Nora. Come.” He held out his hand.
“Are you feeling badly?”
He didn’t feel well at all, but he was better than he’d been when he’d first wakened on this ship—or, at least, his first memory of being awake. “No. Come.” The effort to find words for long sentences tired him, so he stuck to the fewest possible to express himself.
He held out his hand, and she closed the door and settled herself on the pallet with him. The doctor was finally gone, and they were alone. He felt better when she was in his arms. He felt anchored.
The ship—it was the Carpathia, he’d learned—was scheduled to arrive in New York Harbor that evening. The eighteenth of April, a day after the Titanic had been scheduled to arrive, and nearly four days after it sank. Without clear memories of the sinking, arriving at their destination nearly as they’d planned, William had no strong foundation to believe the sinking had happened. His mind wanted to build an image of an uneventful voyage, perhaps delayed by a storm, but no more than that.
Yet here he sat on the floor of some displaced sailor’s office, wearing the tattered fragments of a suit, and here Nora sat with him, bedraggled and weary. If they’d still been on the Titanic, they’d have been surrounded by grandeur.
Was this what she’d felt those first days in Bath, this sense of a dual reality, where the one that was supposed to be true felt the most false? Well, it was exhausting and deeply unpleasant. It made him feel like he was losing his mind.
“Dr. Schuyler said you should try to use more words, so you don’t lose them.”
“Tired.”
“I know. Would you like to sleep a bit before we go on deck? Or do you want to stay here until the ship docks?”
He’d wanted to be standing on deck with her when she caught her first sight of New York. He remembered that. He wanted to see her face when she beheld the Statue of Liberty. She’d hardly left England before, and he’d brought her all the way across the Atlantic. He’d almost gotten her killed, but they’d made it.
“Sleep, and then deck.”
She smiled at his attempt to give her a sentence. “Would you like me to stay whilst you sleep?”
He didn’t like her to be away from him ever. The one thing he had of his missing hours was not a memory, but a pervading sense of need. For her. “Yes. Always.”
When William stepped onto the deck and saw the water glittering blackly in the night, his chest filled with cold dread. He stopped dead and nearly tripped Nora.
“William? Are you all right?”
“I … shit.”
His vulgarity made her smile a little. “What’s wrong, my love?”
The mere sight of the water had his heart racing unsteadily. “I don’t know.” But he did, he knew exactly. That bastard of a dream was all around him, filling him with icy vines.
“Do you want to go back in?”
Yes. He wanted to go in. He never wanted to see the ocean again in his life.
But he lived on the San Francisco Bay. His work took him around the world. He wanted that life back, to live it, know it, feel it. This was fear, and he had no time for it. “No, no. Let’s … I need … sit.”
“Yes, all right.” She led him forward, to an empty bench.
As they approached it, he had a flash of a vision—hooking his arm around the leg of a bench just like it, while the deck beneath his feet canted wildly upward.
His legs gave out, and he went down hard to his hands and knees. The deck was steady beneath him. He tried to clench his hands into that solidity, but of course he couldn’t.
“William!”
Footsteps and shadow thundered to him. “Sir! Are you ill, sir?” A crewman helped him to his feet.
“I’m all right. All right.” Nora and the crewman helped him to the bench. When he sat, he folded forward and set his face in his hands.
“Shall I call a doctor, sir?”
“Yes,” Nora said at once.
“No,” William said at the same time. “No. I’m not ill. I just …” He just what? Had an attack of nerves? No, he absolutely would not admit such a thing.
But the crewman seemed to understand, and not to judge him weak. “Very well, sir. We’ll be docking within the hour.”
Within the hour. Liberty would be in sight. But he didn’t think he could get closer to the water than he was, and he didn’t want Nora closer, either. He thought of her on the Titanic, how she’d climbed the railings so she could see straight down to the point where the hull cut through the water. How happy she’d been, and how worried he’d been. “Can you see?”
She took two steps away, toward the rail.
He couldn’t let her. “NO!”
Her expression when she came back to him and sat beside him was full of understanding. “I’ll stay here with you. I don’t care about a silly statue.”
“I’m sorry. Wanted you to see.” Why were they on deck, then, if he couldn’t let her see the city approaching? So he could have a damned nervous breakdown in public?
“I’ll see it from the dock. If it’s as big as you say, I’ll probably see it from California.”
He laughed, and that sound and the humor that fueled it, and the love, warmed his chest and softened the dread. Holding Nora’s hand, he looked out past the railing at the ocean and made himself breathe.
“Excuse me. Sir? I’m sorry.”
An Englishwoman about his own age, showing a disheveled weariness that was a clear sign of having been a Titanic passenger, came shyly forward, leading a small, towheaded girl of about three or four years, equally mussed and shy, but less fatigued.
“Yes?” Nora asked, shifting on the bench as if she meant to protect him.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am.”
William couldn’t discern well among the approximately infinite different British accents, but this woman’s sounded common. Not Cockney, the only one he was fairly certain he could identify, not quite so broad, but not the refined, clipped tones of Nora’s accent, either.
That train of thought made him realize that he was thinking more clearly, and his chest warmed and loosened a bit more.
“I’ll not bother you,” the young mother was saying. “I only wanted …” She picked up William’s hand and pressed it to her heart. “Thank you, sir. Thank you so very much. I owe you my life. And my girl’s.”
“What?” Stunned, William tried to take his hand back, but the woman had him in such a grip, he would have had to yank away. He turned to Nora, who stared at the woman with naked shock.
“You saved us. They were pushing us away from the lifeboat, shoving and hitting, and you picked Lizzie up and put your arm around me and got us on it. You saved us.”
“I …” He stopped, because the only words he could reach to say were I’m sorry.
She let go of him. “I’m sorry to bother you. I only wanted to thank you. I don’t have much, but if ever you have a need, you find Dolly Wilson, in Queens, and I’ll give you anything I have.” She curtsied, and her little daughter did as well, and then she turned and hurried away.
Another woman stood not far off. She’d been watching the scene play out, and now she came forward. “You did the same for me.” She was American. “Helped me onto a boat and saved my life.” She turned to Nora to explain. “Other rich men were beating us lesser women back, but he beat them away and helped me on. There’s more like us. The story’s gone all around the ship about him. The handsome gentleman who saved us.”
She said nothing more, simply stood there looking painfully awkward, like she was engaged in a great internal struggle. William didn’t know what to say. He had no memory of helping these women.
And then she dropped to her knees and kissed his shoe.
“No! Please!” He grabbed her arm and pulled her up. “Please.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m so glad to see you here and alive. And with your lady, too. God is good. Can I ask your name?”
“Frazier,” Nora answered. “William Frazier.”
“Mr. Frazier. I’m Mabel Morris.” The woman stood and smiled brokenly at Nora. “Your man is an honest-to-goodness hero, ma’am.”
Nora brought William’s hand to her mouth and kissed it. “Yes, he most certainly is.”
The scene at the Cunard pier was madness. Throngs of people crushed onto the pier, far more than would comprise the loved ones of the passengers. Most were simply onlookers, William thought, vultures hoping for a first-row seat to the theatre of love and loss about to play out. Boats had rowed out to meet the Carpathia, full of reporters who started shouting out questions from below as soon as they were in range.
But the commotion gave them cover, and William’s desperate need to get away from the goddamned water gave him focus and energy. As soon as they were allowed, he grabbed Nora and got her off the ship.
People tried to stop them, but he wouldn’t be stopped. He needed this to be in the past. He needed to get Nora away from this horror. He needed to be away from it himself. Holding her tightly, he pushed through the mass of humanity until he’d found its end.
When he was off the pier and his feet hit the solid ground of a New York street, a surge of wild emotion and giddy relief struck William so hard that his eyes blurred and his chest ached. New York. America. Home. His head swam; his knees faltered. He grabbed hold of a lamppost and found his land legs. Home. He was home.
“Home,” he said, drawing Nora as close as he could get her.
“Yes,” she agreed, holding him just as tightly.
And then he hailed a cab and got them to the Ritz-Carlton.
It wasn’t until the extremely concerned and solicitous hotel staff finally left them alone in their suite that the profound fatigue of their mad dash, compounding everything else that had beset them, landed on him like an anvil, and he collapsed into a chair.
“William?”
“Tired. Just tired.” He was more than tired, and the anvil weighed more heavily with each passing second. As he sat there in sudden luxury, he began to shake. He wasn’t cold, not at first, but he shook everywhere. The shaking brought back another image, too vivid and too much like his dream—black water, dead silence, thick cold, vining through him, filling him, pulling him down—and then he was cold, and shaking so hard he could scarcely breathe. “Shit,” he gritted. “Shit, Nora.”
“I’m here, I’m here.” He felt her cool, soft palm on his forehead, and on his cheek. “You’re too warm, William.” She put her arms around him, sliding in under his arms as if she could lift him. “Let’s get you to bed. I’ll call for a doctor.”
“No. No doctor.”
“William—“ She stopped. “Let’s just get you to bed first.”
She helped him stand and walked him to the bedroom. There, she stripped his befouled clothes from him—he fought her, he was cold, but she was resolute, finding more strength in her small body than he had left in his spent one, and she stripped him bare. Then she helped him into the bed and went to the closet for all the extra blankets. She spread them all over him. Alone in the bed, he buried himself deep and tried to make the shaking stop. He shook so hard his head ached and his eyes rattled. He needed Nora.
She slid in with him, as naked as she’d made him, and wrapped herself around him, setting his head on her shoulder, the way he’d held her through so many hard nights in Bath. She was soft and warm, and he drew in a deeper breath. The shaking began to ease.
“Nora.”
“I’m here, my love. I’m with you. All’s well now. We’re safe, and we’re together. Forever.”
Still shaking, but calmer, anchored in Nora’s arms, William closed his eyes and let the cold dark have him.