The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott Read Free Book Online Page B

his apologies, which was more than the pompous ass who scolded that young maid tonight had managed to muster. Interesting woman—hard to forget the abundance of soft hair framing her lively eyes and luminous skin. And such determined ways. Probably worth more than most of the pretenders on this ship, though she didn’t know it. So fresh and young. She made him uncomfortably aware of his own advancing middle age.
    Lucile felt it as she leaned across her dressing table to remove her moonstone earrings after returning from dinner. She saw the liquid in her perfume decanter shiver and then calm. She would have pointed it out to Cosmo, but he was already in bed. How did he fall asleep so quickly? She so hated his snoring. She hesitated, fingering her earrings, waiting to see if there would be another bump. All seemed fine. Not knowing herself why she did it, she slipped the earrings into their velvet drawstring bag and tucked them into her shoe.

    First, a discreet knock at the Duff Gordons’ door.
    “Ma’am, we’ve had a small accident,” the steward outside said quickly to Lucile. “Nothing to worry about. We bumped into an iceberg, but all is well. However, you might want to come on deck.”
    Lucile was not fooled for a minute. The steward knew nothing—he was just prattling a reassuring line.
    “Get dressed, Cosmo,” she said, shaking her husband’s shoulder. “And put your life belt on. I’m going to wake Tess.”
    She was lacing up her life belt, muttering about its clumsy design, when Tess knocked urgently on the door. “We should hurry,” Tess said as the door opened. She made no attempt to smooth away the troubled frown on her face. It wasn’t fitting for her to be urging speed on the Duff Gordons, but social conventions seemed not to matter right now.
    “It’s Cosmo who is taking his sweet time,” Lucile snapped.
    The hallway was filling fast with people in nightcaps and pajamas, looking comically like stuffed teddy bears in their life belts; there wasn’t a silver cigarette holder in sight. Stripped of their grand clothes, they looked quite ordinary, Tess thought fleetingly.
    Cosmo finally appeared, stuffing his shirttails into his trousers.
    “This way,” Tess said, beckoning them to the stairs. Cosmo and Lucile followed her without objection, joining a good-naturedly grumbling crowd making its slow way to the upper deck. Most of the chatter was relaxed, if a little fretful. Some passengers were complaining they’d never get back to sleep after this silly drill, or whatever it was. Such a bother. When an English surgeon asked Lucile politely if she had watched that smashing poker game in the drawing room after dinner—so exciting—she murmured something pleasant. He turned to his companion, a man still in full evening dress: “Say, are we on for the gymnasium after breakfast? Hope they serve those pancakes again—the children loved them.”
    Just behind Lucile was the woman she had disapprovingly called the “coarse Mrs. Brown,” the one who had turned a place named Leadville into a fortune in gold. She was laughing at the sight of her fellow passengers in various stages of dress. “Can’t tell a viscount from a duke in this crowd!” she boomed. “Everybody’s britches look the same!”
    Nobody else laughed, although there were a few titters. Much of it, it seemed to Tess, at Mrs. Brown’s expense.
    They were at the top of the stairs.
    At first, things seemed calm. People were clustering on the deck, shivering and chatting nervously. “We hit an iceberg,” a boy said to no one in particular, holding out a large chunk of ice in his hand, as if making an offering. “See? I grabbed a piece as we passed by. We all did, down below. We were playing.”
    As the minutes passed, with no one seeming to know what to do, Tess realized that crew members were struggling to untangle ropes and canvas covers, slipping on the deck, shouting to one another.
    Lifeboats. They were launching