Unsinkable by Gordon Korman Read Free Book Online Page A

husband, the earl, stepped forward and attempted to embrace her. She whirled away with an expression of deep resentment, and held her daughter once more.
“Your mother is not one for travel,” he explained, falsely jovial. “You know how I couldn’t coax her into my aeroplane.”
“That’s because she has an ounce of sense in her head,” Juliana teased, trying to lighten the mood. “Would that I had inherited it.”
A steward’s voice could be heard in the passageway. “All ashore that’s going ashore!”
This brought on a fresh bout of weeping.
Juliana would miss her mother, but she was secretly relieved when the Countess of Glamford was escorted off the ship, a steward solicitously holding each arm. She stood, still sobbing, on the dock, waving to her daughter at the rail. It was difficult for a single passenger to stand out aboard the largest ship in the world, but the hysterical countess was making sure everyone noticed her poor daughter.
What could be more embarrassing?
The answer to that came swiftly. A hansom cabdrove up to the edge of the gangway and out stepped two uniformed constables. With perfect gallantry, they helped two ladies alight — one a girl of about Juliana’s age, the other a buxom matron dressed, oddly, in purple, white, and green, who had a great deal to say to the policemen, none of it pleasant.
The constables were polite, their decorum never slipping, but their mission was clear: to put these two women aboard the Titanic and make sure they stayed.
Sophie Bronson was humiliated. “Mother, if we had arrived with a brass band, we could not possibly have drawn more attention onto ourselves.”
The famous Amelia Bronson was unrepentant. “I like attention. It’s good for the cause.”
“I was hoping,” Sophie told her ruefully, “that for this one special voyage, we could forget about the cause. It’s already too late for that. Perhaps there’s a stoker in the bowels of the engine room who hasn’t noticed us being kicked out of England, but everybody else has.”
Mrs. Bronson was triumphant in her outrage. “My role is to shed light on the kind of” — she raised her voice so it carried over the bustling dockside — “injustice visited upon women by an unfair system! So I’m quite pleased by all this,” she finished in her regular voice.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” said the older of the two constables, “but we’re not visiting injustice on anybody. Our orders are just to make sure you’re aboard the ship and not to leave until she steams away with you still on her.”
Sophie sensed a long, loud reply brewing inside Amelia Bronson’s active mind. To stifle it, Sophie picked up a sizable leather bag and set it down firmly on her mother’s boot. Seeing a first-class passenger — a lady — actually handling her own luggage brought two porters scurrying over to take charge of their belongings.
A steward followed quickly to take their tickets and escort them to their cabin. “Will your maid be arriving separately?”
“We are women of the twentieth century,” Amelia Bronson snapped. “Quite capable of looking after ourselves — and of voting, too, and making other important decisions!”
“Mother …” Sophie gritted her teeth and gave her traveling companion a none-too-gentle push.
But the steward was well accustomed to high society and its quirks. “Very good, madam. If you’ll beso kind as to follow me.” After a few instructions to the porters, he led Sophie and her mother through a dark-paneled foyer, over carpets as thick as the turf of a well-tended golf course.
A real elevator, thought Sophie, hugely impressed. Just like the ones in the skyscrapers of New York and Boston.
Riding up in the car, seeing herself and her mother repeated in the polished brass and mirrors, Sophie was almost sad. This was the experience of a lifetime — the maiden voyage of this masterpiece of modern science and technology. Vast, luxurious, unsinkable — the Titanic was