Read Chapter 29: The Truth of the Tailor

The water reached her knees before Margaret noticed it. She'd been watching the forward staircase, the way Jack disappeared into the gloom, and the cold seeping through her skirts felt like a separate disaster entirely.

"He said he'd come back," the matron said, gripping the rail. Her voice had gone thin, the way it did when she was praying silently. "He said the strongroom, then he'd come back."

"He will." Margaret heard her own certainty and was surprised by it. "Jack O'Leary has broken every promise a man can break, but he hasn't broken one to me yet."

The irony tasted bitter. She'd known him four days, and in that time he'd lied about his name, his trade, his class, his entire existence aboard this ship. And still, when he looked at her, she saw something that didn't lie.

A marine in a white lifebelt came splashing down the corridor. "You two! Boat eleven's still taking passengers on the port side. Move now or swim later."

The matron grabbed Margaret's arm. "Come, child. We must."

Margaret let herself be pulled a step, then stopped. The marine was already turning away, and the water around them was rising visibly, a slow, patient tide that didn't care about promises.

"You go," Margaret said.

The matron's grip tightened. "I will not—"

"Martha." Margaret used the name for the first time, and the matron's face softened. "You've earned your place on that boat. I'll bring him to you. I swear it."

The matron's eyes searched hers, found something that passed for assurance, and she released Margaret's arm. "God go with you, child."

Margaret turned and waded into the dark.

---

She found Jack on C-deck, slumped against the wall outside the mail room, his head in his hands. The water here was waist-high, and he didn't seem to notice. The blackmail list was clutched in one fist, crumpled and wet.

"Jack."

He looked up, and for a moment, she saw the boy underneath—the one who'd never learned to trust anyone with the truth. Then the mask slid back into place.

"Christ, Margaret. I told you to—"

"You told me to board a lifeboat. I told you I wouldn't. We've established I don't listen." She splashed to him, knelt, and took his face in her hands. "You're freezing. We need to move."

"The water's coming up faster now." His voice was hollow. "Forward compartments are gone. The bow's diving. We have maybe—" He shook his head. "I don't know. An hour. Less."

"Then we don't have time for you to sit here feeling sorry for yourself."

He laughed, a broken sound. "Is that what you think I'm doing?"

"I think you're doing something you've never done before." She lowered her hands to his. "I think you're giving up."

Jack looked at her for a long moment. The ship groaned around them, a sound like a dying animal. Water lapped at his chest now, and he seemed to notice it for the first time. He stood, unsteady, and the list slipped from his fingers.

Margaret caught it before it could sink. "This is it? The blackmail list?"

"Fifty-three names." Jack's voice was flat. "Fifty-three people who trusted the wrong banker. And now they're dead, or they will be, and the man who did it is walking around this sinking ship with a raft he says he's got."

"You don't believe him."

"I don't believe anyone." He looked at her, and something cracked behind his eyes. "I never have. That's how I survived."

"Survived what?"

The question hung between them. The ship gave another groan, deeper this time, and somewhere below, a bulkhead gave way with a sound like cannon fire.

"My father was a tailor," Jack said finally. "A good one. Had a shop on Delancey Street, three sewing machines, a presser he'd trained himself. My mother did the books. My sisters—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I had three sisters. The youngest, Molly, she used to sit under the cutting table and pretend she was a princess in a tower."

Margaret said nothing. She knew that stillness, the way a story needed to be carried carefully.

"I was twelve. I was supposed to be at the shop that afternoon, but I'd snuck off to watch the fire brigade drill. There was a fire in the building next door. The shop—the whole block—" He drew a breath that caught in his chest. "They said it was quick. That's what they told me, anyway. That they didn't suffer."

"Jack."

"I went to live with an aunt in Brooklyn. She meant well, but there wasn't money, and I was a boy with a grudge against the world. I tried the tailor's trade. I was good at it—my father's hands, they said. But every time I picked up a needle, I saw Molly under that table, waiting for a tailor who never came home."

The water around them was chest-high now. Margaret felt it pressing against her ribs, cold and insistent.

"So I took things instead." The words came out like confession. "Small things at first. Pockets. Then wallets. Then I got good enough to steal from men who'd never notice, and good enough to convince them I was their equal when I did. The tailoring came in handy. A suit makes the man, they say. I made myself into anyone I needed to be."

"The tailor's apprentice," Margaret said softly.

"There is no tailor, Margaret." He met her eyes, and for the first time since she'd known him, he wasn't performing. "There never was. I'm a thief. I've been a thief since I was twelve years old. I've stolen from men richer than God and poorer than church mice. I've lied to everyone who ever cared about me, because caring about people is how you get hurt, and I've had enough hurt for one lifetime."

Margaret felt the water rise to her chin. She grabbed the rail, pulled herself up onto the stairs, and turned back to offer him her hand.

"Then we're even," she said.

Jack stared at her. "What?"

"I've been lying to you too." She helped him up onto the stair, where they both stood, dripping, breathing hard. "I told you I was a lady traveling alone to meet my fiancé. There is no fiancé. There never was."

Jack blinked. "Then why—"

"Because I couldn't face Boston without someone believing in me. And you were the first man who looked at me like I was worth believing in." She laughed, a sound that was half-sob. "I'm not a lady, Jack. I'm a schoolteacher. I saved for three years for this passage. And I was so afraid everyone would see through me that I made up a whole life."

"You're a schoolteacher?"

"I teach arithmetic to eight-year-olds who would rather be anywhere else. And I have never once, in my entire life, met anyone who needed saving the way you do."

Jack stared at her. Then, slowly, he laughed—a real laugh, warm and broken and alive.

"Fifty-three names," he said. "A banker who kills his clients. A Pinkerton agent who dies giving me a key to a safe. And I'm standing in a sinking ship with a schoolteacher who lied about a fiancé."

"It sounds mad when you say it like that."

"It sounds like the first true thing that's happened to me in twenty years." He took her hand. "Margaret. When I get you to that lifeboat, I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to deserve you."

"Get me to the lifeboat first," she said. "Then we'll talk about deserving."

Above them, more water thundered through the ship's hull. The bow was going down, and the stern was starting to rise. They had minutes, not an hour.

"The list," Jack said. "We need to get it to O'Brien. He's the only one who can—"

A sound cut through the darkness. Footsteps, splashing toward them.

Jack pulled Margaret behind him, his hand going to the pocket where Whitfield's wallet sat. But the figure that emerged from the gloom wasn't Vance, and it wasn't a crewman.

It was the matron, soaked to the chest, her face wild. Behind her, a torrent of water poured through a shattered doorway.

"The boat," she gasped. "They've launched it. There's no time. There's no time at all."

And from somewhere above them, deep in the heart of the sinking ship, came the sound of the first explosion Bell had promised—a muffled roar that shook the deck beneath their feet.

Jack looked at Margaret, and the question in his eyes was simple: *Do we run for the lifeboats, or do we find out what Bell has done?*

The water rose past their waists.

The ship began to fall.