Read Chapter 20: The Quarantine

Margaret’s breathing had become a shallow, rattling thing, audible even over the hum of the ship. Evelyn had her hand pressed to the girl’s forehead and pulled it back with a wince—the skin was not merely warm, it was furnace-hot, dry as cured leather.

“She’s burning up,” Evelyn said. “Julian, we have to do something.”

Julian knelt beside Margaret’s cot in the storage room, the air thick with brine and damp wool. He touched her neck, feeling the thready pulse skip beneath his fingers. Her face was the color of candle wax, and she was curled into herself, arms wrapped around her middle like she was holding something inside.

“When did she say the pain started?” he asked.

“She didn’t. She’s barely spoken since we found her.” Evelyn’s voice cracked. “I thought it was just the stress. The hiding. I didn’t realize—I should have realized.”

Margaret’s eyes fluttered open, glassy and unfocused. “It’s not the fever,” she whispered. “It’s my side. It’s been building all day. Like a hot wire.”

Evelyn’s blood went cold. She had seen appendicitis once, at a Newport summer party, a young footman who’d collapsed with exactly that complaint. The ship’s doctor had been called, the boy carried off, and she’d heard later he’d nearly died before they could cut.

She exchanged a look with Julian. He was already lifting Margaret into his arms, cradling her like she weighed nothing. Her body was limp, a doll’s body, and a faint whimper escaped her lips as her side pressed against his forearm.

“Infirmary,” he said. “Now.”

They moved through corridors that felt longer than they should have been—narrow, twisting, full of passengers who parted around them with murmurs of alarm. A steward tried to stop Julian for carrying cargo through a first-class passage, and Evelyn cut him off with the full force of her breeding.

“Stand aside. This woman is under my protection, and she is ill. If she dies because you delayed us, I will see your name in every newspaper on both sides of the Atlantic before the week is out.”

The steward stepped back. Julian did not slow down.

The infirmary was small, clean, and brutally white under the electric lights. A young doctor with tired eyes and spectacles too large for his face took one look at Margaret and waved them to a cot behind a curtain.

“Fever, abdominal pain, guarding,” Julian said, laying her down gently. “She’s been complaining for at least six hours, and it’s getting worse.”

The doctor pressed his fingers against Margaret’s lower right side. She cried out, a sharp, thin sound, and tried to turn away.

“Classic McBurney’s point,” the doctor said grimly. “I’m sorry, but this is appendicitis. She needs surgery.”

Evelyn felt the floor tilt beneath her. “Then do it. Do it now.”

The doctor shook his head slowly, pulling off his spectacles and polishing them with a handkerchief already stained with iodine. “Miss, I am the only physician aboard. I have a medical kit designed for seasickness, sprains, and minor lacerations. I do not have a scalpel set, I do not have ether in sufficient quantity, and I have one nurse who is more accustomed to assisting with childbirth than abdominal surgery.” He looked at Margaret, whose eyes were drifting closed again. “Even if I attempted it, the infection has likely already spread. I could open her, but I couldn’t close her properly. She would die on the table, and she would suffer greatly in the doing.”

“Then what do we do?” Julian’s voice was low and hard. “We don’t just leave her.”

“Ice,” the doctor said. “We pack the abdomen in ice to slow the infection. It will buy her time—perhaps twelve, perhaps eighteen hours. If a proper surgical facility awaits at the end of this voyage…” He trailed off, clearly not believing his own words.

Evelyn knew what he was not saying. The voyage ended tomorrow night. If Margaret survived that long, she’d be in a cold Atlantic current, not an operating theater.

“Do it,” Evelyn said. “Buy her the time. We’ll find another way.”

The doctor nodded and disappeared behind a curtain. Julian stayed by Margaret’s side, holding her hand while she drifted in and out of consciousness, her lips moving in half-formed prayers. Evelyn stood apart, her mind churning through the fragments of the locket’s note, the list of names, the warning that she must not break the pattern.

A nurse approached her—a stout woman with gray-streaked hair and kind eyes, carrying a small package wrapped in butcher’s paper.

“Miss Ashworth?” The nurse’s voice was hesitant. “I was told to give this to the Irish girl. The O’Leary woman. Said it was for her safety.”

Evelyn blinked. “Who told you?”

“A gentleman. Tall, well-dressed. Paid me handsomely to see she got it before the evening was out.” The nurse’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t catch his name. He was in a hurry.”

Evelyn took the package. It was lightweight, compact, and felt wrong in her hand—cold, somehow, as if it had been left in a refrigerator. She turned it over. No markings, no note.

“Thank you,” she said, and the nurse returned to her duties.

Evelyn carried the package to the corner of the infirmary and unwrapped it carefully. Inside was a folded canvas garment, grayish-white, with straps and buckles. She recognized it instantly from the deck plans printed in the ship’s brochure: a cork lifebelt.

It was new. It was clean. It was, according to the nurse, intended for Margaret’s safety.

And yet, as Evelyn lifted it, a searing heat bloomed across her fingers, as sharp as if she had touched a lit stove. She dropped it with a gasp.

“Julian.” Her voice was strangled. “Julian, come here.”

He was at her side in two strides. “What is it? What happened?”

“The belt. It burned me.” She held up her hands, showing the red marks already rising on her fingertips. “The package was for Margaret. Someone sent her a lifebelt.”

Julian frowned and reached for it, but Evelyn grabbed his arm. “Don’t. It might burn you too.”

He ignored her, using the hem of his coat to lift the lifebelt. His expression went from confusion to horror in an instant.

“What?” Evelyn asked.

He turned the belt over, and she saw it then. Slits had been cut into the canvas lining, and when Julian peeled one open, a dark powder spilled onto the floor. He touched just a hair’s breadth of it to his tongue, then spat immediately.

“Gunpowder,” he said. “And what looks like lead shot. They’ve weighted it.” He held the belt up. “Even if she managed to put this on, it would drag her straight to the bottom. It’s not a lifebelt. It’s an anchor.”

Evelyn’s heart stopped.

Someone had sent Margaret a death sentence disguised as salvation. Someone who knew she was here, knew she was ill, knew she would trust the gift of a stranger who paid the nurse to remain anonymous.

She looked at Julian, and the truth crawled up her spine like a cold spider.

“It wasn’t meant for the sinking,” she said slowly. “Whoever sent this—they knew she might be in the infirmary. They knew she might be weaker. They wanted her ready to take it with her, just in case she tried to escape.”

Julian’s jaw tightened. “Fleet.”

Evelyn shook her head. “Fleet wants to preserve the sinking. He wants the pattern intact. But if Margaret is on the list—if her name is in that locket—then someone wants her gone before she can change anything.”

She stared at the ruined lifebelt, its canvas lining gaping open like a wound. The nurse said a tall, well-dressed gentleman, paid for silence. Julian’s father, Ashworth, Fleet—any of them could have done it.

But only one of them had a reason to target a stewardess who barely existed on the official record.

“We have to move her,” Evelyn said. “Now. Away from here. Somewhere no one expects.”

Julian nodded, already lifting Margaret again. The doctor protested, but Evelyn silenced him with a look that promised consequences he could not imagine.

As they carried Margaret out into the corridor, her head lolling against Julian’s shoulder, Evelyn slipped the torn lifebelt into her coat pocket. She would show it to Ashworth at dinner. Let him explain it.

And if he couldn’t, she would use it to burn the whole night down.