Read Chapter 2: Shipboard Alliances

The second-class library was nearly empty at this hour, the lamps casting pools of honeyed light over the leather chairs and the rows of books that nobody seemed to read. Élodie had come here to escape the chatter of the smoking room, the clink of glasses from the saloon below, the weight of all those polite inquiries about her voyage—*Who are you traveling with, Mademoiselle Marchand? And your family, they remain in France?*—each one a small knife twisting in the secret she carried.

She ran her finger along the spines. Dickens. Thackeray. A worn copy of *Jane Eyre* that she pulled free and opened to a random page. She did not read the words. She only breathed.

“Mademoiselle Marchand.”

His voice was uncertain, as if he were testing whether he had the right to use her name at all. She turned and found Tom Ashworth in the doorway, still in his day clothes, collar loosened at the throat, a smudge of something dark along his jaw that might have been grease. He looked surprised to see her, and then embarrassed by his surprise.

“Mr. Ashworth,” she said. “You found the library.”

“I was looking for”—he gestured vaguely at the shelves—“something to occupy Rose. She’s been restless. The sea makes her nervous, she says, though I suspect it is the sea of strangers she means.”

Élodie smiled despite herself. “She is a perceptive child.”

“She is a child with too many questions and not enough answers.” He stepped closer, and she caught the faint smell of coal smoke and salt on him. He had been down in the engine rooms. She could tell by the way he moved, still vibrating with the thrum of machinery. “Actually—Mademoiselle, I wonder if I might ask a favor. It is an impertinence, and I understand entirely if you refuse.”

She closed the book. “Ask.”

“I’ve been summoned below. One of the junior engineers is concerned about a bearing temperature in the turbine casing—likely nothing, but I’d rather look with my own eyes than trust a report. Rose is in the lounge, trying to teach herself chess from a book. She’ll be fine for half an hour. But if you were already there, already present… it would ease my mind.”

Élodie hesitated. She had come to the library to be alone. But she remembered the girl’s face at dinner—watchful, solemn, older than her years in the way that motherless children often are—and she found herself nodding before she had fully decided.

“Half an hour,” she said. “No more.”

“You are very kind.”

“I am very foolish,” she corrected, replacing *Jane Eyre* on the shelf. “But let us not tell anyone.”

Rose was exactly where Tom had left her, hunched over a chessboard in the corner of the lounge, a book propped open before her that showed the opening moves of a game called the Queen’s Gambit. She looked up when Élodie sat down across from her, and her small face did not register surprise so much as a quiet, patient acknowledgment.

“Uncle Tom asked you to watch me,” she said. It was not a question.

“He did.”

“He worries too much. I’m ten. I’m not going to fall overboard.”

Élodie suppressed a smile. “I am glad to hear it. I should hate to explain that to him.”

Rose studied her for a long moment. Her eyes were gray, like her uncle’s, but where his were open and warm, hers held a narrowing curiosity that made Élodie feel rather like a specimen under glass.

“You’re not like the other ladies,” Rose said eventually. “They always ask me about my mother. You haven’t.”

The air left the lounge. Élodie felt the child’s gaze land on her like a physical weight, and she understood, with a sudden and painful clarity, that Rose was not naive. She was simply waiting to see if Élodie would lie to her.

“Your uncle told me about your mother,” Élodie said carefully. “That she passed. And I think if I were you, I should not wish to speak of it with strangers, either.”

Rose’s expression softened, just barely. “He told you, then. He doesn’t tell everyone.”

“I am honored to be trusted.”

“He likes you,” Rose said, with the flat certainty of a child delivering a weather report. “He doesn’t like many people. Not anymore.”

Élodie felt her cheeks warm. “Your uncle is—a gentleman. It is easy to be liked by him.”

Rose shrugged and turned back to the chessboard, moving a pawn with two fingers. They played in silence for several minutes—or rather, Rose played, narrating each move under her breath while Élodie pretended to understand the strategy. The girl was extraordinarily focused, her brow furrowed, her lips moving as she calculated. Élodie found herself watching her rather than the pieces, thinking of all the small ways grief reshapes a person, how it bends them into sharp angles and quiet corners.

“I need the lavatory,” Rose announced suddenly, pushing back her chair.

“Shall I come with you?”

“No. I know where it is. Wait here, please—I’d like to see if you can solve the knight’s tour while I’m gone.” She slid the book across the table, already open to a page of diagrams. “It’s the only way to beat me.”

Before Élodie could protest, the girl had slipped out of the lounge, her dark braid swinging behind her. Élodie watched her go, then looked down at the chess problem with a sigh. Knight’s tour. She had no idea—

The minutes passed. Five. Ten. The lounge began to fill with other passengers, a couple arguing over a copy of the ship’s newspaper, an elderly man snoring softly in a wingback chair. Élodie kept her eyes on the door, expecting Rose’s small figure to reappear at any moment. She did not.

At fifteen minutes, Élodie set down the book and went to find her.

The corridor outside the lounge was empty. The lavatory door stood ajar, the small room beyond dark and unoccupied. Élodie’s heart began to beat a little faster, a prickle of unease climbing her spine. She checked the stairwell. The dining saloon. The smoking room, where a steward informed her, with a patient smile, that he had not seen any little girls.

*She’s ten,* Élodie reminded herself. *She’s clever. She knows her way around.*

But the ship was vast, and filled with dark places, and the sea beyond the rail was vast and dark as well.

She found Tom Ashworth at the top of the forward stairwell, his face flushed from exertion, his collar now completely undone. He had been running, too.

“She’s not in the lounge,” he said, breathless. “I went back there first, when the bearing turned out to be nothing—I thought I’d catch the end of your game.”

“She slipped away while I was studying a chess problem.” Élodie’s voice came out flat, ashamed. “I should have watched her more closely.”

“It’s not your fault. She’s done this before. She gets an idea in her head and she follows it, and God help anyone who tries to stop her.” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up at odd angles. “Any idea where she’d go? She talks about the boat deck sometimes, says she wants to see the sea properly at night.”

“Then we start there.”

They climbed together, taking the stairs two at a time, passing stewards and passengers who looked at them with mild curiosity and then looked away. The air grew colder as they rose, the ship’s warmth falling away behind them. At the top, the door to the boat deck swung open onto a wind that cut straight through Élodie’s jacket, and she gasped at the shock of it.

The deck was nearly empty. The boat davits stood like skeletal sentinels against the dark, and beyond them the Atlantic stretched out, black and infinite, the stars overhead so bright and so numerous that they seemed almost artificial. And there, at the rail, stood a small figure in a gray coat, her braid whipping in the wind, her hands gripping the metal as she leaned forward into the night.

Tom reached her first. He dropped to his knees beside her, gripping her shoulders, turning her to face him.

“Rose.” His voice cracked. “What were you thinking? You cannot—you do not understand how dangerous it is to go off like that. You do not *understand*.”

“I wanted to see the icebergs,” Rose said. Her voice was small, but not afraid. She pointed out at the horizon. “The captain said on the public address that we might see ice tonight. I wanted to be the first to spot one.”

Tom stared at her; then he pulled her into his arms, crushing her against him. Élodie watched them, and for a moment she felt like an intruder, an outsider peering into a grief she did not share. Then she stepped forward and looked out at the sea, following the line of Rose’s pointing finger.

And she saw it.

A flicker of white, distant but distinct, catching the starlight. Then another. And another. A field of them, stretching across the horizon like a pale scar on the black water.

“Tom,” she said quietly.

He looked up, his face still buried in Rose’s hair. Then he followed her gaze, and his expression changed. He rose to his feet, lifting Rose with him, his arms tightening around her.

“Those are icebergs,” he said. “A lot of them.”

“The captain mentioned ice,” Élodie said. “But he said the ship was unsinkable. That it was nothing to worry about.”

Tom did not answer. He was looking at the icebergs, and his jaw was hard, and Élodie understood that he was doing the calculations in his head—the latitudes, the current, the speed. He was a man who built things, who understood the physics of peril, and he did not like what he was seeing.

“I’ll have a word with the radio operator tomorrow,” he said finally. “The warnings have been coming all day, I expect. They always do when there’s ice.”

“You’re worried,” Élodie said.

He turned to look at her, and in the starlight his face was older, lined with a weariness that had nothing to do with the cold. “I’m a father to that little girl. I’m worried about everything, all the time. It’s exhausting.”

The wind gusted, and Élodie shivered. Rose had fallen asleep against her uncle’s shoulder, her face peaceful, her trust absolute.

“I’ll find her again in the morning,” Tom said. “But I can’t watch her every moment. And now that I’ve seen those”—he nodded at the ice—“I want to spend some time with the chief engineer, reviewing the emergency plans. It may be nothing. But if it is something…”

He trailed off, and Élodie understood what he was asking before he said it.

“If you need to be elsewhere,” she said, “I will watch her. She’s a strange child, but I find I do not mind her strangeness.”

Tom’s eyes met hers. In them, she saw relief, and gratitude, and something else she could not name.

“You’re a good woman, Élodie Marchand,” he said. “I hope you know that.”

She did not answer. She did not think she was a good woman at all. She thought she was a woman running from a scandal, hiding aboard a floating city from the wreckage of her own choices. But she smiled, and nodded, and followed them back down into the warmth of the ship, where the lights blazed as if the night outside did not exist at all.