Read Chapter 4: Engine Orders

The engine room hummed its low, constant dirge beneath Tom Ashworth’s boots. He leaned over the railing of the catwalk, watching the great reciprocating engines thrust and withdraw like the lungs of some vast iron beast. Sweat gleamed on the stokers below, men stripped to the waist, feeding the furnaces with relentless rhythm. The air tasted of coal dust and hot oil.

“Mr. Ashworth.”

Tom turned. A stoker had climbed the ladder to the catwalk, wiping his hands on a rag that had long since surrendered its original color. The man’s face was streaked with soot, but his eyes were pale and sharp against the grime.

“You’re the one asked about the ice warnings,” the stoker said, glancing over his shoulder as if the bulkheads themselves might carry whispers. “Name’s Driscoll. Fireman, third watch.”

“I did.” Tom stepped closer, lowering his voice. “And?”

Driscoll worked the rag between his fingers. “You’re an engineer. You understand what these engines can do.” He paused, and the hesitation spoke more than words. “We’re making twenty-one and a half knots. Smith’s pushing for a proud arrival. The fires are trimmed to the limit.”

“That’s a fast pace through the ice field,” Tom said carefully.

“Fast isn’t the word I’d use. It’s a race, sir, and we’re the horses.” Driscoll’s pale eyes met his. “I’ve been on the Atlantic twelve years. I’ve seen bergs that close in August, let alone April. The men talk. They say the wireless has been full of warnings all day, and still we go on, full ahead.”

Tom had felt it in his gut since the first sight of that distant, moonlit field of ice—a jagged white scar across the horizon that Rose had pointed at with such innocent wonder. He pressed his palm against the cold steel railing. “I was meaning to speak with the radio operator.”

“Then speak fast.” Driscoll jabbed a thumb toward the gratings below. “Those lads down there, they don’t get a choice. They shovel and they pray. Whatever you can do, Mr. Ashworth, you do it before we’re all left saying prayers we should’ve said sooner.”

A shout echoed from below, someone calling the fireman’s name. Driscoll nodded once, a gesture of grim farewell, and descended back into the heat and noise of the boiler room.

Tom stood a moment longer, feeling the pulse of the engines through his soles. *Twenty-one and a half knots.* They were slicing through waters he’d have crossed with caution in daylight and silence at night. He thought of Rose in her bunk, her small hands folded beneath her cheek. He thought of the aunt in Philadelphia who paid so well for a girl she’d never met.

And then, unbidden, he thought of Élodie Marchand—the way she’d tilted her head when Rose had asked about the iceberg, the way her eyes had flickered with something beyond kindness. Something he didn’t have the words for.

He climbed the ladder out of the engine spaces and blinked against the corridor light. Before his feet could find a direction, his pocket watch told him the hour. If he hurried, he might catch her before the afternoon sat down and grew heavy.

---

The second-class dining saloon was nearly empty at the late afternoon hour. A few stewards were setting out the place settings for the evening meal, laying silver with practiced, quiet ceremony. Tom stood at the threshold for an awkward moment, certain he was making a fool of himself. He had seen her come this way after lunch. He had no other plan.

He was about to retreat when the door to the far deck opened, and Élodie stepped inside, shaking a scarf of cold air from her shoulders. When she saw him, she paused, and a blush rose across her pale cheeks that she tried to hide with a small, surprised smile.

“Mr. Ashworth.” She crossed the saloon to his table, her movements modest but quick. “I did not expect to find you here. Rose is with the ladies’ lounge—I left her with a book of ship drawings. She was showing one of the older women how the watertight doors close.”

“That’s Rose,” Tom said, and the smile came easier than it had all day. “Always has to know how things work. Must get it from her father.”

He gestured to a chair, and Élodie hesitated before sitting. The saloon’s white paneling glowed in the last slanting light from the portholes. He took the seat across from her, suddenly aware of the soot still darkening the lines of his hands.

“I’ve been below,” he said by way of explanation. “The engine room. I wanted to see for myself.”

Élodie’s brow pleated. “See what, exactly?”

Tom ran a hand through his hair, and for a moment, the weight of what Driscoll had said sat heavy between them. “I spoke with a stoker. He told me the coal trimmers are working beyond their limit. That the captain has ordered full speed.” He hesitated, selecting his words the way he might pick a lock—gently, with care. “They’ve had wireless warnings all day. Ice. Ships ahead of us, slowing down.”

Élodie looked down at the white tablecloth, tracing an invisible pattern with her fingertip. “A steward told me it was routine. Something about temperature changes and the Gulf Stream.”

“That’s what they say, isn’t it? The words that make people stay calm.” Tom heard the bitterness in his own voice and softened it. “But I’ve seen the sea when it’s cold. When the ice comes down from the north. It doesn’t care about passenger lists or schedules.”

She met his eyes then, and he saw something in her face that was not fear, but recognition. As though she had been holding a quiet worry of her own and found she was not alone with it.

“You know the sea well,” she said. It was not a question.

“I’ve spent my life near it. My brother was the sailor, though. He had the romance in him.” Tom felt the familiar knot tighten in his chest. He had not meant to speak of his brother, but the words came unbidden, loosened by the long afternoon and the shock of her attention. “That’s why I’m escorting Rose. My brother, Jacob—he owed a great deal. Debts he couldn’t settle before he died. I sold everything I had to clear his name, but it wasn’t enough.”

Élodie’s face stilled. Her hands folded together on the table, composed, waiting.

“Rose’s aunt on her mother’s side—a wealthy widow in Philadelphia—agreed to take the girl in. In return, she would settle the remainder of the debt.” Tom’s jaw tightened. “So I deliver Rose to her, and we all carry on as if this is the arrangement we wanted.”

“You do not want to deliver her,” Élodie said softly.

Tom looked away, out the porthole at the hard, cold sea. “Doesn’t matter what I want. Matter is what’s owed.”

Élodie was silent for a long moment. In the quiet, he could hear the faint thrum of the engines through the deck planks, steady and oblivious. Then she spoke; her voice had a low careful quality, like someone confessing at a threshold.

“There was a little boy in third class. Louis.” She told him then about the broken locket, the missing mother, the older sister Marie with guilt in her eyes. “Marie did not say exactly what happened. But she asked if I would watch for her mother. She gave her brother to me for safekeeping, and now I carry a promise I do not know how to keep.”

“She gave you her brother?” Tom frowned.

“Not the brother. The locket.” Élodie’s lips curved, almost rueful. “She said it was their mother’s. She wanted someone to guard it until her mother was found.”

Tom regarded her for a moment. He had known Élodie was hiding something from the first collision in the corridor— a shadow behind her eyes when she thought no one was looking. But she wore that shadow like armor now, her chin lifted to meet a duty too large for her to carry alone.

“If you find the mother, you’ll need a third-class manifest and a purser who does not look the other way when you ask about steerage,” Tom said. “I know a thing or two about paperwork. About reading between lists.”

“Are you offering?”

“I’m offering to keep my eyes open.” He leaned forward, and something urgent passed between them with the small distance. “We can find her after dinner. I’ll ask around the crew quarters. You show the locket to passengers where you can. Between us, we may cover more ground.”

Élodie nodded slowly. A strand of dark hair had slipped loose from her pins, and she tucked it behind her ear, a gesture so unconscious it struck him to the heart.

“After dinner, then,” she said.

He wanted to say something else, something that had been building inside him since the moment he’d descended from the boat deck with the taste of ice in his mouth. That he was glad to have met her. That she was a strange comfort in a strange ocean.

But the saloon doors swung open, and a steward stepped in, carrying a stack of linen. Tom rose instead, offering his hand. Élodie took it, her palm warm despite the cold pressed against the portholes.

“Until after dinner,” he said.

She left him with a small nod and walked out onto the deck, her coat drawn tight. Tom watched her go, and beneath his feet, the engines continued to drive the great ship onward, blind and full for the dark.