by Rebecca Dean
“What about third-class passengers?” Theo asked Rose. “How many women in third class were saved?”
It was a moment when Rose knew why she liked Theo so much. “You are the only person I know who has shown any interest in those who were traveling steerage. No one knows as yet how many of them drowned, but it’s a certainty it will be a far higher proportion than those traveling second class, or first class.”
The final published figures proved her right. Only 81 women in third class were saved out of a total 179.
“God alone knows the number of men in third class who died,” Rose said bitterly to Theo.
The figures showed that out of a total of 462 men, only 54 had been rescued.
When White Star published the complete list of survivors’ names, Zac Zimmerman’s was not among them. His name did, however, feature prominently in a survivor’s account of the sinking.
Miss Susie Durham had described her experiences to the American press:
The lifeboat I was in was one of the last to leave and because of the steep tilt of the ship it was very hard to get into. Mr. Zimmerman helped the crew pass women and children into it. Then a member of the crew said that one of the boys in the boat was too old to be counted as a child. His mother said he was only thirteen, and he looked to be younger, but the crew member said he had to get out of the boat as it was for women and children only. He did, and Mr. Zimmerman picked him up and even though the crew member had drawn a pistol and was threatening to shoot him if he did so, he put the boy back in the boat. Then he helped other crewmen lower the boat. If he’d wanted to jump into it, he could have, but he didn’t. I think he knew the boat might overturn if too many people were in it. The last I saw of him, he was standing on the deck in his evening clothes, smoking a cigar.
Marigold had cried when she’d read Miss Durham’s account.
Theo had done his best to comfort her, putting his arms around her and telling her not to cry for Zac Zimmerman, but instead to be proud of him.
She was—but she knew it would be a long time before she stopped thinking of the moment on the Titanic when she had been faced with the choice of sailing on her, or returning to London with Theo. What would have happened to her if she’d stayed? Would she have been one of the survivors, or one of the dead?
Terrible though the Titanic disaster was, Iris’s thoughts were centered almost entirely on the preparations for Rory and Lily’s wedding. The wedding itself was going to take place in the local village church; the reception was going to be held at Snowberry. Since Rose was in London, now fully on the staff of the Daily Despatch, and because Lily was too distressed that David was still writing to her believing they were going to be together forever, all the wedding arrangements had fallen on Iris.
She didn’t mind. It was the kind of thing she was good at. She was only a little disappointed that Lily wanted everything to be so starkly simple.
There were to be no bridesmaids. Lily didn’t want an extravagant wedding breakfast either.
“Watercress soup, for the first course, then?” Millie had said to her queryingly.
“I think so. Then salmon mayonnaise, followed by fillets of beef with appropriate vegetables.”
“To finish, a mousse of apricots and champagne-primrose jelly,” Millie had said. “This is a perfect time of year for primrose jelly. Who is going to do the primrose picking? You or me?”
“I will.”
“How many are we catering for?”
“Twenty. When Lily said she wanted the wedding to be small, she really meant it.”
The wedding cake, however, wasn’t going to be small. Millie had made two wedding cakes, both for Lily’s mother. They had been five-tiered, and she wasn’t about to settle for anything less when it came to Lily. “White royal icing with touches of lemon,” she’d said when Iris had asked her about it. “With a traditional wedding couple on top of the cake, and lots of silver horseshoes and silver slippers for good luck.”
Though Iris had had only three weeks in which to do it, everything that had needed to be done had been done. It was the first of May and Lily’s wedding morning. Iris had decorated the church with vases of sweet-smelling lilacs, and Lily’s wedding bouquet of mauve beribboned anemones was on the hall table, just waiting for her to pick it up when she left later for the church.
Their mother, their stepfather, their two stepsisters, and Great-Aunt Sibyl were due to arrive at any moment. Marigold and Theo and Theo’s two sons were expected within the hour, as were Rose, Hal Green, and his daughter, Jacinta. It would be the first time Iris had met Hal and Jacinta, and it was something she was looking forward to nearly as much as she was looking forward to the wedding.
Other guests, guests who would be going straight to the church, included Toby’s parents, Daphne Harbury, and the artist Lawrence Strickland. Toby was best man. The sun was shining. Snowberry was looking its glorious best, and Iris was satisfied that everything was going well. Or she was until she walked into the drawing room and found Lily in floods of tears.
Appalled, she crossed the room to her, saying urgently, “Lily, you can’t cry! Think about how red it will make your eyes! You leave for the church in less than an hour!”
Lily, already wearing the dress she had chosen to be married in, gave a shuddering sob. There was a letter in her lap and the royal crest on it—David’s royal crest—was clearly visible.
“David says how much he is missing me. How he can’t wait to take me in his arms again. How he is counting the days until he leaves Neustrelitz.”
She handed Iris the letter, floods of tears falling down her face. “How can I give so much pain to someone I love with all my heart? I can’t bear the thought of his dear face when he reads the letter I’m going to have to write to him after the wedding. It’s killing me, Iris. Truly it is.”
Iris looked down at the letter in her hand.
My own beloved darling girl,
How I’ve been thinking of you tonight! I’m so longing to see you again, sweetheart. Württemberg was bad enough, but the court here at Neustrelitz is even worse. It’s so boring there are times when I quite literally think I’m going to go off my head. All Great-Aunt Augusta—I don’t know if she is my great-aunt, but she is my mother’s aunt and I call her great-aunt—does is go on and on about what a wonderful queen my mother is and what an awful lot I will have to live up to once my father dies and I’m King. How I long to tell her that the chances are it is Bertie who will be the next King! As I can’t, I just have to suffer it.
I miss you so much, my darling, and just want to have you in my arms again! In another few weeks you will be, and then I’m never going to let you go. Not for anyone! Not for anything! Not ever! I have a calendar by my bed—and a photograph of you holding one of the buns—and I cross the days off every night. When I go to sleep, I dream of you and of how happy we are going to be, and when I think of doing no more prince-ing I’m happier than ever!
I’m going to have to finish now as I’m very tired. I’ve been out shooting all day with my cousin-of-a-kind Grand Duke Adolph. Don’t get upset, sweetheart. I didn’t want to go, and I tried very hard not to hit anything! And this is one more day gone until we are together again—never again to be parted.
Goodnight my own sweet darling … your own very loving and adoring David.
Somber faced, Iris handed her the letter back. She knew the last three weeks had been excruciating for Lily, who had not only been receiving such letters on a nearly daily basis, but had also had to reply to them in a way that wouldn’t alarm David or make him suspicious.
She said quietly and with certainty, “You’ve been amazingly strong up to now, Lily, and for Rory’s sake you have to continue to be strong. David’s birthright is to be a Prince of Wales the country can look up to and see as a figurehead. He may think it is a role he can choose to abandon, but it isn’t. Think of all the people he would be letting down. A whole country—and not just this country either, but Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, South Africa, and India and goodness only knows where else. In marrying Rory before David tells the King he’s going abdicate his rights to the succession, you are doing the right thing.”
There came the distant sound of cars coming down the drive.
She put a hand under Lily’s arm, drawing her to her feet. “Come along, sweetheart. People are arriving. Go upstairs and wash your face. For Rory’s sake you must look a happy bride.”
The cars were nearer now—almost at the door.
Ashen faced, Lily nodded, and holding the letter close to her breast, she walked from the room.
She went to her bedroom and carefully put David’s letter in the box that held all his other letters, and then she went to the top of the house, to her studio. There was something she had to do before she left for the church. One final act before the life she had lived up to now—the life that had included David—was over, and her new life with Rory began.
The studio was full of sunlight. It fell in strong shafts over the bust she had sculpted nearly a year ago, when she had fallen so headlong in love with David and when everything—even becoming Princess of Wales one day—had seemed possible.
She stood in front of it and then, with her fingertips, she traced the contours of his dearly beloved face. It was the good-bye that she would never give him in the flesh. The good-bye that was being given because she loved him so very, very much.
She wondered how he would manage without her, and prayed that he would do so well. Then she removed a sheet that was covering a stack of prepared canvases and gently placed it over the sculpture she had so lovingly and skillfully crafted.
Some day, far in the future, when her pain had eased, she would unveil it and it would take pride of place in one of her sisters’ homes—perhaps even in her and Rory’s home. For now, though, she had to turn her thoughts to Rory. To the life they were going to build together on Islay. She thought of the way the baby she and David had created would never have to live within a prison-house of formality and pomposity and rigid etiquette as David had always done—and always would do.
Instead he, or she, would have the most beautiful Hebridean island of all for a playground. She would have her freedom, too. The freedom to paint and sculpt. The freedom to go where she wanted, when she wanted. The freedom of not being watched by a royal household of censorious eyes. She would have the greatest blessing of all, for unlike David she would never be lonely. Rory had always been in her life and now always would be.
After the wedding reception, she and Rory were traveling straight to Islay. She wouldn’t be in the studio again for a long time. Looking around, she silently said good-bye to it and then turned and began making her way down to the drawing room where her family were fast assembling.
She paused at the foot of the stairs, listening to the chatter that was coming from the drawing room. She could hear her mother saying bewilderedly, “But why wasn’t I asked to help arrange the wedding, Iris? Why is it so small and informal?”
She didn’t hear Iris’s reply because Fizz and Florin rushed past her, barking excitedly to welcome Rose, who, as she entered the house, did so accompanied by a startlingly handsome man. Marigold had already described Hal for her. “He’s all dark and damn-your-eyes,” she had said graphically, and for once Lily had to admit that Marigold hadn’t been exaggerating.
“Hal, Lily,” Rose said, introducing them. “Lily, Hal … and Jacinta, Hal’s daughter.”
“Are you the bride?” Jacinta asked as Lily shook hands with her. “I do like your dress. I can see it’s not really a wedding dress, but it’s very pretty.”
“Thank you,” Lily said gravely. Her dress was a very simple one of white voile with a lace fichu collar. It most certainly wasn’t a typical wedding dress, but she hadn’t wanted to wear one, and Rory had told her to wear whatever she felt most comfortable wearing.
“Are Marigold, Theo, and the boys here yet?” Rose asked as Lily picked up her bouquet from the hall table.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been downstairs at all since people began arriving.”
Rose looked at Lily’s pale face with disquiet. Hal still didn’t know the history behind Lily’s wedding to Rory—and she had told her grandfather and Iris and Marigold not to mention it in his presence. Hal was a newspaper editor. When he asked her to marry him—which she was sure he would do—then she would tell him. When he had become family, she would be able to rest easy that he wouldn’t be tempted to put what he was told into print.
His presence meant she couldn’t speak to Lily as she would have liked, but as they reached the drawing room and Hal opened the door for them, she did say in a low, urgent voice, “If you’re having second thoughts, Lily, please tell me.”
“No. I know I’m doing the only thing I possibly can do. Rory will make me happy, Rose. Happiness is something he’s very good at. And I’m going to make him happy, too.”
With Jacinta walking behind her as if she were her bridesmaid, Lily entered the room to the acclamation of her family, and fifty minutes later, in a church smelling of lilac and with her mother dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, she became Mrs. Rory Sinclair.
Rose’s sense of relief when the wedding was over was vast. If any of the guests suspected that the bride was nearly three months’ pregnant, their thoughts hadn’t been put into words—and Lily didn’t look pregnant. She looked as delicate as a camellia, her blue-black hair caught in a shining coil on the nape of her neck, little ringlets escaping round her temples.
At the wedding breakfast Toby had made a speech in which he managed to be surprisingly funny. Their grandfather had made a speech during which he’d had to blow his nose vigorously to disguise the fact that, at the thought of losing Lily to Islay, he was close to tears. Rory, resplendent in a black doublet and kilt, a lace jabot at his throat and lace ruffles at his wrists, had responded with a short speech of thanks on behalf of him and Lily.
Toasts had been made, champagne had been drunk, and when the wedding party had spilled out onto the terrace and into the garden, Rory and Lily had done so hand in hand.
Rose watched them, her throat tightening.
“They look grand, don’t they?” Millie said, coming up to her. “He’ll make her happy. He has the knack. If you have a minute, could you help me move the wedding cake from the wedding-breakfast table to another table where the bottom tier will be easier to slice? I’ve asked Tilly, but she’s too frightened of dropping it.”
Rose walked back into the house with her and as she did, the front door bell clanged. Moments later William came into the dining room saying bewilderedly, “Captain Cullen has arrived to speak with Miss Lily, Miss Rose.”
Rose was in the process of transferring the wedding cake from what had been the top table, to a small lace-covered table that had been prepared especially for it. It was only thanks to Millie that the cake didn’t come to grief.
She walked out of the room and down the corridor, her face tense.
Piers Cullen was standing in the middle of the hall, staring down at a trail of wedding rice.
He raised his head, his eyes meeting hers.
“Who is the bride?” he demanded. From her dress it quite obviously wasn’t Rose, and he added sneeringly, “Marigold?”
“No.” It wasn’t a moment Rose had foreseen, though she realized now that it should have been. There was no point in lying. Even in the hall the sound of the partying on the terrace and on the lawn could be heard, and he would only have to walk through the drawing room to the open French doors to see who the bride was.
“Well who, then?”
“Lily,” she said, and waited for the explosion.
It didn’t come. She’d robbed him of the breath to give vent to one. He was so shocked she thought he was going to faint.
At last he said hoarsely, “Who to?”
“Her cousin Rory. Rory Sinclair.”
“I don’t believe you! I don’t believe you!”
He pushed her so viol
ently out of his way that she went crashing to her knees. As she struggled to her feet, he raced for the drawing-room door. Seizing hold of its handle, he slammed it back on its hinges.
With bleeding knees she hurtled after him, terrified of what he was going to do. As William and Millie came running, she yelled at them to keep back, knowing that one blow from Piers could be the end for either of them.
“Piers!” she shouted. “Piers!”
Incredibly, once he reached the open French doors he came to a breathless halt, putting a hand to the doorjamb to steady himself.
She came to a halt a little way behind him, certain he had lost his senses, certain that he was mad—and probably always had been.
Looking past him, she could see exactly what he was seeing. The terrace with wedding guests sitting in cane chairs set around white-clothed tables. Her grandfather holding court at one of them, deep in conversation with her stepfather, the stepson-in-law he rarely saw. Great-Aunt Sibyl was sitting with them, a glass of champagne in her hand. A little way off from them, Marguerite, Camille, and Jacinta were playing with Fizz and Florin, trying to teach the dogs tricks, Marguerite and Camille doing so in French, Jacinta showing off by doing so in Spanish.
On the lawn her mother, looking incredibly lovely in rose-pink chiffon and a hat laden with white ostrich feathers, was talking to Strickland, and he was looking down his long Roman nose at her in rapt fascination. Hal, hands in his pockets, was talking to Toby. Daphne was walking down to the lakeside with Theo’s boys one at either side of her and Theo, Marigold, and Iris were standing in a little half circle around the bride and groom.
Marigold was wearing an emerald-green silk dress and a matching hat laden with yellow roses. It dipped seductively low over her eyes as, with a net-gloved hand tucked into the crook of Theo’s arm, she laughed at something Rory was saying.
Rory and Lily were still hand in hand. A slight breeze stirred Lily’s voile skirt and lifted the edges of her lace collar.
Though she couldn’t see his face, Rose knew Piers’s eyes were locked on Lily.
