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Chapter 3

Chapter 3

 And then it'll be too late to take it all back. You ruin my life" - her finger came to rest an inch from Hilda's nose, and it was steady as a rock - "and you'll ruin the Captain's, your own, your children's, and ... Well, it's enough to be going on with."

"No!" Hilda said though there was now more fear than fury in her voice. "I can't accept this. I simply can't accept it. You'll have to tell me more."

Michael shook her head slowly. "I don't have to do anything, Mrs Morgan. Except my work here on the Pride of Liverpool - which I trust I shall continue to do to the satisfaction of all my passengers. Now, was there anything more?"

"You must tell me something," Hilda pleaded, clutching at her arm. "What possible secret could you know about a good, fine man like the Captain that would have such dreadful consequences? It's simply not possible."

Michael closed her eyes in an agony of indecision. What to say? What could she say that would give not the slightest real clue but which would enable the old bag to test her assertion. At last she said, "Ask the Captain how he feels about letting Kathy go and visit Chuck when he's at Yale."

"Ha! Got you!" Hilda was all triumphant again. "It so happens I did!" "And he agreed?" Michael asked in amazement.

Then Hilda remembered that Frank's willingness to consider such a visit had all been when he thought Chuck would be in Chicago. Once he had heard about Yale he'd changed his tune completely and said it was out of the question. "No," she had the honesty to admit.

But by then her face had already said it for her.

ALTER GRANDISON HAD HIS eye on Hilda from the moment he saw her come aboard in Manhattan - in fact, he'd had his eye on her for the past twenty-two years. His first serious attempt to seduce her had been at a ball given by Lloyd's in the City, when they were both only twenty. Fortunately though he had not thought so at the time she hadn't even been aware of what was going on. What a waste it would have been, he now thought, as he watched her move gracefully about the salon, playing hostess to this tiny, glittering world. And so for the past two decades he had I watched her slowly ripen, like some exotic fruit whose maturity is gained in decades rather than seasons; and now she was close to the moment of her perfection.

On that particular evening, the Wednesday after especially they sailed from New York and just two days before they were to arrive in Liverpool, he was watchful. Something had changed in her since their voyage out on the Champlain and their time in Chicago. There was a new light in her eye, somewhere between wistfulness and bewilderment - and a third quality, too, even more enigmatic. He trembled at the thought of possessing her now, for she posed the challenge of the unknown, and there were few women left in that category to him at least.

Around eleven o'clock, the hour when she usually gathered her ridiculous little chirping bird of a daughter and went below to their stateroom, he saw her drift out onto the promenade deck by the starboard door, the moonlit side. She was unaccompa nied. So far, so good, he thought as he slipped out on the port side and made large strides toward the glazed-in portion up forr'ard. His instinct was right. She was sauntering toward the same area on her side. There were several others about, all well wrapped against the winter's night and enjoying the brilliant moonlight upon the great silver-backed rollers. Among them, he noticed with slight annoyance, was little Kathleen Morgan, deep in earnest conversation with the sick-bay nurse, who was allowed on the promenade deck after ten in the evening. (He knew as much because she was one of his three reserve bets in case Hilda failed him.)

His manservant appeared with his coat and hat, just in time for him to settle it at a rakish angle on his head and give it an insouciant tip in her direction. "I feel utterly naked without it, Hilda," he said. "Aren't we the most absurd of God's creatures!"

She laughed. "Why d'you say that, Walter?"

So he was "Walter" now - a bit of a change since the Champlain. "Because of our obsession with rules, don't you know. Tell a man he's free and the first thing he says is, "Thanks very much, but what are the rules?' Now don't you call that absurd?"

"And women? What do they say?"

"You are the rules, Hilda. Nay, more than mere rules you are the Law itself. You draw the boundaries. We try to get our toes over 'em." He slipped off his coat. "Here, put this around you - just like old times!"

"You mean I still drown in it."

"Well, tell me about Boston. I was sorry to have to miss that."

She did not immediately answer. He gave an awkward laugh. "Something must have happened."

"I wish I knew." She gave an awkward laugh, too, and laid her hand briefly on his arm. "Here, you're shivering," he said. "Let's go back

inside."

"No!" Her response was immediate. She went to the rail and pressed her forehead against the cold glass. They were immediately below the centre of the bridge. Frank must be up there, not fifteen feet above her - and yet not within a thousand miles of her, either.

"Is something amiss?" Walter asked. "You know I'd do anything to help."

"Dear Walter," she murmured, giving him a grateful smile. "I know you would." Anxiety crept back into her voice: "You are the very soul of discretion, aren't you? I mean, nothing I said to you would go any further?"

"If you asked it, I would carry it to the grave, my dear. So ask away." She hesitated a long while. He knew well enough to say nothing. At last she sighed and told him, "It's so awkward."