Voyage Out: The Complete Series

Prologue

PROLOGUE

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LUCIA:

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CHARLEY AND I LEANED against the smooth, polished railing of the RMS Mauretania, the fastest ship in the world and a Blue Riband favorite of the Cunard Line, watching New York drift by on the murky waves crowded with packet ships, steamers, barges, tugboats, ferries, and other maritime traffic of the harbor. The vitality of the city and its denizens pulled further and further away into the distance until it was no more than a still mural, capturing a remembrance of things past.

“So,” said Charley, not turning her eyes away from the Hudson, “what misdeed brings you here? Surely not...filial disobedience? Not insurrection?” A hint of Charley’s old impertinence twitched at the corner of her mouth although her gaze remained fixed on the river. “Oh dear, was it the rubber baron you refused or the heir to the Barrington mining patents? Perhaps copper and railroads instead of rubber? A fellow patron of the Oak Lounge? Or a permanent member of the Maidstone Golf Club? Some other spawn of the Four Hundred?”

“Charley—”

“Were you torn from a scandalous affair with a man from across the great divide? An unknown Hollywood hopeful destined for greatness? The first footman? A Democrat? Did you attempt to elope or simply locked yourself in your room? Was—”

“Charley.”

“All that lovely money, all those grand empire building plans riding on the back of connubial bliss. How dare you send that foregone conclusion up in smoke!”

“I... Father was...rather put out.” I pulled my cloche hat and raccoon trimmed coat closer about me against the cool flurrying breezes. “You?”

“Something of the same.” Charley watched a graceful lone seagull glide by on the air currents. “Nothing, though, that cannot be redeemed by catching a titled lord with a respectable fortune in these new hunting grounds to which we have been sentenced.”

I thought of Charley’s unexplained absences over the summer and past year, and her Aunt Merry’s unwavering cheerfulness and unconcern whenever an acquaintance asked after her niece, and the whispers and rumors circulating through the Park Avenue salons dedicated to tea and scandal, weightless, ghostly incorporeal things which vanished in the light but no less viperish.

“Oh?” I said. Behind us, a counterpoint of voices and sounds—greetings, laughter, hurried and leisurely footfalls, the excitable cries of children and bellows of parents, the groans of cargo being moved about the decks, the plaintive lowing of the ship horn, the dip and splash of the cold waves lapping against the hull—rose and fell and carried away on the briny air.

Some note of curiosity and skepticism must have crept into my voice for Charley answered with a fleeting secret smile.

“Gunpowder, treason and plot,” she said, turning, at last, away from the waves. There was a hint of self-mockery in the way she bore herself, of defiance, a glitter in the eye, a stubborn jut of the chin amidst the emergent dimples, daring to stand before all of Neptune’s oceans to tempt Fate. “It’s good to see you again, Lucia. Ready for an adventure?”