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  He looked up and saw her staring at him. Their eyes met and he smiled. She smiled back and quickly turned away, blushing furiously.

  Somehow, some way, she had to meet him. Across the deck, Beckett wasn’t worried about that. He had already written it into the story. He would meet her over dinner that evening, after she had come down the grand staircase of the ship of dreams, dressed in a gown of cream and lavender, with gardenias in her hair.

  Chapter Five

  Carrington took great care in dressing for dinner. Without thinking about it at all, she reached for the loveliest evening gown in her wardrobe, a new creation made of cream colored lace over lavender silk. The gown was empire style, with a neck that was just low enough but still proper for a girl her age and embroidered all over with clusters of sequins and crystals. A small train swept behind her and the shoes she wore matched the gown. She piled her hair high on her head and let only a few red-gold tendrils cascade down her back and dressed her upsweep with a crystal comb and white gardenias. A glittering diamond necklace finished her outfit. Even her mother approved.

  “That is a lovely gown,” she said as they started down the grand carved staircase for dinner. “Even prettier than I had imagined it would be when we had it made.”

  She kept looking for the handsome man she had seen on deck as they were escorted to their table. She temporarily forgot about him as they were introduced to the Astors who would be dining with them for the duration of the voyage. She was wondering how to broach the subject of their trip to Cairo when Mr. Astor introduced her to Molly Brown.

  “Molly was in Cairo with us,” he said. “Are you perhaps interested in Egypt at all, Miss St .Clair?”

  “So very interested,” Carrington exclaimed. “How thrilling it must have been to actually be there.”

  “It was quite something,” Molly said. “I brought back three crates of souvenirs. Mr. Brown has no idea what’s about to have to be unloaded.”

  “You saw the pyramids?” Carrington asked.

  “Saw them and a good bit of what’s inside them,” Molly remarked.

  “I cannot imagine anything more wonderful,” Carrington said.

  “Then by all means,” John Jacob Astor said, “you should see it in person. I’m sure we’ll have another expedition soon. I can’t quite get enough of it all myself. Perhaps your parents would let you accompany us.”

  Carrington tried not to look too excited at the prospect. “I would love that, Mr. Astor.”

  “Well.” Rose St. Clair said, “Perhaps we could think about that.”

  Carrington’s father and the other gentleman rose as three other people approached table.

  “Jackson MacKenzie,” Wilson said, stretching out his hand. “It’s been years.”

  Beckett’s father shook Carrington’s father’s hand. She looked at Beckett, who was standing beside his father, recognizing him as the man she had seen after boarding. But if this man was Jackson MacKenzie, then…

  “You remember the St. Clairs, my dear,” Jackson said to his wife.

  “Of course,” Alice MacKenzie said. “Although it has been a long time. And this is Beckett.”

  “Who has grown up since you last saw him,” Jackson said as they took their seats. “And this beautiful young lady can only be Carrington.”

  Beckett took the empty seat beside Carrington. The woman he had fallen in love with on deck, who was dressed exactly as he had predicted she would be, was his favorite childhood playmate?

  “Hello, Carri,” he said.

  Carrington blushed. “I don’t go by Carri anymore, Beckett.”

  “I will try to remember that,” he said, smiling at her.

  “And I shall hope that you no longer carry frogs in your pocket?” The whole table laughed at their reunion as the waiters began serving the first course.

  “I haven’t played with frogs in quite some time,” Beckett said quietly. “And as I recall, you went away and didn’t say goodbye.”

  “We went abroad for three years. And I begged to come say goodbye, but my parents said we didn’t have time with all the arrangements.”

  “I was inconsolable,” he teased.

  “For about two days and then you forgot about me and went off to play with your friend with the dreadful manners…Warren, wasn’t it?”

  “It was,” Beckett said as Warren sat down beside him. “And he is still lacking in manners, as is apparent in the fact that he has arrived at dinner after the first course was served.” He turned to Warren. “Do you remember our childhood playmate Carrington St. Clair?”

  “Little Carri, all grown up,” Warren said.

  “And she doesn’t like ‘Carri’ anymore,” Beckett said.

  Carrington turned a shade of pink. He had been in her presence for less than ten minutes and he was already teasing her as he had when they were children.

  The first course was taken away and the second replaced it. Wilson St. Clair addressed Beckett.

  “Beckett, I trust that you are following in your father’s footsteps and have also gone into banking?”

  “Not yet,” Beckett replied.

  “Beckett has this notion that he wants to write books,” Jackson laughed and several of the other men at their table laughed also. Molly Brown came to his rescue.

  “I like a good book myself, Beckett. What kind of book are you writing?”

  “I think it started out to be a mystery with some Egyptian folklore thrown in, but it seems to have taken a romantic bent,” Beckett said, spearing a chilled shrimp.

  “Well, we might be able to help you out with that,” Molly said amiably. “J.J. and Madeleine and myself and Mr. Stead over there have just come from Egypt.”

  William Stead said, “And I heard that there might even be a mummy on board the ship.”

  Carrington turned her attention away from gazing at Beckett’s profile. “Really?”

  “The ship has a big cargo hold,” Stead said. “One never knows.”

  Molly Brown laughed. “I brought crates big enough to hold a mummy myself, that’s for sure.”

  “I would like to talk to someone about Egypt,” Beckett said as the dishes were changed out once again. He wondered how many courses dinners on the Titanic would consist of.

  “Of course,” John Jacob Astor replied. “But I believe that Miss St. Clair can also help you with that.

  Apparently she is quite well read on the subject.”

  “I have read so much,” Carrington admitted. “But it can’t compare to actually being there.”

  Her father changed the subject and the dinner continued without any more talk of mummies and Egyptian excavations. She and Beckett made small talk and eye contact frequently as the meal progressed. When the men rose to retire to a private salon and smoke cigars, Beckett turned to Carrington.

  “May I escort you up on deck for a stroll?”

  “Mother, is that acceptable?” Carrington asked, knowing that she was going anyway.

  “Of course,” Rose said quickly. Beckett MacKenzie, she thought. Why did I never think of him? And Carrington seems quite taken with him. She resolved to talk to her husband about that later in the evening and struck up a conversation with Alice MacKenzie.

  Beckett stood and pulled out her chair. She smiled at him and his heart skipped a beat. The dress she wore was exactly as he imagined it when he wrote about it in the book. Could he tell her about that? Should he?

  She took his arm and they found themselves on the deck under the stars.

  “I can’t believe that we are both sailing on the maiden voyage of the ‘ship of dreams’,” Carrington said.

  “Of all the people I expected to be on board,” Beckett said, “you weren’t one of them.”

  “Are you going to say that you thought of me non- stop night and day?” Carrington asked playfully. Her tone surprised her; she never flirted with men, but with Beckett, the teasing seemed to roll so easily off her tongue.

  “But I did.” He smiled. “For at least
three weeks.”

  She laughed with him. “That long?”

  “Well, I was only eight, after all. What have you been doing since then? How did you end up on Titanic?”

  “We lived in England for three years and then Father got involved in a new business and we came back to New York. I had hoped that they would see fit to let me attend college, but they didn’t. Instead Mother had gotten it into her head when we lived in England that I needed to one day wed a titled Englishman, so we recently spend the last month there, while I avoided the proposals of the Viscount Alastair Tregarron.”

  “He sounds…very British.”

  “He was. Not that he could help it. He just wanted a very traditional wife, one who would be content to be the lady of the manor and do needle point while he went hunting and watch the children. I didn’t think he would ever be accepting of a wife who wanted more. One who was far too interested in books and traveling and discovering things on her own.”

  Beckett leaned against the rail. The moon and stars shone brightly above them. The ship moved easily through the water.

  “I’m quite fond of books myself,” he said. “And I understand wanting to travel. Since graduation Warren and I have been visiting whatever country strikes our fancy. Mother and Dad joined us three months ago. Dad had business meetings, but I suspect that his real intention was to make sure I actually came back and started the job he’s been holding for me at the bank.”

  Carrington said, “You aren’t interested in a career in investment banking? Most men would love that kind of opportunity, wouldn’t they?”

  Beckett sighed. “Yes, Warren tells me that all the time. It just isn’t the life I want. All I’ve ever wanted to do is write.”

  “What is your book about?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not completely sure. It started out being about a character who is very similar to me and then it took a romantic turn when I saw you on board. I’m not sure what to think about what I’ve been writing. It’s been a little …odd.”

  “The story is odd?”

  “No, the experience of writing it.” He paused. “If I tell you, will you promise not to think I’m crazy?”

  “I don’t know. Tell me and I’ll make a judgment.”

  He laughed and pulled out the book. “This is the book I’m using to write my novel.”

  “It’s beautiful. Where did you find it?”

  “In a market in Morocco. There was a man in a turban behind the table and he looked like a character out of Aladdin. He spoke with that sort of British accent that foreigners acquire when they study in England. He said that it was a book that had the power to change lives.”

  “So you bought it, thinking it would change yours?”

  He smiled. “No. I didn’t believe him. I bought it because I like the way the book looked and I needed something to write in. But then I started writing and…” Would she think he was crazy?

  “And what?”

  “I was writing and I wrote a passage about the main character looking across the boat he was on and falling in love with a woman he saw. I described a woman that looked exactly like you, Carrington, wearing a dress that looked like what you were wearing.”

  She hesitated. “Couldn’t that be coincidence? Coming from somewhere in your subconscious?”

  “Maybe. But then I wrote in a couple of children who were playing. A brother and sister fighting over a doll. The brother was about to throw the doll overboard when I wrote that he changed his mind and gave it back to his sister.”

  “Couldn’t that also be coincidence? Maybe he was always going to give it back.”

  “I wrote Warren into the story and had him go to the main character’s room. In the middle of the night he came to my room and said exactly what the character Warren said. Then, when I saw you on the deck right after we sailed, I wrote a paragraph about what you would be wearing when you came to dinner.” He opened the book to that passage and handed it to her. She read it and her eyes grew large.

  “How could you possibly know I would have a dress that looks like this?” She looked from the book down at her gown.

  “There isn’t any way I would have known, Carri.”

  She re-read the passage and handed the book back to him. “So you could make us the main characters of this book…and change the course of our lives?”

  “I’m almost afraid to admit that I probably could. But should I?”

  “I don’t mean anything drastic. You could find a way for me to go to Egypt. And for your novel to be a huge success.”

  “But then how would we know if it would have happened anyway?”

  She considered that. “We wouldn’t.”

  “I want to be a success because the writing is good, Carri, not because there’s some kind of magical powers to this book.”

  “Your writing is good, Beckett.”

  “You have only read a short passage, Carrington.”

  She opened the book to the first page and began to read, while he watched her, thinking that she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. And that he liked independent, almost stubborn streak that had probably tried her mother’s patience and made Alastair Tregarron apprehensive.

  Carrington looked up. “You write well, Beckett. The story just flows and your descriptions are so well done I can see everything you are writing about.”

  “I’m still not sure where to go from here.”

  “Put in the Egyptian storyline. Maybe if you write about them finding a mummy on board, then we will.”

  He laughed. “You really do have an infatuation with Egypt, don’t you?”

  Her face flushed. “Perhaps too much of an infatuation.”

  “How would you have them go looking? They’ve only just met at dinner?”

  “Well, of course he is handsome and charming and they realize that they were childhood sweethearts.”

  “Of course.”

  “They go up on deck and start talking and discover that they are both interested in the recent findings in Egypt. And when they hear rumors that there is a mummy on board, of course they must go looking for it.”

  She looked into his eyes. “Aren’t you going to write it?”

  He took the book from her and pulled out a pen. “What will you do while I write?”

  “Watch you.”

  “Won’t you get bored?”

  “No, I’ll keep thinking about what is going to happen to them, now that they’ve been reunited.”

  “Is this my story or yours?”

  She smiled at him. “I’m thinking it’s ours, Beckett.” He looked at her for a moment and then started writing. And as he wrote, it occurred to him that he hoped they had a story after their voyage on RMS Titanic ended.

  Chapter six

  “You abandoned me last night,” Warren said as they went to breakfast their second day aboard the Titanic. “I suppose Carrington St. Clair made you forget that you oldest and closest friend was stranded in the salon listening to old men talk business.”

  “I should say I’m sorry, but I enjoyed myself and I can’t say I’m sorry to have missed that. Tonight you might want to find some other kind of distraction.” Beckett was already looking for Carrington.

  He had stayed up late after he had escorted her back to her cabin and written three more chapters and was eager to know what she would think. Her knowledge of Egypt was going to be an asset to his story. Already the plot was stronger and the novel suddenly had more substance.

  “Why do I think that the rest of this voyage I am going to be left on my own?”

  “You might be,” Beckett said, laughing. “I have every intention of spending as much time as I possibly can with her. Now and when we return home.”

  “And your book? How will that happen if you are taken in by Miss Carrington’s charms?”

  “My book is doing very well, thank you. She’s collaborating.”

  “So whose novel is it then?”

  Beckett said, “Mine, I should think. But pe
rhaps the story is both of ours.”

  “Oh no.” Warren said.

  “What?”

  “Now you’ve gone all romantic on me.”

  “I have. But I can’t help it.”

  As they sat and consulted the breakfast menu, Warren sighed long sufferingly. “And as she has just arrived for breakfast I suppose I have become invisible again.”