“I haven’t. I’ve been there on occasion, but only for a few weeks at a time.”
“Egypt in winter is the absolutely best time to go.” Now Margaret’s gaze returned to Madeleine, very direct; Madeleine dragged herself back to the present. “It’s warm without the brutal heat of summer. The temples, the stars, the sunsets. The history and art—they’ll steal your breath away. There’s nothing like traveling to open the eyes and inspire the spirit. We’re setting off in January. Why don’t the two of you join us? If not for the whole tour, at least for some of it?”
“Egypt,” said Madeleine, sitting up, and the word tasted like spice in her mouth, something rare and wonderful and perfumed. She’d never been farther south on the Continent than Marseilles, never traveled anywhere beyond the pearl-chokered salons of New England and Europe.
Egypt.
And then that word, full of spice, transformed itself into a new word, an even better one, resonating down through her bones: Escape.
Jack was watching her, his fingers now still. She met his eyes and curved her lips and tried not to look pitiful or pleading. Kitty lumbered over, sprawled along the rug at her feet with a satisfied grunt, soaking up the heat from the hearth.
“Egypt,” he said. He rapped another hard tattoo against the wood. “What a marvelous notion.”
CHAPTER 17
We took the Olympic across the pond. It was a beautiful ship, still more or less new, having only been in service since the summer before. I remember thinking at the time that it was the grandest ocean liner I’d ever been on. There weren’t many on board we knew, which was sublime, and no reporters at all, which was more sublime still. We found only a handful of people in first class who were even nodding acquaintances, including J. Bruce Ismay.
Ismay. President of the International Mercantile Marine.
Chairman of the White Star Line.
（Or “Yamsi,” as he called himself in the supposedly secret messages wired from the Carpathia to White Star’s New York offices, attempting to commandeer another ship to spirit him away to England after the sinking. So that he could cower there across the Atlantic, where the United States Senate inquiry could not touch him.） That bastard. Even writing out his name now makes my teeth clench.
Our entire voyage to Europe, Ismay could not stop boasting about White Star’s upcoming newer, better steamship （not yet launched）， built as a sister ship to the one we traveled on. He and your father spent countless hours discussing all the technical aspects of both steamers, the tonnage, the reciprocating engines, beams and displacements, deck plans. Jack was always keen on delving into those sorts of details. He was an amazing man of science, in his own way. His inventions won all sorts of accolades and awards.
I’ll show you some of the write-ups, his ribbons and certificates and sketches. I’ll put aside some of the instruments from his home laboratories.
Your father and Ismay would stay up late into the night in the smoke room of the Olympic, holding their sessions, and when Jack would return to our stateroom, he was always starry-eyed and reeking of cigars.
Which, of course, I never minded.
Which now I would give my right arm to smell again.
I don’t know. All those rapt, late-night conversations about Titanic. I think maybe they seeped into him like a poison.
Yes. Maybe he was poisoned with the thought of that newer and better ship and her maiden voyage; sick with longing to see her all spick and span and untested.
Maybe that was why.
Perhaps Bruce Ismay was right to try to flee. Were he standing before me now and I had a pistol in my hand, I might easily put a bullet in him.
January 1912
Paris, France
France was awash with rain. Not just any rain, but a miserable sleety slush that shifted back and forth from hard stinging drops to wet flaky splats, soaking through even the thickest of oilskins. From the moment they’d reached Cherbourg, it had begun, and had not relented for more than an hour or so a week later. Paris appeared to be weeping, all her famous fa?ades stained with streaks of dirty gray ice. Medieval gargoyles retched watery sludge into leaky lead gutters; puddles and rivulets of melt mirrored the silver, sullen sky.
Whenever Madeleine went outside, her hair frizzed, and her breath frosted into clouds.
The air smelled of gasoline and horses and wet manure.
It was not warm.
There were, of course, history and art aplenty, but the stars remained hidden, and the sunsets descended uniformly gray. At least their suite of rooms at the Ritz-Carlton was well heated, as was the lobby and all the fine restaurants nearby to be found. But she still wore her furs wherever she went—she would wear them to bed if she could—and the tips of her fingers and toes nearly always felt numb. It was the strangest burden, this chill she carried with her. It felt like a fever wracking her, except she shivered instead of sweated.