As it happened, she knew nearly everyone on the observation deck, and could have worked her way into a conversation with any of them. Since the affair at Balmoral, three months ago, she was a sought-after member of society. Silent and invisible word of the King’s approval of her had moved through the ton. The ignominious exclusion she had been facing because she had dared to marry a commoner had been cancelled because King Edward had a roving eye and an appreciation for a pretty ankle.
Only, she did not wish to converse. She really did not want to be here at all. The launch of the Lusitania was just the last in a long line of events, affairs, intimate gatherings, small dinners for hundreds, balls and soirees she had attended since March. Cream envelopes with seals and embossing and elegant, flourish-filled script slid through the front door of her little house in Mayfair every day. What had been just one or two of the little, almost-square missives had become a pile scattered across the Turkish rug which required two or three trips to the dining table to carry them all.
William Melville surveyed her invitations each morning after breakfast, before she settled in to write acceptances or find a polite way to convey her regrets. It was he who had insisted she travel to Scotland for this latest affair. Adele would much rather have stayed in her little house for several days in a row, or perhaps even a fortnight, with no requirement to speak pleasantly, keep the order of precedence firmly in mind at all times, or keep her back straight.
She could not remember the Season being so draining, when she had been a debutante.
Therefore she lingered at the back of the observation deck, getting in the way of the staff carrying trays of full champagne glasses and little petits fours, her mood dark.
“Oh, the ship is moving, I assure you, my Lady,” a male voice said, from her left and just behind her.
Adele glanced over at the man. He was a stranger to her, but his dress was not that of a servant, or one of the dock workers who climbed up to the deck to speak to the John Brown and Company officials. He wore a very proper grey suit and matching hat, a pristine white collar and his sober tie held not a hint of brown in it, which would have clashed with the suit. His overcoat had a fur collar, nothing elaborate—vicuna, perhaps.
His grey eyes twinkled as he considered her from under the brim of his hat. “The RMS Lusitania weighs over thirty thousand tons. It takes a while for anything that heavy to get moving.”
Adele adjusted the fur stole around her neck, pushing the tail back over her shoulder. “I don’t believe we have met,” she said coldly.
“Because we have not,” the man replied. He didn’t seem at all bothered by the impropriety, either. He swayed slightly toward her, as if he was sharing an intimacy, even though he stood a good three paces away from her, and staff passed between them. “I am not an invited guest,” he added.
Adele drew back, horrified. “You…you just climbed up here?” She reassessed the man swiftly. He was as well dressed as any of the gentlemen on the deck and he was not young, either, for which one might forgive such daring. His cheeks and the corners of his eyes had fine lines and his beard held a great deal of white, while his thick moustache was grey.
The grey eyes were close set on either side of a slightly uneven nose, but they were warm with humor as he gave a soft laugh, displaying even, white teeth. “Oh, I am permitted to be here, my Lady.” He hefted a leather-bound notebook in his left hand. His thumb held a pencil against the spine between open pages. She saw notes and little sketches on the pages. “I work for the Times newspaper. They have asked me to report upon the launch.”
Relief trickled through her. “I see,” she said, keeping her tone cool.
“And look.” He nodded toward the wall of iron, with its gleaming coat of fresh new paint. “There she goes.”
Adele looked back at the ship. It was moving, now, and the cheering and clapping intensified. She watched as the ship slid to her left, the seams of the hull passing by with increasing speed. “It—she, I mean—she seems to be moving away from us. I mean, not just down the slipway, but sideways, too.”
“That is because she is.” The man gestured toward her. “May I?”
“If you do not intend to copy anything I say into that notebook of yours, you may.”
He moved closer, so that they stood together on the deck, but there was still a good foot of space between them. “The Lusitania is nearly eight hundred feet long.”
“I see.” She did not.
“That is nearly three football fields, end to end,” he added.
“Oh…that is long.” She studied the ship sliding past them with even greater interest.
“It is,” he said. “The ship is longer than the river is wide here in Clydeside. They couldn’t back the ship straight into the river the way they might one of their little steamers. The slip was built at an angle, so the ship can slide into the river along its length, rather than its width. That is why the ship appears to be moving away from us.”
It was quite simple, once one was acquainted with such little facts. “Thank you, that makes a great deal of sense,” Adele admitted.
They watched the ship move majestically down the slip. The prow of the boat, which had looked as sharp as a knife when she had stared at the great ship from the window of her cab when she had arrived at the docks, was actually a rounded edge. The hole where the anchor would sit was empty, for now, and much larger than she had assumed it
