On a Cold Dark Sea(2)

Then, to the officer’s astonishment, the woman began to cry.





PART ONE: BEFORE





CHARLOTTE

Charlotte hadn’t believed the Titanic would sink. Even at the very end, when glass shattered and a hand thrust her forward, she’d still assumed they’d all be saved. She’d stepped out into the icy night, grabbing at the arm a sailor offered for support. Stiffened by pride and anger, she’d taken a seat in the middle of the lifeboat, refusing to look back at what she was leaving behind.

Now, Charlotte’s eyes scanned the upper deck of the rescue ship, looking for the man she both loved and loathed, the only person who’d ever truly known her. From the very beginning, Reg saw past Charlotte’s fluttering eyelashes and false modesty, to the scheming beneath her meek exterior. You’ve the face of an angel, he’d said, not a week after they’d met, but a devilish soul. Laughing, as if it pleased him. Reg didn’t pull Charlotte into a life of crime; she chose her own path, herself. But Reg applauded her along the way. He alone understood what she was capable of.

And she hadn’t even said goodbye.



Charlotte Digby was a beauty. Everyone told her so, even when she was too young to know what it meant. In time, she learned to heighten the effect by widening her deep-blue eyes as the faces leered down, offering a charmingly hesitant smile that made her chestnut ringlets quiver. Her looks, she quickly came to understand, were her greatest asset, an advantage to be leveraged. People assumed her perfection was a sign of inner purity, a surprisingly common belief that put them off their guard.

Charlotte inherited her good looks from her father, who’d been lost at sea before she was born. Charlotte’s mother spoke of him as she would a natural disaster: a storm that upended her life before passing on, leaving her to sweep up the pieces. Charlotte grew up on the fringe of respectability, in a small but spotless house paid for by Mr. Hepworth, the father of Charlotte’s two younger brothers. They called him Papa, but he was always Mr. Hepworth to Charlotte, a seemingly small matter of etiquette that told her everything she needed to know about her status in the family. There was a Mrs. Hepworth, who lived somewhere in the country and either didn’t know or didn’t care that her husband kept a separate household in south London. Perhaps she was relieved to be spared his physical demands. On the nights Mr. Hepworth was in residence, Charlotte pushed her face into her pillow so she wouldn’t have to hear the ridiculous, piglike grunting from her mother’s bedroom.

Such domestic arrangements may have been denounced from a pulpit, but in practice, Charlotte’s childhood wasn’t marred by scandal. She lived on a street where neighbors acknowledged each other with nods but never invited each other over for tea or questioned the story you chose to tell about your life. Charlotte had no idea how precarious her position was until a coldly worded letter arrived from Mr. Hepworth’s lawyer, informing her mother of Mr. Hepworth’s sudden death and the provisions of his will. School fees for Charlotte’s brothers were to be paid in full, but there was nothing left to Mother or Charlotte; their house—rented, never purchased—would revert to the landlord at the end of the month. When Charlotte’s mother burst into ragged sobs, Charlotte knew she was mourning the loss of Mr. Hepworth’s money as much as his companionship.

The boys were packed off to school, their faces pale but composed as they boarded the train; at eight and ten years old, they already had the look of men resigned to their fate. Charlotte and her mother moved into a room above a cheese shop, a sour-smelling space with a single, lumpy bed and leaky windows. Their rent was paid in labor, and they scrubbed cheesecloth and counters until their fingers and knuckles pulsed with pain. Charlotte was thirteen years old, growing up and filling out. She was always ravenously hungry. Now that Mother could afford meat only once a week—a gristly joint that was stretched into watery stews and soups—there was never enough food to fill Charlotte’s grumbling stomach. But Charlotte also hungered for other comforts of her previous life. A new dress to replace the one whose sleeves no longer covered her wrists. A silk ribbon to distract from the shabbiness of her hat. When she saw young women her age prance across the street, their pearl-buttoned boots peeping out from beneath jaunty dresses, Charlotte felt a gnawing ache.

Life-changing decisions could be made on a whim, a lesson Charlotte would remember in the midst of the Atlantic, many years later. For months, Charlotte stared longingly at the apples on the fruitmonger’s cart whenever she passed by the market. Until one day, for no particular reason and with no advance thought, she stopped and stepped closer. When the fruit seller turned to a customer, Charlotte’s hand darted forward, swiping an apple and sliding it into the fold of her skirt. A cart rattled past, blocking her path and forcing her to stand in place as the fruit seller turned in her direction. Charlotte’s arm trembled, and the apple’s red skin peeked out, betraying her.

There was no denying what she’d done. Charlotte’s eyes prickled with tears; her lips parted to offer an excuse that her mind was too dull to produce. The fruit seller’s scowl softened.

“Go on, then,” he muttered.

The reprieve was so unexpected, and her relief so overwhelming, that Charlotte couldn’t move. She stared at the man, as he stared at her, and she felt his gaze as a physical sensation, a warmth that emanated from his admiring eyes. It was the first time she realized her beauty would allow her to sin and be forgiven. Or, better yet, never be suspected of sinning at all.