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Chapter Text

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"I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul."

--A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

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________________________________________

Jul. 17, 1911

Dear Madam,

We do not know each other, and it is long odds that we would ever become personally acquainted. Not the less, I hope you will pardon me for this sudden and unusual correspondence from a total stranger. 

I assure you, I do not generally write to unknowns, and those few who know me well, know me as too much of a sensible and traditional man for these sort of adventures. And perhaps to a fault, a painfully modest fellow who wishes to bring no extra attention to himself. 

Even so, I was done over by the brick that is my sense of duty to lose no more time in penning this letter to you. Plainly speaking, I have in my possession your belonging, and considered the possibility that you might want it back. 

That is to say, by your 'belonging', I mean that I have kept your unposted letter with me for some time. 

Sparing you the particulars, we were once very nearly in the same place at the same time aboard the RMS Cedric. I am one of the ship's complements. Our last day of the voyage, I went down to the mail room to post just a few lines to my sister to expect me to arrive safely in Liverpool. While waiting on the mail clerk to take my letter, it was by happenstance that I caught the honeyed scent of winter heather, not at all like that distinct smell of paper known only to mailrooms. 

It stole my attention to a folded letter abandoned on the reception counter. With no envelope, postage, or any clues about its author or its intended, I was left only with daresays.

I reckon one of the mail clerks had a cob on, as he couldn't be bothered to tell me more about the owner of the letter. Only that it'd been a lady who had come in just before me, said nothing when asked if she needed any assistance, and fled from the room. In his outstanding wit, he imagined that you had clearly changed your mind about posting it and left it abandoned on the counter for one of them to throw away, as if it were his job. He grumbled something about being no one's drudge, and being fed up with being treated as such on this ship, and that I could tell the high lights that they should expect to sort the mail themselves if they presumed to make him take his meals with the steerage. 

Had I been in a mind to listen, I might have. 

Though, it was your fine handwriting that had fixed me more. Graceful, rounded, eloquent. Steady with full attentiveness to every detail. A swaying dance of letters with a clarity and honesty about every mark that left me unexpectedly reassured. 

It reminded me instantly of the beloved I have lost. One so dear to me, still.  

Leaving me guessing endlessly about the character of the author who had such a fine way with her pen. 

Or perhaps it was your letter itself that I haven't stopped thinking of.

Forgive me, I know letters are intimate things, and I myself am a very private man. However, unfolding your letter was the only way I discovered your card tucked inside, and then your address in Liverpool.

And then, unintendedly, your words on the page. 

"I know I'm doing better now. It's been three years since then, and I have accepted that cruel fate and moved on to find alternative meaning in my life. I feel so proud of myself that I've finally let the past go...Until out of nowhere...one little thing happens...one old letter tucked away in a drawer, one off-chance of catching that nauseating smell of jasmine flowers, one instance on this ship when I had stepped aside to allow a mother to walk by with her baby carriage...one very small reminder...and it's like I'm losing everything all over again...Had it not been for this ship, and the railing guarding me from the ocean on the other side of it, I'd think I was drowning."

Please have the utmost confidence in me that I did not intrude further on your privacy by reading more of your letter, save for that.

Though, since taking that small glance at it, I must confess, it has been three weeks now that I have dallied in returning your letter to you. 

Partly owed to the precious few hours I have to spend on letter writing at sea, and partly to the idea that...well, to be fair, madam, your words have accidently become a comfort to me. Knowing that we the broken-hearted aren't alone, and that we belong to a large company who understand the yearning for memories of once upon a time, and how terrible it is that there will never be more. 

I too find goodbye rather difficult, and it is no different when I imagined parting with your letter, which I have kept safely in my coat aboard the Cedric. It has kept me company all this time, and if I'm honest, bittersweet upon seeing it go. How rare it is for a man with a nature so quiet as mine to discover my own heart in another soul.

I very nearly almost stopped myself from writing that last part, afraid that you would write me off as some old batty. I can speak for myself as a man of many hats. Master mariner, widower, and father to four small children--though 'batty', alas, I have no luxury for now. 

Even so, though batty this may be, I couldn't stop myself but to ask you just the same.

Would you allow me to write you again sometime?

I assure you, I would never be a demanding correspondent to you, and I shall never ask more from you, save to exchange letters together. And I would not expect that we do so very often either. Only when you desire to write me most. 

Should it make you feel more at ease about writing me, we might even agree not to use our given names, or share any distinguishing details about the other that might compromise our reputation, should anyone question the suitability of us penning each other. I will never share more than you wish to hear from me. 

All my hope is that we might both find some reprieve from our alike melancholy, and a distraction from everything around us in our exchanged letters together. I can only hope to be a small measure of comfort to you, just as your words have done so for me. 

Please do not feel obligated to say yes and accept me as your pen mate. 

I know this is still a very remarkable request to ask of a woman I know nothing about, and I know I'm quite possibly shooting into the dark. If you deem this unsuitable, please discard this letter straight away and take me at my word that I will never trouble you again after this. 

Should you consider it, however, I would be very pleased to someday find another letter from you.

Sincerely yours, 

H.

Chapter Text

Rumor had it that Roselee Eversea was a woman with everything to fear, now that the world had been pulled out from under her feet. 

Rose, however, felt quite the opposite. 

Now that she had been forced into surrendering to the worst outcome imaginable for a once married woman, what other grim reality could scare her now? 

She gave her heart blindly to one Prince Charming, but ever after isn't for the deserved in every Welsh fairy tale, and she would accept that her life after it would be very different from now on.

A divorced woman--even the miserable wife of a legitimately cruel husband--wouldn't be spared from any exclusion or scandal in high society, nor that deplorably salty narrative that somehow, in the end, it was all her own fault that he threw her away.

They liked calling her a "New Woman". Only a pitch above that other damming word for an unmarried, untamed woman; "whore".

But not by much. 

Maybe if she had been a dutiful wife to the end (and if no longer dutiful, at the very least a quieter one) and just accepted that a man must get a return on what he's invested in (namely, her) perhaps she might've "turned a blind eye" and not interfered with Mr. Charles Eversea taking what she could never give him.

Perhaps then, her abrupt one-way ticket from Wales for her indefinite stay in Liverpool would actually be the joyous reunion the ladies at her table were desperately pretending it was.

But Rose was too observant to assume the tension  around her table was all thanks to her lead in Bridge.

Miss Dina Evans wouldn't stop sneaking fascinated glances at Rose across the table. Amazed by "how well" Rose was taking it, as if she'd expected any woman in Rose's position to do as the eastern women do, and take their own life rather than face such relentless social shame. Divorcees were rare, a presentation of freaks, in a society where girls like her were still forced to endure it "For England".

Perhaps, in that respect, Charles had showed her mercy by falling out of love with her.

But not by much.

"How very brave you are taking it all, our Rose", Miss Dina had said, dabbing the corner of her eyes too many times for Rose's liking.

"I'm afraid I can't see it that way. Had I been given another choice, I can't say I'm brave enough to choose this again," Rose had told her. "I'm only doing what I must."

Mrs. Paralee Alexander was warm and accommodating of her old school friend as usual, but nervous. Rose could see it in the way she made a fuss over her, and the way she overcompensated taking the lead in all their discussions that afternoon, praying no one mentioned the words "disjoined", "halved", "battered", "abandoned", or "found wanting" in front of Rose.

Rose despised it.

She knew Para meant to save her from anymore heartache, but all of society was tiptoeing around Rose these days, as if she were a shattered vase in an exhibit. 

"Damaged goods".

She would never again be just "Mrs. Charles Eversea" anymore, but "the divorcee". 

No matter how devastatingly he had broken her, the end of her marriage would always be her fault in the eyes of everyone else who wasn't there in that house with Charles.

And now that society had named her an outlier, the last thing Rose wanted was to be treated any differently by her friends, even for all their little extra kindnesses.

All she wanted was to forget the world against her, and play Bridge like they did as girls back at Lucie Clayton.

Because she had just won her fourth trick in a no-trump bid, which now put Rose in lead of the game. 

"40 below the line, please," she requested that hers and Para's score be modified, as she collected her winning trick. 

Paralee dummied her cards flat on the table, face up for Rose to select her bid for the next round. 

But the move didn't distract Para long enough from pursuing their politely heated argument she would not let go of.

"Rose will stay here with me," she insisted to Dina. "We have the room. It's only Georgie and I, now that David is 4th Officer aboard Olympic again. I would love her company. Our poor Rose didn't have time to pack any of her belongings before hurrying away from Wales, and I have plenty I don't wear anymore here that she can try on. So many beautiful gowns I had ordered to wear to the officers' balls that I never wore once I was carrying Georgie."

"No, my dear Para, I insist, taking Rose back to London with me is no trouble," Miss Dina assured her. "There are fewer people who know of her situation there and she will have to endure less chatter. I will let her choose some of my own gowns in the meantime. You have little Georgie to worry about now. I don't mind taking Mrs. Eversea under my wing.   There is plenty for a lady to do in London, and I know a lady, who knows a lady, who knows a school mistress looking for a mentor for her girls. It won't be the opulent life Mrs. Eversea had in Wales, but it will suit her mind."

"Definitely not. You have enough to worry about choosing a suitable husband in London, and taking such a delicate matter onto your shoulders...it will only complicate marriage more for you," Para pointed out. "I can't allow you to take on such a...such a...that is to say, a-"

"Risk?" Rose offered her own opinion to the debate. "That is what I am to both of you. I'm a scandal, at best, and a liability, at my worst. So, no matter how direful you see my circumstances, I will not let them turn on you because you've opened your homes to me."

"Rose, that's not-" 

"It's reality, Para," Rose insisted her point. "I go down as captain of my own ship, and I won't take you under with me." 

"You are captain, and we are your officers. Where you go, captain, we follow," Para insisted further. "Because we all know fully, that should any of us girls stand at the helm of a doomed ship as captains do, none of us would from our own lifeboat watch the other sink. We won't abandon you, no matter how society talks."

"Think only of Georgie," Rose reminded her friend gently. "If he follows his father into the Royal Navy one day, our actions reflect on him. If I had been fortunate enough to have a child, I'd want him to have the best chance at everything. So, I'm asking you both, for Georgie's sake, send me away." 

"But you have no more family. Where else would you go?"

"America, of course." 

"America?" Para asked, appalled. "How is it you'd rather leave behind everything you love to live alone in another country than accept help from your dearest friends?"

"If I stay in England, leaving Charles means my story is already over. At least in America, no one will know the new chapter I'm walking into is an epilogue to the one I walked out of. I can rewrite me from the beginning there." 

"But...how are you so sure that, even in this dark point of your story, fate isn't already writing a new chapter for you as we speak?" Para beckoned Rose to reconsider. "What if you're not walking into an epilogue, but right out of the middle of your own story?"

The door to the Alexanders' drawing room opened quietly, but Para hardly noticed her attending housemaid walk toward Miss Dina, carrying a silver serving tray with a single envelope and a handtied posy of white Hawthorn flowers resting on top.

"She's right, you know," Dina agreed readily with Para. "Who's to say that you'll get what you want in America? What if everything you want is still right here in England? Your friends. Your most beloved places. Perhaps even, another chance at an unforgettable love-"

"Too soon, my dear," Para cut Dina off promptly, mercifully saving Rose the trouble. "This isn't The Lady of Camellias. Rose is living quite a different reality." 

"Your answer, miss," the housemaid set the letter serving tray in front of Miss Dina, who appeared mildly surprised.

"Dear lord, already? How keen that Mr. Harvey is," Miss Dina rolled her eyes. "Why is it always the ones I don't fancy that write me back instantly? I only just rejected his calling card this morning, and he sends back a bouquet of hawthorns? Thick as mince, these men are." 

"White hawthorns, to boot?" Para eyed them curiously. "Wasn't it only last week that he wrote to say how very pitiful he feels loving an unattainable woman for so long, and how he's safely given up on you. What's Mr. Harvey mean to say by all this fine talk now?"

"The devil should I know. The man is obsessed with me," Dina sighed, tossing the letter aside uninterested to Para. "He's far too peculiar to even guess what keeps that man ticking. If you mean to win a woman over, send her a rose, for God's sake. Not a cheap and cheerful buttercup." 

"It may not look like a rose, but it is indeed a rose, Miss Dina," Rose told her. "It being my namesake, you have it on good authority that a hawthorn blossom is not a buttercup, but a member of the rose family. And a declaration of love and devotion isn't the only reason an admirer might send a lady hawthorns. White hawthorns can mean hope or well wishes for new beginnings.  The flower might even represent a promise of protection from Mr. Harvey in seeing you overcome particularly difficult hardships. And after that, he seems to wish you never forget the beauty in living that still remains after those difficult times are gone. So, forgive me, but the way I interpret it, there is no stronger declaration of devotion than a hawthorn flower. Nothing more captivating about a man than constancy. Does any of this fit your Mr. Harvey?" 

"Certainly not!" Dina cried. "That man could scarcely tell you his left foot from his right, let alone remember to send flowers." 

"She has a point," Para agreed, examining the envelope herself. "Lissy, didn't they give you a name?" 

"There was no name, Mrs. Alexander," the housemaid answered her. "A boy with an empty basket rang the bell and handed it off to me just a few minutes ago. Said he sells flowers on Queens Drive. Canterbury bells, marigolds, hawthorns, daisies, carnations, honeysuckle and the like. He said a giant of a gentleman stopped him while he was selling his basket on the street, and said he'd pay him double for the whole of his basket, if he delivered that letter straight away for him. The lad said he was so happy, he'd cut and run, and forgot to ask the gentleman his name." 

"I see. It seems it's come from White Star."

And Mrs. Paralee Alexander's brow perked ever curiously as she turned the neat little envelope over and noted their first clue. The red shipping company flag with the white star in the middle, identical to the ones she got from David on his tours. 

 Para slid the letter opener across the familiar emblem sealing the back of the envelope. 

"Well, that leaves our muttonhead Mr. Harvey out," Dina seemed greatly relieved to be out of the fire. "Maybe it's from your husband."

"David hasn't even gone to sea yet, and besides that, this handwriting is far too disciplined to be his. For one, this author has consistently firm pen pressure, modestly sized words, and quite an elegant right-favored slant to his letters. David, on the other hand, makes every letter big and extravagant and all about him. I can't say enough how refreshing it feels to breathe easy when reading a letter with good open spaces between lines."

And after crossing her and Miss Dina Evans off the dwindling list of the letter's intended, Para's blue eyes brightened in realization as she glanced up again at her unwitting guest, who was now more interested in counting out the winning Bridge tricks still left forgotten on their table. 

"Rose?" Para softly broke Rose's steady train of counting. "Perhaps?"

Rose's eyes were like buttered chestnut in the sunny lit drawing room when they turned up to Para from her cards. 

Not the sort of maple sugary brown that men can't stop writing poetry about, but the earthy tone that made Paralee think of the timeless willows surrounding the schoolyard they all grew up in. The kind of bark that is centuries strong and rooted deep. 

"You think it was sent for me?" Rose guessed Para's unlikely assumption. Glancing first at Para, then Dina, then the mysterious letter in question. "Why would anyone write to me at your house? No one knows I'm here. It can't be me...can it?"

And after being trapped in a numbing fog of melancholy for weeks, Rose's heart suddenly skipped as her attention turned back to the beautiful, fresh white Hawthorns laying against the Mahagony wood of their table. 

"Charles?" was the first thought that stole her breath away. 

But if he had somehow had a change of heart about his decision, and realized his mistake, and thereafter persevered across the whole United Kingdom to find his wife, discovering at last that she was staying with Para in Liverpool, on her way to America...had he really sent the letter?

Wasn't that just the fantasy she'd been dreaming up every time she fell asleep on a wet pillow soaked by her tears?

Why would anyone as headstrong and self-interested as Charles come looking for her?

To tease her about the power he held over her? 

To fool himself into believing she'd ever take him back now?

To throw Hawthorns and sorry letters at her feet, and swear how deeply he loved her unknowingly all along?

A hope for a new beginning.

Was he asking for her forgiveness? 

"Dear Madam," Paralee began reading the letter aloud. "We do not know each other, and it is long odds that we would ever become personally acquainted. Not the less, I hope you will pardon me for this sudden and unusual correspondence from a total stranger.

"Sparing you the particulars, we were once very nearly in the same place at the same time aboard the RMS Cedric. I am one of the ship's complements. Our last day of the voyage, I went down to the mail room to post just a few lines to my sister to expect me to arrive safely in Liverpool. While waiting on the mail clerk to take my letter, it was by happenstance that I caught the honeyed scent of winter heather, not at all like that distinct smell of paper known only to mailrooms."

"Dear Lord," Dina side-eyed Rose, grinning. "That's quite romantic. He even guessed correctly that it was heather." 

"The RMS Cedric, it says?" it was Para's turn next to side-eye Rose. "Wasn't that not the ship David recommended me to book for your crossing here? You met a gentleman aboard?"

"I made no acquaintance with any man." 

"Well, I say, letters from eligible bachelors don't just fall out of the sky," Dina remarked with a knowing smile. "And certainly not without inspiration."

And wasn't Roselee Eversea just the muse to launch a thousand ships?

"If you've never met him, then who on earth is he?" Para asked Rose curiously. 

"I couldn't say," Roselee shook her head.

But her friend's Gibson girl tilted doubtfully, taking Rose's denial as a sign of modesty rather than the truth. "Rose. Come now." 

"I swear, I can't," Rose tried to convince her. "I could scarcely pull myself out of bed to wash and take a meal, let alone have it in me to socialize or make any sort of impression on any gentleman aboard that ship." 

"Well, he writes quite passionately for an unknown fellow."

"He shouldn't have taken the trouble," Rose insisted, meaning that to be the end of it. "And not another word about it." 

Though, she knew exactly how it looked. 

How right Paralee was to be suspicious. 

Roselee had only just sat down to their first game of Bridge and tea together since school, and not even after two days of arriving in Liverpool, letters from mysterious gentlemen abroad were already falling into Rose's lap. 

"Are you sure you weren't up to more than you let on aboard the Cedric?" Dina's brow rose to the divorcee, who had unexpectedly become her quiet competitor for catching doting letters in Liverpool. "It's quite a rare gesture for any man to take." 

"I hardly said a word to anyone," Rose assured them both. "I had no heart to, really."

"And yet you're being pined for by a sailor?" Paralee teased her.

"A widower too, by the looks of it," Dina remarked, scanning the letter where Para left off. "And likely some years older than her." 

Para snatched the letter back from Dina. 

"We mustn't butt in," she reminded her friend, folding the letter again for privacy. "This letter wasn't meant for us. He wrote it for Rose." 

"No, it was not meant for Rose either," Rose countered. "It's more likely his imagination carried him away, and he wrote it for a woman unlike me, who has never been in my position. He's probably some hopeless romantic who dreamed up the perfect girl, with perfect proportions, perfect connections, perfect circumstances, and the perfect temper to entertain this sort of adventure. Had he seen me in person and learned what scandal I am caught up in, he wouldn't have given me a second thought."

"Will you not at least read the letter fully before you assume so much of him?" Para beckoned her, offering the letter to Rose, which her friend hesitated to take. "You might find it comforting to know he does not sound like a young man chasing after some starry-eyed girl. He is honest with you completely about his own shortfalls. And besides that, I don't see anything wrong with a widower or him being an older man. He's likely established. Well-travelled and worldly wise. And experienced."

"In every respect," Dina remarked, winking at Rose. "He mentions that he has four children, which means he's quite nurturing."

"Quite a dream for a man indeed," Rose remarked. "I think you should write him, Dina. Don't thank me." 

And deciding she wouldn't be told twice, Dina's clawing fingernails gradually spidered their way across the table toward the letter. 

"Don't even think about it," Para swatted the back of Dina's hand with her fanned cards. "I do believe she said she doesn't want our help in any case, remember? Rose is a brick of a girl. Let her sort this out." 

"You're being impossible," Rose shook her head. 

"The only thing impossible is that you will never rise out of your broken heart with time. And perhaps, with a little push, much sooner," Para teased her. "You never know, Rose. He could very well be the Albert to your Victoria." 

"Won't you both stop?" Rose threatened them playfully. "I will leave, if you don't, and take none of your unworn expensive dresses with me. What of it then?"

"A ship's complement," Para ignored her, as she smiled and pondered on with Dina. "Who do you suppose that could be, Miss Evans?"

"It might possibly be anyone," Dina presented a list of culprits. "Fireman, able bodied seaman, vitualer, gallery Cook."

"Hardly suitable for our Rose's situation. We must shoot for the stars. A Purser? An officer, perhaps? Or a shipbuilder? A captain? I've a mind to ask David. He's familiar with all the White Star officers." 

"No," Rose quickly stopped her ambitious friend, blushing hot in the heat of so much sudden attention. "I've not been here two days, and you both are already trying to marry me off again? And to a mariner, of all the men in Liverpool?"

"The early bird catches the fish, Rose," Dina reminded her. "A Liverpool season is brutally competitive."

"I am not here to find another husband."

"A Mr. H, huh?" Para turned back to Dina. "What might this H stand for? Harold? Harrison? Hagrid?"

"Para!"

"Or Henry, perhaps?" Para went on guessing. "How many of those do we know in Liverpool, Miss Evans?"

"Hmph," Dina remarked, counting out the stack of extra cards from the mail tray the housemaid provided for their letter writing convenience. "How many calling cards can you spare?"

"She can't part with one," Rose answered firmly.

"As many as it takes to find a handsome widower, with 4 children, who we hope may be a captain for White Star, whose first name might begin with an H," Para egged Dina on. 

"Oh, don't fret, I will not rest until I've found this 'captain' for our Rose," Dina promised her. "Maybe your Mr. Alexander can help us solve the mystery? When is the soonest you can see your husband before he goes with the Olympic to sea? We must strike while the iron is hot. Even eligible widowers are snatched out of the marriage market in a blink these days." 

"If I put off my crossing to America for the time being," Rose bargained with them. "Will you two forget all about Mr. H? There's no need to marry me off to a stranger to ensure I stay longer in England with you. I will do that regardless, because you are my 'officers'. You are my only true friends. But I beg you to understand that I do not need to know that man's identity. Not in this melancholy season of my life." 

"But you will write him back, won't you?" Para beckoned her. 

"Of course not."

"Then pass him along," Dina said, reaching again for the twice rejected envelope. 

"Ehem," Paralee cleared her throat, and her stern gaze didn't let up until Dina's hands reluctantly withdrew again to her side of the table. 

"Rose, you are your own woman now. You no longer need to keep seeing yourself as Mrs. Roselee Eversea. There's no reason for you to feel that you are being unfaithful to Charles for choosing your own happiness," Para told her gently. "He thinks himself so happy in Wales with his mistress. Wouldn't it be the best revenge if he were to find out you've moved on, and are happy now too?"

"I don't want revenge," Rose answered her quietly. "If they are happy together, that's all I want for Charles. Why should we both feel miserable?"

"And why should you be the one out of the both of you?" Para countered. "Of course, I tease you only because of my affection for you. But what if not every man is as self-infatuated as Mr. Eversea? What if the kindness, and forethought, and reverence that this Mr. H showed in this letter to you is everything you deserved from the very beginning? Whether husband or secret letter companion, isn't it comforting knowing how keenly someone desires to study and understand you--your thoughts, your feelings, your passions? Write him." 

"I can't," Rose whispered. "Anonymous or not, it wouldn't be proper, under any context. And it isn't just the thought of our exchanged letters falling into the wrong hands...But I fear we may only use each other for the love we have lost. And because of that, I can not promise him that my heart would ever truly be in it...I can't promise him anything...Only that the chore of letter writing won't likely keep my interest for long. Everything feels like a chore to my heart lately." 

"Then only one letter, at least?" Para suggested hopefully. "Just a short reply to thank him and tell him why you can not be his pen mate. After penning such a moving letter, the man at least deserves an answer."

Rose sighed, her fingers caging around the neat stack of playing cards again. 

"Shall we then?" she said, dealing them each a new hand for their next round. "If you win, Mr. H gets his answer from me. If I win, I do as I like, the way I like, with no interference." 

Because for a "new woman" who has everything to fear, the only way left for her to take now was to step bravely into the unknown.

Chapter Text

August 2nd, 1911

From a lady to a sailor,

Dear Mr. H,

You wrote to me in the gentle language of Hawthorns, and I have since answered with nothing but silence, pregnant with so many of my conflicting hesitations. 

It is likely, by now, that you have forgotten all about the letter you penned me from the RMS Cedric. 

You will be, perhaps, surprised that yours did not go unremembered. 

I can only fancy your astonishment then upon receiving this humble letter now. Please excuse this intrusion on your time and attention, on account of my anxious fretting over choosing a perfect synonym for the word raw. 

Mrs. P and Miss D (dears to me, as they are) thought the word too crude for a first impression, and insisted I use something more ladylike instead, like candid, unfeigned, ingenuous. 

And losing quite a lot of hours crossing out empty words I don't fancy, the raw truth of it is, I'm penny plain. 

By that, I mean, forgive me, sir, if you are one offended by the word raw. It is quick, it feels exceptionally good when shouted out a window on a Sunday, and it is only three letters long. 

And with regard to apologies, I am truly sorry that I have taken so long following my crossing at sea to pine over how best to honor your extraordinary kindness with a reply. 

When I am not distracted by unbearable uncertainty for my footing in the world, and the this-and-that of daily life at my new home in Liverpool, and have a quiet moment when my thoughts may go where they please, I remember your letter and how unexpectedly refreshing your great, gentle heart. 

I could not suffer through another day without penning you an answer.

What should come of this, I can't say, sir, but at the very least, please do not feel sorry for taking notice of my discarded letter and writing me.

I am not by any bit offended for you doing it. 

I lost something of mine, and you nobly gave it back to me, and now I am in your debt. 

I am indeed grieved to learn that our mutual heartsickness is so alike, and of the late beloved you have lost. I instantly worried that my recklessly abandoned, broody letter may have invoked painful memories of your grief that are still too tormenting to reckon with. 

I suppose I thought nothing but of myself, and how alone in my melancholy I imagined I was, and that no other person who found my discarded letter aboard that ship would ever give my letter even an afterthought, before doing me the favor of scowling at its sad state and properly chucking it away. 

I did not, in the end, expect that soul to be you. 

After everything I have endured before the Cedric, I cannot imagine what sort of man would take it upon himself to show me such a quietly heroic service. 

Letters truly are intimate little things, but just when you believe nothing can surprise you anymore, how arresting it is that such a small thing as a letter can interrupt a whole world for you. 

And what a small world it was for us, wasn't it?

That day I went looking for the mailroom aboard the Cedric, I faintly remember passing several crew members and gentleman alike, but being so lost in thought about the letter I had put myself up to post, I scarcely remember any faces or words spoken to me that day. I had all day been thinking only of my letter, and all the words I wished I had the courage to say to its intended.

Thinking back on our last day on the voyage, I regret now being so obsessed with my own problems and feelings, I didn't look up and take notice of you once.

Should we have been in the same place at that very moment, it might've happened that we walked by the other without each knowing it.

Had I taken notice of those around me as keenly as you had my letter, I might've had a garden of faces to imagine for my hidden rose.

Now, I am only left to guessing games for who you are.

Though, knowing that it is indeed unlikely we will ever be near each other again, and how you went through the trouble of sending my letter to me, I feel I should at least tell you what became of it. 

The truth being, I have decided to never post my letter, and want nothing else to do with it, or the stirring memories it makes me think of eternally.

I meant fully to throw it away for good, but because the clever thing had spent three weeks warmed by your greatcoat pocket before it came back to me, it has enchanted itself into becoming something quite different to me now. Something no longer deserving of a dust bin or my contempt.

How am I to let go of the one thing that connected one broken heart to another, and accidently made one a mutual comfort to the other. 

I was happy to know that at least one person in the world found some good in it.

This being so, in answer to your aftermost question, I was certainly honored by your request to write each other. However, I'm afraid my present situation is so dire, sir, that I can hardly bear to ask another intimate of mine to descend with me into my private abyss, let alone put two coherent words together to describe to you the extent of my regrets. It is the reason why I have struggled to write this letter out of a perfection I can no longer pretend I have. And out of a graceless lady's raw imperfections, I must regrettably demur from your desire to have me as your pen mate. 

Knowing that my days of feeling strong and feeling utterly broken are completely changeable--maddening to myself, even--it would be unkind of me to ask another to take me and my troubles on. Therefore, I fear I would not be a very indulging correspondent to you, sir, as I can not guarantee that I will always be a comfort to you. I fear that my circumstances are so heavy on my shoulders, that it would be cruel to force another soul to bear the brunt of my heartache. 

And to be quite candid, sir, I hope that no one ever comes to understand what it feels like to sail my wandering boat through this moonless night. 

As you guessed correctly of me in your letter, I am still no master of goodbyes, and feel already the pain of coming to the end of this letter as your pen mate. Even so, I know I shouldn't be selfish, and demand more of your attention than I can ever repay you. 

For your sake alone, I regret that I can not say yes to you in this exact moment of my life, and beg you not to fret hereafter for me or my troubles.

I only wish you would know, that despite my reluctant answer, your letter was in the end as you hoped it would be. 

You were more than a small comfort to me, of which I am barely temperate in surrendering to your request. 

And though I should very much like to cross out that last line, afraid you will write me off as some "batty" full of contradiction and temptation--I won't. 

Raw, it is then for us, sir. 

Believe me, 

Your most obliged,

R

Chapter Text

And with the hardest part over in writing such a regretful letter to her intended, all she had to do was post it.

Lissy had offered to do it for her, but Rose insisted on getting out on her own for exercise to deliver the letter herself.

Wandering through the heart of Grey Road with no objective in particular, save to read over the lines she'd penned to Mr. H, and convince herself they were still the right ones.

You wrote to me in the gentle language of Hawthorns...

...when I have a quiet moment when my thoughts may go where they please, I remember your letter and how unexpectedly refreshing your great, gentle heart.

...Being so obsessed with my own problems and feelings, I didn't look up and take notice of you once.

Should we have been in the same place at that very moment...

And it was at that moment that Rose gazed up from her letter.

Finding out that she was lost and had unwittingly taken a wrong turn somewhere while being so absorbed in her letter, unexpectedly facing a toy shop instead of the intended post office. 

A child's wooden rocking horse sat on exhibit in its long glass bay windows.

Her heart tugging as she studied the large black beady painted eyes just below the horse's pointed ears, and the tiny seat built into the sleigh of the little rocking cradle.

Making her eyes flutter shut against the burning ache in her chest that never quite went away, heavy with that damning memory that never let her find peace.

Thank heavens the wooden chair Dr. Watson offered her had been there to catch her, giving her just enough reassurance that she was still in command of her sensibilities, no matter how faint she felt when the doctor finally opened the door to his office.

His walk toward her was agonizingly slow and more reverent than she liked in the echoing hallway of the clinic, with its cold hollow wooden walls and polished planked wooden floors that could chill a corpse.

Every footstep heavy with the burden of his news that Rose had, until now, believed she was fully capable of managing herself, after preparing herself all morning to hear the truth, once and for all.

How greatly she had overestimated her own fortitude against that bitter truth.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Eversea. It is as I had feared," regret hung in the hush of his voice."It appears that you are no longer pregnant."

Rose had already suspected as much, but at least an hour ago, she had still held hope. Now, hearing the truth spoken so objectively out loud, it felt like all the wind had been knocked out of her, and the sharp ache in her chest made it impossible to get it back.

"That can't be right," she shook her head, feeling like the world had been dropped from under her feet. "I'd done everything right. I followed your advice to the exact letter, doctor, on how I should carry myself, what I should eat, how I should not exhaust myself with too much charity work. I'd done it all to ensure this wouldn't happen again."

"I am very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Eversea. If there is any way I can be of further assistance to you regarding this very difficult matter, please do not fret over asking."

"How does this keep happening?" she asked, as her eyes welled over. "How can I have lost another child?"

"I'm afraid there are some answers that can never be known, no matter how progressive our science." 

"Then what can science do for me? Is there no remedy I might be able to take to make me strong enough to carry a child?" she pleaded with him. "Can I not be fixed, doctor?"

The doctor folded his hand over hers to oblige his patient with solace that was only minimal to her. 

"I understand your grief, Mrs. Eversea. I know how desperately you longed to become a mother. And I wish I could give you some peace. However, I would advise you not to try for another child again. I don't know if your body can handle the stress of it."

"What do you mean, doctor?" she asked. "Are you saying I'm unwell?"

"Unwell, no, my dear Mrs. Eversea. But the truth of it is...it appears you are incapable of carrying a child naturally," he broke the news to her as gently as he could. "You are medically barren. You will never give birth to a child in your entire lifetime, and I fear that another pregnancy will only put you in more grave peril." 

The tears she'd tried so desperately to hold back were unstoppable then.

"Are you sure of it, doctor?" she pleaded with him. "How should I begin to tell my husband this news?"

"I'm very sorry....I know how disappointed you must feel for your loss. I, who have seen you try the hardest, wished more than anything that I had happier news for you."

"Disappointed, doctor?" Rose had whispered back to him, hardly able to wait until she safely made her way out of his office door to grieve her loss, because her heart broke so quickly in front of him already. "I am devastated. What woman...what wife can I be to my husband now, if I am no longer capable of giving him the son he's asked me for? If Charles hardly desired me before, he certainly won't want me now. In the business of inheritances, it's all about heirs, isn't it? What man would remain married to a woman who can't give him any children?"

 "You are his wife, and if he is an honorable man, he will do the right thing," the doctor tried to encourage her. "If you would like, I can call on Mr. Eversea this afternoon, and give him the news on your behalf."

"No," Rose spoke over the swelling of sorrow in her throat. "No, that won't be necessary. I will inform Charles about our child myself."

At last, Rose's eyes fluttered open again to the toy shop window, chased back to the numbing present of the world going on outside of her, feeling that her inner world was still too unbearable to live with.

But this time, it was no longer just her and the rocking horse standing opposite each other through the window glass.

Her stinging, red-rimmed eyes traced her reflection in the window, finding that a gentleman had appeared suddenly, standing quietly next to her. His eyes contemplating the same rocking horse that had captured her interest at the toy shop window.

The despair in Rose's own eyes gradually giving way to intrigue as to how this towering oak tree of a man next to her had so easily escaped her notice.

Tall, but not lanky. 

Even hidden under the straight, self-reserved posture of his shoulders dressed by his charcoal gray towncoat, Rose's wandering eyes chased the quiet undertone of virility in his solidly defined tone, powerfully built to last. 

Had she been properly introduced to him, rather than happening upon him by chance in town, Rose might've believed them if they told her that he was the strongest man in the world.

Her lips parting slightly, as if they begged to ask aloud that red-hot question that stole her attention away from whatever had been on her mind before. 

What sort of excursions does this man take part in for the endowment of such a body?

And even more impressive, how did such a burly man move with so much natural grace?

Rose had been so lost in her tormenting memory, and this gentle giant had such a remarkably gentle footfall against the cobblestone path, that Rose never knew the exact moment when she wasn't alone anymore.

All she knew was that the quiet confidence in the reserved way he carried himself gave her a sense of comfort she hadn't expected from a total stranger. 

Having let her guard down for nothing but a rocking horse, allowing this man to see just how deeply a child's toy could break her heart, Rose might've felt mortified at anyone finding out that her hidden wounds were still bleeding, and she was exhausted of bandaging her feelings with some form of witty understatement, good humor, or making light of her situation, because as a woman, she was always, always thinking of others before herself. 

But this time was different. 

This time, it appeared someone was thinking of her. 

Not a word was said between her and the gentleman, and neither of them owed it to the other, but she felt looked after in the most gentle way imaginable. 

As if this man had just been going about his business in town, saw a woman in muted distress, and understood innately that gallantry isn't the only way a hero might rescue his damsel, but by offering her the very nurturing warmth of his ever constant presence.  

Even just a moment of his companionship gave her some reprieve from always trying to keep up with a world that wished to race on without her. 

It wasn't just the man's modestly commanding presence that lured her to him, but his ability to listen deeply. Not because she had said anything at all to him, but because he'd observed her with silent vigilance and showed up at just the time she needed so desperately not to feel alone.

And seeing that Rose had now become curiously aware of him, he humbly removed his hat to explain himself to her. 

"Pardon me, love, for stalling your morning walk," His voice was rich and well-carried, with a delicious hint of Gaelic undertones spicing up the savory Liverpool Scouse that sweetened his accent, kept hushed for her regard, and any listening ears nearby. "I was sorry to notice you here alone and vulnerable in the firing line of prying eyes. I thought, perhaps protected by that tree there at your right, and myself guarding you on your left, it would discourage unwanted attention, and you could think on this rocking horse much more privately, as long and comfortably as you'd like. Though, I realize now that in doing so, I have put myself as an obstacle in your path and prevented you from walking on from here. Should you feel ready to move on, I will be glad to step aside and make room for you." 

And placing his hat back on again, he let her take whatever time she needed to be ready. 

And if she had dared to say it, Rose loved him instantly for not drawing attention to her, or making a fuss out of the show that was her emotions. 

Instead, he stood as a perfect mirror of what she was feeling. 

Seeing a bit of herself and the things she couldn't say to anyone reflected in his eyes, as he made his own study of the child's rocking horse beside her. 

Making her wonder if her feelings were not only noticed, but understood for once as completely valid and meaningful.

Never once had Charles seen her the same way. 

For a man who inspired her urges to cuddle up and feel safe, Rose was even more curious to guess what was on his mind as he gazed at the rocking horse with her. 

Was it all just chivalry on her behalf, or what was that hint of sadness she thought she recognized in his eyes?

Leaving Rose lost for what to do. 

She wanted to ask him everything about how he'd noticed her here, but knew that would be improper, considering they hadn't been properly introduced. She wanted to ask him what it was about the rocking horse that had brought him to this window, but knowing her own reason for stopping there, she wondered if such a conversation would be unsuitable. How could she ask about something so private, when she had not even learned his name first? 

And so, she said the only thing that felt natural to her in the moment. 

"We will make room enough for the both of us, sir," Rose answered him quietly. "I will not move until you do. At least for as long as we both need to feel ready to walk on."

And then she said nothing else.

Deciding that as the only two people drawn to this rocking horse at that point in time, what wasn't said between them meant volumes more than pressuring any performance of the usual social graces, and he likely wouldn't ask that of her anyway.

Rose wouldn't ask more of him either, but to stand and be deeply present with her in that moment. So that no matter how very much the same or how very different their personal meanings for the rocking horse were, they wouldn't have to carry it alone.

Until Rose decided she'd been gone long enough to make her friends worried about her, and that it was time she moved on--albeit, regrettably--from his soul-quieting refuge. Taking her eyes away from the toy shop window glass to finally meet this stranger's gaze. 

Regretting instantly that she'd taken so long to look up at him, and no longer had any time to  indulge in how handsome he'd been all along, having come to their last moment, when they'd mutually agreed to let the other pass on the walkway and go about their morning as usual.

As green as the Cambrian mountains, those eyes were to her, glowing with an enchant of smoky grey. Reminding her of the same lush mountains in Wales she'd wake up to every morning at Eversea house. That quiet moment dedicated only to herself, when she asked wasn't there still more I could've had outside this lonely house, just before she faced all the demands waiting for her to dress and become lady of the house again. But instead of the busy summer season of green, his eyes took her straight back to Autumn and her favorite shawl she'd regrettably left behind in Wales, when the rain she loved brought in the soft light of grey sea fog, and left everything glowing silver in the coziest of her daydreams.

Had she had it all her way for once, Rose knew she could've lost herself then, and the morning with her, chasing the sea fog in his eyes.

Because in his eyes, she found out she no longer desired the things she'd thought she desired before.  Because he was every bit of a man she might've wanted for herself, had she known there were men out there as dutiful, and observant, and reverent of her as he was, even as a complete unknown woman to him. She no longer felt that the one tragedy of her life was that Charles no longer loved her. Not when this man's passing regard of her had outdone any scrap of affection she'd been clinging onto in her own marriage as proof that her husband still adored her. 

Had she taken a different course for herself, had she the power to start over at another chance to be admired so deeply, and had met this man much sooner, with the same wisdom that humbled her now, she might've settled for nothing unless it was someone like him. Someone who made her feel this comfortable in his presence, and seen, and make it appear as if it were all so effortless. If he was always this kind to strangers, Rose could only imagine just how very lucky a woman would be to be the constant object of his affection and observant attention. 

And he took his time to move out of her way, letting her indulge in that private thought of hers much longer than she probably should've.

Her gaze fixed and willingly captured by his. Her feet slowly finding their way back on course of the main walkway, as she passed by him on the left, and he tipped his hat in farewell to her with his right. 

Surrendering the walkway to her leisure again, the gentleman took leave of her, and made his way quietly into the toy shop. 

Leaving Rose stunned by the sudden morning chill that brushed across her collar once he was gone. Her protector's impressive stature having been so effective at shielding her from the worst of the cold, that for the fleeting moment that would be remembered as their unexpected meeting, she'd forgotten she ever felt it. 

Chapter Text

'Dear Mr. H,

I came upon a rocking horse in a toy shop window today, and it was the most courageous little thing I ever laid eyes on. 

I've changed my mind.

I propose we write with all our whole hearts into it, and dare not look back. 

So, write me, as soon as you're able.

Yours Very Sincerely,

-R'

Chapter Text

How very much Henry used to look forward to coming home to Grey Road, and having a few days with Pollie.

How very desperately he longed to be home, for so many years working at sea, so many times his requests to take leave for his children had been overlooked by the marine superintendent, so many hours he'd spent trying to hang onto the way his children smelt since last he'd wished them goodbye, and imagining how much of their precious moments he was missing out on from the solitude of his ship.

How terribly, terribly he'd missed his babies.

Until that very moment, when they were just a few steps away from him. 

Henry stopped walking just before crossing the evergreen boxwood hedges that opened up to the garden. Having to stoop his great height an inch or two over the kraft wrapped birthday present he was carrying in his hand. All to pass under the climbing roses entwined in the hedge arbor, remembering how very particular his sister-in-law was about preserving Pollie's garden. His eyes searching the inviting maze of narrow garden paths, bordered and overflowing with full lushly green perennials, French lavender, pink foxglove, pearly asters, and sherbet peonies. But it wasn't until his gaze wandered to the beautifully unkempt back end of the garden, not yet deadheaded and gentle with late season color, that he found the true apples of his eye. 

If there was untamed wilderness to bring out the wild in them, and enough dirt to start a farm, where else should Henry find his littlest ones?

Surrounded by a field of balloons on the grass of every color-red, blue, green, yellow, orange--Henry found an old weathered garden bench, with four button-eyed paper dolls sitting next to each in descending height, and yarn for hair. Two boy paper dolls with rather bedraggled chocolate stringy hair, and two paper doll girls. the taller one with yarn like honey, and the tiniest with hair yellow as fair afternoon sun.

Never could he have popped in on a happier  moment than his youngest playing together under the willow tree.

Annie, in her white lace dress with a large white ribbon in her soft curls, and two  grotesque matching garden dirt stains on the knees of her stockings. Her laurel green eyes lighting up every time her brother George tapped a pink balloon with his wooden paddle. Watching it float in the air above her as she chased after it with her own wooden paddle.

"I've got it! I've got it!" she panted excitedly as she followed the balloon sailing through the air.

"Run, Annie, run!" her brother George cheered her on. "Don't let it touch the ground, or Rumpelstiltskin will come out his hole to catch you, and turn you into a fairy!"

Annie yelped in terror, running along faster to catch the pink balloon. "I don't want to go with Rumpelstiltskin!"

Setting Harry's birthday present on the garden bench, Henry sat down next to it. Not wanting to disturb his children at their paddle balloon play, as they looked so happy while doing it. 

"Pardon me," he mumbled his excuses to the four paper dolls perched next to him on the bench. "Care if this humble fellow should join you lot?"

Though Henry had not let a moment go by at sea without thinking of his children, he now felt like an absolute stranger to them.

George couldn't be older than 6, and Annie...3, at the most?

How had they grown up so fast since he'd last been home?

Before he knew what it was to come home again, that is, and find no wife looking forward to him coming. 

Though, what other man was lucky enough to find himself in Henry's position, the father of four beautiful children, a highly regarded and esteemed reputation at sea as the newly appointed chief officer of the RMS Olympic, and blessed enough to have a family who still cared very deeply for him? 

How can that man still say to himself,  'Am I yet unhappy? '

Was there anything the matter with him? 

Was he still waiting for things to 'heal with time' as everyone never seemed to stop reminding him, or was he so irreparably broken, that he barely noticed the sunlight, or flowers, or how much he loved the garden he and Pollie had dreamed up together?

He was trying...He really was trying.

But for God's sake, how could the weather be so splendid today, and the sun so brilliant, when she was no longer there to share it with him?

Was there no more room in his heart for awe, or gratitude, or joy, or optimism anymore? 

Would he always feel so full of the emptiness from his great heartache, that not even the sweet faces of his children could fully bring back the light to the suffering hollow in his chest?

For if it was not for the children, he did not seem to have anything left to live for anymore. 

The poor bairns had already lost their mother. 

Why should they lose a father too?

And so, Henry did what he must...what he had learned to do so extraordinarily well since last Christmas. 

He imagined Pollie and the children with him, on holiday in Cairo to visit their dear friend Lily, like they'd always planned together, but never got around to. He thought about how much that would have pleased her, and how it would have done Pollie some good, if he had managed to escape longer than just a few days to take her away from the excitement of being pregnant at home with four small children. 

And thinking of Pollie--happy, and, well, and fired up with her wit as usual, cuddling up against his elbow on that garden bench--Henry gave in to a doleful smile.

If he could never again smile for his own sake, at least for the sake of his children not finding out that their papa was rather quite good at pretending himself. 

That paper dolls weren't the only ones with their smiles drawn on.

And seeing so much of himself in his bench-side companions, Henry distracted himself from their always-on happy faces, and the noise of his own head, by reopening the letter he had collected from the post, on his way to the toy shop for Harry's birthday gift. 

'Dear Mr. H,

You wrote to me in the gentle language of Hawthorns, and I have since answered with nothing but silence, pregnant with so many of my conflicting hesitations.

It is likely, by now, that you have forgotten all about the letter you penned me from the RMS Cedric.

You will be, perhaps, surprised that yours did not go unremembered.

Knowing that my days of feeling strong and feeling utterly broken are completely changeable--maddening to myself, even--it would be unkind of me to ask another to take me and my troubles on. I fear I would not be a very indulging correspondent to you...

 I hope that no one ever comes to understand what it feels like to sail my wandering boat through this moonless night.

As you guessed correctly of me in your letter, I am still no master of goodbyes, and feel already the pain of coming to the end of this letter as your pen mate. 

I regret that I can not say yes to you in this exact moment of my life, and beg you not to fret hereafter for me or my troubles.

I only wish you would know, that despite my reluctant answer, your letter was in the end as you hoped it would be.

You were more than a small comfort to me...'

Pop!

Henry's attention was yanked out of his silent reading to the sudden sound of a balloon exploding as it fell onto the green grass and brown oak leaves in front of him. 

Shreds of pink shattered at Annie's black and white, glass-buttoned boots as she stood awestruck and frozen. Realizing at last that the quiet man sitting next to her yarn paper dolls on the garden bench was actually her father.

"Papa!" she cried. "You've come home!"

Forgetting all about Rumpelstiltskin and the loss of her favorite pink balloon, Annie dropped her wooden paddle to run to Henry.

Henry set his letter aside just in time to catch his daughter as she threw her arms around his neck.

"Gor, look at you. Quick as a little rabbit, you are," Henry fawned over her, as he stood with Annie wrapped in his arms. "How are you growing taller than me now?"

"Papa, I thought you'd never come back to me!" 

"Why's that, my little duck?" Henry asked her. "You know papa always comes back to you as soon as I'm able, and I'm never gone for very long anymore."

"But I had a dream you couldn't come back to us,  because your boat got swallowed up by the sea," Annie told him anxiously. "I was so terribly, terribly worried."

"It was only a dream, darling," Henry assured his little one, as Annie pressed her hand against his face fretfully to reassure herself he was unharmed and all in one piece. "See? Everything's in order, isn't it? Just as you left me. And now I'm back here again with you for just a few days, as promised." 

"But why can you never stay with us longer than just a few days?" she lamented. "Don't you miss us, papa?"

Henry's heart sank as he looked at her, regretful that he still wasn't able to give her a certain answer. How might he explain to one so little that his work at White Star did not seem to be easing up in any way, and that he wasn't never sure how much longer he'd be needed to command its ships?

"For any amount of days, my lamb," Henry told her in quiet morose, pressing a kiss against her round rosy cheek.

And unable to bear spoiling their party, when they were only a moment ago so happy, Henry lightly distracted her attention. 

"Oh, I'm being very ungentlemanly, aren't I?" Henry made his pardons, as he turned back to the paper dolls lined on the garden bench, with Annie's arms still clinging around his neck. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your mates here? They seem to me so oddly familiar."

"Don't you recognize them, daddy?" she asked him. "May I introduce Jennie--George--Harry-- and me?"

"Oh, yes. Of course, I see it now," Henry nodded. "I can hardly tell them from my very own children."

"Do you think these paper dolls will fool even Rumpelstiltskin?" she asked him hopefully. "I don't want him to find the real me, and turn me into a fairy."

"Well, I won't allow it, sweet pea, should he offer me all that I could wish for you," Henry assured her, letting her stand on her own two feet so he could face George. 

The boy greeting his father with a respectable, slight bow, and extending his hand out to Henry to give him a good strong, welcome-home handshake.

"Hello, sir!" George greeted him cheerfully, his sea-fog green eyes wide and a perfect mirror of Henry's from behind his boyishly shaggy brown hair, as he inspected the wrapped gift tucked under his father's elbow. "By any chance, would that present be for me?"

"Of course, it is yours," Henry answered him, readily passing the wrapped gift over to him. 

George's face brightened as he stood jaw-dropped and holding the gift in both hands.

"Really?" 

"To hold for your brother," Henry added.

"Aaahh, dash it!" George sighed in disappointment, as he followed his father back toward the house, with his brother's unclaimable present in his coveting hands. "Harry gets everything, he does!"

"And what have I told you about frightening your sister with your wild stories?" Henry reminded his son.

"I haven't, sir," George swore. "Honest, I haven't."

Henry nodded a greeting to his sister-in-law, Annie, who was making her way over to them from across the garden. 

"Harry, I'm so pleased to see you," Annie greeted him, holding her hand out to Henry, and his large sailor's hands warmly closed around hers, lightly squeezing her hand in a revering greeting. "We were expecting you this morning, and Owen and I were just asking ourselves if White Star had changed their minds and wouldn't let you get away after all."

"They wouldn't dare dream of it, as long as I've been away from home already. No man ever cleared off ship so fast for the midnight train from London," Henry told her. "I was only put back by a rocking horse."

"A rocking horse?" she repeated, in surprise. "A bit too late for Harry to have, wouldn't you say?"

"He's never too old for his father to fancy the look on his face, when he believes it's all I've got him for his birthday," Henry quipped. 

"Papa, can Annie and I open Harry's present now and see what he's got?" George interrupted, hardly standing the suspense any longer. 

"Of course, that's for Harry to decide," Henry told him. "Go and tell him to come out and meet his horse."

"Yes, papa!" George shouted excitedly, darting off toward the house to find his older brother, with little Annie chasing close behind him. 

Annie smiled, shaking her head as she and Henry watched George and little Annie scamper off toward the house to find the birthday boy, and put an end to their bursting anticipation.

"You are bad," she muttered, side-eyeing her brother-in-law.

"Ah, well, I can't always be the good 'un," Henry remarked to her with a playful sigh. "Our George is due for a hair cut though."

"If one could only hold him down long enough to make him stop squirming in his seat," Annie sighed, shaking her head. "Suppose I'll have to do it as the boy sleeps."

"I never realized just how much Pollie had her hands full," Henry said, as he watched George and Annie race each other to get through the side garden door first. "I miss her." 

Annie waited quietly as the breeze gently  whispered through the swaying lavender and oak leaves. Giving Henry a moment to linger in her sister's bittersweet memory, before she could no longer let it take him away from what was right in front of him. 

"I haven't seen the children so happy until you'd come home," Annie told him, gently shifting their topic of discourse, for his own good. "I shall never understand why you won't take a longer leave from sea, and turn your attentions to home, where you are so greatly wanted." 

"Even though I am no longer a husband, I am still a father, and I've four children to provide for," Henry answered her quietly. "They're growing so fast, they'll each need new clothes and toys, and dear God, I can only imagine how much is required to feed them now." 

"They'll want their father, most of all," Annie remarked to him. "It's the only thing an officer's rank and salary haven't given to them yet." 

Henry might've agreed with her, had she understood that being in the Royal Navy Reserve, he was not at leisure to command whenever he pleased, and what's more, he found that throwing himself in his work was at least enough to save him from the overwhelming shock and numbness of his loss, and keep him from thinking of Pollie. 

"If Pollie had been spared to me...How pleased she would have been to see the ships I've had now," Henry said quietly. "I had looked forward so much to getting command for her sake, so that she could have an easier time, and I could afford someone to look after the children for her at home. All this training, the drills, the examinations, being taken away to sea for months at a time, giving it my all...I was doing all of it for her, and now..."

Henry caught himself in mid-sentence, and stopped.

Worrying all at once that he was being plainly selfish. 

If finishing what he wanted to say seemed so distressing, that if he couldn't bear to pick up where he left off, how should Annie take hearing him say it? 

How very sorry she looked as her kind eyes gazed back at him.

What must she be thinking of him now?

'She must feel so helpless when I'm near,'  Henry thought to himself. 'She must feel that it is so much easier when I'm not around.'

And knowing that he was putting such a all-consuming grief on Annie's shoulders--all while she tried to make peace with her own longing for Pollie--Henry could never do anything that would cause her more pain and suffering.

"Please excuse me, my dear Annie. It's Harry's special day. Now is not the proper place or time, I know. I only mean to say, that I don't know what I and the children would have done without you and Owen. I will never forget how kind you've both been to me, while I've been away from the children for months at sea," Henry told her gratefully. "Though, I might've sworn I left at least four of these little sprogs behind...Where is Jennie?"

Annie sighed hopelessly, as she glanced back at the house. 

"Somewhere about," she answered. "Though it's anyone's guess where." 

"Has something happened again at her school?" Henry asked her in concern. 

"I hated to trouble you by bringing it up, just as you'd arrived...Though Owen and I have considered taking on a proper governess for Jennie," Annie explained. "It seems the day school is no longer suitable for her. Apparently, there was an incident with the other girls yesterday, and when Jennie heard that you were coming home, she'd been hiding ever since."

"She hasn't been found?"

"We've searched high and low, in all the usual places," Annie said reluctantly. "Not even for a slice of birthday almond cake, she won't come out." 

"I suppose I should try and coax her out then."

***

Thank heavens for the grounding reassurance of Henry's own footsteps echoing against the hardwood pine floors of the foyer. Giving him just enough solace that he was still in command of his world and his mind, no matter how faintly his heart fell upon opening the door, and finding the house so loathsomely quiet.

His keen eyes searching instinctively for Pollie. 

That hungry look in her bearcat blue eyes, as she scanned him up and down in his sea officer's uniform...as if she didn't know he'd already made her heavily pregnant.

"You know, it's always so cruel that you keep me waitting for you so long," she'd say something of the like to him, just before they made love. "I hope you are very well aware that you will be making up every last moment of it to me, Mr. Wilde."

And much to his liking and to his loathing, this house was exactly how he remembered it...except when it wasn't.

For heaven's sake, she was gone, and there was nought he could ever do to bring her back, not for all the money they could pay him as a royal navy officer...but that house...that damned place he should've always called his with her, it still to him smelled fleetingly of Spanish oranges and her perfume. 

And the things he'd tried so hard to forget these last tormenting months in silence, began to stir in him. Taking him right back to the moment he felt so afraid, so furtively uneasy, and overcome by an irrational panic.

The silent house echoed, as he remembered it, with the phantom sound of a baby weeping. 

Weakened and despairing cries in the dark belonging to a poor child who felt alone, terrified, and in pain.

Henry felt a sharp, gutted blow to his belly, instantly triggering his fatherly intuition to console the little one's hurt.

His intense desire being to follow the crying upstairs, and protect and comfort the baby, as he could never bear for any of his children to feel so scared and abandoned long.

It'd been a very dark December night, and the glow from the kindled fireplace in the library, where he'd been asked to wait, danced across the corridor leading back to his bedroom, where a woman was sobbing his name.

And the moment he heard her calling for him, he couldn't keep himself from her any longer. 

Barely able to contain himself when the doctor stepped out of the room to stop him from walking in and seeing her. 

"No, Mr. Wilde, I think it's best you wait outside," the doctor advised him, blocking Henry's way in, as he tried to get a look at what was going on in the room, when the Nurse hurried out of the door with fresh towels, more and more of them stained bright red. 

"That's far too much blood," Henry said to the doctor, going paler as his anxious gaze followed the basket of bloody towels and the nurse downstairs. "How can she be losing so much blood?"

"It is all a very natural part of labor, Mr. Wilde," the doctor, sweating and exhausted, tried to assure him.

"Is it natural for it to go on this long?" Henry questioned the doctor. "The pain has never taken so much out of her before. She's been asking for me. Please, step aside and let me assure her I'm here."

"Mr. Wilde, I'm afraid I must advise against it," the doctor held his ground firmly. "It's not proper for a husband to be in the room when his wife is bearing a child. I fear it will only make her more uneasy, and that is not what we want for her, or the babies right now. You must remain composed, sir." 

"Something's not right about the labor, I can feel it," Henry swore to him. 

He could hear it in the desperate way Pollie cried his name, and he could hardly stand to keep quiet about it any longer.

"I know how strong she is, and how she would hide anything to keep anyone from making a fuss over her. By that, I mean if I can not be by her side, you must stay vigilant with her, doctor. No matter how much she tries to hide her suffering. You must keep a close watch over every small thing that concerns her," Henry pleaded with the physician. "Yesterday, it worried me to see her in so much pain--"

"Mr. Wilde, I assure you," the doctor interrupted him. "Your wife is being looked after in the utmost care--"

"No, you don't understand. These complaints aren't normal for her, for every time she's carried one of our children. She's had terrible fevers these last several days, and can't keep any nourishment down, and there's been an unusual amount of blood here and there," Henry desperately tried to persuade him. "I read that these circumstances might be telling signs of an infection, though I can't be certain. I'm not a doctor. Though I  fear if you don't intervene, I may soon lose her."

"I see, you read it in a book," came the frustrated doctor's sneering answer. "Well, seeing as you are indeed not a doctor, Mr. Wilde, I can only imagine that your study has left you with many questions that your work as a sailor can't educate you on. Allow me to put it in simpler words for a humble man like you to understand. Had I the luxury of seeing her much sooner than now, I might've done something to prevent the infection. But since I am left with no time to work in trying to save these newborns, save for a hope and a prayer, I ask  you kindly to stand back and let me see what it is that can be done."

But before the doctor could turn away from him again, Henry's strong mariner's grip caught the man's coat sleeve. 

More out of desperation and anguish for what Henry was so afraid to lose, than for how ruthlessly the doctor had talked down on him for being nothing but a "humble" seaman, who understands nothing but even simpler words.

"Don't let her die," Henry begged the doctor, hardly able to master himself and his crushing distress anymore. "For God's sake, she's everything to me, sir. Please save her. I'll do anything you ask of me, should it see Pollie safely through this. Just tell me what to do to help, or I will surely go mad."

"Wait, Mr. Wilde," the doctor's voice was gentler this time, suddenly more empathetic as he repeated his advice to the habitually reserved fellow, who was now damn near hysterical with grief for his beloved. "And pray...For Pollie's sake, you must take hold of yourself. You still have four other little ones who will need you to remain strong in the morning, when they learn they no longer have a mother." 

The soft mechanical twinkling of a music box brought Henry's mind back to the parlor music room he suddenly realized he was standing in. 

Light airy notes that played Schubert's Serenade filled the melancholy house with something other than its crushing silence. A  bittersweet nostalgia of a forgotten place in Henry's heart, that mercifully chased away his relentlessly haunting memories of his failures.

"Jennie?" Henry called out to his daughter gently. "I know you're here, darling. It's only your  papa...Won't you come out?"

"I'm very sorry to tell you, sir," came a faint whisper back out of the closed piano sheet music cabinet. "Jenny is away at the moment."

 Henry soundlessly approached the music cabinet the whisper appeared to be coming from, and sat down on the rug right beside of it. Folding his knees up against his chest to make himself smaller, so as to make sure no one walked in, and spotted him almost perfectly hidden between the music cabinet on his left, and the tall oakwood bookcase on his right, Henry sighed. 

"Well, how unlucky I am...I was very much looking forward to seeing her before I went away again," Henry told the music cabinet. "When do you suppose she'll be back, I wonder?"

"Suppose...it should depend..."

"On what, might I ask?" Henry wondered.

"Will you be cross with her for running away?" she asked him. 

"No, darling, I won't be angry," Henry set her mind at rest. "In fact, I would be happy enough to join her. A million times, I myself have wished I could run away from it all."

"But where would you go?" she asked him quietly. "With mama?...Would you never come back to us then?"

Henry paused, feeling a guilty pang in his heart. 

Children were so damn receptive, and being his, even more bloody so. 

How he wished he could join their mother, and comfort her in a way they wouldn't let him on the night he'd lost her. 

"You will always have me, my sweet girl. Even when I am away to sea, my heart stays here with you, your sister, and brothers. I'd long for you all too very much, if I went away. Mama will just have to understand. I hope to be with her again someday, but not now," he told Jennie. "Suppose that's why I have nothing but time to wait here all afternoon until you come out."

"Suppose I made you wait past supper?" she asked him. "Would you be angry with me then?"

"I would be very hungry," Henry answered her. "But not angry."

"Suppose I've done something terribly bad?"

"Suppose that makes me only more eager to help you find a way to fix this?" Henry replied. "No matter what it is, I should like to hear it, if it's the reason I can't see you now. Whatever it is, we will get through it together, as we always have."

"Suppose I stayed in here for days?" Jennie challenged him. "Would you be called back to your Olympic and leave us here alone again?"

"Suppose...when you put it that way...This world can seem immense to someone so small, with all it's overwhelmingly immense feelings and moments of solitude," Henry told her. "I couldn't be angry with you for finding somewhere hidden and cozy to feel safe in. I was an exceptionally good hider myself as a boy. Though, if what you're feeling now is the same as I feel, I should very much like to hide with you, if you have any room, by any chance?"

"Afraid not," she said reluctantly. "There's only room for one."

"Ah, that does present a problem, doesn't it?"

"But I suppose, if you really are afraid, like me, perhaps we can hide in the open together?" she offered him instead.

"I should like that very much."

And then the doors of the cabinet slowly creaked open, as Jennie crawled out of it, taking a seat next to Henry as he scooted over for her. 

No longer able to hide the swollen, purple bruise puffed up around her pretty aqua blue eye. 

"Who did this to you?' Henry pressed her for an answer.

Jennie only shrugged, dropping her eyes from her father's. 

"Would this be the 'incident' your Aunt Annie mentioned at school?"

"You said you wouldn't be angry, papa."

"I'm not...I'm not angry," Henry checked his tone, trying his hardest not to lose it and hunt down the rascals who'd done this to his girl. "I should just very much like to know their names."

"It wasn't their fault, papa. It was me who started it. I wanted mama so much, that I wore her old shawl to school with me. The other girls called me a poor wretch for it. And when I said it was my mother's shawl, they called me a poor wretch with no mother. So I walloped them something good, and I didn't care what trouble I made for myself by doing it. Though, I'm afraid mama's shawl got the worst of it. I'm sorry for taking the shawl from your things, papa."

"We can talk about that later. I don't care much about the shawl anyway," Henry told her. "Are you alright?"

"Knowing how bad they got it, I should say I'm fair to middlin' actually," she nodded confidently. "But the shawl isn't a total loss, you see?"

And reaching back into the cabinet behind her, Jennie shook out Pollie's shawl to show him how nicely it'd been re-patched since her little dust-up with her schoolmates.

"Did Auntie Annie mend it for you?" Henry asked her.

"No. It was Miss Eversea."

"Miss Eversea?"

"She's the headmistress's assistant," Jennie informed. "Or...was." 

"I should like to thank her then." 

"You won't be able to anymore, because she's been sacked," Jennie told him. 

"Whatever for?"

"Because she was kind to me instead of punishing me, like the headmistress told her to," Jennie said. "She was only our assistant for two and a half days, before the headmistress screamed for her to get out." 

"I see...And would Miss Eversea happen to stay in Liverpool?" Henry asked. 

"I don't know for certain," Jennie answered. "I can ask my headmistress, if you'd really like to know."

But as much as Henry might've loved to thank the heroic headmistress's assistant, he decided it wouldn't be proper to go sending his child around asking after a married woman on his behalf.

Perhaps, that was just the nature of his very strict seafaring schedule, and all the precious little time he actually got with his family. 

Grateful as he was to this Miss Eversea for taking Jennie's side at school, he was in no position to pursue her.

As Henry had come to accept in his last letter from R, some people, no matter how meaningfully they might touch your life, are only meant to share your world for only a fleeting  moment in time.

Everything around him being so temporary, and this too, being another one of those things.

"How long has the headmistress thrown you out of school this time?" he asked his daughter. 

"Three days."

"Three days, you say? Well, I suppose that works itself out just perfect for us, don't it?" Henry smiled at her. "Though, I reckon we'll only need just a day to tuck in Harry's birthday cake, won't we?"

"With very little trouble at all."

And finally getting a smile in return out of her, Henry couldn't help but think again to himself how very much like her mother she was becoming every day.

"There now, that's more like my old girl," Henry told her warmly. "There's that smile I'm so proud of."

***

"He always manages to be the first one to find her," Annie told her husband, Owen, as she watched Jennie lead her father out of the house to join her siblings. 

Harry having just opened his birthday gift, with a look of great relief that it wasn't a rocking horse after all, but a champion and most useful present. A brass spyglass that came with its own polished wooden box, and a golden anchor engraved on the lid, so that he might explore his own mysteries of the sea. 

"She always comes out straightaway for him," Owen remarked. "By any chance, did he mention anything to you about what brought him home this time around?"

"He misses the children, of course."

"There's something else, I fear," Owen said distantly, as he studied Henry intently from afar. "Can't you see it in the way he walks? Slower. Sadder. Defeated. He's just not quite the same Henry we knew only months ago."

"He's just lost his beloved wife, and sons, all on Christmas day," Annie reminded him. "Perhaps he will never be 'quite the same Harry we knew' again."

"If I might speak frankly, my dear," Owen lowered his voice, in case one of the children should walk by them and overhear. "I worry that this 'new Harry' plans to leave us very soon...Perhaps, never to return here again." 

"Whatever do you mean by such a dreary thought?" Annie stopped walking the garden path to turn on him gravely. "What are you suggesting?"

"I've just got this terrible, queer feeling...You know the feelings I get sometimes," he told her. "I got the same sort of dread on the night Pollie went into labor."

"Please don't mention it to Henry," she pleaded with him. "I couldn't bear to see the look on his face, if he knew that." 

"That is why I feel something must be done to push in, before it is too late," Owen told her. "It would be dreadful indeed, if something were to happen to him, and the children were left alone without a mother or father in this world." 

"You sound as if you and Henry both know something I don't," Annie remarked, raising a brow at him.

"Well, when I met him in London, he told me something that caught me off my guard," Owen said. "He asked if I'd be executor of his will, in the event that he should no longer be here, should anything happen to him."

"Such a morbid thought, dearest. Surely, you can't possibly be suggesting-"

"Isn't that proof enough that we should be concerned about him?"

"Proof of what exactly?" Annie asked him, aghast. 

"I shouldn't say it," Owen said reluctantly. "It's not anything a woman should have to hear. But I feel I must look after him more diligently than ever before...Henry said to me...He said since the day Pollie was taken from him...it is a very real circumstance...Death...and he would not like to leave his children again, until he was assured that a will would ensure they are happy and comfortable. And I told him, I said it was a fair concern, but that I hoped he was planning on living a long, happy life hereafter."

"And what did he say to that?" Annie asked him eagerly. 

"He said it's funny that I should say something like that...After Pollie died, he'd walked to the ministry to report it, and felt completely that he must have died with her," Owen reported. "All that he lives for now is the happiness of these children."

"But he deserves as much happiness for himself!" Annie protested in hushed tones.

"I can't agree more, my dear Annie," Owen assured her of his own concern. "I worry for our Henry. Next, he'll be giving away all his belongings and writing us all farewell letters. I can not bear to even imagine it."

"Whatever shall we do to help him," Annie asked him. "There must be something in our power to comfort him in his anguish." 

"Perhaps, while he is here, a distraction will do him some good," Owen suggested. "Private fellow as he is, perhaps we should invite him out into society with us. Anything will do, if it will keep him from locking himself in a ship with no other way to spend his time alone, but to think of his wife."

"Now that you bring it up, I have a friend from school who stays in Liverpool. A Mrs. Paralee Alexander, who is married to a White Star man. Perhaps, if I write to her and suggest a social gathering of some sort, Henry might feel more comfortable around his shipmates," Annie told him. "I'm sure she'd be thrilled for an excuse to throw an occasion."

"If she would be willing, she would be our grace." 

"Do you think we can convince him to stay longer?" Annie asked her husband. 

"Only as long enough as it takes to ensure his will is mended for his children," Owen answered. "I have already written to a lawyer in Scarborough, a Mr. John Moody, who has accepted the request. However, it may be more than just a few days before he can get here. Apparently, he's quite popular in high society, after serving some Earl and a collection of other well-to-dos. He's become so affluent, in fact, that rumor has it one of his sons may be engaged to an Earl's niece...Blast, I can't remember the girl's name...Something Crawley...It was in the papers only a week ago...Though that is besides the point. But he's the best. Until Moody is at leisure to speak with us, it may give us some leeway to postpone Henry's return to sea."

"Perhaps...Let's hope then that Mr. Moody is extraordinarily busy, and gives Henry all the time he needs to be at home with his children," Annie said hopefully, as she glanced over at Henry and the children again. "A gentle reminder of how much he means to all of us, and how much of a long, happy life he still has."

Chapter Text

August 14, 1911
Liverpool

From a sailor to a lady,

Dear R,

I should say, it is quite the contrary.

If we are to speak as plainly as old pennies, then let me say that the raw truth of it is, I had not forgotten the letter I penned to you aboard the Cedric. Not even now.

After some weeks spent quietly questioning the merit of my first letter to you, and at last accepting that I was unlikely ever to receive a reply, I found myself, during the long hours of my night watches at sea, wondering whatever became of the 'heather lady' from the Cedric. I confess, the thought of you came to me often. Unbidden, but not at all unwelcome.

Permit me first to thank you, truly, for your letter and the kindness and candor of your words. That you remembered my letter at all, and answered it with such a reflective, generous reply, is more than I ever expected. 

How long I lingered in the garden, listening to my children's laughter from under our oak tree. If you only knew how very long it was that I sat with your letter after reading it, you would know you've not written into a void. You were heard. More than that, you were understood.

I read your words slowly. Twice. The second time, aloud to myself.

You say it is unlikely that we should ever be near one another again. Perhaps that is so. Yet your words have crossed considerable miles between us and found me still, and I am quietly grateful.

Permit me to say, also, that I found no offense in the word raw. It is a word I have come to know well, if not by name aloud; raw loss, raw hours, raw hope...Sharp to the touch, and terribly honest. 

I know what it costs to be candid in a world that so often demands composure. You need not apologize for the rawness of your approach. 

I know it well.

 You were right to choose the word, and you were right not to choose something else.

It is a strange thing, isn't it? The way a discarded letter became rescue between two strangers. I never meant to intrude. I had simply seen something of my own sorrow mirrored in your word. Something honest and aching. And I hoped, selfishly perhaps, that you might not mind if I answered it.

I do not believe you broody, nor inconsiderate for leaving your letter behind for me to find. I believe you to be quite brave, and honest, and I greatly admire it. 

If I may speak without impropriety, you are not 'penny plain' to me. It is no small thing to find such a spirit in a world, who is so pleasantly honest. What you deem imperfection, I call clarity. Your vulnerability is not an imperfection. There is a rare kind of courage in the way you write. Not loud nor seeking attention, but true in a world that so often prefers pretense. And I admire you for it.

Should your heart still wander through a moonless night at the moment you receive this letter, I beg of you, pardon it with much more kindness, for there is no shame in being patient with its season.

Though you demur to write again, I do not feel you owe me an apology for it. The fact of your reply is answer enough to a quiet hope I scarcely admitted to myself. That you have read my letter, and written in return with such earnest care, is a gesture I shall carry with me through many crossings henceforth.

I am deeply sorry to learn that the burdens you carry are still so heavy, though I will not pry into their shape. It is not in me to press a lady to reveal what she is not ready to let another soul carry with her. I do not think you cruel for not wishing to take on the troubles of another. On the contrary, it seems to me an act of great gentleness, and rare self-knowing.

I am thinking again of your letter you almost threw away. The one you spoke of that had become changed by the warmth of my coat pocket, and was no longer the great source of pain it had once been, but a comfort. 

I might say the same of myself, having found it.

If nothing else comes of this fleeting but delightful exchange of ours, I am content to have been, for a brief hour or two, a safe harbor for you. 

That is honor enough for a sailor who has known the emptiness of long nights at sea.

That is to say, if your own nights feel like a moonless sea at times, then you are not alone in that. I, too, have wandered its waters. And there are days still when I can't see the stars...But in the distance, on certain mornings, I see sails again.

I live for those.

I understand your decision.

I will not write again, unless you wish it from me.

Though, should you ever find that your burdens have lessened, and that you feel you'd desire most a listener and wish to write me again, I would welcome another letter from you with an  indulgence I dare not name. 

This sailor shall always be at the ready.

Be well, R.

May your days ahead bring you comfort, and the moon. 

Until then, I remain,

Your most respectful servant,

-H

Chapter Text

August 15th, 1911

From a desk that is no longer lonely,

Liverpool

Dear R,

I confess your letter came to me when I had not expected it.

I had just posted a reply to your first letter in the early light of morning, when your second arrived. 

 I was caught quite unaware--pleasantly, so--and find myself now suddenly writing you again. Will you forgive the untidy order of it all?

It is no small thing in this world to risk the heart a second time. That you would do so with such grace and spirit humbles me more than I can rightly express.

Before your second letter arrived, I had only just returned home for a birthday for my eldest, Harry. A spirited lad with a vivid imagination, presently enamored with tales of sea monsters and the grand mischief of having cake before supper.

A rocking horse, you say? I believe I know the very one. I passed him only yesterday while in search of Harry's birthday gift. The little fellow seemed to draw no small measure of admiration from those passing by. He has a quiet way of holding one’s attention, doesn't he?

I pictured that very rocking horse at once. Standing proud in the window, all button-eyed courage and painted noble posture. Braver than the calvary, I should say, waiting to be galloped away into the unknown. 

I thought, how fitting, that it should be you who sees courage where others might only see a toy.  Forgive me, if I say I think I know the sort of heart that notices such a thing.

It pleases me more than I can say to know your heart has changed on the matter. That you’ve chosen to write me, after all. For your change of heart, and your courage, I am truly grateful. It was a pleasant and unexpected thing. As though I had just come home after a long voyage, and found the hearth still lit.

You offer a rare sort of daring, to write with our whole hearts. I think there is something valiant in that.

Yes, let us write to one another. Fully, honestly, with no trimming of truth to make things prettier than they are. 

If it be raw, let it be so. 

The world is already so full of pleasantries, anyway.

Though I make no promise that I am any great correspondence, who will send lines that are poetic, clever, or even particularly brave. I do not pretend to be the most entertaining of correspondents. I do not attend parties, nor do I keep pace with the theater. I can not even recall the last time I danced.

I no longer live in a house full of laughter.

But I can tell you the names of the stars above the Irish Sea. I can tell you what a ship sounds like when it breathes in fog. And I can tell you how it feels to be looked at by a child who does not yet understand why you must always go. Only that you are home now, and for the present moment, that is enough. 

And should your heart ever grow heavy with more than silence can hold, you need only write. I will listen, with all the care I have to give. You have my word that I shall write you, as soon as I'm able, with all the attention and gladness a letter to you deserves.

It is the least I can do to repay your kindness, and a privilege I do not take lightly.

For I can not deny that some part of me still remains at sea. Always adrift somewhere between what was and what might have been. But your words felt to me like a rope thrown from the shore.

A gentle one, tied to a rocking horse.

And I will hold on.

Yours quietly, and most sincerely,

-H

Chapter Text

August 17th, 1911

Liverpool

From a Desk That Had Nearly Forgotten Its Purpose,

Dear Mr. H,

You may laugh (and indeed, I hope you will) when I tell you where your letter found me this afternoon.

Having only recently made up my mind to remain in Liverpool with my dear friend, Mrs. P, I was determined at once not to make myself a burden to her, and began hunting earnestly for a position.

All of yesterday, I was answering advertisements with the grit and stubbornness of a lady in an Elliot novel. 

I was sorry to report to Mrs. P, though not sorry at all in principle, that my last post ended abruptly. 

To put it briefly and spare your time--a certain mistress believed me to be "too gentle" with the children in my care. By that, she meant that I would not beat a child over the knuckles with a ruler, for any amount of times, as any sort of punishment. 

I have always been very fond of children, and it never did sit right with me to teach a little one to fear the very hand that is meant to guide them. 

I politely refused. 

And so it was, as you might imagine, the end of my position. 

Though, not to be discouraged, I applied for another post.

One in particular seemed promising. A respectable household seeking a governess in her late 20's. 

Of course, I arrived with no references, but a rather passionate speech for why I truly felt references didn't matter in this case, because I had an eager heart to prove myself, and a willingness to bend to whatever schedule the lady of house required, with very few demands of my own. 

Only to discover that the lady of the house had recently given birth to a daughter, and required a wet nurse, not a governess at all.  

Her French maid had somehow misinterpreted the proper title for the role, and somewhere between the advertisement and the maid's translation, the words became entangled with misunderstanding

The mistress of the house was decidedly uncharitable about the slight error in translation, and about me. Though in all  fairness, I suppose I did look a special kind of foolish standing in her drawing room, against an expectation I couldn't hope to meet. 

I made my quickest apologies and took my leave, as gracefully as one might expect under such awkward circumstances.

On my way out, I passed the little one in her bassinet. 

How precious she was, and she caught my heart quite unexpectedly. Not a sound from her, as she slept so soundly. Tiny, docile, and perfect. Entirely unaware of how unbearably hard the world can be for us girls.  

And that, I think, was the part I felt most sorry for. 

I suppose it goes without saying that the position asked of me what I can not, nor shall ever, be able to offer.

It was only when I reached my room again, that I saw your handwriting on the envelope someone had left resting for me on the books I've once again neglected.

And the world, for a moment, stopped hurting quite so much.

I confess, it is the first time I've sat down all day, and I have not left this desk ever since. 

And so, I must kindly disagree with you, Mr. H. 

You wrote so humbly of your belief that you could "not be any great correspondent," to me. Even so, I can't imagine what more I might want from a letter. 

If you believe you lack in poetry, then we are perfect for each other, so far as pen mates go. 

As you may tell by my untouched novels, I have grown too practical for the romantics as of late. 

But your words are so reassuring, that one can safely breathe in them, and if they sometimes feel heavy with sorrow, to me it only means they are honest. 

 Any man who knows the names of the stars above a sea, and can describe the breathing of a ship in the fog, has already outdone every man I have ever known, in poetry and conversation alike.

Forgive me...I know that idea sits scandalously with the romantics, of which I am not. 

But since we've promised to be truthful, I can honestly say you leave me in wonder, Mr. H. 

Not unpleasantly, I hope you understand. Only...that I am not often met with being spoken to with such care, and I am trying...truly...to let my heart rest in it. 

To trust that kindness can exist without any  condition, rather than brace for the moment it turns cold. Your gentleness is more extraordinary than anything I have known, sir, and I fear I may already be growing spoiled by it.

As for the rocking horse, I was delighted knowing you'd passed the same toy shop, and saw the exact same one. Yes, that is the fellow. Button-eyed courage and painted posture, indeed. I believe you are right. I noticed him because I recognized myself in him. A willingness to stand his ground, even when there is none left to stand on. 

I wonder if that is why your letters feel so steadying to me.

We are both like rocking horses, sir. 

Forgive the childishly romantic way of saying so.

Speaking of children, you wrote of the look your child gives you when you return home, not yet understanding why you must always go. I have no children who gaze at me in such a way, but I do know that children do not waste their devotion where it isn't earned. And there is something very noble in being the person a little one waits for. 

It only leaves me curious about the heart behind all these letters.

You spoke of reading my letters slowly.

I must admit, sir, that yours have had the same effect on me. 

You wrote that you would write again, only if I ever wished it....And I do wish it, sir. 

I wish to know everything of you. 

I should like to know the names of the stars above the Irish Sea.

I should like to know what stories your child begs you to tell again and again about your crossings. 

I should like to know what you keep tucked in your pocket, now that my letter is no longer there, and whether it means anything to you.

I should like to know if the sea still feels like home, or if it has asked more of you than it once demanded.

I should like to know whether you mend your own gloves, or if there's anyone who insists on doing it for you themselves.

I should like to know what you think of, in the moment just before sleep claims you.

And whether you always sign your letters with such polite restraint, or if you have ever let mischief have a turn.

There are things I may tell you as well, if you should want to hear them.

But I fear I’ve written far too much already. 

Still, something in your letter stirred a life in my own house, where laughter has not lived either for some time. To feel a light there again, even the gentlest one, has left me quietly nostalgic for what I thought was lost.

If that sounds like the words of a romantic, you must put it down to the late hour, sir. I promise I shall be much more sensible when the sun is up.

Yours (trying very hard to be) sensible,

R.

Chapter Text

It was work that kept a man's hands busy.

Poking at feathering embers, turning the firewood to just the right angle on the grate, coaxing the heat to fill the chilled drawing room around him. 

A soft northern rain had fallen unexpectedly that morning, and when Henry passed Annie carrying in the laundry from the line, he noticed her wince and rub her hands together, cupping them around her breath to warm them. She always felt the cold in her poor fingers. And for all she'd done for the children while he was at sea, Henry found himself eager to discover more ways to make her comfortable.

And something about the meditative, quiet order of tending the fire kept his mind from wandering back to R's letter.

He hadn’t dared to open it again.

Nor had he left it on his desk in plain sight, where he might be tempted to answer it this morning.

Instead, he hid her letter between the pages of Pollie's old devotional journal. 

A dark green little book, the size of her hand, with its edges worn from years of use, stitched with Pollie's floral embroidery. Nature being her great love, besides their children. 

She used to watercolor Welsh hillsides and sketch scenes of people about town around her Sunday hymns, in quiet moments when their babies were sleeping. 

The inside flyleaf signed, "C.P.W. January 1901". The year they welcomed their firstborn, Jennie, before he was pulled away to sea so often.

Before he lost Pollie for good. 

'For this child I've prayed, and the Lord has heard me,'  Pollie had written on the day Jennie was born. "Harry says she has my likeness. I pray she has his strength. Lord, give thy peace to my Harry and to my newborn child. Be thou their fortress, that they may trust in thy mercy. And if there should come a day when I am not here to do it, be for them what I long to be still, and watch over them always.'

He left R's letter there on that page, so the sight of Poly's handwriting would keep his heart from wandering. A reminder of where it still waited, stayed to the woman he loved so very deeply.

I am her husband.

I was always a husband. 

I never stopped. 

R had written nothing compromising of herself, that might give him an unfavorable impression. 

She had been nothing but gracious, even in the private world of their letters. 

The danger was in him. 

Because for Henry, a widower who no longer expected any woman to look at him as a man worth noting anymore, something in the way R wrote him called out to him through a numbing sea fog that felt eternal. 

There was something gently disarming in her letters.

"I wish to know everything of you."

She meant those words so kindly, and yet, Henry couldn't keep his heart from lingering at the door he'd locked nearly a year ago. 

And to keep that door from drifting open, Henry kept R's letter tucked for days between the pages of Pollie's journal. 

Not to neglect R, but to restrain himself. 

That part of him that still remembered...and wanted.

She had asked after him first. 

She wrote as if the small parts of his day were worth asking after.

She wrote about children, and small acts of kindness, and carrying herself with dignity in the face of heartbreak, and a rocking horse painted with courage. 

Like she was someone still hopeful about these small joys in life, despite being so terribly broken. 

She made him feel needed again.

And that, more than anything, unsettled him. 

That a woman could again make him feel useful, or like he was a man worthy of being known. 

Of mattering to her. 

And God help him...He wished to know everything of her too, not just a monogram.

He found himself imagining her voice, her presence in the room, and other intimate details about her he had no right to want.

He knew he shouldn't answer her letters so quickly. Not unless he meant something by it.

The manner in which he responded meant everything, if he were to be careful not to sound like a man waiting to court her, or lead her to believe his heart was ready to be claimed again.

He was not ready. 

He could not let his most primal desire--the parts of himself that remembered being touched and missed the warmth of a wife--pull their gentle correspondence into something deeper neither of them could keep.

He knew exactly what someone like R could stir in him, and what he might someday long for, should he dare to let himself dangerously hope.

Because what he really wanted, still and always, was Pollie.

God help him, he longed only to hold again the woman who had been his. 

A log Henry had been too distracted to catch gave way, snapping through the iron grate, and crumbling into a ballroom dance of embers in the hearth. 

The heat flared suddenly in his face, pulling him back into the drawing room. Back to the fire in front of him, the scent of burning wood, and Owen's voice crackling on in the background.

Henry picked up the poker and nudged the rogue log back into place. 

All while Owen went on chelping away. Apparently having done so for several minutes, while Henry's thoughts wandered elsewhere. 

"No, Harry, for a matter such as this, you don't want just any solicitor in Liverpool," Owen was saying, slumped rather cozily in the drawing room's fattest armchair, with a steaming cup in hand. Made all the more cozier by the good, strong fire his brother-in-law kept going, as if he were the one it had been started for. 

"Your children certainly deserve better than that." 

"But why Scarborough?" Henry asked him, setting his poker aside. "And why this Moody fellow?"

"Because he's the best in matters that concern family," Owen informed him. "Surely you've heard of his recent triumph with Mr. Patrick Crawley and the fight over his entail?"

"News of that sort rarely reaches the wires at sea."

"No matter. The man's reputation proceeds him." 

"I'm drawing up a will, Owen, not fighting for a title," Henry reminded him. "I don't need the best. Only someone sound and dependable." 

"If it's practicality you want, then Moody is your man," Owen insisted. 

And there, he ventured off again. 

More cleverly disguised babble that Henry suspected wasn't actually the heart of Owen's argument anyway, or the hidden truth behind it. 

"I wish I knew how to ease your worry for me," Henry finally got a gentle word in with the  flurry of Owen's. "But I promise I am not unraveling, and I'm not to be fretted over. I expect to get away to London again two weeks from tonight. I do not know that I can manage to stay longer."

But Owen would not be discouraged. 

His argument determined to outlast Henry's two week deadline, as he went on making a point that blurred into the crackle of the fire. How highly recommended this solicitor was, why it mattered for the children, and how very practical it would be to wait.

And when Owen spoke again about family, Henry felt his heart ache once more. 

Bringing back all the old longings that R's letters had stirred in him.

Love. Belonging. Warmth.

Each one of those things he treasured so dearly.

...But R spoke of them as if she knew too well what it was like to lose them. As if they were forever beyond her reach.

I am not often met with being spoken to with such care, and I am trying...truly...to let my heart rest in it. 

And Henry found himself wondering...Why?

I fear I may already be growing spoiled by it.

Spoiled by care? By gentleness?

What sort of life made a woman like her so wary of kindness?

The question laid anchor in him heavily. He knew well enough about pain that didn't show itself openly. 

And these were not things an unbroken woman said, unless she'd been hurt in ways that still lingered.

Hurt that made her careful about trusting another man again, or about calling herself a romantic. 

As if someone cruel had punished her once for dreaming that she deserved any better.

What then had happened to R before she boarded the Cedric, and why did the idea trouble Henry so much?

Who hurt her so unimaginably, that even compassion scared her now?

But asking those questions was not part of their arrangement. 

He shouldn't wish to know more than she was willing to give him.

He respected her privacy too much.

And he shouldn't feel any measure of outrage or protectiveness over the idea of some intimate of hers dimming so gentle a soul.

He shouldn't wish he could undo it, or want to show her differently. 

He should not even imagine her eyes, as if he were trying to guess their color behind the page. 

Or the smirk on her lips when she mumbled the word raw.

Or the way she had lingered beside that infant's bassinet, the same way he'd pause sometimes, when passing by the empty one, still unused in the crushing silence of his home.

He shouldn't want to know any of it. 

And yet...he couldn't stop imagining her beyond her pen.

Knowing that, despite all his fears and objections, he would write her back in the end.

He must. 

"Henry." 

Owen's voice broke his train of thought. 

"You're thinking of her, aren't you?"

Henry went still, his hand pausing on the poker as he drew in a breath his heart wouldn't allow him to let go of. Mostly, because it was heavy with guilt. 

"Pollie," Owen said. "You're thinking of Pollie."

Of course, Henry thought, as he gradually let his breath go again.

Of course Owen hadn't meant R at all. 

"I'm always thinking of Pollie," he answered Owen quietly. 

Owen sighed, his eyes staying on the gently crackling fire in front of them. 

"Harry," he said. "I hope you won't mind me saying so, but we all worry for you."

"And I hope you won't mind me saying again, there is no need to." 

"And yet, we do," Owen replied. "You look like a man who is already walking through the afterlife. Your body sits here but your spirit is leagues away. We worry for you very much." 

"I assure you, I am managing." 

"I know you're trying, Harry, but the children long for you. Young Harry, he remembers more than he lets on. And Jennie, well she's always had a hard time at it, hasn't she? Ever since..."

"You needn't say it," Henry murmured back. "I know Pollie is gone."

"Forgive me, I'm not asking you to mend what can not be mended yet. God knows that isn't it," he assured Henry. "I just hope you will consider stepping out with us? Nothing too grand, just an invitation Annie and I received from her acquaintance, a Mrs. Alexan-"

"I'm sorry, Owen," Henry answered him, setting the poker in its place and brushing ash from his hands. "I don't believe I'm ready for any sort of outing."

"Not long, of course," Owen insisted. "Perhaps only an hour, at most?"

"I can't imagine enduring even less."

"Bit by bit, Harry," Owen encouraged him. "Like tending a broken bone. It feels impossible at first, but easier with time."

"A broken bone is not the same thing as losing the woman I loved," Henry disagreed quietly. "I would sooner break every bone in my body than endure this torment." 

"Isolation would be far crueler," Owen countered. "It's comforting at first, until it becomes your prison. It's no way to live, Harry, and you have so much reason not to give up."

"Everyone tells me the same thing. They say I have so many reasons to live for, but what is living, really?" he asked Owen. "Do they suppose I move on? Forget her? Forget my sons? Do they suppose I look forward to next Christmas, with half of my reasons gone now? I can't  be merry, simply because someone expects me to be." 

"And what should they expect?" Owen questioned him, glancing toward the foyer where the muffled shouts of children at play could be distantly heard somewhere. "For God's sake, Harry, you're the very center of their world. They can't lose you too."

"And they haven't lost me," Henry insisted. "I'm still here. Even if half of me is gone, I'm holding fast to what I still have." 

"Pollie loved you dearly," Owen said gently. "But she would not have wanted this half life for you. Nor for the children."

"Very well then," Henry gave in at last, if for nothing else but to appease Owen. "I'll think on it. For their sake. And for Pollie's."

It was the most Owen could hope for, and all Henry could promise.

But it was enough to make a relieved Owen rest more easily in his chair, as though he'd just helmed a ship that had sailed dangerously close to its doom.

And with the argument settled at last between them, Henry stood up from the hearth to take his leave. "Excuse me." 

Stepping out of the drawing room into the foyer, he followed the sound of a rather tactical child's mumbling toward the garden door.

Finding Jennie's navy blue hair ribbon first, tied neatly in her light chestnut locks, as she perched on the window bench in the dining room. Elbows leaning onto the window ledge, meticulously turning her brother's spyglass between her fingers. The rounded lens pressed against the windowpane, one eye squeezed shut, as the other peered through the monocular with the importance of a general studying enemy lines. 

"Jennie?" Harry called her out curiously. 

His daughter startled, quickly dropping the spyglass into her lap. Her cheeks blushing warm with the thrill of espionage. "Yes, Papa?"

"Why have you got Harry's glass, love?"

"I confiscated it," she informed him. "George and Harry built a Gentleman's Smoking Room outside, with those milk crates there."

"Have they?" Henry asked, joining her at the window to get a look at the shabby little fortress erected between two oaks outside. "A Gentleman's Smoking Room, is it?"

"Yes, and they say girls aren't allowed," Jennie protested the injustice of it all. "It isn't fair. They've their own little club, and Annie and me are turned out, as though we're beneath them." 

Henry's expression softened.

"No," he agreed. "It's not fair."

And leaning forward to brace his elbows against the window ledge with her, he studied the crooked stacks of milk crates, the droopy roof made from one of Annie's stolen tablecloths, and the triumphant of the boys all snug inside, discussing the state of the world over twigs for cigars. 

A ridiculous imitation of privilege, and still, an exact mirror of their world outside the garden walls.

"But," Henry said to Jennie. "that is precisely why your reconnaissance is important work."

"Truly?" she asked.

"Truly," Henry nodded to her. "If the boys insist on barring you out, then their fortress deserves...an ambush. Every fortress has a weakness. It's only a matter of time before someone discovers it."

Jennie grinned and nodded back in agreement. 

"Well then, as you were, Admiral," Henry said, official as any naval commander, as he straightened up from the window bench to leave her to it. 

And she dutifully held the spyglass back up to her eye, and turned the lens again in renewed tactical enthusiasm. 

He had only gotten two steps toward the foyer when a small afterthought stopped him again.

Half-remembering something Jennie had mentioned about some unfortunate assistant earlier that week...dismissed without a reference.

A fleeting detail he'd wondered about asking her, after reading R's letter. 

Of course, Liverpool was full of women who might've fit the description...but what were the odds that she might possibly be...

Henry turned back around. 

"Jennie?"

"Yes, Papa?"

He kept his voice matter-of-fact, careful not to betray the odd ember of curiosity that had made his asking irresistible. 

"What was the name again of that assistant, the one your Miss Pemberton dismissed?"

"Oh," Jennie was only half listening as she scanned the milk crate fortress with her spyglass. "Mrs. Eversea, Papa."

The unexpected prefix caught Henry off guard again. 

Missus?

A married woman, dismissed without a reference, working in a post meant for unmarried younger women?

There were only ever a few unfortunate reasons for that circumstance.

None of which he wished to imagine for R.

And yet...the strange coincidence between Jennie's recent story and R's letter enticed his hypothetical inkling. 

"By any chance," he casually pursued the question. "she wouldn't happen to be called a Mrs. R. Eversea, would she?"

But Jennie's attention was again distracted.

"They're on the move!" she whispered excitedly.

At that very moment, George and Harry burst out of the milk crate fort.  Both wearing Owen's evening coats, that dragged behind them like royal capes. Thick black mustaches drawn under their noses in reckless inkwell lines, and top hats teetering sideways on their proud little heads.

"I do say, sir! Good day to you, Mr. Wilde!" George announced grandiosely to his brother.

"And to you, sir, Mr. Wilde!" Harry echoed nobly back. 

"Honestly," Jennie sighed, rolling her eyes. "The pair of geese. So full of themselves, the both of them."

Henry only smiled at that. 

Very much her father's daughter, he thought.

And then, he stepped out of the dining room, leaving Jennie to her campaign.

But his thoughts lingered with that one name a moment longer. 

Eversea.

Unreasonably so. 

Was he playing the romantic now? Imagining they might have passed one another somehow, without knowing it? That her quiet, thoughtful voice might belong to someone who lived only a few roads away from him?

Quite unlikely.

And quite honestly, he was grateful for that.

Imagining R at a polite distance beyond Liverpool suited his present situation a lot better. A life still complicated by loss, and ever changeable by a profession that could pull him to sea at any moment. 

Even if he were ready to take another wife someday, what woman would agree to the conditions of his demanding chief officer's career? 

He would never ask anyone again what he had once asked of Pollie.

No, tracing R's identity was forbidden to him. He much preferred the safety of not knowing, to protect their delicate friendship.  

And he would not, for any temptation, betray the woman he still grieved.

So Henry let the name Eversea fall back into coincidence, and walked on.