Titanic's Ondine (2 page)

“They are a strange species,” Elizabeth commented as the cheers of passengers reached their ears and flowers thrown by well-wishers littered the water around them.

“And yet it is our fate to marry one and conceive a child if we wish to gain our souls,” Madeleine reminded her.

“I have no desire to do so, but I think you may have finally found your fate, little sister.”

It was the closest Elizabeth had ever come to bestowing her approval on Madeleine’s choice of a mate; with those long awaited words of wisdom, Elizabeth swam away and left Madeleine to watch the launch alone.

As the last gangway was removed, half a dozen men ran up to the ship, pleading to be let aboard. Carrying bags similar to Joe’s, they looked more like crew than passengers. With potential White Star employees being denied access and disembarkation no longer possible, it appeared Joe would be leaving after all.

Five tug boats edged Titanic out onto the main channel, turned her downstream, and cast off. When the ship reached the end of the docks, it barely averted a collision with two liners moored nearby. The near mishap turned Madeleine’s thoughts solely to Joe’s welfare. Nausea swelled in the pit of her stomach as she imagined what could have happened if Titanic had indeed hit the other ships. She couldn’t bear it if her beloved Joe came to harm. She grew acutely aware of the dangers Joe would face on the liner’s epic maiden voyage, and, suddenly, playing the little woman waiting at home wasn’t enough for her.

An Ondine was more than a free-spirited water nymph whose beautiful singing voice could bewitch any mortal. As a minor nature deity, Madeleine was also tasked with keeping seafarers safe on their journeys. No one could stop her from following Titanic to keep watch on its precious cargo.

Chapter Two

“Report below decks!” The young officer snapped at Joe and the rest of the standby crew after he’d seen off the tardy stokers and firemen.

“Yes, sir.” Joe hoisted his kitbag over one shoulder and followed the others into the bowels of the ship.

“Don’t mind him,” the hunched figure beside him muttered. “Officer Moody’s bark is worse than his bite.”

“You know him?” Joe’s experience was limited to less illustrious company.

“Aye. I’ve worked as stoker on a couple of ships under him. I’m Bill, by the way.” The crewman offered a callused hand for Joe to shake.

“Joe.” It was a quick introduction as they were hurried along the pristine corridors.

The immaculate interior of Titanic was quite different from the rust buckets Joe usually travelled on. He swore he could still smell the fresh paint of E deck’s white walls.

“Crew Accommodation!” The figure at the head of their ragtag line banged on the dormitory door and vanished back into the ship’s maze of corridors, leaving them to fend for themselves.

Joe slung his belongings onto the nearest bunk. His chest tightened when he saw how many bodies they would have to cram into the small space; his breathing became shallow as he realized he would once again have to deal with a lack of natural light in his quarters.

“Hope you’re not claustrophobic.” Bill guffawed as the electric lights flickered overhead.

An aversion to enclosed spaces was right up there with seasickness on the list of stupid afflictions for sailors, and Joe suffered from both. In fairness, he never claimed to want a life at sea, but these days you had to take work where you could find it. For the sake of his family, he would overcome his personal discomfort, just as he always did.

* * * * *

“I need to get out of here.”

Joe finally admitted his discomfort days later as he walked down Scotland Road with Bill at the end of another hard shift. The crew had jokingly nicknamed the long passageway, but Joe found nothing amusing in the narrow, windowless tunnel.

“Unless you’re one hell of a swimmer, you’re stuck here for the duration, mate.” Bill slapped his sweat-sodden back.

“I can’t stand being cooped up for a second longer. I need air.”

The coal dust in his lungs and the intense heat of the boiler room were suffocating him. If necessary, he would claw his way up top to find oxygen.

“Be careful. It wouldn’t do for the cream of high society to cross paths with the great unwashed, would it?” Bill flashed him a gap-toothed smile and proceeded to the dorm, while Joe made a break for the upper decks.

The late hour meant most of the passengers should be safely tucked into their cozy beds for the night, but Joe kept to the shadows anyway. The undershirt and shorts the stokers stripped down to, to endure the stifling work conditions, were not for public view.

When he finally made it outside, he held onto the rail, leaned over the edge of the ship, and inhaled the fresh air into his lungs.

He heard a familiar female voice behind him. “You look as though you needed that.”

He so desperately yearned to hear that voice right now! Surely, he must have imagined it?

“Madeleine?” He turned to see her step out from an alcove beside the steps for passenger accommodation. “What are you doing here? How—”

“Does it matter? I’m here now, with you.” Under the faint silver light of the crescent moon, dressed in her signature blue-green chiffon, Madeleine shimmered like a ghost in the night.

Joe crossed back over the deck to where she stood in the shadows. Wanting nothing more than to bury his face in the soft honey waves of her hair and breathe her sweet scent, he nevertheless held back.

“I’ve just finished my shift. I’m in no fit state to come near you.”

It was one thing to be penned in with other sweaty laborers who smelled every bit as nasty as he imagined he himself did, but she wasn’t the sort of woman he could subject to the grime of life in the engine room. She deserved the best of him.

Undeterred, Madeleine advanced toward him, placed her palms on his dirty shirt, and whispered in his ear. “I. Don’t. Care.”

The breathy sound of her voice all but swept him overboard on the wings of unadulterated joy. He no longer questioned her miraculous appearance. The sight of this fantasy woman transported him from the dismal fog of his labor, and that was enough for now.

When her lips pressed against his, he forgot all sense of propriety and gave himself over to the moment. His arms encircled her waist to pull her heavenly body to his and kill any notion of a return to reality.

He had spent too many nights lost in erotic dreams about her, and now his libido, abetted by moonlit madness, was working overtime. So far, their courtship had amounted to a few kisses snatched covertly, away from his family’s watchful eye. But here, where anything seemed possible, he realized he wanted her with a hunger he didn’t know he possessed.

Joe let his hands stray over her round rear, which only encouraged the steely determination of his groin. He stepped back.

“Is something wrong?” Madeleine frowned when he broke off the kiss.

“Not exactly.” He cast a glance down toward his ever-tightening shorts. “I don’t want to rush you.”

She had a knack for turning him into a horny adolescent who got hard at the mere sight of her female form. But though his body might crave instant relief, his heart required he respect his love’s needs, too. Nothing would change the fact he wanted to spend as much time as possible discovering the delights of her body.

Madeleine laughed, mischief written all over her face.

“You have absolutely no need to be embarrassed.” She locked her eyes onto his, creating a charge of electricity between them that could have powered the ship and rendered him unemployed.

The dainty fingers that branded his skin through his shirt wreaked more havoc as they seared a trail down his chest and started a fire in his loins.

“Madeleine . . . .” The blood pumping in his ears rapidly moved south when she reached the waistband of his shorts.

She chewed her bottom lip. Wicked intent danced in her green eyes as those same fingers wrapped around his cock. She showed not a trace of shyness in her touch, and he jerked in surprise at her assertiveness. A gasp, a clench, and he held on to the almost-orgasm.

“God, Madeleine. You’re killing me here.”

Above the beat of his thundering heart and Madeleine’s soft laughter, Joe picked out the tack of heavy footsteps across the deck, accompanied by the jangle of keys. He clamped one hand over her mouth and restrained her pleasure-seeking digits with the other.

“It’s the Master-at-Arms,” he whispered.

He whisked her back into the inner sanctum of E deck.

“Did he see us?” she asked when he uncovered her mouth.

“I don’t think so.” The consequences for Joe would surely be dire if he had. “Where’s your room? We have to get out of sight.”

Whatever did or didn’t happen between them tonight, he couldn’t afford to lose his job.

“I . . . er . . . don’t have one,” Madeleine stuttered.

Joe stopped in his tracks.

“What do you mean you don’t have one? How else did you get on board?”

She was not making sense. Even he, a lowly crew member, had a room. Unless . . . .

“Tell me you didn’t stow away!”

He didn’t believe her capable of such an act, but, then again, she had been full of surprises this evening. If she had stowed away, they were both in serious trouble.

“In all honesty, I did not pay for my passage,” she admitted.

But her manner suggested there was more to the story.

Joe didn’t hang around to let his shock get the better of him. He grabbed her hand.

“We can go over the whys and wherefores after we get you hidden somewhere safe.”

“I heard there’s a pool on board.” Madeleine remained strangely calm.

“Yes. So?”

Joe’s ardor was rapidly cooling with the thought of the long arm of the law reaching out to scoop them up.

“So . . . who’s going to be there at this time of night?”

The suggestive arch of her elegant eyebrow made him wonder whether she had safety or seduction on her mind. With either option available, he was happy to lead the way.

* * * * *

Madeleine had taken some stupid risks to get here. She had put both herself and Joe in jeopardy, all in the name of love—or lust. Both had caused her to abandon common sense.

Joe’s absence certainly made her heart fonder, and she had decided she couldn’t survive a few days without seeing him. Craziness took hold when Titanic docked at Cherbourg to allow more passengers to embark, and all she could think about was being with him. Boarding proved relatively easy. She fit in well with the rich and beautiful, and a little of her singing magic charmed the inquisitive staff, putting them under her spell long enough to enable her board
sans
ticket.

One last look at him, and she would have happily slipped back into the sea with no one the wiser. But she hadn’t counted on his being locked away below decks, forcing her to hide out, waiting for him, like the stowaway he assumed her to be.

Joe led the way to the swimming baths on Deck F.

“The stewards might have locked the doors already,” he warned.

How could she tell him he was wrong? That, after using her wiles on the steward in charge, she came here every night to swim in the salt water pool?

In the end, she let him discover for himself that the door was unlocked.

“How very slapdash of them.” He grinned and led Madeleine into the eerily quiet leisure room.

Madeleine’s skin literally itched for relief in the pool’s watery welcome.

“Will you join me?”

“I . . . uh . . . I’m not properly attired,” he mumbled from the poolside.

“Neither am I.”

His discomfort amused her. Working-class men, or, indeed, men of any standing, usually couldn’t wait to get naked with her.

“I’m not wearing any underwear,” he admitted.

She could hear the blush of his embarrassment, though the semi-darkness hid it from view. Restrained by this model of propriety, loving wouldn’t come easy. Madeleine took a bold leap which she hoped wouldn’t taint his high regard for her.

She moved close enough to him to ensure he could see she meant business.

“Neither am I.”

Madeleine let her dress fall from her shoulders onto the tiled floor to leave her body completely exposed.

Joe didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. The finger he patted on his lips gave away his concerns. He would never make a great card player when he had such an obvious tell.

Too much, too soon?

“I’m not a harlot, Joe, just someone who wishes to share herself with you in an act of love.”

A shiver crept over her skin while she awaited his response.

Without saying a word, Joe folded her into his arms. Cradled in that musky, smoky cocoon, Madeleine was content to remain in his embrace as long as he wished to keep her there.

Only the slight tremble in his taut biceps gave him away—the gentleman fighting against natural impulse.

“I want us to be married when we sleep together, Madeleine. I was engaged once before and gave my heart away only to have it broken. Louisa was my first love, my first everything, but I wasn’t good enough for her to marry, and I swore the next time I lay with a woman it would be with my wife.”

Madeleine couldn’t understand a woman who would throw away the chance to be with this wonderful man for the rest of her life, but Joe’s reluctance to sleep with her suddenly made sense. He was just as scared to give himself completely as she was. But, regardless of their fears, she deemed his intention to wait until they were married to sleep together unnecessary. She was more certain than ever that they were meant to be together.

“Aren’t we as good as man and wife? We love each other, we’re planning a future together, and surely we shouldn’t let a piece of paper stop us from expressing that. Couldn’t we just pretend that this is our honeymoon?”

“I guess I could never afford anywhere as grand as the Titanic for us . . . .”

While Joe mulled it over, Madeleine took affirmative action and pulled his shirt open to reveal an already puckered nipple.

“I want this.”

She teased the pebbled flesh with the tip of her tongue before her hungry mouth devoured it.

“And I came up here to cool off.” Joe gave a strained laugh.

“What’s stopping you?” she asked.

She deftly removed his shirt. Though he seemed a little shy about it, he assisted her as she moved on to his shorts.

He didn’t give her time to fully appreciate the view, but she took a mental picture before he dived into the pool. Manual labor certainly did wonders for the male physique. The heavily defined muscles of his arms and chest were surpassed only by his strong corded thighs and the tantalizing indents at his hips pointing the way to heaven.

The male anatomy was nothing new to her, but Joe’s attributes made her mouth water. As if to torture her further, he made a run for the pool, showing her a flash of the pert behind she wanted to sink her teeth into.

“What are you waiting for, Mrs. Marlowe?” he called to her.

His less than graceful dive showered her with water. She couldn’t wait to join in and jumped in behind him. When she surfaced and cleared the water from her face, she found Joe watching.

“You’re beautiful.” He brushed the hair from her face.

The heartfelt compliment, one without ulterior motive, came as a bolt from the blue. So, too, did the well of emotion her body produced in response. She dealt with it the only way she knew how, by wrapping her arms around his neck to kiss him. All the fears she harbored about giving away her heart dissolved in the water around them.