“You’ll have to keep it tucked longer than that. Bollocks, what are we going to do?” He whacks his cap against his knee. “This is so typical. Plans always half-baked.”
“So I’ve had to improvise.”
“You wouldn’t have had to improvise if you had thought things through. You can’t just”—he throws out his hands—“waltz into first class without your mistress. They’ll catch you eventually.”
I primly smooth my skirts. “Aren’t you a nelly naysayer?”
“Better than a Jack the lad,” he shoots back, calling me a show-off.
“Simple Simon.”
He twists away from me and pounds a fist to his mouth. Clearly the naming game is not filling his nose with the perfume of brotherly love.
“All right, Jamie. I guess I could’ve planned it better. But the stars must have aligned, because here we are, together. This is our Halley’s Comet. We’ll find Mr. Stewart and show him our Jumbo act. He’s our ticket into America.”
“You’re cracked. What makes you think a man like him will even see us, let alone employ us? You’re starting to worry me.”
“Because I dream of a better life for us?”
“No. Because you’re reminding me of Ba.”
I hiss in air, which feels cold against my teeth. “Ba was a visionary.”
“If you say so.”
He can’t still be angry with Ba after all these years, can he?
The day Mum collapsed, Ba had just brought her the news—his ratty top hat in his hand—that his bee farm had flown away, taking with it most of our money. Ba was that rare man with a head full of ideas and the courage to make them happen. Of course, they hadn’t all worked out.
At any rate, that explains all the dreams I’ve been having about Ba lately. He’s stuck in this life because Jamie’s anger is keeping him here.
“Tonight you can sleep in my room. Then, tomorrow, you can get off at Queenstown. I have enough money to get you back to London. Aunt Susan would take you in. Find you another job.”
I groan. Unlike her parents, Mum’s sister visited us after Mum died. She helped me find the job with the Sloanes, and invited Ba and me for the occasional Sunday dinner when her parents would not be around. “Why would I want to go backward?”
“It’s illegal for us to go to America. Who knows what could happen to you? I’d be half-mad with worry.”
My jaw clicks in annoyance. America not wanting us worries me, too, but I know how to take care of myself. “I’m not going back.”
The oval ball comes sailing at my head. I reach up to catch it, but Jamie snatches it out of the air a fraction of a second before me. He jumps to his feet. “Watch it, you clods.”
I scramble to my feet as well, in case there’s trouble.
The two young men with the plaid jackets run up to us. But instead of the wrath I expect, they doff their hats, exposing yellow hair thick as thistles.
“Beg your pardon, ma’am,” one says in the flat accent they use in Birmingham. “Brummies” always sound like they have a mouth full of cheese. “Didn’t see you there.” His grimace looks more sheepish than cross, and his tone is apologetic.
My fists loosen. He thinks he’s in trouble. I tip up my nose. “I’ll say. You may have your ball back . . .” The Brummie reaches for the ball, which Jamie is spinning on his palm, but I sweep up a finger. “On one condition.” Jamie pulls the ball away so fast, the Brummie nearly falls over. “You must pass along some generosity of spirit and let those two wee lads over there play catch with you.” I nod toward the back rail, where Wink and Olly are craning their necks at something Bo is showing them in the distance.
“Sure, ma’am.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Jamie releases their ball to them, and they jog away. Shooting me a weary look, Jamie sits back down.
“Now don’t you miss performing?” I crack.
“Not the kind of performing you want to do. I’ve moved on from that. I doubt I could even do a gunslinger, let alone the entire Jumbo.”
“Sure you can. You just have to practice.” The one-arm handstands we call gunslingers are our specialty.
“And even if all those things with Mr. Stewart happen, I don’t want to go to America. Walking a rope is a hundred times harder than shoveling coal, and I only did it because it was the best way to keep us from starving. Besides, I have work to do. My contract won’t be up for several months.”
I expected resistance, but this is outright defiance. It was easier when it was just the two of us. Our plans always included each other. With his new mates, perhaps his loyalties have shifted. Maybe they’ve steered him in a different direction than he is meant to go. Especially that shifty ox, Bo.
The Titanic rolls and shifts, but I hardly notice. “Has all this salt water made you slow, Jamie? You were meant for better things. Think of this as a door to a larger world. You always wanted to study astronomy. With our talent, we can get into America, and then you’ll have your chance.”
“I study astronomy every night.”
“I meant in the scholarly sense.”
He lets out a frustrated groan, and a group of men cuts their eyes toward us from one bench over. “I like what I do.”
“Fine. Do what you like to do. But I’m not going back to London. I’m going to New York, with or without you.” I get to my feet, and a cold breeze slices through my thin blouse.
Dragon and phoenix twins are yin and yang opposites that usually create harmony together. But when we disagree, we won’t easily stand down, especially the more masculine “yang” dragon, which in our case has always been me.
“Come on, don’t be that way. Where are you going?” He follows me to the stairs.
“I’m tired, Jamie.” Our footfalls clatter on the steps. “I thought scaling a crane or hiking for miles through this wobbly maze just to find you had wrung me out. But you know what really put me through the wringer? Talking to an ungrateful clod like you who wouldn’t know a good opportunity if it bit his Queen Mum.”
I let that sink in before crossing the well deck. Jamie tails me to a doorway into the superstructure marked “First and Second Class Only.” Somewhere in there lies Mrs. Sloane’s trunk, which I should fetch before they move it into the cargo hold. Plus, I’m getting cold, and I’m not asking my gobby goat of a brother for a coat.
“You can’t go there,” Jamie hisses from behind me.