THE HEART NEVER LIES
Chapter Eleven
Rose
I cried and cried and kept coming
to the same conclusion. I had to escape, and I needed money, but how was I to
pull off both? I was keeping this baby.
The dress fitting later was a
strain. I wiped my tears and stood for hours as Amelie, the designer, pulled,
tucked, and pinned me. Cal stood and watched, and my mother, too, both smiling
broadly.
"Rose, my sweet, you look
divine, like a fairy princess," he told me.
My mother commented, "She
looks pale, Cal."
"Nonsense. She’s excited
about the party in two days’ time!" Cal exclaimed.
I went to go back to my room
after the fitting and I heard Cal down the corridor in his office talking to
his new valet, Andreas Bonner. Cal did not have any grief about the odious
Lovejoy dying on the ship and had employed Bonner soon after, and Bonner, who
was actually a cousin of Cal’s, was just as devoted to Cal as Lovejoy had been.
"Well," Cal was saying.
"I did it and got away with it."
"Oh?" queried Bonner.
"Fleeced the Admiral Pacific
Insurance Company for millions of dollars for the disappearance of the Heart of
the Ocean."
I stopped dead halfway up the
stairs as I listened in horror.
"Of course, the necklace is
in my safe, not at the bottom of the ocean as the insurance people think."
He laughed out loud. "I win. I always get my way."
I pictured Jack drawing me
wearing the necklace, a precious, intimate moment. That necklace was my last
link to Jack. Oh, how I loved you, Jack!
I wanted to howl, but crept back
upstairs to the nursery and sat down, stunned.
Suddenly, my plan was crystal
clear, and that necklace was the key, my way out of here.
Jack
Molly Brown told me bits about
Rose, our love, about the ship sinking. But I could not remember Rose at all. I
could not feel anything. All I knew was my name.
"Where is she now?" I
asked dully as I sat before a magnificent fire in Molly’s luxurious apartment.
Molly quietly passed me a paper.
I turned to the Society pages. There was an article entitled Grand
Engagement of Caledon Hockley II and Rose Elizabeth DeWitt Bukater Announced.
Party to Follow. All Philadelphia society to be There.
There was a picture of her, so
like my sketch. She was so beautiful. Then there was a picture of a dark-eyed
and dark-haired Hockley looking smug. I didn’t recognize him.
"Molly," I asked,
"if she loved me so much, why is she marrying this Hockley guy when you
say she despises him?"
Molly frowned. "I don’t
know, Jack," she said "Maybe her family is forcing her to."
So many questions, but no
answers. I could not help a girl I did not remember. Maybe I had loved her?
Maybe I should move on and make a life for myself and start anew. Should I work
in a art studio? I was sure Molly would help me.