Riley handed her a glass of water, which she sipped and felt better.
Evelyn touched her daughter’s hand. “Take your time, dear. The evening is young. Everyone is still in good spirits.” Then she chuckled. “That’s two of my daughters who have fainted on the floor of the Tremont.”
The women all laughed.
“Technically,” Sophie said, “Elise didn’t actually faint so much as she passed out.”
“Sophie!” Elise protested, clearly embarrassed by the mention of when she’d drunk too much punch and fallen into her now-husband’s arms, nearly sliding down the front of him onto the dance floor. At the time, he was barely an acquaintance though she’d already been carrying a spark for him for years.
Riley shot his wife a fond look and offered her a wry grin. “I remember when you fainted away at my feet. You frightened me half to death.”
Sophie blushed. “You caught me as I recall, exactly like William caught Rose.”
“I feel much better,” Rose said. “I want to see William. Let’s go downstairs.”
Slowly, they went downstairs and walked into the ballroom, like a cluster of lovely flowers, with Riley taking up the rear. The rest of their menfolk were beside them in an instant.
“You gave me quite a scare,” William said to Rose. “Are you well?”
She nodded, glad to set eyes on him and to hold his hand. He was real. He loved her.
“What happened?” he asked as she leaned into his side.
Whathadhappened? She’d seen a ghost — a realistic-looking ghost. So real, in fact, that he’d been flesh-colored and breathing. However, she knew with certainty that he wasn’t real.
“I honestly don’t know, but I feel quite recovered. I’m even ready to dance.”
William’s face broke out in a smile. “If you’re up to it.” He took her hand. “I’ve been dying to show you off all night.”
“Take it easy,” Riley called after them.
Rose finally got to experience dancing in the arms of the man she loved, feeling like a queen, dressed in the loveliest garment she’d ever worn. She enjoyed hours with her family and friends, eating, drinking, and definitely making merry.
Through it all, however, she felt strangely detached, as if she was watching the party through another person’s eyes. She spent the first hour after awakening looking for Finn’s ghost at every turn on the dance floor.
When she realized how foolish that was, she tried to stop herself and nearly succeeded. Yet even as she focused on William’s handsome face or her sister’s loving smiles, Rose was aware of a shadowy discontent. Her own ridiculous hallucination had cast a pall over her engagement party, and she was determined to hide it from all those who had worked so hard to make this a special night.
She hated the fact that she was slightly relieved when the party was over. Yet she couldn’t deny that she was glad to climb into her bed that night under her mother’s roof. In the dark and quiet, Rose pondered what she’d seen.
The apparition had been so real — looking slightly older, Finn’s wheat-colored hair a wee bit longer, yet his clothing in fashion. She wrinkled her nose, trying to understand what it meant. Wouldn’t a ghost have looked exactly as Finn had looked when he’d died over three years earlier, nearly four? What’s more, if he were merely a figment of her imagination, wouldn’t he have been as she remembered him from their last night together?
She sighed in frustration. She wasnotgoing insane. She was merely tired; it was two in the morning. Obviously, at the beginning of the evening, she’d been overexcited by the event. Her agitated brain had conjured up another exciting time from her past and summoned Finn.
Besides, the party had been a great success, and William was the perfect fiancé. She could ask for nothing more.
So why did she wish it was a few hours later when she could go to Finn’s old rooming house? Merely out of curiosity, of course. A compulsion to go preoccupied her as she drifted off to sleep.
***
Ludicrous notion, she scolded herself, as she drove her carriage across Beacon Hill and eventually stood before the front door of Finn’s old rooming house. Utterly absurd, she muttered, going into the foyer and then to the door of his room. Before she could decide whether to knock and be judged a fool, the door opened and an older gentleman came out. He was looking at his feet until he nearly collided with her.
“Oh! You startled me, young lady. May I help you?”
“No, sir,” she said, bending down to retrieve a pint milk bottle that sat with a note attached by his door.
Wordlessly, she handed this to him before turning and fleeing. Not back home, however. No, she directed her horse toward the waterfront, not admitting that she was heading toward East Boston.What was the point in going there?Yet what had been the point in going to his old rooming house? Had she truly thought she would find his ghost had taken up residence at his old bedsit?
She shook her head at her own foolishness yet couldn’t help taking the Charlestown Bridge all the way up to the Chelsea Bridge and, finally, crossing the small Free Bridge on Meridian Street that brought her into Eastie, as close to the waterfront as possible. It was a path she had taken many times after the sinking except when she took the penny ferry across the harbor.
