“It’s at the bottom of the Atlantic with my favorite lounge robe.” Cassian moved the hunk of potato closer to James’s mouth. “Open.”
Reluctantly, James complied, and Cassian fed him the food.
“There, that wasn’t so hard now, was it?” Cassian jested before popping a piece of potato into his own mouth too.
Back and forth Cassian went with feeding them both for a while. Over on the bed, John and Ethel became engaged in a conversation, though both of them were talking so softly that James couldn’t really follow what it was about. Instead, James concentrated on enjoying the salty pieces of starch. He let his thoughts lazily float from one matter to the next, all of them hazy, hovering behind the thick veil of medication.
After a while, Cassian spoke again.
“Oh, I nearly forgot,” he began, feeding James another potato piece, “I had our fellow passenger from the collapsible boat send a message to your former employers. I asked that it make it to your friend Maggie and your parents as well. All of them will know that you’re safe. Afterward, I requested that he contact the people I have working for my own estate and asked that my live-in staff be gone by the time we reach New York. Aside from the head of my household, who will meet us with a car. After he brings us to my home, though, he’ll leave for the summer with the rest of them. Most will visit their families, I presume.”
It took James a couple of seconds to pull himself out of his foggy thoughts and consider the implications of what Cassian had said.
“You’re sending them home for an entire season?” James finally managed to ask. “What about their salaries?”
“I’ll keep mailing them their base pay, obviously. I’m not that heartless. But I needed to make sure that the two of us wouldn’t be bothered by them while you recuperate. And while we figure out where you’ll live long-term as well.”
“Not in London?” James asked before another possibility flitted into his head, one that was so intensely unpleasant it made his stomach churn even while the medication was clearly still coursing through his veins. “Or else on theOlympic. Or whatever other bloody ship the White Star Line will want to reassign me to.”
“Do you honestly think that I’ll let you continue working as a steward? After we nearly lost our lives in the middle of the ocean?” Cassian scoffed. “James, you will live with me in New York.”
Through a relieved exhale, James said, “Oh, thank God.”
Ethel spoke up. “Excuse me, Cassian, forgive me, but won’t that... uhm... won’t that invite speculation? Not that I know what’s best, of course, but I wanted to make sure that you’d considered that aspect of it.”
“I’ve considered it, Ethel, thank you,” Cassian replied, a small hint of irritation, or perhaps only exasperation, in his tone. “In fact, James and I nearly ended our relationship over it all before our ship struck that berg.” He let out a long, slow breath. “I’ve considered the impact that my bachelorhood will have on my reputation as well as how it might look if I’m constantly seen with the same man around the city, but I haven’t come up with a way to fix either of those things. Perhaps I can’t fix them. Perhaps James and I will simply have to pray for the best moving forward.”
Ethel’s eyes fell to the floor. John scooted closer to her and took her hand.
“Cassian is a smart man, Miss Ethel. He’ll be safe. He managed to make it onto the overturned collapsible out on the ocean. He’ll come up with something.”
Cassian smiled and let out a short hum-laugh.
“I like that sentiment, John. Thank you.” Cassian found James’s hand and kissed it. “You’ll live with me, James. Either in the same city or the same house. I’m confident that between the both of us, we will indeed come up with a sufficient solution.”
James smiled at him through the laudanum-induced haze, which seemed to have slowly become more pronounced, maybe because of the food. He felt so warm and peaceful, pins and needles pitter-pattering over skin, and he felt so incredibly safe and happy, too.
“I’d love that, Cassian,” James murmured sleepily. “I’ll live wherever you want me to live.” Through a light laugh mixed with a yawn, he added, “Just as long as it’s not out on the ocean.”
Cassian chuckled a bit. “It won’t be.”
He picked up another piece of potato and brought it to James’s lips. James took it from him. He exhaled a soft, contented sigh as he chewed, closing his eyes after only a couple of seconds. It was so Goddamned nice to be taken care of like this, even as embarrassing as it was to have Cassian feeding him in front of people.
All of a sudden, the warmth in James’s chest intensified. Eyes still closed, James heard the faint sound of rustling, followed by the quiet clatter of a porcelain plate being set down on the hardwood floor. And then there was even more wonderful warmth blanketing him. And the scent of pine and musk and black pepper, faint but still so present. And then slight pressure, as though he was being held.
“Get some sleep, James,” he heard Cassian say.
And then, James finally fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
James
April 17, 1912
In the middle of the afternoon, James awoke to an empty stateroom. Groaning wearily, he pulled the covers up over his head and shut his eyes, though he could tell from the lightness of his limbs and the slight clarity of his mind that much of his medication had likely worn off. Consequently, he knew that sleep might not come.
Not that he needed it, exactly. James had spent the bulk of the past forty-eight hours or so sleeping, mostly with the help of laudanum. He’d woken up to have a bit of food several times, only because Cassian had forced him to, and he’d cried, too, here and there. Even though James felt strange for sleeping so much and for not leaving the stateroom, Cassian had reassured him that there were several other survivors who had confined themselves to their borrowed staterooms as well, all of whom were either too exhausted or too overwhelmed by shock and grief to leave for long periods of time.
