“I am getting the feeling you don’t like me very much.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you. But you must know you were quite rude.”
“At the map room, you mean. Is that what makes you so sour toward me? I am sorry, my lady, and I do humbly beg your pardon. It’s just that girls are always slipping or falling or twisting their ankles wherever Fitz sets up his headquarters.”
Was he being ironic? Her cheeks flushed dark with rage. “You can’t be implying that I did it on purpose.”
“No.” He shook his head, as though he had never heard of anything quite so ridiculous. He was either utterly in earnest now, or a very good actor. “No, of course not.”
The attempt at sincerity was even more infuriating, and she very much considered rising from the table, marching out of the dining room, and finding her parents, so that then she might at least enjoy them, and their card games, and their idle chatter. But then she imagined this Sal laughing at her in his imperturbable way, and that seemed like the worst fate of all. She could not stand the idea of him thinking of her as silly and a liar. But neither could she stand the idea of him thinking other girls silly liars—like poor Lilly Adell, making herself miserable to meet a man. She felt a sudden fury on behalf of all the women who had ever lived, giving so much of their wit and youth and beauty just to be noticed.
“So what,” she said hotly.
“What do you mean ‘so what’?”
“What if I did do it on purpose, what would it matter?”
She could see that he was making an effort not to smile at this, which made her angrier still. “But why would a girl of such obvious pride do a thing like that?”
“Well, why do you think?”
“I haven’t a clue what goes on in the mind of a high-class girl like you.”
“Oh please.” She had no desire to hide her indignation that though he was calling out hypocrisy in others, he too was shading the truth. “I mean, you sail around with a young man of not a little social importance. You see how he lives, do you not?”
“Yes, I’ve traveled with him since we were children; of course I see how he lives.”
“He gets to go on all sorts of adventures, and everyone applauds him for it.”
“Yes, he’s very brave.”
“He is, to be sure. But there are other young men who go in for boating, and sporting, and adventuring, are there not?” She waved her hand at the men who sat at the table, each of them trim, and able, and rich, and used to going where they liked and doing what they pleased for their own amusement and not thinking of the many others who made all their leisure possible. Beside them sat their sisters and wives and cousins, who were a very lovely roving audience for the triumphs of brothers, husbands, and cousins.
Sal leaned his elbow against the table and angled his head in curiosity. “Some.”
“And do you know any young women like that?”
“Well—no.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“I guess young women just don’t like adventure.”
Now it was Vida who smiled in amusement at Sal’s half-blind way of viewing things. “Have you asked any young women if they don’t like adventure?” she prodded. “Now, I am not one to make an argument with the world as it is. In fact I quite enjoy the world as it is. But if you have eyes, then you can see that all the things that are expected of girls—that they be pretty, and dress like ladies, and wear skirts and make houses lovely, and all the other fixed ideas of female purity—are perfect ways to deter young women from a life of adventure. Anyway, I like a big gown, and a big party, and to have everyone saying how beautifully I am dressed. So what?”
“Which is it? Do you like the fussy dresses, or do they hold you back?”
“Have you never felt two contradictory things strongly, truly, and at once?”
He considered that, but was too slow in replying, and so she charged on to win the argument.
“The world is full of contradictions, and I am not trying to change it. But I assure you, the desire for the new and novel and to go exciting places is in all of us. Or most of us, anyway. And certainly in plenty of young women. Our adventuring is of a different kind, by necessity—we adventure in ballrooms, and with the dressmaker, in our imaginations, and in our hearts. That leads to real adventure, if we imagine right—adventure on the arms of our husbands. And if we choose well in that category, then we shall see all manner of wonders. That is the hand we ladies are dealt. I for one am quite good at playing this particular game and making a laugh of it.”
But Sal frowned at her perfect logic. “I guess I’ve just never taken up the hand that was played me.”
“I wonder.”
He held her gaze. “Nobody tells me what to do. I go anywhere I like, and my life is what I make it.”
“You seem to think balls and things are very silly, and yet you serve a master who attends them all the time. Your life is what he makes it, no? Look me in the eyes and tell me you go where you like, and that your life is exactly as your soul would make it.”
But he couldn’t quite look her in the eye. She spent a few moments studying him, and concluded that he might be sort of all-right-looking, from the right angle and in the right light. He had dark eyes and lashes, and a nose that curved nicely, and a full mouth, but it was all so funnily put together, as though his face had been left out in the sun, and melted slightly, and would remain forever with its features not precisely aligned.
“I don’t usually underestimate people,” he said after a while.
“From you that must be a high compliment!”
“Do you care about this dinner?”
Vida glanced at the others sitting at their table. “You mean the rolls and the squabs and the potatoes dauphinois? Not even a little.”
“If you are really so keen to see the map room, I could show it to you.”
He had already stood up from the table, taken a step back from the opulent dinner that was just then being ferried through the room by a hundred uniformed waiters and deposited plate by plate before the first-class diners. Vida hesitated a moment—for what would the room make of her leaving early? Would her parents hear that she had not stayed put, that she was not acting like a marriageable young girl? Would she end up in worse trouble? But Sal had made clear that Fitzhugh would not be coming. She hated the idea of everyone seeing her waiting around for him. She had another look at her dining companions—the men with nothing to talk about but boating and racing and sports, the women absolutely stuffing their faces with Waldorf salad out of boredom—and decided to do what most excited her curiosity.
“All right,” she said, and led the way to the closest exit, to make sure that as few of the other first-class passengers as possible saw her leave with the nobody. But once they were through the door, and she saw the glitter in his dark eyes and a hint of that amused smile, she thought she had better clarify for him, too: “Only because I have nothing better to do at present.”
Six
“This does not seem the most direct route.” Some girls, saying a thing like that, would affect a treacly coyness. Not so Vida. She’d had a look at the layout of the many decks of the Princess and she knew where she was going, and that they were taking a very meandering path to the map room. She followed the nobody who called himself Sal down a flight of stairs, and—eager for Sal to know that if he were playing a trick on her, she would see to it that he lost his job—spoke directly. “Did you hear me? I prefer a direct route.”