Chapter 2
Victoria got up early the next morning, and walked to the pool, which she was delighted to have on board for exercise.
She had purchased a ticket for use of the pool the day before.
She got into the warm seawater and had an invigorating swim before breakfast. She went back to her cabin afterward, had tea and Viennese breakfast pastries, and then dressed for the morning’s activities.
She watched young couples playing shuffleboard, and another young couple chatted with her.
They were from New York, had been on their honeymoon, and were now on their way home after a grand tour of Europe.
Victoria appeared to be the only single woman in first class, and the only young one.
There was a grand dowager in a remarkable hat with a face like an eagle.
And the young Mrs. Astor was on board with her husband, but the stewardess had told Victoria that she hadn’t left her cabin.
Mrs. Astor was expecting, and not feeling too well.
Alfred had run into her husband in the smoking lounge and they spoke briefly.
They knew each other, but weren’t close.
Alfred joined Victoria on deck before lunch, and lay on a deck chair with a rug over him, sipping bouillon from a cup.
Victoria was invited to play shuffleboard with one of the couples and accepted with pleasure.
When she glanced over, she saw Bert Banning sitting on a deck chair next to her father, chatting animatedly, and they were laughing.
She hadn’t seen her father look this well in months.
The trip was doing him a world of good. At the captain’s table the night before, Alfred had asked a million technical questions about the boat.
Victoria had only been listening with one ear.
She had been talking to the man on her other side about the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Her father had taken her there several times.
And to Venice, which she loved. The conversations had been interesting and lively.
When she finished the shuffleboard game, she wandered over to where her father and Bert were sitting, and Bert looked up at her as though he had seen a goddess.
“I invited Bert to lunch with us,” Alfred said to her.
“If you don’t mind, Lady Victoria,” Bert rapidly added. He wasn’t obsequious, he was polite and respectful of them both.
“I do mind that you’re using my title. If you do, I might have to call you ‘Sir Bert.’ ”
“I don’t have a title,” he said modestly, and she took her parasol, gently touched his shoulder with the tip of it, and looked at him seriously.
“I hereby dub you Sir Bertram Banning,” she said solemnly. He laughed and shook his head.
“That’s not quite the same thing,” he chided her.
“Yes, it is. I think members of the peerage are allowed to do knightings and bestow titles. I don’t think we can do marriages, but we can certainly extend luncheon invitations.
You’re one of us now, Sir Bert,” she said with mischief in her eye as both men laughed, and it struck Alfred again how much like her mother she was.
It was a gift just having her with him. She made everything fun and light.
And her mischief and gentle irreverence had made both men laugh.
Bert Banning relaxed once he sat down at the table with them.
He had not been invited to dine at the captain’s table on any night of the crossing, and he hadn’t expected to be.
He knew how those things worked in British society, although he was possibly the richest man on the ship, or one of them, after Jacob Astor.
But the captain knew who to invite, and who not.
Being seated at the same table with a commoner, an industrialist, a businessman, would have profoundly offended the titled passengers and members of the British aristocracy.
Bert Banning was satisfied to dine alone at his own table, and deeply touched by the Oldbrookes’ invitation to join them.
When he left them after lunch, Victoria was enraged on his behalf and said as much to her father.
“I can’t believe how rude people are, that they don’t invite him to join them, don’t speak to him, and that the captain doesn’t invite him. Americans don’t have titles. Why is Jacob Astor seated at the captain’s table and Bert isn’t?”
“Because Jacob Astor is the richest man on this ship and wellborn. He is the cream of New York society. And Bert is not one of us. We live with an unforgiving class system that hasn’t changed in centuries, and probably won’t change for at least another century, if then.
They want to believe that men like Bertram Banning are lower than they are, that he’s less deserving, and they don’t want him to forget it, so they remind him of it every chance they get. ”
“That’s disgusting, Papa. He’s a perfect gentleman. And very smart and cultured.”
“Yes, he is. And I like him. I always have.”
“But you don’t invite him to dine at the house either. Why not if you like him so much?”
“He doesn’t expect it. He accepts the place where society has put him.
He’s an outsider, and nothing is going to change that in his lifetime, no matter how rich he is.
It might change in your generation, but not in ours.
” Bert was sixty-two years old, a full twenty years younger than Alfred.
Victoria had noticed that people looked right through Bert, as though he didn’t exist and wasn’t there.
It infuriated her, and when she saw him standing at the rail that night when she walked around the deck, she walked over to him, stood next to him quietly, and looked up into his warm brown eyes when he glanced at her.
He kept the appropriate distance between them, and couldn’t help but notice again how beautiful she was.
“Did you have a nice dinner with your father?” he asked her. “He’s a wonderful man.”
“Yes, he is,” she agreed with him.
“He is the only member of our club who has ever spoken to me.”
“Why let you in then?” Victoria was seeing a side of the social order of her world that she had never seen as closely until she saw it through Bert’s eyes.
“They felt they had to. I was admitted in exchange for a favor I did for someone. Several important people put a great deal of pressure on the club, and they wanted to show how modern they are. But of course they’re not.
They hang on to the old ways for dear life.
So I’m in, but they won’t talk to me, in protest. It’s their revenge for having their hand forced. I don’t mind.”
“And why would you want to belong to a club where no one speaks to you? That can’t be much fun.”
“It’s peaceful. I go there just to think sometimes.
I don’t go to London very often. I belong to a mill owners’ club in Manchester.
Everyone talks to me there, and sometimes I wish they didn’t.
I’m among my own kind. Successful mill owners.
They’re a motley crew of industrialists, owners of big and small mills, some very wealthy men, and a few aristocrats. ”
“Is it interesting owning a mill?” She was curious about him. She had never met anyone like him. He was gentle and strong at the same time. He seemed like the kind of man who could lead other men.
“You wouldn’t think it’s interesting, but I do.
We deal mostly in cotton and wool, and we make some beautiful silks.
We learned the techniques for the silks from the French.
The gown you’re wearing tonight is probably made from one of our silks.
” He sounded proud. “And maybe the reason I go to a club where no one speaks to me is to remind myself that even though I’m not one of them, they let me in.
And when the next generation comes along, they’ll probably let them in and talk to them.
These things take time, generations sometimes, for things to change. ”
“It seems so wrong to me,” she said quietly.
Bert asked Victoria something very bold then, but they both felt brave in the moonlight, looking at the open ocean.
There were small icebergs in the distance.
“Why is it that a lovely young woman like you isn’t married?
” He couldn’t imagine a single reason. She was smart, beautiful, well-bred, and nice.
She thought about it for a minute before she answered.
“I never wanted to leave my father. He needs me. I want to be with him until the end. And I never met anyone I wanted to marry. I don’t see any reason to.
” She didn’t need status or a title. She was going to inherit a great fortune one day.
And she had more freedom with her father than if she were married.
“You don’t want children?” She shook her head.
“Definitely not. I’m perfectly content as I am.”
He couldn’t think of a single woman who would have said that to him.
All the women he had ever met had wanted something—marriage, status, money, children, a title.
He could tell she was telling the truth, and seemed perfectly satisfied with the life she had.
And she wasn’t looking for someone to improve it for her.
She lacked for nothing, in her opinion, and didn’t want a husband.
They stood there in silence side by side for a little while, and then it got too cold and they went back to the brilliantly lit halls, the wood paneling and chandeliers.
He walked her to her door and left her there, and thought about her on the way to his own stateroom, down the hall from hers.
She walked into her living room, thinking about him.
She was shocked by how poorly her own world treated him, and that he accepted it as normal.
He didn’t expect anything more from them.
He accepted the order of things as it was.
She wondered if her father was wrong, and if he would come to dinner at their home if they invited him.
She’d like to try sometime when he was in town. She liked talking to him.
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