Chapter Sixty-Six
IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG FOR QUARITCH AND ROSENBACH
to come to an agreement. Within two days, Ada received a telegram from London.
Rosenbach and I have worked out our agreement. Please proceed to Philadelphia if you still would like to pursue what we discussed. You can return to our office at any time convenient to you. B.A.Q.
Ada put the piece of paper down on the desk and sat on the bed, placing her hand over her abdomen.
It had now been almost a month since the Titanic had sunk, and there wasn’t a time she wasn’t replaying in her head all of her moments aboard the ship with Harry.
From the first idyllic hours they had spent in the privacy in her cabin, to the horrible minutes when they had to say their final good-byes.
It all felt like part of a fever dream. And yet, as she peeled her eyes toward the future, she knew she would soon have another anguish-filled decision to make.
Could she keep the one thing that was a living, breathing embodiment of her love with Harry?
Or would she force herself to give that up?
She didn’t need to have read all those novels in her youth to know that the prospects of being an unwed mother were grim.
Quaritch would never let her work in the store in such a scandalous state, and she assumed Rosenbach would not either, though she hardly knew him.
She stretched out on her bed and tried to calm her nerves and soothe her queasiness.
Her constant morning sickness felt like a double-edged sword. The waves of nausea mimicked seasickness, a feeling that invariably drew her back to being on the collapsible lifeboat and the horror of watching Harry go down with the ship.
But it also reminded her of the love that had resulted in her current state. The irony was not lost on her. She tried to conjure Harry beside her, telling her she was strong. That she was intelligent. That she would find her way.
Hadn’t that been what he told her on their first long walk in Holland Park, that she was all those things and more?
Katharine Stephen, her mentor at Newnham College, had told her one afternoon while she was helping in the college’s library, “Be the heroine of your own story. Don’t let anyone write it but you.”
Ada closed her eyes, reminding herself that what Miss Stephen had shared was sound advice.