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“Huh?”
When I glance over my shoulder, I catch him watching me. “You haven’t been around much lately,” I clarify. “I was surprised to hear from you today.”
“Yeah.” He turns back to the framed pictures on the wall, reading the printed labels beside deteriorating pieces of paper. “It occurred to me you don’t have many ways to get around to conduct your research. Thought I’d be of service.”
“I see. Purely academic interest then.”
I scrutinize a gown in a standing glass case, which was purportedly worn by a Tulley at a royal wedding during the reign of William IV. I feel Nate’s intermittent gaze at my back.
“As research assistants go, I’m moderately reliable,” he drawls, then wanders off again.
He’s a tough nut to crack. Stiff upper lip and all that. I can never quite tell if he’s being flirtatiously obscure or politely evasive.
Or maybe I’m simply reading too much into this again. Nate doesn’t go to college. He works nights as a bartender when he isn’t playing gigs. So it’s possible he has a lot of daylight time on his hands and not nearly enough ways to spend it. In that case, I’m a brief distraction between obligations.
Then again, Jack and Jamie aren’t offering to drive me an hour into the country for homework.
“Take a look at this,” Nate calls from another room.
I search for him until I find a hidden corridor tucked behind a bookcase. In the small room, a projector shows black-and-white newsreel footage of ships arriving at a port. Weary, huddled people in blankets disembark at the pier. On the adjacent wall are framed news articles, photographs, and two small oil portraits of a familiar figure.
“TheVictoria,” I breathe. “William, the middle brother, was lost at sea when the ship sank.”
I’ve seen photographs of William Tulley before. In this context, however, surrounded by the footage of the disaster’s aftermath and headlines from around the world that announced the tragedy, he feels more alive than a grainy image in a book.
He was a handsome young man in his midtwenties with soft, narrow features and a rebellious mustache, his gaze perpetually fixed toward the horizon. A wanderer’s spirit.
“He was cute,” I remark.
Nate’s amused voice tickles the back of my head. “Was he now?”
“Sure. I mean, I totally would’ve tapped that,” I say before remembering I’m not with Eliza but rather with a gorgeous Englishman.
That gets me a strangled laugh. “I reckon poor old Will would’ve been riddled with confusion if you hit on him using that phrase.”
I start laughing too and affect a (not good) posh British accent. “Hullo, sir, I would like to tap you. Please, remove your britches.” I turn to beam at Nate. “Hot, right?”
“So hot,” he says solemnly.
I continue to study theVictoriamaterials, wondering why William Tulley ended up on this doomed ship. “You know what’s wild? William wasn’t even on the official passenger manifest. Wasn’t scheduled to take the voyage. He was a last-minute addition to the crossing.”
“How on earth do you know that?”
I smile smugly. “I’m a possessor of infinite knowledge, Nate. That’s how you roll when you spend your entire life in the library.”
“Should we brag about that? Truly?”
A laugh sputters out. “Fair critique. But it came up in my research. I tracked down the manifest, and his name wasn’t on it. Instead there was a handwritten notation from someone at the shipping company saying Lord William Tulley would be joining them. They even cleared out a first-class cabin for him. Probably had to kick out some poor soul to make room for his lordship. Annoyingly, it doesn’t say if he was traveling alone or not.”
“But the fact that he boarded the ship at the last minute must mean something, right? Running away to America to nurse his broken heart.”
“Or,” I counter, “running away to America with the woman he stole from his brother.”
“Also a possibility,” Nate says unhelpfully before moving toward the next display.
A few moments later, he calls me over again.
“Over here.”
