The Titan Drowns: Time Travel Romance - Nhys Glover (ebooks that read to you txt) 📗

our Researchers fell in love with a young woman in 1810, who history recorded had died in a horse-riding accident four months later. He was devastated, but knew that hers was not a case for Retrieval. She hadn’t disappeared. Her body didn’t go missing.

‘But when he went to her funeral, he spoke to her sister who wondered what he was doing there. He was supposed to be on his way to the New World with his wife. Much to his surprise, he discovered that he had, with the help of two of her sisters, arranged to fake his wife’s accident and burial. Until he learned what he had done, he had no plans to do such a thing. Where did the idea first come from?’

‘My mind is in chaos trying to think my way through all this.’

‘Yes, well you are not alone. There are even more contentious situations, like taking children from paedophiles before they can hurt the child. At first, we thought we had to let such events play out. But then Julio initiated an action that led, inadvertently, to the historical event, and so we started to be more proactive about our rescues. If we thought to rescue a child, then we were always meant to rescue that child. We were changing nothing – simply fulfilling destiny, as it were. That is our mantra now.’

‘What is a paedophile? It is Latin for “child lover.” Are not all parents child lovers?’

‘This refers to sexual love, and often harms the child. It becomes a major problem in the later part of this century. It was probably a problem before, but it was never recognised as such.’

‘Those men exist. We call them buggers.’

‘Nooo,’ Eilish denied tentatively. ‘I think that refers to male homosexuality. Homosexual men are not usually paedophiles. Let us change the subject.’

‘Certainly, especially as my brother has been concerned all these years that I was one.’

‘One what? Paedophile or homosexual?’

‘Both, either… my unnatural disinterest in women concerned him greatly.’ He chuckled amiably.

‘Luke tried to ask me the same question. No, before you ask… he wanted to know if I was interested in women if I was not interested in men. I said I was interested in neither. We are a singular pair, are we not? Until we met, neither of us had any normal sexual urges. Now look at us, at it like rabbits.’

Max choked back a laugh. ‘Are all women of the future so explicit?’

‘From about the middle of this century they started to become less ‘ladylike’ and never looked back.’

‘Well, I imagine I will need to get my affairs in order – very subtly of course – in the next few weeks. In between times, I will busy myself being “at it like a rabbit” if my doe will comply.’

‘Rabbit away, my buck. I find such activity very effective exercise to counter the rich food we are eating so often.’

Max kissed her mouth suddenly and with much fervour. ‘I feel like making the most of my fertile seed while I have it,’ he mumbled against her mouth.

‘You said you were too old and that I would kill you…’

‘I am meant to board that ship, so I doubt you will succeed in killing me. If you do… well, I will die a happy man.

 

 

Chapter Seven

 

Marco

 

9 April 1912, London ENGLAND

 

Marco Lorenza’s head hurt. The restaurant staff had stayed late toasting those who would be joining Giuseppe on the maiden voyage of the Titanic and he had been forced to join in their revelry, even though he was not going to share their bounty. It was expected to be financially very lucrative, this first voyage of the Olympic class liner, as the first class passengers would be splashing their money around celebrating the historic voyage. He’d felt more than a twinge of disappointment not to be one of their number. Not only could he do with the money, but to be part of that journey would make for stories he could tell his children and his grandchildren.

Not that he had any thought of marriage and children yet. He was only twenty-eight and nowhere near ready to settle down. There was still so much of the world to see, so many experiences to milk of their novelty. And he needed to be financially secure before he took on the responsibility of a family.

He had seen what settling down young had done to his parents. Old before their time, weighed down with debt and the responsibility of five children, all before they were thirty. They were role models of what life could do to you if you let your heart rule your head. Was it any wonder that his father had involved himself in the worker’s demonstration and riots of ’98 in their home city of Milano. He had been so angry at the injustice. His children starved while the rich factory owners with corrupt politicians in their pockets used their workers like so much meat and gristle to be chewed over and spat out when they no longer had the strength to be of value.

No, he didn’t blame his father for getting involved in that demonstration. He would have gone along, too, had his mother not insisted he stay home and help with the younger children. She had recently given birth to her sixth child and the demands of motherhood were dragging her down. Maria, his ten-year-old sister, couldn’t manage her three younger, hellion brothers alone. So he’d stayed to help with his younger sibling, and his father had been killed. Shot dead by the police sent to break up the demonstration.

Shaking his head at that memory, he went to the stained sink in the corner of his room and poured himself a cup of water to wash away the stale alcohol and the bitter taste of memories from his mouth. When he looked up from the sink and saw his heavy eyed, unshaven face in the cracked surface of the mirror, he sighed heavily.

It wasn’t meant to be like this. Working twelve hour shifts in a Ritz restaurant; making barely enough to cover his room in a rundown boarding house in Greek Street, Soho; only able to send a few shillings home to his mother to help her make ends meet.

But back then, he’d had all the insanity of youth telling him life owed him more. Grieving for his father, angry that he had not been there to save him, he turned his fury on anyone who drew his attention.

His mother had been first. He saw her marriage to the foreman of the plant – his father’s bitterest enemy – only months after his death as a betrayal. He’d raged at them both, refusing to accept their bond. Time and again the bastard had beaten him into submission, but he’d always come back for more. Finally, after one brutal beating that came close to killing him, his mother had begged him to leave. He was only making it worse for her and the little ones, she said. Mario was a good provider, she told him, and there was no other way for her to support her children. If he could not understand her sacrifice, then he needed to go.

The angry child he had been back then couldn’t understand her. To him, her rejection had been the cruelest blow of all. And so he had gone, determined to make his fortune and then return to take his mother and siblings away from that life.

He grunted bitterly at his own naiveté.

Life, he found out the hard way, was not the stuff of dreams and fairy tales, and he was no hero who fought unbeatable odds and won. No, he staggered from one low-paid position in one foreign city after another, his only gift a talent for languages, which at least gave him employment wherever he went. Some might say that his good looks were also a gift, but they were more curse than gift, getting him in more trouble over the years than he wanted or needed.

It had started at fourteen as a lone, pretty boy cast adrift in the world. Men befriended him, and in his innocence, he did not understand why. When he discovered what they wanted from him, he was forced on several occasions to fight his way to freedom. Years on the streets of Milano had taught him to fight, and he had needed those dirty street-skills to escape the depravity of those men’s attentions. In retrospect, he wondered how he had gone his whole youth without knowing about such unnatural activity. He imagined his father had kept such men away from his children. No one had wanted to cross Angelo Lorenza back then.

And when he was old enough that he no longer attracted the attentions of those types of men, his good looks had drawn the enmity of those who envied his easy charm with women. Not that he had ever gone out of his way to attract women, they just came to him: pretty and plain; old and young; rich and poor. They were drawn to his looks like moths to a flame. Once he had satisfied his lust with the novelty of it, by eighteen such attentions only served to annoy him. None of them were interested in him. They saw no deeper than his tall, muscular body, his classic profile and wavy black hair.

Rejecting women’s attentions only served to draw enmity of a different kind. No, his looks were more hindrance than help on his quest to explore the world and make his fortune.

For instance, even though he was one of the hardest working waiters at Gardi’s Restaurant on the Strand, he was not selected for the Titanic job because he “caused animosity amongst the staff.” Women would seek tables in his area and leave large tips that made the other waiters jealous. It didn’t matter that he always behaved in a professional manner with patrons. It didn’t matter that he shared his big tips with the rest of the staff. They resented him and he knew no way to change the situation.

A few times over the years he’d found a workplace he liked and made friends of some of the staff. But then his other liability would kick in: his itchy feet. Staying anywhere for any length of time was impossible. Boredom would set in and he would start looking for new sights to see, new experiences to explore. Novelty was his most demanding mistress and he could do nothing else but meet her needs, even when it cost him the friendship and comfort of a position he enjoyed.

And it was that mistress who drove him now after a year in London. He was tired of the wet, miserable weather, the superior looks the English threw at anyone who was not their kind. He hated their coldness and impeccable politeness that cut as deeply as any abusive comment. And he hated the dingy room where he tried to sleep while the sleaze of the city endeavoured to keep it from him with their noise.

Marco drew out his cheap pocket watch to check on the hour. He was on lunch shift, which started at eleven o’clock and it was already ten. It was way past time he bathed, but the bath in his building was almost worse than not bathing at all. The water was rusted and rarely hot, the bath required disinfecting before use, and the floor was so disgusting that he wore a second-hand pair of slippers to the bathroom and left them at the edge of the bath to put on as soon as he stepped out of the water. For this reason, they were now somewhat mouldy and smelled almost as bad as the floor.

Marco settled for a wash at his basin, even though it would not do the job as well as he wanted. Cleanliness was almost a fanatical need for him. He assumed he got it from his mother, who had kept a spotless house and clean, tidy children, no matter how empty their stomachs were. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” she had told him on many occasions.