“Have you got straw in your attic?” he huffs, finally straightening again. “They’ll figure it out. Then they’ll send you back, either in Cherbourg or Queenstown, probably in some fish hauler with a bunch of smelly old sods.”

“Cherbourg’s in a few hours,” I say of the French port where the Titanic will be taking on additional passengers. “The crew will be too busy to figure it out before then. And Queenstown isn’t until tomorrow morning.” The last stop before open sea. “I’ll keep my chin tucked until then.”

“You’ll have to keep it tucked longer than that. Bollocks, what are we going to do?” He whacks his cap against his knee. “This is so typical. Plans always half-baked.”

“So I’ve had to improvise.”

“You wouldn’t have had to improvise if you had thought things through. You can’t just”—he throws out his hands—“waltz into first class without your mistress. They’ll catch you eventually.”

I primly smooth my skirts. “Aren’t you a nelly naysayer?”

“Better than a Jack the lad,” he shoots back, calling me a show-off.

“Simple Simon.”

He twists away from me and pounds a fist to his mouth. Clearly the naming game is not filling his nose with the perfume of brotherly love.

“All right, Jamie. I guess I could’ve planned it better. But the stars must have aligned, because here we are, together. This is our Halley’s Comet. We’ll find Mr. Stewart and show him our Jumbo act. He’s our ticket into America.”

“You’re cracked. What makes you think a man like him will even see us, let alone employ us? You’re starting to worry me.”

“Because I dream of a better life for us?”

“No. Because you’re reminding me of Ba.”

I hiss in air, which feels cold against my teeth. “Ba was a visionary.”

“If you say so.”

He can’t still be angry with Ba after all these years, can he?

The day Mum collapsed, Ba had just brought her the news—his ratty top hat in his hand—that his bee farm had flown away, taking with it most of our money. Ba was that rare man with a head full of ideas and the courage to make them happen. Of course, they hadn’t all worked out.

At any rate, that explains all the dreams I’ve been having about Ba lately. He’s stuck in this life because Jamie’s anger is keeping him here.

“Tonight you can sleep in my room. Then, tomorrow, you can get off at Queenstown. I have enough money to get you back to London. Aunt Susan would take you in. Find you another job.”