Cold All the Way Through, But Warming

An Interview

AN: With this chapter, this fic is officially over 100,000 words long.

The week of the ball had come, and I had to beg off my tutoring under Mr. Keller until after the event. I was so busy with a hundred small tasks to help with the ball, not to mention the last fittings for my dress. Along with the interview that I had arranged with the Times, it was too much to add the mornings at the office. Mother had allowed me the use of the reception room at the Fifth Avenue house for the interview, she had been invited to tea by some society lady who felt like taking sympathy on a widow. Looking around the room, it seemed so different from when the will reading had been held. The flower arrangements had been cleared away, the wood polished and the floors shining in the light from the cleaned glass in the windows.

I made sure everything was perfect before I nodded to the butler to see in the reporter from the Times. The tea and other refreshments had been laid out, and an extra table provided for the reporter's writing paper. The servants had arranged a pair of chairs across from each other over a low table, and I positioned myself so that I could see the door. When he entered, a rather shabbily dressed man, I greeted him happily. "Mr. Roberts, please take a seat."

He nodded, "Miss Dalian, thank you for agreeing to see me."

"Of course, I am only sorry that it took so long." I sat across from him, folding my hands across the black silk of my skirt. "Shall we begin?"

"I won't be quite as formal as Senator Smith," He laughed, pulling out his paper and a pencil. "Perhaps you could just start when you first awoke that night. What did you first notice?"

"That the engines had stopped, I had gotten so used to them that their absence was startling."

"And what was it like when you first heard the ship was sinking? Were you surprised?"

"We all were, you don't expect to hear that when travelling." I tried to remember back to that night. "It was quite a shock to have Mr. Murdoch tell us."

"You've proven yourself quite his defender. We at the Times are glad to hear it, he was very sympathetic during the inquiry. He did all he could, did he ever tell you how they made it to the boat?" I could easily discern the flattery in his words, and the most I could say for the Times was that they had remained impartial in their coverage of the inquiry. None of the papers had leapt to defend any of the crew, let alone the officers

"I believe he answered that during the inquiry."

"Nothing he told you specifically?" His pencil stilled. I had a brief flash of Will's face that night on the Carpathia, when he had told me he had wanted to throw himself into the water but it was only his promise and Charles's diligence that had prevented him.

"No, I'm afraid nothing specific. We did not discuss that night much."

"Now, you rowed back to the wreckage. You didn't want to leave the boat and let a crewman do it?"

"I'm afraid I was in quite a shock that night. I never even considered leaving the boat. I felt I would rather row than sit and wait." I drew in a breath, trying to keep my composure. "Rowing back to the wreckage was no heavy task. It was only in the wreckage that we truly saw the horror of what had happened."

"You saw bodies then?"

"Yes, enough that it seemed to lose all scale. We rowed through the field, checking bodies as we past them for some sign of life."

"But you found some survivors? Do you remember any of them?"

"I could barely see outside of the lights one of the officers held. I remember there was a girl, a young woman really, wrapped in a blanket and handed back. There was an injured man, he died in the boat. I heard him stop breathing. I truly could see little, so I could not tell for sure how many we pulled out of the water."