Free Carpathia by Matt Forbeck

lead Abe on in that way, but he'd been so insistent and so sweet that she had decided to go through with it.
      While she had allowed outside pressures to force her into producing a suitor, she had sworn to herself that she would not allow that to build into the kind of inertia that would transform her into a young bride. She had no designs on Abe's wealth or his title. The notion of someday becoming the next Lady Godalming held no allure for her.
      Even the idea of the nobility – that one person was inherently superior to another by nature of his birth – rankled her. That sort of notion was cut from the same cloth as the idea that women were second class citizens, the kind who could work and pay taxes and contribute to society in a myriad of ways but were unable to vote. She'd become an outspoken suffragette to fight against such injustices, and she had zero desire to become part of a similar problem.
      And then there was the way that Quin looked at her, with the sort of burning intensity that the callow Abe had never been able to muster. She had long wondered if he'd had feelings for her, but he'd never once given voice to such longings. So she'd settled for Abe, who seemed content to give her as much space and time as she required, which suited her well.
      Now she'd let the boys put her on a lifeboat and send her off to live without them while the two of them suffered a noble death. It galled her that she'd permitted them to get away with that, and now that the Titanic had slipped beneath the waves, she felt a terrible guilt squeezing her heart. She already worried that it might never go away.
      That fact had prodded her to protest Hichens's behavior, and she had vowed to herself that she would not stop until either he gave in or the point had been rendered moot. As far as she could tell, they were still a long way off from that moment. People still splashed about and screamed and bellowed and called and begged for help out there in the darkness. There had to be not just scores of them but hundreds.
      "There isn't enough room!" Hichens said. "Not for all of them. If we go anywhere near that mob, they'll pull us under. They'll swamp and sink us for sure."
      "Then we go back and save the ones we can," Maggie Brown cut in. She had been arguing for Lucy's points the entire time, and that fact had given Lucy the resolve to carry on, even in the face of the fear-ridden apathy evinced by the rest of the boat's passengers.
      "Right," said Lucy. "If we save even one more person, isn't that worth it? Don't you think he'll be grateful? That his family will be thrilled to see him delivered safely from this disaster?"
      Lucy turned to the rest of the passengers, appealing to them. Perhaps if she could get enough support, they could override the cowardly Hichens. "Think of that," she said. "Every person we save is one less family left bereft."
      "She's right," said Maggie. "We're almost all women here in this boat. Where are your men? Your husbands? Your boys? Are you going to just let them all die?"
      "By the time we'd get to them, they'd already be dead," Hichens said. "The water's filled with nothing but stiffs, and there's nothing you can say or do to make me row through that God-damned graveyard out there!"
      Lucy stood straight up in the boat now and glowered at the repulsive man. "If you're not going to help, then get the hell out of the way," she said. "We can pull those oars as well as anyone!"
      "You touch those oars, and I'll toss you overboard with my bare hands!" Hichens said, the veins on his neck popping out as he bellowed his threat.
      Maggie stood up next to Lucy now and put a hand on her shoulder. She scowled straight into Hichens's hateful eyes, and in a voice filled with quiet menace said, "I'd just like to see you try that."
      Hichens tensed up, and Lucy braced herself for the man's attack. Would no one, she wondered, come to her aid?
      There were two men on the boat