No Greater Love Read Online Free PDF

looked down at him with open amusement.
    “This is just great, Dad.”
    “I’m glad to hear it.” But at that exact moment, Kate caught a glimpse of her son as she approached, and scolded him when she reached them.
    “Bertram! How can you allow him to look like that! He looks … he looks like an urchin!”
    “Do you hear that, George?” his father asked calmly. “I’d say it’s time to clean up. May I suggest that you go to your stateroom and change into something a little less … uh … worn … before you overly upset your mother.” But his father looked more amused than annoyed, as the boy grinned up at him with a wide smilethat mirrored his own. But Kate was far less amused as she told George to take a bath and change his clothes before reappearing.
    “Oh, Mom …” George looked imploringly at Kate, but to no avail. She pulled up her sleeve, took his hand in her own, and marched him downstairs, where she left him with Phillip, who was studying the passenger list, hoping to find someone he knew there. The Astors were on board, of course, and Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Straus, of the family who owned Macy’s. There were many, many famous names, and several young people as well, but no one Phillip knew, not yet anyway. But he had seen several young ladies who appealed to him, and he was hoping to meet them during the crossing. He was still studying the passenger list when his mother escorted George into the room and asked her older son to see to it that he clean up and behave himself, and Phillip promised to do his best, but George was already chafing to be off again. He still wanted to visit the boiler room and the bridge, and go back to the kitchen again, there were several machines they hadn’t let him use, and there was one elevator he still had to check to see if it went farther up or down than the others.
    “It’s a shame you don’t get seasick,” Phillip said to him mournfully as Kate went back to the others on the Promenade Deck.
    She and her husband enjoyed a pleasant lunch with Edwina and Charles, and then met up with Phillip and George and Oona and the younger children after their naps, and Alexis seemed a little less worried about the ship by then. She was fascinated by the people chatting and strolling all around, and by then she had met the little girl that her father had mentioned earlier. Her name was Lorraine, and she was actually closer to Fannie’s age. She was three and a half and she had a babybrother named Trevor, and they were from Montreal. She had a doll just like Alexis’s. They were grown-up lady dolls, and Alexis called hers Mrs. Thomas. She had gotten her from Aunt Liz for Christmas the year before, and Alexis went everywhere with her. Lorraine’s had almost the same face, but her hat and coat weren’t as fancy as the one Aunt Liz had sent, and Mrs. Thomas was wearing a pink silk dress that Edwina had made, under the black velvet coat that she had come with. She had high button shoes, too, and that afternoon Alexis took her for a walk with her as she strolled around the Promenade Deck with her parents.
    The ship docked at Cherbourg at Alexis’s bedtime that night. The little ones were already asleep, and George had disappeared again. Kate and Edwina were dressing for dinner, while Charles, Phillip, and Bertram waited in the smoking room for the ladies.
    They had dinner in the main dining saloon on D Deck that night, the men all in white tie, of course, and the women in exquisite dresses they had bought in London or Paris or New York. Kate wore the incredible pearl and diamond choker that had once been Bertram’s mother’s. The dining saloon itself was exceptionally beautiful with carved woodwork, shining brass, and crystal chandeliers, and the three hundred first-class passengers dining there looked like visions in a fairy tale in the brightly lit room. Edwina thought she had never seen anything as beautiful as she looked around, and then smiled at her future husband.
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