The atmosphere belowdecks was steamy and close. Guilford and family had been allotted a tiny cabin midships; Caroline seldom left it. She had been seasick the first day out of Boston Harbor. She was better now, she insisted, but Guilford knew she wasn’t happy. Nothing about this trip had made her happy, even though she had practically willed herself aboard.

Still, walking into the room where she waited was like falling in love all over again. Caroline sat with back arched at the edge of the bed, combing her hair with a mother-of-pearl brush, the brush following the curve of her neck in slow, meditative strokes. Her large eyes were half-lidded. She looked like a princess in an opium reverie: aloof, dreamy, perpetually sad. She was, Guilford thought, quite simply beautiful. He felt, not for the first time, the urge to photograph her. He had taken a portrait of her shortly before their wedding, but the result hadn’t satisfied him. Dry plates lost the nuance of expression, the luxury of her hair, seven shades of black.

He sat beside her and resisted the urge to touch her bare shoulder above her camisole. Lately she had not much welcomed his touch.

“You smell like the sea,” she said.

“Where’s Lily?”

“Answering a call of nature.”

He moved to kiss her. She looked at him, then offered her cheek. Her cheek was cool.

“We should dress for dinner,” she said.

Darkness cocooned the ship. The sparse electric lights narrowed corridors into shadow. Guilford took Caroline and Lily to the dim chamber that passed for a dining room and joined a handful of the expedition’s scientists at the table of the ship’s surgeon, a corpulent and alcoholic Dane.