The Ripper's Wife

1

It began with a shipboard romance, the sort of thing you might find in any romantic novel, play, or film. From time immemorial it always seems to have been the rule that when presenting romance to the masses, the hero and heroine must meet in a memorable manner, something amusing, adorable, or antagonistic, that will spawn an entertaining anecdote they can regale their friends and relations with for years to come. But happily ever after really depends upon where you end your story.

Did you ever sit and wonder what happens to the lovers locked in a passionate embrace after the gilt-fringed curtain goes down or the words The End appear upon the silver screen? Does Prince Charming really love and adore his Cinderella forevermore, forsaking all others as long as they both shall live, till death they do part? Or does he, sooner or later, exert his royal and manly prerogative and take a mistress, an ambitious lady-in-waiting, a buxom, bawdy laundress, or a pretty little actress perhaps? Are we really expected to believe that the noble bluebloods of the court accept a former servant girl as their queen? The young and na?ve never think or worry about such things; when you’re only eighteen it’s easy to believe in love lasting “forever” and “happily ever after.”

The setting was picture-postcard perfect—a spick-and-span new steamship, part of the prestigious White Star Line, all fresh paint, varnish, and high-gloss polish, a veritable floating palace, with a buff-colored funnel belching steam high above our heads, regally bearing us across the ocean from New York to Liverpool. The SS Baltic might have steamed right off one of those popular souvenir postcards almost everyone in those days collected. It was all that perfect—gilt-edged perfect! It was the perfect place to fall in love!

Looking back now, in hindsight after six decades, if I were to cast the movie of my life, I might have been pert, blond, and vivacious Carole Lombard, champagne bubbly in a bustle and ringlets with an Alabama belle’s molasses accent, dense and sweet, and he might have been dignified and debonair, sedately suave William Powell, a little staid and stodgy perhaps—some might even have gone so far as to call him “pompous”—but with a ready smile, a wry sense of humor, and a twinkle in his eye. He made my heart flutter and skip like a schoolgirl! With a tall silk hat and a diamond horseshoe sparkling in his silk cravat, dapper in a dark suit straight from Savile Row, patent-leather boots, and immaculate dove-gray gloves and matching spats, he was every inch a gentleman.

I suppose I must sound awfully silly, but every time he looked at me it was like receiving a valentine. Pictures of hearts, Cupids, cooing doves, clasping hands, and bouquets of flowers and boxes of chocolates tied up with red and pink satin bows filled my head like a bewildering array of pretty cards on display in a stationer’s shop, and I just didn’t know which one to choose, and in truth I didn’t want to. I wanted them all. I wanted him! He was everything I had ever dreamed of. Or perhaps the sadder and wiser and much older me of today should correct the gauche green girl of yesteryear and say that he represented everything I had ever wanted. In those days, it was all about appearances. In society, style trumped substance every time.

It was March 11, 1880. Like the date inside a wedding ring, it is engraved upon my memory and heart. How could I ever forget? It was the day my life changed forever.

I was eighteen, bubbling over with high castle in the clouds, hopes and champagne dreams—intoxicating, sensuous, thrilling, and sweet. A living doll—I think at almost eighty I’m old enough to say that now without seeming vain—who always saw the world through rose-colored glasses. I was a dainty little thing, with a curvaceous corseted hourglass figure, tiny waist bracketed by generous bosom and hips, dressed in the latest Parisian fashions, with gleaming golden ringlets, violet-blue eyes that provoked my many beaus to say that they would make forget-me-nots droop and weep with envy, sugar-pink rosebud lips just longing to be kissed, the white magnolia blossom skin we women of the South prized so, and ankles and wrists so tiny and trim. I was a delicious little dish!

It seemed as though I had spent my entire life hiding under shady hats and veils to keep the sun from singeing me with its hot, crisp, baking kiss, and being scrubbed down vigorously with buttermilk and lemon juice in a never-ending crusade against freckles. And for the blemishes that seemed to erupt whenever I was overly excited or anxious Dr. Greggs prescribed a face wash of elderflower water, tincture of benzoin, and just a little arsenic. Not enough to hurt, he assured me in his kind, grandfatherly way when I shrank back and fearfully demurred when he handed me the prescription, remembering a play I had seen about an evil, scheming woman who had put arsenic in her boring old fuddy-duddy husband’s soup so she would be free to abscond with her lover, a worthless but excruciatingly handsome lounge lizard with hair like black patent leather who danced like a dream and never threw away the love letters foolish women sent him lest he have to do something so menial and mundane as work for a living. I relished every thrilling, wicked moment of it and had sat through it five times, in wide-eyed wonderment, leaning forward in my seat, even though it made my stays pinch, anxiously nibbling my nails and a bag of toffee.

Despite being a seasoned traveler, a habitué of sophisticated Parisian salons and worldly European circles, and a rather sporadic attendance at a deluxe Swiss school for affluent young ladies in Vevey where I did little more than sit in the garden, eat chocolates, dabble in watercolors, devour romance novels, and gaze at the breathtaking vista of blue lakes and snowcapped mountains and dream until I graduated at sixteen, I was never blasé or jaded. In those days, I exuded a bewitching, bewildering blend of innocence and confidence, shyness and sophistication. I wore them like a halo that protected me like Saint Michael’s shield. I glided through life endowed with the sweet certainty that nothing bad could possibly ever happen to me. I believed in the innate goodness of people; I trusted in the kindness of strangers and was eager to like everyone and wanted them to like me. I gladly proffered my trust until I was given reason to withdraw it. But even then I never stopped believing that most people truly are good at heart, though they might sometimes behave badly because they were hurting inside or driven by some dark or desperate compulsion or circumstances I was not privy to. I wished them well and accepted their failings and flaws as endearing little foibles and went on believing that good would eventually triumph over whatever darkness assailed their poor souls. I didn’t believe in evil then; to me the Devil was just another storybook villain; I never thought I’d end up dancing, or sleeping, with him.

I was traveling with Mama, the bountiful-hearted and -bosomed, white-blond, violet-blue-eyed Baroness Caroline von Roques, a worldly-wise Alabama-born beauty whose numerous admirers always poetically declared that her hair was like a field of our Southern cotton silvered under a full moon, and my brother, the handsome gilt-haired “Alabama Adonis,” Dr. Holbrook St. John Chandler.

We had just left New York, where we had been spending time with dear old friends and making new ones, adding to our collection of admirers, the candy boxes, bouquets, and books of sonnets they sent us with declarations of undying devotion piling up high in our hotel sitting room, and just having a grand giddy ol’ time. It had been a whirlwind visit filled with lavish luncheons, society teas, and dinner parties, fancy dress balls, the theater and opera, daily shopping excursions, tailors and dressmakers appointments, brisk canters in the park on proud, high-stepping steeds that would have delighted my cavalry officer stepfather if he had been with us, and thrilling race meets where we all wagered recklessly on the ponies and gave our handkerchiefs and little charms for good luck to the handsomest of the jockeys. All Mama had to do was smile and mention our cousins the Vanderbilts and all doors instantly opened for us and credit was graciously and generously extended at all the best stores.

We planned to do much the same thing in London before we returned to Paris, which we worldly wanderers were pleased to call our home, though more for stylistic reasons than any fixed address, and where “Handsome Holbrook” had his medical practice, his waiting room packed with excited and excitable females all suffering from some form of womanly or nervous complaint.

Just like one might expect in a play or a film, James Maybrick literally swept me off my dainty little feet. It was our first night out to sea. I was so excited. I loved ocean travel. It never made me ill. I had already lost count of the number of times I had crossed. Though I had a fine collection of postcards, souvenirs of all the ships I had sailed upon, I had never bothered to count them. I was eager to purchase one of the SS Baltic to paste into my album and explore every splendid inch of this magnificent 420-foot ship; Captain Parsnell had already promised me a personal tour. He commended my daring and adventurous spirit. I wasn’t even afraid to venture down into the belly of the beast to see the boiler room manned by sweaty bare-chested stokers black faced with coal dust and rippling with hard muscles.

In a new gown of Wedgwood-blue satin with a wide white embroidered chinoiserie border edging the full, draped skirt, and a waterfall of white silk roses, blue ribbon streamers, and cascades of snowy lace falling from my bustle, I was hurrying from my stateroom. I had dallied too long over dressing, fussing and fidgeting, dancing around the room, humming love songs, and making sure I was perfect in every way.

The leather soles of my blue satin slippers pattered and my taffeta petticoats rustled like a flock of bellicose doves as I raced to the dining saloon.

On the companionway there was a moment of sheer panic when all of a sudden I seemed to go from stairs to air. I felt myself falling, and then, just as suddenly, I was safe, my quivering body cradled in a pair of strong masculine arms.

When I dared open my eyes, a diamond horseshoe was winking at me from a gentleman’s black silk tie. He’s caught me in his arms like he has his luck in that glittering U, I thought. Slowly, I raised my eyes to see a pink mouth smiling at me from beneath a dapper mustache, so deep a brown it was deceptively black, carefully formed and waxed beneath a fine patrician nose, and then I was staring into a pair of intense dark eyes, sharp and sure as a surgeon’s knife, I vividly recall thinking. My unknown savior held me like a bride about to be carried over the threshold of her new home. My bosom heaved, but I couldn’t breathe. I felt all aflame, as though I’d just emerged from a visit to the boiler room. I felt the perspiration pool between my b-reasts and a flaming blush dye my cheeks a pepper-hot red. I couldn’t speak. My tongue felt like a clumsy knot of wet pink ribbons. I must be scarlet as a lobster and seem about as dumb as one! I thought. Where, oh where was that coy, flirtatious, smiling miss I had always been with my beaus? I needed her!

Before the gentleman and I could exchange a single word—surely I would have said something soon!—General Hazard and his wife were upon us, reaching out to me with the most tender concern. Exclaiming that they had seen the whole thing and watched in heart-stopping horror as I began to plummet but hadn’t been able to reach me in time.

The Hazards were like an uncle and aunt to me; they kept homes in New Orleans and Liverpool on account of the General’s dealings in the cotton trade, and we had often visited and traveled with them. The General and Mrs. Hazard both suffered from rheumatism and other age-related infirmities and loved to go anywhere they might enjoy the baths, luxuriating in the hot, sulfurous waters and sipping mineral-rich tonics, being pampered by nice doctors, who brought sweet dreams instead of nightmares to one’s bedside and never prescribed nasty medicines, pretty, smiling nurses in starched white caps and uniforms that rustled like angels’ wings, and sure-fingered muscular masseurs with faces fit for magazine covers but bodies that looked poised to enter the boxing ring. Mama and I had accompanied the Hazards to several fashionable spas and sampled such delights for ourselves, though neither one of us was ailing and we were both in the bright bloom of health. But it was always fun to be petted and pampered, especially by such nice, attractive people.

“Florie! Oh my dear, I’m trembling still! When I saw you start to fall my heart stopped!” Mrs. Hazard exclaimed, patting her heart through her black bombazine bodice.

“Thank heaven you were here, Jim, to save our Florie,” General Hazard was saying to my gallant savior, mopping his worried brow and frowning beneath the upside-down horseshoe of his droopy pewter mustache. “If it hadn’t been for my gout, my heels would have spouted wings and I would’ve caught you myself, my dear!”

I felt my slippers touch solid ground again. I was on my feet, and still flustered and speechless. What was wrong with me? Mrs. Hazard’s arm was around my waist, and I was leaning weakly against her, ever so grateful for her support, as I didn’t quite trust my feet, and introductions were being made.

His name was James Maybrick; he was a wealthy cotton broker with offices in Norfolk, Virginia, and England’s prosperous port city of Liverpool, where he was born and still made his home. The Hazards had known him for years. The General had often done business with him and enjoyed his hospitality at the Liverpool Cricket Club, and Mrs. Hazard had lost count of all the times he’d shared their table. They were clearly very impressed with him. “Solid as a rock, my dear! You need have no fears about James Maybrick!” Mrs. Hazard assured Mama when she took her aside and asked for his particulars.

After that, we were almost constantly together, sitting in the deck chairs, wrapped in warm tartan flannel blankets, deep in conversation over steaming cups of tea or beef broth, or just leaning back, resting and enjoying the salty sea air; strolling the promenade deck, a proud pair of seasoned travelers, smilingly reassuring those of our fellow passengers who were nervous and green; playing cards; dining and dancing; sitting beside each other, our fingers sometimes discreetly, daringly, entwining, at the ship’s concerts; or with our two heads bowed over a single hymnal during religious services. Every evening Mr. Maybrick would call for me at my stateroom and escort me in to supper and then, afterward, to the ladies saloon for coffee and conversation, while he retired to the smoking room for brandy and cigars with the other gentlemen. Then he would retrieve me for a moonlit stroll before seeing me safely back to my stateroom.

The attraction was instantaneous; we were like two moths drawn to the same flame. But no one seemed to understand; they all accounted it some great mystery, like some dime museum oddity in which some element of chicanery might be commingled with the wonderment it inspired. All were in agreement as to why Mr. Maybrick should be so smitten with a ravishing young belle like me, but when they looked at him all they could see was a portly, paunchy, pasty, middle-aged Englishman who talked a great deal about cotton and horse racing. Were they all blind and deaf? Why couldn’t they hear his enthusiasm and see how when he smiled he lit up like a jack-o’-lantern? He was like a great big overgrown boy, and my heart just wanted to reach out and hug him. I couldn’t help but love him. Their confusion was the conundrum, not my feelings!

They made so much of the fact that he was forty-two and I a mere eighteen. I didn’t understand all those frowns and behind our backs whispers that had a way of always reaching my ears, all those muffled murmurs about pretty babies being snatched from cradles. In the South where I was born and spent my early childhood, husbands were often considerably older than their wives, and in the sophisticated European society I had grown accustomed to in my teens this was also commonplace; I had met men in their seventies with wives my age.

I only ever worried about Mr. Maybrick’s age upon those occasions when I noticed that his pallor seemed much more pronounced and his eyes appeared bloodshot, like the dark pupils were snared in a scarlet spiderweb, and I detected a slight tremor and cold clamminess in his hands. Sometimes they appeared so pasty white and limp that I actually shrank from touching them. There were times when he would rub them vigorously, complaining of numbness.

Many times he would take from his pocket a beautiful wrought-silver box with a rather charmingly risqué bas-relief design on the lid of Nelson’s notorious mistress, Lady Hamilton, as a scantily draped “nymph of health,” more bare than bedecked, and put a pinch of the white powder it contained into his tea, soup, or wine. But I was too well-bred to ask what it was.

I was sorely afraid some illness might swoop down and carry my Mr. Maybrick away from me on the Wings of Death. But whenever I tentatively expressed my concern he would smile, call me his dear “Bunny,” and say, “I’m afraid I’m not as good a traveler as I like to pretend,” and, with a sweet shamefacedness, blame it all on a slight touch of mal de mer.

I believed him because I wanted to believe him. And why should I have doubted him? In those days, it was “the demon rum” the do-gooders crusaded against, not the contents of the medicine cabinet.

Gullible and innocent, I had no way of knowing that some gentlemen, especially those of middle or advancing age and those of weak constitution or insecure nature, routinely took “virility powders” or a “pick-me-up” tonic containing such dangerous, potentially deadly, ingredients as arsenic and strychnine to stimulate their masculine powers. Certainly no gentleman of my acquaintance would ever have been so boldly indelicate as to discuss impotency and aphrodisiacs with a well-bred virgin like me. Not even my doctor brother would have dared broach the subject. And if Mama, who was the wisest and most worldly woman I had ever met, knew about this peculiar manly indulgence she never saw fit to enlighten me.

Why could all those naysayers and frowning faces not see all the wonderful things Mr. Maybrick and I saw in each other? We both loved travel, good food, and books, keeping au courant with the fashions, and the heart-pounding excitement of the green table and turf; we were both spellbound by the roulette wheel and avidly courted Lady Luck.

He was no callow youth bent only on getting my bloomers off. I could talk to him and learn from him. He even made speculating on cotton seem exciting as a game of chance when he told me all about “bear sales” wherein cotton one doesn’t actually possess is sold in the hope of being able to cover the obligation by buying at a lower price later and thus making a profit of thousands of dollars. I was utterly fascinated. He was the first man who had ever made me feel like I was more than a living doll.

Why couldn’t they understand? How could I not love him? And what he could give me—a solid, steady, and respectable English home, real roots, a foundation, the chance to build a life and, God willing, grow a family. Though none would ever have guessed it to see the giddy girl caught up in the social whirl I was then, I was bone weary of wandering, of living out of a trunk, in luxurious hotels or the chateaux of the aristocrats and millionaires Mama sometimes intimately befriended. I didn’t want to stop dancing or for the excitement to ever end, but I wanted to settle down, to go home after the dancing was done to a place that really was home, to my own fireside, familiar and dear, not just another house or hotel in which I was merely a guest.

But they didn’t understand. Whenever Jim and I strolled past on the promenade deck, people would whisper and shake their heads. Dour old dowagers and iron-gray spinsters, who had long since given up all hope of marrying, would turn and stare or glare after us, branding our backs, determined to make their disapproval felt. They whispered about indiscretions, making our courtship sound so sordid, speaking in hushed, appalled tones about how late I stayed out, “after dark, my dear, and without a chaperone!,” and our lingering on the deck, watching the moon and the stars mirrored in the glass-smooth sea with his arms about me, his breath warming my skin, and my soul, as he called me his darling “Bunny,” and how when he brought me back to my stateroom he tarried overlong in the sitting room saying good night to me.

Mama thought Jim would make a grand husband for me. So what if he was older? He was respectable and rich, “solid and dependable as the Bank of England.” I imagined his face as an engraving surrounded by dictionary entries for words like Strength, Stability, and Security. Mama and I were from the South, where cotton was king, and knew enough cotton brokers to know that Jim’s boast that “trade is enthroned in Liverpool with cotton as prime minister” was absolute truth.

Jim was equally impressed with my pedigree. I feared Mama would drive him mad with all her chatter about the important men nesting like fat partridges in our family tree, friends and relations of royalty and founding fathers, like Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin, high-ranking clergymen, Harvard graduates, bankers, founders of schools and railways, real estate barons, the first Episcopal bishop of Illinois, a Secretary of the Treasury, and a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. My grandfather had founded the town of Cairo, Illinois, and been caricatured by Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit, and my father had sat on the Supreme Court and served as Assistant Secretary of State for the Confederacy. And, of course, there were our cousins the Vanderbilts.

Though I wished she wouldn’t, Mama made me sound like some kind of heiress, one of those wealthy American girls the newspapers had dubbed “Dollar Princesses,” girls who traveled to Europe on fishing expeditions to catch a title to put the crowning touch on their millions. My stomach was all queasy and I felt like a fraud, a sham heiress, when she dropped hints about the two and a half million acres of land in Virginia and Kentucky that I might one day inherit, conveniently neglecting to mention that it was all swampland and there was some complicated legal tangle about just who in our family actually owned it. It was all a great muddle that would have cost too much to unravel, the lawyers would have gotten richer and us only poorer, and the land would have just sat there stagnating without a buyer, so we just left it be; no one really thought it was worth all the bother.

She also glossed over the scandals of her own past, the label of “adventuress” many affixed to her name along with words like conniving, duplicitous, ingratiating, sychophantic, and scheming; the two dead husbands whose deaths the gossips claimed too conveniently coincided with Mama’s desire to change partners; her numerous love affairs—they said she went through men like handkerchiefs—and her amicable separation from my worldly and debonair Prussian stepfather, Baron Adolf von Roques. She deftly deflected attention away from his absence with nigh constant reminders that he was attached to the embassy in St. Petersburg and thus of necessity spent much of his time in Russia away from the bosom of his loving family. Glowing with wifely pride, she described his service under Crown Prince Frederick as a cavalry officer in the Eighth Cuirassier Regiment. His troupe of ballet girl mistresses and handsome male secretaries, always tall and candlestick slim, with hair slick and shiny as black patent leather, his hot and hasty temper fueled by a taste for vodka in vast quantities, and his penchant for dueling over the slightest perceived insult were of course never mentioned. Mama was always a practical woman who preferred to accentuate the positive and ignore the negative like dust swept under the carpet.

Their arrangement was entirely amicable. It was not by any means an unhappy marriage; on the contrary, it was all very sophisticated and civilized. But Mama was prepared to admit that it might seem distressingly bohemian and unconventional to the typically traditional, and narrow, English mind. So why risk muddying the waters by talking about it? After all, what had their marriage to do with mine? At the time, I thought it made perfect sense. It was not, of course, the kind of marriage I wanted for myself; I wanted the whole beautiful fairy tale of everlasting love and happily ever after. I wanted no storm clouds to mar my perfect blue sky, so I kept smiling and silent and let Mama do all the talking. She said she knew best, and I believed her. I didn’t want to make a single frown or worry line crease my beloved’s brow. I really was the sweet, old-fashioned girl he thought I was, not some wild bohemian child of the demimondaine, so why give him any cause to doubt me?

I loved Jim and truly I did not want to mislead him, but when I voiced my concerns to Mama she insisted that I keep silent. I would never be able to forget or forgive myself, she said, if such an overt display of honesty dashed my hopes entirely.

“Darlin’ ”—she clasped my face between her hands—“your face is your heart, you are incapable of lyin’, but you’ve yet to learn that honesty can cost a woman dearly. You will blame yourself every day o’ your life, an’ quite rightly too, for costin’ yourself that which would have brought you perfect happiness. In this world, a woman must be cunnin’, not na?ve an’ timid, or else she loses out to another, a rival, who is not afraid to be clever an’ take chances. Listen to your mother. I know; I have vast experience in these matters.”

She was adamant that I must leave everything to her; besides, it was unbecoming for a young girl to talk of business and financial matters. “If you’re goin’ to do that, Florie, you might as well put on some blue stockin’s an’ spectacles and scrape your hair back into a bun an’ give up all hope of a husband, for you’ll certainly never get one by talkin’ o’ those matters!

“After you’re married you’ll fall to quarrelin’ an’ quibblin’ about finances soon enough; every couple does.” She sighed, reminding me that as a third-time wife she was in a position to know. “Enjoy the bliss o’ ignorance an’ freedom from bein’ tied down by facts an’ figures while it lasts, darlin’. The honeymoon’ll be over soon enough; it always is.”

What could I do? She was my mother and a wise and worldly woman who “knew how the game is played an’, more important, how to win it.” I loved her, and I knew she loved me and always had my best interests at heart, so, as always, I nodded and said, “Yes, Mama.” Some might say that was a mistake, that any marriage begun in deception is doomed. All I can say is that she was my mother. All little girls are brought up being told to listen to their mothers and that they’ll be sorry if they don’t, and I didn’t want to be sorry and looking back years later, still nursing a broken heart and longing for Jim and what might have been. I wanted to be Mrs. James Maybrick with all my heart and Mama was determined to make my dreams come true. “The heart doesn’t lie, but sometimes the tongue has to,” she said, “an’ which would you rather have, a whole honest tongue or a broken heart?” Of course, I chose my heart; I always did.





The last night of the voyage, our last chance to dine amidst the shining silverware, white linen, and cut-crystal splendor of the first-class dining saloon before we docked in Liverpool, Captain Parsnell stood to make the customary announcement.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “it is my pleasure to inform you that we have made the Atlantic crossing in the usual excellent time upon which the White Star Line prides itself. We have moved at a steady sixteen knots and shall dock in Liverpool in the morning. It has been, I think, as quick a crossing as can be managed by any steamer currently in Her Majesty’s service. Customarily, at this time, I would propose a toast to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, but this evening I wish to first offer another toast. I think perhaps you can guess to what, or should I say, rather, to whom, I refer. . . .”

He paused to allow some polite chuckles and to give the disapproving dowagers a moment more to glower through their lorgnettes and frown at us. But Jim and I just smiled into each other’s eyes and clasped hands across the table.

“I raise my glass to the health of two who met aboard this ship only seven days ago. They embarked as strangers, but found romance upon the high seas. This very afternoon they informed me of their intention to wed this summer. A toast, ladies and gentlemen, to the long lives and good health of Miss Florence Chandler and Mr. James Maybrick! A toast to the happy couple—to these two who shall soon become one!”

Everyone, even those who disapproved most vehemently of our romance, raised their voices and glasses to wish us well. It would have been the epitome of discourtesy to do anything else.

That night my whole world was rosy and filled with delight. The wine was sweet as nectar and I’m afraid I might have drunk a little too much.

Long after most of the lights had gone out, Jim and I lingered up on deck, wrapped in black velvet darkness and each other’s arms.

“I never want this night to end!” I whispered, safe and contented in his embrace. “If I go to bed, I’m afraid when I wake up in the morning it will turn out to have all been just a dream.”

We watched the golden sun rise over the deep blue sea. When a dolphin broke the surface Jim rubbed his diamond horseshoe and guided my fingers to do the same. Seeing a dolphin meant certain luck. “We’re on a winning streak,” Jim said. “With you at my side I’ll never lose.”

When he escorted me to my stateroom, lingering for one last long kiss before he let me go, he boldly whispered into my ear, “I dream of the time when I need not leave your side when we say good night, though, in this instance, it is in fact good morning.”

I was the happiest girl in the world, and I knew Lady Luck was smiling down on me, blessing this venture.