But he must feelsomething; otherwise he wouldn’t be offering her his own dinner.
Her stomach rumbled again. Had he heard it?
She glanced up to find his lips now pressed into a firm line, but his voice still sounded soft when he said, “Take what you want. I insist.”
She reached out and swiped two biscuits and two pieces of pemmican. She couldn’t explain why her hand trembled as she did so, nor why, once she had the food in her hand, she stood staring at it rather than putting it in her mouth.
She had the strangest notion not to eat it but to squirrel it away somewhere in her pack and hide it for a time when she was truly hungry.
Which was ridiculous, because she’d been hungry for weeks.
“Eat it, please. I have flour to make more biscuits, and pemmican and jerky aplenty in my pack. I’ll catch fish for dinner to give us some fresh meat. Don’t worry about eating too much.”
She lifted a biscuit to her mouth and took a small bite.
“Do you have food, Mr. Amos?” Father came up beside her and reached for a biscuit. “This looks delicious. All we had for lunch was stewed roots.”
Mr. Amos’s hand reached out and clasped Father’s wrist before he could snatch the biscuit from the box. “This food is for your daughter. You can wait until I catch us some dinner.”
Her father blinked. “But I only had a small bit of jerky after Heath and Richard came back to camp. I really am quite hungry.”
“You can wait an hour.” There was no hint of kindness in Mr. Amos’s voice now, and he closed the lid on the box with more force than necessary, causing the sound of wood slapping together to echo through the valley.
He bent and retrieved the pieces of a fishing pole that had been strapped to the side of his pack, then screwed them together with smooth, practiced movements.
A moment later he stalked off toward the lake, leaving her with the entire box of food and her father with a perplexed look on his face.
* * *
It tookMikhail less than an hour to catch ten fish. As he’d expected, the lake had been full of them, but no one in the party of botanists and researchers had known how to make a fishing pole out of a tree branch after Jack had died, and Richard had said Jack’s fishing pole had broken during the bear attack.
He’d held his tongue, not bothering to tell Richard that if he was going to survey the Stikine and Iskut River valleys for the Department of the Interior, he should be a skilled enough woodsman to fashion a fishing pole or snare a rabbit or do something to provide food for himself and the members of his party.
But despite the fact Richard Caldwell published a field guide every year about some new area he’d explored, and despite the fact he’d written numerous reports for the Department of the Interior over the years, it seemed the man had never once gone on an expedition without a guide.
Mikhail shouldn’t be surprised. In his experience, Richard Caldwell liked to talk big, even when he knew very little.
His fishing line full, Mikhail turned away from the lake and headed back to camp, where he was hoping he could make use of Miss Wetherby’s cutting board to clean the fish.
Her father and the other scientist were packing their specimens and equipment in a wooden trunk that looked large and cumbersome, and Heath and Richard were having a deep conversation near the bedrolls.
Mikhail pursed his lips as he surveyed the trunk. It was sure to slow them down. There would be no quick or easy way to get it through the canyon, and if the rain turned to snow... Well, he didn’t want to think about how slippery the trails would be while carrying the trunk.
“You caught that many fish?”
He turned to find Miss Wetherby standing beside the fire, her eyes running down his stringer.
She tucked her bottom lip between her teeth, as though not quite sure what to say, then finally blurted, “We won’t be able to eat all of those.”
“I know, but I want to cook them all tonight. We’ll save some for breakfast tomorrow. Mind if I use your cutting board?”
“Go ahead.” She gestured toward the wooden board he’d watched her take down to the beach to clean. “I figured I’d still cook the roots I dug up, and the bit of jerky Heath and Richard brought back with them, but I hadn’t realized you’d catch so many fish.”
“The roots will be a good addition to the meal. I have some flour in my pack. Do you know how to cook biscuits over a fire?”
She stilled for a moment, then gave her head a small nod. “I’ve been cooking biscuits like that since the first time I accompanied my father on an expedition.”
Something about how she said that made him wonder just how old she’d been when she’d gone on her first expedition. But if she was accustomed to being in the wilderness, then why was she so thin? It didn’t make any sense. “Have you been sick recently?”
