Miss Wetherby’s brow furrowed, then she shook her head, causing locks of wavy red hair to tumble about her shoulders. “No. Why?”
“How much did you eat of the food I gave you?”
Her eyebrows slashed down, and she took a step back from him. “Why?”
“Because I want to know.”
“Enough.”
Just how much was “enough”? He moved around her, covering the few steps to the boulder where his wooden box sat. He opened the lid, only to find it still missing two biscuits and two pieces of pemmican.
“We ran out of pemmican a week ago and flour before that.” Miss Wetherby twisted her hands in front of her, her eyes riveted to his box. “We gave Heath and Richard the last of the jerky weeks ago when they went to find help.”
“I’m aware.” Or at least he was starting to become more aware. Starting to have a better idea of what the real problem was. “But how much did you eat while I was fishing? You must have been starving.”
“I was, but...” Her hand crept up to cover her belly. “I felt full really fast.”
“How fast? How much food did you actually eat?”
She looked away. “I could only stomach a few bites of pemmican and half a biscuit. I gave the rest to my father.”
Her father. The thought of the hale and hardy man eating his daughter’s food caused Mikhail’s jaw to tighten. “Do you still feel full or are you hungry again?”
Her hand splayed wider against her stomach. “I still feel full.”
A few bites of pemmican and half a biscuit was a paltry amount of food. She shouldn’t be full after eating so little. Just like she shouldn’t look gaunt and emaciated when no one else in her party did, and she hadn’t been sick.
Just how little food had she been consuming since Jack died? Had she been sacrificing her own portions so the men had more?
Did any of the men know what she was doing?
Mikhail looked at his wooden box, then back at Miss Wetherby. “Dinner should be ready in about an hour. I want you to eat what you can, but not so much that it makes you sick. Then I want you to eat again before bed and make sure you have food to eat every couple of hours on the trail tomorrow. Try to eat six or seven small meals throughout the day, even if you’re only hungry enough for a few bites.”
She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “Why do you care so much about what I eat or when?”
Because he’d been in a situation like this once before. It hadn’t been his expedition. He’d just been along to help the guide, but much like Miss Wetherby’s father, the guide on that expedition hadn’t understood the dangers of an Alaskan winter. He’d kept them in the wilderness far too long, and once the snow came, things had turned deadly.
That expedition had a woman on it too.
Mikhail shoved the thought away. Thinking about Livy wouldn’t do him any good. This was a different expedition—one that he would ensure had a far different ending. “I’m afraid you might be undernourished, and it’s a five-day hike back to the river—and that’s if the snow doesn’t come and we can move at a reasonable pace with that big trunk. I need you to be able to hike out of here tomorrow without fainting.”
Her shoulders slumped. “I was just trying to make sure everyone else had enough.”
So no one had been taking her food or rationing too little for her. She’d been doing it to herself. That was something, at least. “You did a good job keeping everyone else fed.”
She shook her head, causing tendrils of fiery red hair to cascade over her shoulders. “I’ve only been cooking for my father and Dr. Ottingford. Heath and Richard just got back to camp today. They said they traded with Indians for some food while they were gone.”
“Perhaps so, but before they left, you fed the entire camp on your own, right?”
“After Mr. Ledman died, we started rationing the jerky and pemmican as soon as we realized none of us knew how to fish or snare an animal. Mr. Ledman had done all that. I should have rationed the small bits of cornmeal and flour too, but I didn’t realize...” Her gaze moved up to the mountains, their peaks now shrouded in shadows of early twilight. “Do you really think we can make it out of here? With the snow coming? With everything that’s happened? Can you really get us back to the river safely?”
“Of course. It’s my job. I wouldn’t have signed up to do it if I thought I’d fail.”
Or at least, he’d thought he could do it when he assumed he’d be able to find the botanists in a week, two at most.
When he’d assumed the entire party was made up of men.
Miss Wetherby looked at him for a moment, their eyes meeting again. She was a beautiful woman, even with weariness lining her face and shadows filling the space under her eyes.
