“I will risk it,” he said.
Without thinking, she said, “You’re joking.”
“No,” he breathed, watching the dog root up his body. “I’m not.”
“Are you mad?” she asked. She would not restrict his movements, of course, but she’d already invested four days in his care, and considering the rapidly approaching deadline on her next travel guide, not to mention the investigation of her uncle, it would be such a waste to have him leave and then do something as inconsiderate asdie. Four days for nothing.
Now Bridget was on his chest, staring him in the face, her nose just inches from his.
“I am a grown man,” he said to the dog. “I cannot tolerate being tended to by a hired footman or a wom—oryou. I’ve a ship that is apparently missing and a crew with it. I must begin an inquiry that will locate them both. I’ve been attacked and left for dead, two circumstances for which there will be grave consequences. I need to discover who and why. None of this can be managed from your bed, regardless of how grateful I am for your care to this point. I don’t know what day it is, I don’t know whatmonthit is, and I am ravenously hungry, but I refuse to lie prone in this bed and ask you, of all people, to hasten to the kitchen and feed me like an invalid.”
She was just about to tell him that it was a Tuesday, in August, and that hewasan invalid, but he pulled an arm from beneath the covers to push away the dog, and the combination of this exertion and his long proclamation ofI don’tsandI won’tsoverwhelmed him. His skin went ghostly white, his emerald-green eyes blinked and then rolled back in his head, and he collapsed against the pillow in a dead faint.
Even Bridget’s fresh round of barking did not rouse him. Sabine scooped up the dog, sailed from the room, and went up the stairs to prepare his broth and cider. He’d said he was hungry—arguably the only sensible thing he’d said—and so he should eat. Although she did not have all day to wait around. Today she would return, finally, to theDreadnought. Her plans to interview the scurvy sailors had been postponed while she settled Stoker into her house, but she’d always planned to go back.
She had time to feed Stoker and carry on—or argue with him and carry on—but she did not have time for both.
