“Because you’re half-dead.”
“Possibly. But if that is true, I am also half-alive. You may be shocked to learn that the living part of me knows quite a lot about smugglers.”
She shook her head because she did not have the conviction to say no.She must refuse him, mustn’t she? They were not collaborators. They were not even friends.
“You do not trust me,” Stoker guessed.
“I do not know you,” she said, the truth.
“You knew me enough to marry me.”
“I would have married anyone.”
“I don’t believe that.”
You shouldn’t believe it,she thought.I would not have married anyone.
He asked again. “Tell me only what you’ve learned today.”
She hesitated.
“It will become clearer in your mind to relate it,” he said. “Only until the doctor arrives, perhaps? To take my mind off the pain.”
“The pain is your just reward for today’s recklessness,” she said, sighing, but she drifted closer.
He waited. After a moment she said, “I have an idea. I’ll tell you about the sailors if you tell me what’s happened with the Duke of Wrest.”
Stoker made a sound of regret.
“What?” she asked. “It’s only fair. My investigation in exchange for yours. You cannot include me in the early days and then filch on the ending.”
“There is no ending,” he sighed.
“There is more than has been revealed to me.
“Tell me about the smuggling.”
“Tell me about the duke.”
“Ladies first.”
“Why?” She laughed.
“I am half-dead.”
Another laugh, but she drifted to the bed and settled on the corner of the mattress. Bridget leapt into her lap and Stoker winced.
“Today,” she began carefully, “I met twelve sailors who claimed to have served as crew on a small brig owned by my uncle’s associate—this man, Mr. Leaver. The boat sailed from Portsmouth across the channel to France, making delivery of one hundred bails of wool. When they returned from France, however, they sailed with fifty barrels filled with some unknown... something. The sailors were not told.” She paused for effect, relishing his attention. “They did not return to their home port of Portsmouth with the unidentified barrels,” she said. “They sailed west instead, just off the coast of Dorset, to a tiny barrier island called the Isle of Portland...”
