“Yes, but Miss Sabine is not here, is she?” Stoker said. “And Harley has been called upstairs. I can see sunshine from the window but there’s no guarantee it will remain. I should like to take some air while I can.”
“But sir?” challenged Perry, “what would the doctor say about—”
“Perry? Look up, if you please. Look at me. I’m fully clothed. I am unarmed. I am merely asking for a favor.”
The maid lifted her head but kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut.
Stoker sighed. “You’ve suggested that you’re immune to monetary incentive, but I’ve got a ten-pound note for you if you’ll simply spare five minutes to help me out the bloody door.”
Perry gasped at his language, but she also opened her eyes. Stoker had managed to heave himself to standing and now hovered beside the bed. He raised his hands, palms up.There, you see?
Perry gasped again. “But you’re not half-dead!” the maid exclaimed.
“That remains to be seen,” he chuckled, taking a careful step. “Can you find where they’ve hidden my hat and a cane?”
“But you look just the same as before, Mr. Stoker!” the maid praised, gawking from the doorway.
“Is that a compliment or an insult? Where is my hat?”
“They told me you were burning with fever, starved down, thin as a blade. They said you were swollen with infection.”
“Thin as a bladeandswollen with infection,” Stoker mumbled. “Well, I don’t do anything half measure. Do you see a cane in the corridor? I could find my own hat, if I only had the cane.”
“But what will Miss Sabine say when she comes home to discover you’ve gone out?”
“Likely she will be relieved. How warm is it? I despise London weather. I became a sailor to escape this frigid island.”
The maid had finally moved from her spot and dashed about, producing items Stoker might find useful for a walk. She piled her arms with an umbrella, a week-old broadsheet, two shillings from her own pocket, a stack of biscuits from a discarded tea tray, a lady’s fan,his hat—praise God—and two editions of Sabine’sNoble Guide to London.
“Would you like to take a chair into the gardens, sir?” she asked.
“Just the cane, Perry, if it can be found.”
“Oh right.” She piled her armful of provisions on the bench and produced the cane from behind the door.
“Thank you,”he said. Slowly, taking care to protect the pulling stitches and soreness in his side, Stoker walked through the door and out into the September sunshine.
“Stoker?” Sabine called, stomping through the overgrown path that led deep into the gated garden of Belgrave Square. The builders of Belgravia had made great strides, constructing an exclusive neighborhood out of former marshland in only five years’ time, but garden pathways had been an afterthought, clearly. “Stoker?” she called again.
She held her breath and listened, expecting to find him collapsed on the ground. She rounded a large birch tree, its trunk crowded with overgrown rhododendrons, and stumbled into a sunny clearing with a stone bench and birdbath. Thick foliage, lush from September rains and just beginning to turn red and gold, hung over the bench, filtering sunlight like stained glass. Swirling leaves fell intermittently, floating on the surface of the birdbath and dotting the soft green grass. Jon Stoker, dressed in trousers and shirtsleeves, stood at the outer edge, where sod met hedge.
Sabine came up short when she saw him. He was dressed in day clothes, his head was bare, but a hat rested on the bench. He was steady and tall on uneven sod and his broad shoulders pulled against the white linen of his shirt. He was... whole.
“Stoker?” she said again, more softly.
He turned, cringing a little, putting a hand to his wound. When he saw it was her, he said, “Sabine.” A statement, not an invitation.
“You’re here,” she said, the first appropriate thing that popped into her mind.
You’re well; you’re dressed; you’re beautiful—it was all wrong.
“I could not lie inside another hour,” he said. “I’m reading correspondence by the light of the sun instead of your smoky lanterns.”
“You must be recovered,” she said, surprised by his progress in just five days.Now he will leave,she thought. She felt her chest deflate.
“Not recovered so much as... improved,” he said.
“I’m glad,” she told him, even whileNow he will leavecircled round and round inside her head.
