His hand shot out to push her down in the same manner that he’d pushed down Schneider earlier.
“Sit.” He was used to his orders being instantly obeyed,particularly when they were uttered in this biting, curt manner. His soldiers jumped to his command without question. This one disregarded him entirely, as if he’d never spoken.
Instead, she wrung her hands, clearly distressed. “I must help her get better.”
“Nonsense. There is nothing you can do.”
“But she will die. And it’s all my fault.” Her china-blue eyes welled up with tears, causing him to fidget in his chair.
She wasn’t about to cry, was she?
“You will fall ill,” he said slowly, as if to a child. “And then we’ll have two of you down with the measles. It might mar your—” he flicked his hand towards her cheek “—pretty complexion. And if you insist on walking in and out of the room, you will infect everyone else here who has not had the disease. And that would not be good.”
She tilted her head sideways. “Truly? You mean to say, everyone here might fall ill?” Her eyes seemed to grow rounder still and looked enormous in her narrow, elfin face. “That would be rather harrowing, would it not?” Her voice had taken on a noticeable lisp. “What on earth would we do if everyone here in the room dies? The innkeeper too? That would be uncommonly sad, would it not?”
Was she roasting him?
“You can take preventive measures by staying away from the sick room. The maid has had the illness, or the doctor would not have permitted her to remain. She will suffice.”
“But she will be so lonely up there.” Miss Honeywell pulled out a handkerchief. “Poor Lady Evie. Such terrible misfortune. Whatever on earth shall we do now?” She dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief andstifled a sob.
Georg repressed a groan. “Pray do not weep. I truly can’t abide it.”
She wept even harder, to the point that her shoulders shook. “But it is all so terribly s-sad!” Her voice was shaking. “Whatever on earth are we to do?”
Heaven help him. Fainting females were one thing. Crying ones were another entirely… Fainting females he could handle. Barely. One merely needed to shove hartshorn salt under their noses and find them a place to lie down. The order of things was negotiable. But crying ones, particularly when they looked at him with huge, blue eyes like hers, swimming in tears…Herrgott,that he could not handle. Female tears left him feeling helpless and trapped. And there it was, stealing over him, that familiar feeling. It was a softening, an urge to do something, anything at all to make her cease crying. It was a sentiment he loathed with all his might. For it was dangerous.
Georg tugged at his cravat. “Pray compose yourself. Your tears won’t improve matters in the least. Instead of crying, I must ask you to provide me with intelligence.”
She lowered her handkerchief. Her tears seemed to have subsided quickly, for her face was quite dry. “Intelligence? What do you mean, intelligence? Why would I have intelligence? What sort of intelligence?” She looked left and right, then whispered, “Do you think I am a spy?”
“Information,” he ground out between gritted teeth, “as to why you are here. And where you are travelling.”
“Why?”
“Because it is a reasonable thing to inquire into given that your employer has fallen ill, and you are stranded in an inn in the middle of nowhere.”
She tilted her head the other way, and blinked. “Why?”
Georg felt like dashing his head against the table. “Truly, Miss Honeywell? You tell me. Why are you here, stranded in this miserable inn?”
“Oh, I can tell you that!” She looked at him happily. “It is because an evil coach, instead of helping us, drove past us, right through a puddle, and splashed us from head to toe with puddle water. Though in all fairness, it was not the coach that was evil, but the driver. Or rather, the passengers the coachman was driving. Drove straight past us and splashed us from head to toe. That did not help in the least, you know, for we were already woefully stuck in a mud hole.” She paused to think. “The carriage, that is. Our carriage. The wheel of the carriage was hopelessly stuck for hours! I daresay if the traveller in that other coach had been gentlemanly enough to assist us in our hour of need, instead of adding to our plight by ruining all our clothes, not only would we have arrived earlier, but Lady Evie might not have fallen so woefully ill, and she would not be on the brink of death now.”
After he had disentangled her garbled speech, it dawned on him that the coach they had passed on the way was Lady Evie’s. It pained him to admit it, but the poppet had a point. Georg looked away and felt a wave of shame creep up his neck. It wasn’t his finest hour, not to have stopped for a coach in distress. Even if he couldn’t have known it was hers.
“She would have already had the measles when you set out from Vienna,” he muttered, not feeling a whit better after having uttered it.
The innkeeper arrived and placed a dish in front of them.
Relieved to be able to fortify himself, for he sorely needed it, he picked up a fork and speared a potato.
The innkeeper placed the same plate in front of the girl,who promptly uttered a high-pitched shriek that could have shattered glass.
Startled, Georg dropped a potato into his beer mug. “Goodness, whatever is the matter?”
“What is this?” she pointed a shaking finger at her plate.
He fished the potato from his beer mug and set it down carefully. “It is called fish.”
