“I smell no putrefaction, and the flesh appears to be healing,” he pronounced. “If all continues this way, I shall remove the sutures very soon.” He listened to Karigan’s heart through a conical tube apparatus, the wide end placed on her chest, his ear listening at the narrow end. Like a small speaking trumpet, Karigan decided. The mender inquired of Mirriam about Karigan’s diet. After a favorable response, he asked, “No ill humors, fever, or the like?”
“None that I’ve detected,” Mirriam replied. “Seems eager to get into mischief. But beyond that, only the illness of her mind.”
Karigan glowered.
“You say she will take no morphia?”
“I am right here and able to answer for myself,” Karigan said. “I will take no morphia.”
“My dear,” the mender said in a condescending tone, “you’ve nothing to prove. The morphia is only to benefit you by subduing your pain.”
And me, she thought. “I do not need morphia.”
The mender gave her a testy frown as though he preferred his patients drowsy and malleable. “Very well, but I shall bring it up with your uncle. Most young ladies would desire relief.”
Karigan held her tongue, but it was not easy.
“Her mental frailties,” the mender told Mirriam, “do not make her fit to speak for herself.”
The housekeeper escorted him to the door. She paused and gave Karigan an enigmatic look and then was gone. What was in that look? Approval? Disapproval? Something more complex? Karigan could not tell.
“I just want to go home,” she murmured. Now that she was once again alone in her room, it hit her. She wanted away from these strange people and their ways. She profoundly missed her Condor, her fellow Riders, and the way the world worked in her own time. She missed Ghost Kitty curling up beside her on her pillow and purring her to sleep.
She would find a way home; she would learn how Mornhavon had defeated Sacoridia, and she would take that information with her. Until she figured out these matters, she must remain patient and accept the professor’s protection so she could rebuild her strength.
If she couldn’t get past Mirriam, she would use the window. She’d enough bed sheets to tie together . . . Karigan considered plans and counter plans until the midday bell rang, and Lorine appeared with a meal. Karigan steeled herself for more boiled dinner, when Lorine lifted the lid off the main dish and there was only barley soup. Karigan did not think her sigh of relief went unnoticed.
She thought to question Lorine about Mirriam’s habits and schedule but dismissed the idea as too obvious. She’d have to observe on her own. The maid curtsied and departed, leaving Karigan to thoughtfully spoon soup—carefully blowing on it first—into her mouth. Perhaps if she made herself sleep all day, then she’d stay awake long enough in the night to commence her prowling. It was ridiculous, really, that she, a Green Rider, was cooped up like this. She—
Karigan paused with a spoon of steaming soup halfway to her lips, when she felt someone’s gaze on her. Had her ghost returned, here in the brightness of day? Slowly she turned her head, seeking any sign of that filmy presence. She did not see it, but when her gaze fell across the window, and she discovered a pair of golden eyes staring unblinkingly in at her, she screamed, and barley soup cascaded across the room, the bowl smashing on the floor.
Mirriam burst in almost immediately, with Lorine on her heels. “Miss Goodgrave! What on Earth? How dare you fling the professor’s porcelain!”
Karigan hissed as the burning hot soup soaked through her nightgown, and she plucked the fabric away from her skin. “I saw a pair of eyes! In the window.” Now for certain, she’d utterly convinced them of her insanity.
Mirriam stomped over to the window, gazed up, gazed down, and gazed all around. “I see nothing,” she replied, whirling around to stare at Karigan, her hands on her hips.
Karigan was not surprised, and as her wits settled back into their proper place, she belatedly realized that whiskers, and white and pale gray fur had accompanied the eyes before her scream had scared the poor cat off her window ledge. She laughed at herself.
“Miss Goodgrave, stop this instant.” Mirriam raised her hand as if to slap her.
Just as quickly Karigan raised her arm to block it. “I am not hysterical,” she said, no laughter in her voice now. “I was laughing because I’m just realizing I was startled by a cat. A cat at my window.” Karigan did not add that her sighting of an apparition in the early morning hours had put her on edge.
Mirriam’s posture relaxed, and her upraised hand fell to her side. Her expression, however, revealed she was not entirely convinced.
“There has been a cat hanging about the back garden lately,” Lorine said.
“White with gray?” Karigan asked.
Lorine nodded.
“No one had better be feeding it,” Mirriam replied. “Filthy creatures.”
Lorine clasped her hands in front of her and glanced down at the floor, but Mirriam did not observe it for she was gazing intently at Karigan.
“Just after we’ve cleaned and put fresh bedding on,” Mirriam said. “Now we’ll have to do it all over again.”
“I’m sorry,” Karigan said with a grimace. “I was just really startled.”
“See that it does not happen again.”
A clean nightgown and bedding were brought in, and after Karigan changed, she was ordered to sit in the chair while the bed was made anew, soup was sopped up from the floor, and broken porcelain swept away. In addition, the butler arrived with a little table, Mirriam directing where it should be placed. Not next to the window, she ordered the butler.