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“I put her to sleep.”
The prince frowned. “It’s been over eight hours.”
“She’s had a rough day,” Griff said dryly.
“And she is only human.” Conn smoothed a page of his book. “I suppose I must be grateful she isn’t hysterical.”
She had been frightened. Her pulse had beat in her throat like a caged bird. But she had swallowed her fears enough to demand her clothes and ask after her companions. Griff admired courage, even in a human woman. “She was asking questions. I did not know how to answer her.”
“Tell her the truth.”
Griff snorted. “That we wrecked her ship and plucked her from the wreckage because the little savages downstairs require a keeper?”
Conn shrugged. “Perhaps she would take pity on them.”
“Aye, maybe,” Griff said. Her feelings were not his responsibility. Neither was her fate any longer. So he was even more surprised than the prince to hear himself say, “She is worried about the other passengers.”
Conn raised his eyebrows. “I sent them a ship.”
“Without adequate food or water.”
“That is the captain’s problem. As soon as the passengers were plucked from the sea, their fate was in human hands. We do not interfere in mortal affairs.”
“We interfered when I broke the propeller shaft.”
Their gazes clashed, the prince’s cool as frost.
Damn it, what was he doing? Griff wondered. He was the prince’s man. He did not argue.
Neither would he beg.
But the memory of the woman’s wide blue eyes slid into him like a knife, loosening his tongue. “It would be”—What? Just? Compassionate?—“expedient to restore the balance by seeing the other humans safely to their destination. With calm seas and favorable winds, they could reach land before their provisions run out.”
Conn’s long fingers drummed the desk. “Very well. Calm seas and an easterly wind to the Azores. And in return, I will have my school.”
Griff bowed. He had won his point. The prince had granted his request. So why did he feel so uneasy?
“You cannot force her to teach,” he said.
Conn smiled thinly. “Then you must persuade her.”
Emma’s heart pounded. Her nipples pebbled in the cool sea draft that flowed over the stone windowsill. She shivered.
She needed clothes.
And answers.
She could wait for the tall, half-naked Viking to bring them to her, or…
Hands trembling, she threw back the carved lid of the chest at the foot of her bed.
Or she could seek them herself.
The other ship passengers had gone on, the man said. But there must be someone—a doctor, a magistrate, a shipping line agent—who could tell her where she was and how she was to get—
Not home, she realized bleakly. But to Canada, at least.
She dragged a length of warm red wool from the chest, measuring the garment against her body. A skirt? A long cloak, and under that a pile of thin, yellowed shifts. Hastily, Emma pulled an undergarment over her head before tackling the line of cloak buttons.
