“You’d do no such thing, d’ye hear me?” Mercy retorted, her glare taking in all the girls in the cabin. “That kind of thinking will only get you in a heap of trouble.”

Wide eyes stared back at her from their beds.

Sarah, from her curled-up position on the bottom bunk, said quietly, “I never knew my dad. My mum didn’t talk about him. But I ’spect he was a rich fellow somewhere ’cause she always warned me not to let myself dream about being together with someone who weren’t like me. Told me he’d just use me and then leave me.”

“That’s right. We haven’t come this far to start letting men use us.” Mercy said the words fiercely, thinking of Twiggy and the men she’d let use her. Her mum could have resisted them and their gifts. Surely she could have found a different way to help the family. “We’ll stay strong and build new lives for ourselves.”

Mercy closed her eyes and willed herself to believe the words. She had to stay strong. She couldn’t let herself be swayed by a man—no matter how handsome and kind he might be.

“Miss Lawrence?” Mercy knelt next to the prostrate woman.

“Be she dead?” Harry, the ship’s boy, stood behind Mercy and peered over her shoulder.

Mercy tugged down Miss Lawrence’s high collar and touched the vein in the woman’s neck as she’d seen Dr. Bates and Dr. Colville do to their patients. She avoided a bruised spot that looked strangely like teeth marks—almost as if someone had taken a vicious bite out of the woman’s neck. At the steady rhythm of a pulse, Mercy expelled her breath. “No, she’s yet alive.”

The lanky, freckle-faced boy shrugged his shoulders as if disappointed there wouldn’t be any unfolding drama to entertain him.

“Then I guess I’ll be on my way.” Harry backed out of the stateroom. “Dr. Colville said to holler if you need me to fetch ’im.”

“Thank ye,” Mercy said, although she wasn’t planning to be near Dr. Colville any more than she had to, not after the conversation she’d overheard between Mrs. Robb and Mr. Scott.

She’d do best to stay as far from him as possible.

After Harry closed the door, Mercy glanced around the private berth given to Miss Lawrence. It was tiny, with a single bed attached to the wall, a built-in writing table that could only hold one sheet of paper at a time, and a simple three-legged stool. There was hardly enough space to stand next to the bed, much less kneel. Regardless, Mercy could sense right away that the wave-tossed motion at the middle of the ship was calmer than in the cabins at the aft.