And when could he reasonably expect to go back to Spain, anyway? That same muddled recollection of his superior had contained some instruction about enjoying Christmas with his sister, hadn’t it?

Christmas. That was a month and a half away. So much would have happened in that time—the wolfram would have been loaded on Erri Barro, and the frigate would have set out to sea. He’d wanted to be there, one of the team on the English ship sent to intercept it. Thoroton had told him he could be. That he could see it through, from discovery to confiscation.

No chance of that now.

“Finished?” Nurse Denler frowned at the bowl—still over half full. “Would you like the bread and butter?”

Solid food should sound good, shouldn’t it? But the thought of it just made him hurt. “No. Thanks.”

“All right.” She stood and lifted the tray from over his legs. “Try to rest until your sister comes. Do you want to lie back down?”

Move again? Only to want to return to this position so he could actually see Dot when she got here? He risked a shake of his head—a minuscule one.

Given the increased noise in the ward as men were roused for their dinners, he didn’t really expect to rest. But he must have dozed for a minute here and there, because it seemed like only a moment before he heard his sister’s familiar voice saying his name and felt her familiar fingers on the top of his hand.

He blinked awake, glad it wasn’t with a jerk this time. Saw Dot with her curls pinned back in their usual chignon, her smile obviously trying to strike a note between bravery and normality, the blue-grey eyes they shared suspiciously shiny.

Then his gaze tracked just past her, to a second figure hovering by his bed. He might have thought it another nurse, except instead of white, he saw blue. A blue dress under a belted blue coat. And above that, hair of dark chocolate pinned in a plain bun, a slender nose in a slender face, and those dark eyes that had haunted him for the last month.

Blast it all. Why today? When he was dressed in a soup-stained pajama shirt and couldn’t move without the risk of crying like a baby?

The ever-helpful Nurse Denler arrived with another chair, and Margot De Wilde sat.

Drake tore his eyes from her and looked back to his sister. “Hello.”

Dot sighed and wove their fingers together. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better.” He couldn’t think of a time he’d been worse, as a matter of fact, but he’d embrace the British stiff upper lip just now.