The physician unfolded his arms. After that, he stopped looking at her hands.
For the next hour, she was the only door between two men who could not otherwise reach each other. The physician asked, and she asked, and Stepan answered, and she gave the answers back exactly as they came, without softening them or tidying them. She told the physician about the salt fish on the ship and the bad water in the last week of the voyage. She told Stepan what the draught in the glass was for and why he must drink all of it. When he refused, she told him that her nurse would have held his nose, and the ghost of a laugh came out of him, and he drank.
And through the whole of that hour, the Duke of Rothley stood by the window with his back to the dark glass and his hands behind him. He did not speak. He did not once take his eyes off the bed.
When the physician had gone, the fever seemed to ease a little. Stepan lay back against the pillow and studied the Duke. Then he spoke to Anna slowly this time, choosing his words.
"He asks if this is the brother," Anna said. "The elder brother, the one the captain talked about."
"Tell him yes," said the Duke.
She told him. Stepan's eyes filled again. He reached for the silver watch on the blanket and pressed it into Anna's hand, and nodded toward the window.
She rose and crossed the room and held it out. The Duke took it from her. His fingers touched hers, cold as the glass behind him. He opened the dented case and looked at the stopped hands inside it, and something passed over his face that Anna felt she should not have seen.
"Ask him how my brother died."
Anna asked. Stepan listened to the question with his eyes closed. When he answered, he spoke to the ceiling. Then he turned his head and spoke directly to the Duke in a language the Duke could not understand, as though he could make him understand by looking at him hard enough.
"He says, 'Not yet,'" Anna said. "He says he carried something from the captain across half the world, and he will not give it lying on his back like a sick calf. He will give it on his feet, the way a soldier gives a report. He asks Your Grace to forgive him. He asks you to wait until he can stand."