Page 70 of Tempted
To Ramsay, this was a novelty indeed. That his woman came down in her bedgown to see how he fared and that she offered to tend his wound herself was unbelievable. That she cared about whether that wound and its cauterizing left him scarred was nothing short of a miracle.
Jock and Cameron carried him upstairs, and she swept the lynx cover from the bed and told them to lay him upon the linen sheet. She picked up her scissors and began to cut away his leather breeks. “Don’t stand there like a clod!” she told Cameron. “Fetch hot water.” He ran to do her bidding, and Jock grinned, “Would ye like me tae hold him still for ye, lady?”
Ram ground out, “I won’t be the one tae flinch. Are ye sure ye’ve guts enough fer this, lass?”
“A wager,” she proposed, “that my hand will be steadier than your leg.”
Ram’s eyes narrowed, and he jerked his head toward the door, ordering Jock to depart. Cameron came back with hot water, and Ram said, “Go and gloat over some other’s wound. We wish tae be alone.”
His chausses were saturated with blood, and she cut them away along with the leather of his breeks. When she exposed the jagged wound, she blushed that it reached from inside his knee up to his groin. As she washed and cleansed it, he held his leg steady as a rock, and she thought, wait until I stick my needle through your flesh.
A deep frown came between his black brows as he eyed her needle. When she saw at what he scowled, the corners of her mouth lifted. “I shall sew you up with cream silk and embroider it with French knots,” she teased. She took a deep breath and deftly plunged in her needle.
“There’s no need for such dainty stitches,” he told her.
“Don’t teach you grandmother how to suck eggs. You are ugly enough—I don’t want you scarred into the bargain.”
He grimaced. “Too late, when ye see me naked, ye’ll faint.”
“Ha! I’ll not faint over a man’s scars.”
“‘Tis not my scars that’ll make ye faint,” he promised, grinning.
“Oh!” she said, and dropped a stitch. “You have a swollen head.”
“Aye, among other things,” he said wickedly.
She was working very close to his genitals, and remembering how they had hurt her, she jabbed him with the needle “Sorry”
“Yer not, Vixen. Yer in yer element having me at a disadvantage.”
She compressed her lips and concentrated upon knotting the silk after the final stitch “There Anything else?” she half-asked herself.
“I have a tremendous thirst, lass,” he said low.
“Forgive me. How thoughtless I am. It’s because you lost so much blood.” She summoned a page and sent him running for a jug of ale. “Perhaps you’d prefer whisky for the pain?” she asked anxiously.
He shook his head. “Ale is fine.”
When it came, he quaffed the whole jug, then lay back. It was the first time Tina had ever seen him look tired. When she drew the lynx fur cover over him, he took hold of her hand and lifted it to his lips. “Thank ye. I promise we won’t always sleep in shifts,” he said with a humorous gleam in his eye.
In the early afternoon when Tina went up to check on him, she was surprised to find him up and dressed, writing missives. “You shouldn’t be on that leg.”
He looked at her, weighing her words to see if her concern was genuine or assumed. He cared naught for the wound, but he found he cared deeply about her solicitude. “There are matters that need my attention The English raided by ship. Every coastal town, village, and farm will be vulnerable.”
“But Donal and Meggie are at Castle Kennedy on the coast! We must warn them.”
“I’ll send a message, if it will make ye feel better, but they won’t raid the castle if they know the Kennedys are in residence.”
“Donal’s men-at-arms are not like your hard-bitten soldiers, Douglas,” she pointed out. “Few are,” he replied. “They only dared come within a dozen miles of Castle Douglas because they thought we were still north, and one day earlier we would have been.” He frowned. Someone must be leaking information, or else it was outright spying. He was jaded enough to suspect everyone, even the people within his own castle.
Ram did not wish to alarm her, and he kept his mouth shut about the women who had been carried off. “I’m sending to Angus for another fifty Douglases. Ye’ll be quite safe here.”
She shrugged a pretty shoulder. “‘Tis not the English I fear.”
“Surely it’s not me—I’m wounded and harmless.”
“Harmless as a scorpion!”
