“You spoke … spoke to my Colonel?” Ross asked, his voice shaking, contempt twisting his face.
“You like to hurt women. A bruised serving girl in your army’s camp three months ago. A seamstress whose arm was broken a year back, leaving her incapable of caring for her ailing mother. And your own father is rumored to have disowned you and forced you into the army eight years ago,” Slade said.
Ross’s nostrils flared with hostility. “How dare you question my superiors, you dirty Scot?”
Satisfaction speared Slade’s belly when Ross sprung up and came at him with a right hook. Because he no longer had to hold back. Slade effortlessly blocked Ross’s fist, letting his rage propel his own fists again and again into Ross’s face. His movements were too quick for Ross’s retaliation. It gave Slade the opening to grab the back of Ross’s head, slamming it down against his pushed-up knee. Ross’s head bounced back, making him lose his balance, and taking him down on his rear.
Slade descended on Ross holding Ross down with his knees, but a thought jabbed through the haze of his blinding fury. He needed to get Phoebe away before the constables arrived. Explaining Phoebe’s presence would be difficult. As a former colonel he might be able to lie his own way through his involvement, but not Phoebe’s. He needed to end this now.
Slade drew his trident dagger from its sheath, but his gaze shifted when he noticed movement in his right periphery. Ross was withdrawing his own primed pistol from its holster. Before Slade could knock it from Ross’s hand, a loud shot sounded. Slade half expected to feel a piercing pain in his right side from the shot but felt nothing except for a few wet splatters on his face. He blinked down at Ross, and it was then that he saw the hole in the side of Ross’s neck, gushing red. The life was slowly draining from Ross’s eyes. As Ross gasped for air, his slackening half open mouth and sideways glance registered shock. When a soft crash sounded a few feet away, Slade looked to see Phoebe still holding her pistol, smoke dissipating from its barrel. But she was now on the ground, her delicate features lined with pain, and her breathing labored. Her injured leg must have failed after she had retrieved, reloaded, and fired her pistol.
“I will get you home, my love, and have a physician tend to you, please, just hold on.” Slade quickly removed any sign of Ross’s uniform and tied it in a bundle on the saddle of Ross’s horse, then slapped the animal’s hide with his palm, sending it running for the trees, he then briskly dragged Ross’s body behind a large yellowing larch bush.
Slade carefully lifted Phoebe and carried her to sit across Destroyer’s back. Her shallow breathing sounded more like a wheeze. Sweat now dripped from her brow and her face was ashen, despite her weak smile of, dare he say, victory and peace marred with physical pain. His stomach was in knots with worry for her injured leg.
“Thank you for helping me slay my nightmare,” she wheezed.
“For you, I would gladly slay a thousand Rosses, but in the end, you did the deed,” he said, his throat feeling like it had been sandpapered. He straddled Destroyer behind her, gently cradling her in his arms, setting out for Garraidh. Guilt had thickened the back of his throat. And condemnation flayed hisskin from his bones for letting Phoebe ride off alone. He should have protected her.
Each clop of Destroyer’s hooves jostled her leg, causing her to wince. And each wince was like a stab to his heart
When he arrived at Garraidh, Slade carried her up to their bedchamber. He sent Aila to fetch the physician while he gently and carefully removed Phoebe’s outer layers then put her in bed, propping her leg up on pillows.
Slade’s gut twisted in helpless knots as his eyes fell on Phoebe’s left shin where she’d explained on their ride home that the gelding had kicked her. It was swollen around a deep gash, in a multitude of ghastly reds and purples. The sight of it shredded his insides.
What if he hadn’t gotten there in time? Would Ross have raped her again? Killed her? The unmitigated rage and horror surging through him at the thought almost felled him. What would happen the next time he wasn’t with her, and she encountered someone like Ross or Bolingbroke? Dear God, he’d never been this helpless.
“Don’t …” Phoebe whispered.
Slade blinked at his wife, who had been eying him through her contorted sweat drenched expression of pain.
“Pardon me, my love?” he asked.
“This injury is not your doing. Don’t take it on your shoulders.”
Just then the physician arrived.
The bespectacled, graying man inspected her injury from every angle possible, asking Phoebe a series of questions about the type and location of the pain. He hovered, impatience gurgling in his belly. Why didn’t the doctor simply give her something for the pain?
Slade said as much to the physician, but the man ignored him, mumbling something about overbearing and overprotective husbands.
After an inordinate amount of time, the man opened one of the bags he’d arrived with and put together a splint of wood and leather. The pained noises Phoebe made during the process utterly and completely devastated Slade. It must have shown on his face.
“Please do not worry so, Master MacLean, I’ve seen worse. Your wife’s ribs are bruised, not broken and the fracture in her leg is clean. The chances of infection are low. But it can take up to three months for the bone to fully heal. I’ll leave her laudanum tincture for the pain and will return regularly to check on her,” the surgeon said before leaving the bedchamber.
Three months. Dear God.
Despite the chances of infection being low, fever did come. And Slade spent the next two days gently wiping Phoebe’s heated skin with a cool water-soaked linen to keep her fever down. He spoon-fed her broth in bed whenever she awoke. And he repeated soothing words to her as she slept and thrashed about, and until the crinkle in her brows eased.
“You are my life, my reason to breathe,” Slade whispered to Phoebe, as she slept. “If anything happens to you, I will burn this entire Godforsaken world down, because it will be nothing but ashes without you.”
Breena and Lucia came from Eileanach on the third day, after hearing about Phoebe’s condition.
“Please let us tend to her, Colonel,” Lucia said, her brows arched in concern.
“You need to sleep yourself—you’ve been up for two days,” Breena said. “She’ll be in good hands, I know exactly what to do.” Breena’s smile was reassuring, but Slade still couldn’t leave Phoebe’s bedside.
He recalled Breena was a healer and an expert on medicinal plants when she put a curious concoction to Phoebe’s lips to drink. Still, he stayed by Phoebe’s side until the fever finally broke. He thanked all the saints he could name—and Breena. Phoebe was out of danger.
