“Aye, we do, most of the time. But some are thinking Duncan should be chieftain. There is grumbling and some do no’ like that a Kerr has taken hisself a Sassenach bride.”
She focused on the lad’s face. “I see.”
She wondered why, if so much was at stake for Ruark, he had ensured that their vows could not be easily annulled. “Then let us make sure nothing happens to me.”
Rose walked to the end of the bed and removed the blanket covering her patient’s lower legs.
Her breath caught like a hot iron in her throat, and, looking away, she knew it was all she could do not to betray her expression to the lad.
He had been wearing shoes at the inn when she had examined the wounds left by the ankle chains. Now as shepulled a stool to the end of the bed and sat, she wondered how the boy could ever have stood or walked at all. Three of the toes had been broken within the last week of his incarceration and had attempted to heal. The irons that had bound his ankle had left raw wounds that had healed over open sores. The newly healed-over scabs would have to be cut away and the wounds beneath lanced and drained to rid the body of the oozing infection.
Nausea clenched her stomach. Closing her eyes, she breathed in slowly, drawing from the fresh air coming through the window.
The enormity of the task ahead suddenly paralyzed her. She could not do this. Sensing Rufus’s eyes on her, she found him watching her from beneath half-closed lids. “Will I lose my foot?”
“Nay,” she lied.
He could very well loose his leg if gangrene set in. He would surely lose his life if sepsis poisoned his blood. His body was warm to the touch, which meant he was already fighting infection.
She stood and, turning her back to him, retied the red scarf on her head to give her trembling hands something to do. She wished she could faint about now and be spared what she knew needed to be done.
“Gavin and me, we should no’ have laughed at ye at the inn,” Rufus said.
Her back to him, she bit her lower lip. “I am sure it was the ale that gave you your courage,” she said, her voice even.
The door opened and Duncan entered carting two bottles of wine.
“May I talk to you?” she asked, wanting to step past him into the corridor, but he put his arm on the door.
“Speak in here,” he said.
She glanced over her shoulder at Rufus. “I think we need—”
“In here,” Duncan said again, his voice losing the ever-present humor. “The lad has a right to know what it is ye have to say.”
Duncan wasn’t going to allow her to tell him she couldn’t do this. He wasn’t going to allow her to leave this room. Panic filled her.
“Sometimes we have to do a thing we do no’ want to do, lass, because it must be done. Now I will be in here with ye. And Rufus there”—he tipped his chin toward the bed—“he is no’ afraid as ye are. Are ye lad?”
Rose saw a faint smile twitch at the corner of Rufus’s lips. Duncan was wrong. As she looked into the wounded boy’s face, she could see someone in this room more scared than she was.
Duncan handed her the bottle of wine. “Let’s get on with what needs to be done, lass.”
Rose lost all sense of time.
She had never noticed when the sun set. The fire died sometime in the night, but the cool air from outside kept her focused on her task.
She worked by candlelight, snipping and slicing away the infected layers of skin to clean beneath until fresh blood oozed. She picked debris from both the ankle wounds and the toes then washed the wounds with water and wine as fresh blood oozed over her fingers. Somehow, she held onto the small pincers that grew heavier in her hand with each passing hour. The toes were not the worst, though she was worried she would not be able to save the smallest one. Once when Rufus screamed, Duncan kept the lad still, his voice as calming a balm as the dose of laudanum she had given him.
She took a grip on herself, concentrating only on each task, and when that was done, she moved on to the next. Duncan spoke soothingly to the young man, his voice also soothing her. The painstaking work lasted until dawn.
When she finished, she cleaned the blood from her hands. She stirred the fire until a small flame leaped from the peat, and she heated water and used burnt alum on the deeper wounds. Then she wrapped the foot in strips of cloth that she boiled in garlic and witch hazel. There would be terrible scarring, she thought and, though she had done her best with the toes, they might never heal straight.
At last, she loosened the leather Duncan had used to tie the lad’s leg to the bedstead and sat back on the stool. She looked up to find Duncan’s eyes on her, and he gave her a nod of approval.
“Ye did fine, lass,” he said. “Real fine.”
It was all that he said, and she doubted he was speaking about her work. She still did not like Duncan, nor did she trust him. But the words made an impression on her. One that followed her to bed as Kathleen led her to a chamber down the hall.
