“We should cauterize the wound, sir,” the young doctor’s voice was saying. “It will stop an abscess forming, aye?”
“No!” Zeb jerked away from the doctor and made a dash for the door, knocking into people and sending one woman flying with a shriek. Jolted out of his random thoughts, William made a reflexive dive and knocked the boy flat.
“Come on, Zeb,” he said, hauling Zeb to his feet and propelling him firmly back to Dr. MacFreckles. “It won’t be that bad. Just a moment or two, and then it’s all over.”
Zeb appearing patently unconvinced by this, William deposited him firmly on a stool and pulled up his own right cuff.
“Look,” he said, displaying the long, comet-shaped scar on his forearm. “That’s what happens when you get an abscess.”
Both Zeb and the doctor peered at the scar, impressed. It had been a splinter wound, he told them, caused by a lightning-struck tree.
“Wandered round the Great Dismal Swamp for three days in a fever,” he said. “Some . . . Indians found me and got me to a doctor. I nearly died, and”—he lowered his brows and gave Zeb a piercing look—“the doctor was just about to cut off my arm, when the abscess burst and he cauterized it. You might not be so lucky, hey?”
Zeb still looked unhappy, but reluctantly agreed. William gripped him by the shoulders and said encouraging things while the iron was heating, but his own heart was beating as fast as it might have had he been awaiting cautery himself.
Indians. One, in particular. He’d thought he’d exhausted his anger, but there it bloody was again, bursting into bright fresh flame like an ember smashed open with a poker.
Bloody f**king Ian Murray. Fucking Scot and sometime Mohawk. His bloody f**king cousin, which made it all that much worse.
And then there was Rachel. . . . Murray had taken him to Dr. Hunter and Rachel. He drew a deep, ragged breath, remembering her worn indigo gown, hanging on its peg in the Hunters’ house. Grabbing a handful of the cloth and pressing it to his face, breathing in her scent as though starved of air.
That was where Murray had met Rachel himself. And now she was betrothed to that—
“Ow!” Zeb writhed, and William realized belatedly that he was digging his fingers into the boy’s shoulder, just like—he let go as though Zeb were a hot potato, feeling the memory of James Fraser’s iron grip on his arm and the agonizing pain that had numbed him from shoulder to fingertip.
“Sorry,” he said, voice shaking a little with the effort to hide his fury. “Sorry, Zeb.” The surgeon was ready with the glowing iron; William took Zeb’s arm, as gently as he could, and held it still while the thing was done. Rachel had held his own.
He’d been right; it was quick. The surgeon pressed the hot iron to the wound and counted five, slowly, then took it away. Zeb went stiff as a tent pole and sucked in enough breath to supply three people, but didn’t scream.
“It’s done,” the doctor said, taking the iron away and smiling at Zeb. “Here, I’ll put a bit of sweet oil on and bandage it. Ye did well, laddie.”
Zeb’s eyes were watering, but he wasn’t crying. He sniffed deeply and wiped the back of his hand across his face, looking up at William.
“Well done, Zeb,” William said, squeezing his shoulder gently, and Zeb managed a tiny smile in return.
By the time they’d returned to the girls and Colenso, William had managed to tamp down the rage—again. Was he never going to be able to get rid of it? Not ’til you make up your mind what to do about things, he thought grimly. But there wasn’t anything that could be done right now, so he squashed all the sparks in his head firmly into one dense red ball and rolled it to the back of his mind.
“Here, let Fanny do it. He trusts her.” Jane took the vial containing the dose Dr. MacFreckles had made up for Colenso and gave it to her sister. Fanny promptly sat down beside Colenso, who was pretending as hard as he could to be asleep, and began stroking his head, murmuring something to him.
William nodded and, gesturing to Jane to accompany him, withdrew far enough to be out of earshot. Rather to his surprise, part of his brain had apparently been analyzing the problem and coming to conclusions while the rest was occupied, for he had a rough plan.
“What I suggest is this,” he said, without preamble. “I will make provision for you and your sister to receive regular army rations, as camp followers, and to travel under my protection. Once in New York, I will give you five pounds, and you’re on your own. In return . . .”
She didn’t quite smile, but a dimple showed in one cheek.
“In return,” he repeated more firmly, “you will mind my orderly and my groom, tend their ills, and make sure they’re reasonably cared for. You will also be my laundress.”
“Your laundress?!” The dimple had disappeared abruptly, replaced by an expression of sheer astonishment.
“Laundress,” he repeated doggedly. He knew what she’d been expecting him to propose and was rather surprised himself that he hadn’t, but there it was. He couldn’t, not with his thoughts of Rachel and of Anne Endicott so fresh in his mind. Not with the deep, smothered rage fueled by the thought that he deserved no woman but a whore.
“But I don’t know how to do laundry!”
“How hard can it be?” he asked, as patiently as he could. “You wash my clothes. Don’t put starch in my drawers. That’s about it, isn’t it?”
“But—but—” She looked aghast. “One needs a . . . a kettle! A fork, a paddle, something to stir with . . . Soap! I haven’t any soap!”