Page 72 of The Scot Beds His Wife

“Aye, well. Desperation makes us do all sorts of things we’d not thought ourselves capable of,” he stated blithely, blinking quizzically when Samantha’s smile disappeared.

“I—I’ll be going.” Lady Eleanor stood, the once graceful lady moving as though her bones and joints were trying to remember how.

“And leave this one with a strange man in a bedroom with no chaperone?” Eammon teased, his tone a strange mixture of aghast levity.

“You’re hardly a stranger, Mr. Monahan,” Lady Eleanor said patiently, inching along the wall.

“I am to the lass,” Eammon argued merrily. “And I’ll have to lift her nightgown to the knee to check the stitches. If that’s not enough to cause a scandal, I can’t think of what is, can you? What would your son say? Better yet, what would the queen say?”

“I’m not wearing a night—” Sam clamped her lips shut the moment Eammon’s pleading eyes met hers.

Eleanor hesitated. “I—I could get Alice…”

The man’s brawny shoulders deflated much in the way Eleanor’s had done only moments before. “It’s all right, my lady,” he crooned softly, as though speaking to a skittish filly. “I’ll fetch her for you. She’s all the way down in the kitchens, and… that’s a lot of stairs for you to navigate on your own.”

He set the bag in his hand down at the foot of the bed and turned to leave.

“Will it take you long?” Samantha queried, allowing more of the pain she was in slip into her voice than was strictly necessary. “I foolishly tried to walk on my leg this morning, and now it feels like a fire poker ran it clean through.”

“Och, nay.” Lady Eleanor made an exquisitely feminine sound of distress and returned to the bed, groping for her hand and clutching it when she found it. “I didn’t ken you were in such pain, lass. Mr. Monahan, Eammon, you must see what is wrong immediately. Do you think it’s infection? Are you feverish, Sam?”

Samantha flashed a conspiratorial look at Eammon, who squinted at her with a skeptical glance of which she’d seen the identical like in the eyes of his son.

A soft, motherly hand traced from her wrist, up her arm, her shoulder, and found her forehead, checking for a rise in temperature and finding none.

“I don’t think so,” Samantha said pathetically. “It just… hurts. Will you stay and hold my hand?”

“Oh, aye, lass. I’d not leave you in pain.” She clucked again before asking anxiously, “Is there aught you can do, Eammon?”

Samantha didn’t miss that Eleanor had forgotten to address the stable master as “Mr. Monahan” twice now.

“Aye,” Eammon said slowly as Samantha fought a smile and tugged the blanket above her knee, revealing her bandages. Scandal be damned, it reallydidhurt, but not as bad as that time she’d tripped and fallen on the red branding iron when she’d been naught more than a gangly girl of fifteen who hadn’t yet learned to control her long limbs. Now she sported a Circle T branded sideways on her hip as an eternal reminder of what pain really was.

“How is Calybrid?” she asked as a gentle hand with rough skin held her ankle still while the other undid her bandages.

“He was awake and thirsty this morning, and bleating curses at Locryn like an ornery old ewe,” Eammon answered. “I don’t at all think this is the end of that old bas—” He stiffened, catching himself in time. “Bloke,” hefinished lamely, glancing up at Eleanor, who still smoothed over Samantha’s brow.

“I’m glad,” Samantha answered. “He’s become a friend.” She hissed in a breath of true pain when Eammon’s fingers tested the skin around the stitches.

“There’s no swelling or redness,” Eammon remarked with satisfaction. “’Tis a good sign, lass. Would ye like any more laudanum before I reapply the salve?”

Samantha shook her head, making a face. “I think it made me sick this morning.” Not a complete lie, but she knew it was now time to keep her wits about her. Pain or no pain.

“Aye, it’ll do that to some. Best to avoid it if you can, lest you develop a taste for the stuff.”

Another word he’d said struck her. “Salve?”

“Just something I concocted to use on the horses when they’re injured. Keeps them from going lame. Miracle stuff, this.” He fetched a tub of a repulsive-looking gelatinous substance the color of bog mud, and dipped his fingers into it.

“What’s in it?” Both Samantha and Eleanor wrinkled their noses at the smell.

“Just some garlic, lavender, honey, blessed thistle, and…” He squinted a little, as though debating something. “A few things you need not worry about overmuch.”

“But—”

Samantha hissed as he plopped a generous portion of it onto her wound, and then glared at him as though he’d betrayed her, promising retribution. And after she’d guilted Eleanor into sticking around and everything!

White teeth flashed at her from behind his beard, and his big shoulders lifted as though to say, the damage had already been done, she might as well allow it.