“So you have.” The marquess exhaled a deep shudder of relief. “Now, which of you ladies can take the neatest stitch?”

That said, the marquess of Tullibardine promptly fainted dead away.

Chapter Three

John Murray would have slid to the floor in a boneless heap if Evan MacGregor hadn’t caught his elbow and forearm under the man’s sinking chest and pressed him firmly back into the upright barber’s chair.

Maxtone stepped on the levers, tilting the chair. Between the trio of strong men, they managed to get Tullie firmly secured in his tilted seat.

With his mouth open and his jaw slack, Tullie presented the most ungraceful pose for a grown man that Elizabeth had ever seen in her life. Even so, her pride in her brother’s courage went up another notch.

Not one shout against the pain had escaped his lips. He’d chatted through the whole ordeal as if his pain were of no import. Elizabeth knew from her own haunting experiences that the truth was, the human body could only endure so much before one’s courage dwindled to nothing in the face of body-racking pain.

She didn’t think John’s loss of consciousness was taken as a sign of weakness by any person in the room with him.

His muscular arms dangled limp over the sides of his chair. A steady rivulet of blood cascaded out of the deep surgical cut and dripped on the oak floor.

Amalia took advantage of Tullie’s loss of consciousness to smooth an errant lock of damp hair from his brow. She bent and placed a sisterly kiss on his cheek. “There, there, my bra’ laddie, sleep while you may.”

While the surgeon and Tullie’s manservant reached for towels to begin mopping up, Evan focused his full attention on Elizabeth. His black brows twisted, and those censorious eyes of his became achingly more intimate. He said pointedly, “Well, then?”

“Well, then, what?” Elizabeth bristled, not liking his peremptory tone, or his blasted appraising look, either! Again he had made her acutely aware that she was barefoot and dressed only in thin gown and wrapper. Hardly suitable attire for a confrontation with a renowned rake.

“Which of you is going to sew Tullie up? That’s what.” Evan cast a dismissive look at Elizabeth, and settled on Amaha.

“Och, nooo... Not me!” Amalia protested. “My hands are shaking so bad, I can’t thread a needle, much less poke it in a man’s flesh. I’ve never done such a thing.”

“I’ll do it.” Elizabeth contradicted all her instincts, which demanded she fade quietly into the woodwork now. Heedless of her revulsion for blood and her deep-seated fear of physical pain, she stepped forward and briskly washed her hands at the basin on John’s marble-topped commode. She was one Murray who would die before admitting a weakness to a MacGregor.

Her hands were nowhere near as steady as she wished they could be. The real truth was, she’d never poked a needle into living flesh, either. But she’d go gladly to hell and back before granting that truth to Evan.

Not twenty-four years old, and the man had already made a legend of himself by his valor in battle. Elizabeth had heard her uncle, Colonel Thomas Graham, rattle off chapter and verse throughout the entire Christmas holiday about the adventures of the Grey Breeks, his privately recruited company of Royal Highlanders. The MacGregor had figured largely in nearly every harrowing tale of the ongoing battles with the French on the Peninsula.

But Uncle Thomas had made no mention of having brought his entire company back to England. She’d pose some pointed questions of her own on the morrow, when her father and Thomas Graham arrived from the countryside.

Pretending to a calm she was far from feeling, Elizabeth took needle and thread in hand and lifted the towel draped across her brother’s surgical wound.

Butter’s stubby fingers pressed the bloody flesh together, showing her where to begin. Elizabeth glanced at Butter’s face. His pale blue eyes revealed concern for her brother. Elizabeth vowed to make the neatest stitches she could.

“Had some experience at this, have you, Corporal Butter?” she asked.

“Och, aye, an’ then some. Though I daresay I’ve spent more time sewing up foolish Sassenachs than I have the loyal clansmen that remain. Yer doing fine, lassie. The bullet went in clean. Stuck in the gristle, not the bone. He’ll heal quick enough. I’ve seen worse. Cannonade, now that makes a mess of a man.”

“I can well imagine,” Elizabeth added dryly. She blinked her eyes to clear them, and concentrated on making small, neat stitches and tying firm knots in the wet boiled thread. An even twenty saw the large incision firmly shut.