William grabbed him by the arm; the little groom yelped and he let go. “What’s wrong? Did you not have that arm seen to?”

“They’re afraid of the surgeons,” Jane said sharply.

William drew himself up to his full height and glared down at her.

“Oh? Who told them they should be afraid of the surgeons? And how do they come to be in your care, may I ask?”

Her lips pressed tight together, and she glanced involuntarily into the shelter. Fanny was looking out at them, doe eyes huge in the fading light. She swallowed and put a protective hand on Colenso’s shoulder. Jane sighed deeply and took William’s arm again.

“Come with me.”

She led him away a short distance, still within sight of the little shelter but out of earshot.

“Fanny and I were waiting for you when those boys came along together. The bigger one—what did you say his name is?”

“Colenso Baragwanath. He’s Cornish,” William added shortly, seeing a look of amusement flit across her face.

“Really. I hope it isn’t catching. Well, he was so ill he couldn’t stand, and sank down on the ground near us, making the most horrid noises. The little one—yes, I know he’s Zebedee, thank you—was beside himself, half-weeping with confusion. My sister is a most tenderhearted creature,” she said, rather apologetically. “She went to help, and I followed.” She shrugged.

“We got Colenso into the wood far enough to get his britches down in time, and I gave him a little water.” She touched a small wooden canteen that hung from her shoulder, and he wondered briefly where she’d got it. She hadn’t had it when he’d met the girls by the creek yesterday.

“I am much obliged to you, ma’am,” he said formally. “Now—why is it, exactly, that you did not then take the boys in to see the surgeons?”

For the first time, her composure showed signs of cracking. She turned a little away from him, and he noticed the last rays of the sun polishing the smooth crown of her head with a faint, familiar gleam of chestnut. The sight of it brought back memory of his first meeting with her with the force of a thunderclap—and, with it, the memory of his mingled shame and arousal. Especially the latter.

“Answer me,” he said, more roughly than he’d intended, and she turned on him, eyes narrowed at his tone.

“There was a finger lying on the ground by the surgeon’s tent,” she snapped. “It frightened my sister, and the boys took fright from her.”

William rubbed a knuckle down the bridge of his nose, eyeing her.

“A finger.” He had himself seen piles of amputated limbs outside the surgeons’ tents at Saratoga, and aside from a quick prayer of gratitude that none of the disconnected arms and legs was his, had experienced no particular qualms. “Whose was it?”

“How should I know? I was too much occupied in keeping your orderly from shitting himself to ask.”

“Ah. Yes. Thank you,” he said, rather formally. He glanced toward the shelter again and was surprised to see that Fanny had come out and was hovering a little way from her sister, a wary look on her lovely face. Did he look threatening? he wondered. Just in case, he relaxed his posture a bit and smiled at Fanny. She didn’t change expression, but continued to stare at him suspiciously.

He cleared his throat and took the sack off his shoulder, holding it out to Jane. “I thought you might have missed your supper. Have the boys—well, Zeb, at least—eaten anything?”

Jane nodded and took the bag with a celerity suggesting that it had been some time since the girls had had a meal. “He ate with the other grooms, he said.”

“All right, then. I’ll take him in to have his arm seen to and perhaps get a dose for Colenso, while you and your sister refresh yourselves. Then, madam, we can discuss your own situation.”

He’d been intensely aware of her physical presence for some moments, but when he said that, she turned the full effect of her eyes on him—cider, he thought vaguely, or sherry wine?—and seemed somehow to flow, shifting in some indefinable way. He hadn’t seen her move, but suddenly she was standing near enough to touch, and he smelled the odor of her hair and imagined he felt the warmth of her skin through her clothes. She took his hand briefly, and her thumb moved across the palm, slowly. The palm tingled and the hairs on his arm rippled.

“I’m sure we can come to a reasonable accommodation, my lord,” she said, very grave, and let him go.

He dragged Zeb into the surgeon’s tent like a recalcitrant colt and stood by, only half-attending, as a young Scottish surgeon with freckles swabbed the boy’s wound clean of dirt. Arabella–Jane didn’t smell of the whorish scent she’d worn at the brothel, but, by Christ, she smelled good.

“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 fucking Ian Murray. Fucking Scot and sometime Mohawk. His bloody fucking 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.