Chapter 65
Red blurred Slade’s vision at the sight of Phoebe’s injured leg and Ross looming over her, her discharged pistol on the ground a few feet away.
Bloodthirsty rage howled through his veins.
An unimaginable roar cracked the air. It took Slade a split second to realize he’d made the ungodly sound.
He dragged Ross away from Phoebe and slammed him down on the ground.
When he’d heard the shot minutes ago, his only thought had been for Phoebe.
Propelled by an instinctual inferno in his belly to protect the woman he loved, Slade slammed his booted foot into Ross’s head.
Ross dodged the second kick, rolled and jumped up, blinking from Phoebe to Slade, realization and a lewd smile twisted his lips apart, revealing bloodied teeth.
“You know I’ve had her before you?”
Slade growled at Ross, just as Ross’s right leg came at Slade.
The first kick sent a shock of pain through Slade’s side.
He gritted his teeth, too focused on ending Ross to care.
He was ready for the second kick. He entrapped Ross’s right thigh to keep him unbalanced and in place as he punched Ross’s face.
Again, and again. Ross angled his elbows in a defensive position, causing Slade to drop his leg and to step to Ross’s rear.
He grabbed Ross’s waist from behind, heisted him up and slammed him down with an ear-piercing crash.
Slade hovered over Ross, his breath coming hard and fast like a growling beast, his usual patience and methodical nature shredded. He held back from punching and kicking Ross until the man’s body was a bleeding mass of skin and bones, even though that’s all he wanted to do.
“I learned something about you from Colonel Wilfred Owens.” Slade snarled at Ross.
“You spoke … spoke to my Colonel?” Ross asked, his voice shaking, contempt twisting his face.
“You like to hurt women. A bruised serving girl in your army’s camp three months ago. A seamstress whose arm was broken a year back, leaving her incapable of caring for her ailing mother. And your own father is rumored to have disowned you and forced you into the army eight years ago,” Slade said.
Ross’s nostrils flared with hostility. “How dare you question my superiors, you dirty Scot?”
Satisfaction speared Slade’s belly when Ross sprung up and came at him with a right hook.
Because he no longer had to hold back. Slade effortlessly blocked Ross’s fist, letting his rage propel his own fists again and again into Ross’s face.
His movements were too quick for Ross’s retaliation.
It gave Slade the opening to grab the back of Ross’s head, slamming it down against his pushed-up knee.
Ross’s head bounced back, making him lose his balance, and taking him down on his rear.
Slade descended on Ross holding Ross down with his knees, but a thought jabbed through the haze of his blinding fury.
He needed to get Phoebe away before the constables arrived.
Explaining Phoebe’s presence would be difficult.
As a former colonel he might be able to lie his own way through his involvement, but not Phoebe’s. He needed to end this now.
Slade drew his trident dagger from its sheath, but his gaze shifted when he noticed movement in his right periphery.
Ross was withdrawing his own primed pistol from its holster.
Before Slade could knock it from Ross’s hand, a loud shot sounded.
Slade half expected to feel a piercing pain in his right side from the shot but felt nothing except for a few wet splatters on his face.
He blinked down at Ross, and it was then that he saw the hole in the side of Ross’s neck, gushing red.
The life was slowly draining from Ross’s eyes.
As Ross gasped for air, his slackening half open mouth and sideways glance registered shock.
When a soft crash sounded a few feet away, Slade looked to see Phoebe still holding her pistol, smoke dissipating from its barrel.
But she was now on the ground, her delicate features lined with pain, and her breathing labored.
Her injured leg must have failed after she had retrieved, reloaded, and fired her pistol.
“I will get you home, my love, and have a physician tend to you, please, just hold on.” Slade quickly removed any sign of Ross’s uniform and tied it in a bundle on the saddle of Ross’s horse, then slapped the animal’s hide with his palm, sending it running for the trees, he then briskly dragged Ross’s body behind a large yellowing larch bush.
Slade carefully lifted Phoebe and carried her to sit across Destroyer’s back.
Her shallow breathing sounded more like a wheeze.
Sweat now dripped from her brow and her face was ashen, despite her weak smile of, dare he say, victory and peace marred with physical pain.
His stomach was in knots with worry for her injured leg.
“Thank you for helping me slay my nightmare,” she wheezed.
“For you, I would gladly slay a thousand Rosses, but in the end, you did the deed,” he said, his throat feeling like it had been sandpapered.
He straddled Destroyer behind her, gently cradling her in his arms, setting out for Garraidh.
Guilt had thickened the back of his throat.
And condemnation flayed his skin from his bones for letting Phoebe ride off alone. He should have protected her.
Each clop of Destroyer’s hooves jostled her leg, causing her to wince. And each wince was like a stab to his heart
When he arrived at Garraidh, Slade carried her up to their bedchamber. He sent Aila to fetch the physician while he gently and carefully removed Phoebe’s outer layers then put her in bed, propping her leg up on pillows.
Slade’s gut twisted in helpless knots as his eyes fell on Phoebe’s left shin where she’d explained on their ride home that the gelding had kicked her. It was swollen around a deep gash, in a multitude of ghastly reds and purples. The sight of it shredded his insides.
What if he hadn’t gotten there in time? Would Ross have raped her again?
Killed her? The unmitigated rage and horror surging through him at the thought almost felled him.
What would happen the next time he wasn’t with her, and she encountered someone like Ross or Bolingbroke?
Dear God, he’d never been this helpless.
“Don’t …” Phoebe whispered.
Slade blinked at his wife, who had been eying him through her contorted sweat drenched expression of pain.
“Pardon me, my love?” he asked.
“This injury is not your doing. Don’t take it on your shoulders.”
Just then the physician arrived.
The bespectacled, graying man inspected her injury from every angle possible, asking Phoebe a series of questions about the type and location of the pain. He hovered, impatience gurgling in his belly. Why didn’t the doctor simply give her something for the pain?
Slade said as much to the physician, but the man ignored him, mumbling something about overbearing and overprotective husbands.
After an inordinate amount of time, the man opened one of the bags he’d arrived with and put together a splint of wood and leather. The pained noises Phoebe made during the process utterly and completely devastated Slade. It must have shown on his face.
“Please do not worry so, Master MacLean, I’ve seen worse.
Your wife’s ribs are bruised, not broken and the fracture in her leg is clean.
The chances of infection are low. But it can take up to three months for the bone to fully heal.
I’ll leave her laudanum tincture for the pain and will return regularly to check on her,” the surgeon said before leaving the bedchamber.
Three months. Dear God.
Despite the chances of infection being low, fever did come.
And Slade spent the next two days gently wiping Phoebe’s heated skin with a cool water-soaked linen to keep her fever down.
He spoon-fed her broth in bed whenever she awoke.
And he repeated soothing words to her as she slept and thrashed about, and until the crinkle in her brows eased.
“You are my life, my reason to breathe,” Slade whispered to Phoebe, as she slept. “If anything happens to you, I will burn this entire Godforsaken world down, because it will be nothing but ashes without you.”
Breena and Lucia came from Eileanach on the third day, after hearing about Phoebe’s condition.
“Please let us tend to her, Colonel,” Lucia said, her brows arched in concern.
“You need to sleep yourself—you’ve been up for two days,” Breena said. “She’ll be in good hands, I know exactly what to do.” Breena’s smile was reassuring, but Slade still couldn’t leave Phoebe’s bedside.
He recalled Breena was a healer and an expert on medicinal plants when she put a curious concoction to Phoebe’s lips to drink. Still, he stayed by Phoebe’s side until the fever finally broke. He thanked all the saints he could name—and Breena. Phoebe was out of danger.
Slade sent a missive to Bullfinch updating him on the mission and requested that he do everything he could to ensure Ross’s body either wasn’t found or couldn’t be traced back to the Movement.
Over the next two weeks Phoebe’s color returned, and during the following three months her leg slowly healed.
They celebrated Hogmanay together, quietly in their marriage chamber.
It was the best Hogmanay Slade could recall.
At the end of the three months, after the surgeon pronounced her healed and left, Slade sat next to her on the edge of the bed and took Phoebe’s hand in his.
He was too close to her, he couldn’t think straight, he couldn’t reason rationally with her by his side, he loved her too much, and she consumed him with passion, light, happiness, and all that was good in this world.
His love for her was like being perpetually drunk on alcohol.
He needed distance, he needed time to think objectively without her love and loveliness distracting him.
He needed to come up with a plan to safeguard her on missions.
He needed time apart to think. A perfect time to finish his own mission.
“I must leave you for Sutton Coldfield. I’ve been putting it off for three months, but I can put it off no longer,” he said, an uncomfortable feeling settling in his belly.
He’d received word from Bullfinch that Bolingbroke was still sanctioning illegal raids in remote Scottish farming villages to not only eliminate rebel threats and instill intimidation and fear among Scots, but to exert English dominance and control.
Her gaze dropped, but not before he saw the tender worry in them. “Of course, you must have business to take care of. I’ve proven to be a distraction these past few months, haven’t I.”
He placed a finger beneath her chin gently lifting her face until her eyes landed on his. “You are my wife. And while your loveliness is indeed a most welcomed and tantalizing distraction, I do have to go.”
He finished the sentence by crushing his mouth to hers. He devoured her lips and tongue with his own, inhaling his wife like a dying man gasped for air, knowing this kiss would have to last him a long time.
After he pulled away, breathing hard yet ignoring the urgent throbbing need in his body, his eyes registered the solemn smile lifting her delectably ravished mouth.
“You will be careful.”
“And we must discuss our future, and the Movement. I will not stand by and watch you put yourself in danger again, as you did this last time with Ross. If your injuries had been irreversible, or if he had taken your life, I … I …” Slade broke off when the jab of pain to his chest became too much to breathe or even speak.
“But Ross is dead.”
“There are plenty of men like Ross still out there.”
He saw her throat working, before she spoke, a glint of something in her eyes. “It is the burden we must bear for the work. Even now, you will be riding into danger on a mission. And I will have no rest or peace of mind until you return safely.”
“Yes, but you are my wife. It’s my responsibility and my honor to keep you safe.”
“No more than I want to keep you safe.”
“But as a husband, I am the one who must bear this burden.”
The glint in her eyes was now clearly visible as indignation, and from her flared nostrils and heightening color, it was going into full blown anger. “Are you now to tell me, husband, that it’s your duty to control my work, my comings and goings under the guise of keeping me safe?”
Slade let out an anguished breath, but it did nothing to calm the heat rising in the pit of his stomach or the tension growing in his body. “No, that is not what I am saying.”
He was trying to tell Phoebe he wanted to keep her safe because he loved her.
He was her husband, and it was his privilege and duty to protect her.
His life would be dark, desolate and less than nothing without her.
But he was bungling it. And from the look on her face, he was fast realizing this was a conversation they had to have when he wasn’t about to leave on a mission.
“I must leave now, but we have to continue this conversation. We must discuss our marriage.” He kissed her forehead, trying to ignore the stiffness in her body, before he turned and left.