She nodded. “I’m sure we do. My aunt has about twenty different elixirs and tonics and miracle remedies ordered from ladies’ magazines. I’d wager they’re all primarily laudanum.”
“Go and get them, then.”
She nodded and prepared to stand.
Logan’s hand closed tight around a fistful of her skirt. “No,” he murmured. “Na tréig mi.”
Her heart wrenched. “I can’t leave him.”
“I’ll go retrieve the medicines,” Rabbie said.
“In my aunt’s dressing room,” she said. “Two stairs up, fourth door down the western corridor.”
“Na treig mi,” Logan rasped again. “Dinna leave me, Maddie.”
“I won’t.” She took his hand in hers. “I’m right here.”
He squeezed it tight. “You must swear it, mo chridhe. You’re my heart. If you leave me, I’ll die.”
She pressed her hand to his cheek and looked into his eyes. “I won’t leave you. You’re not going to die. Munro is going to patch you up. I’m going to be right here while he does. Neither you nor I are going anywhere.”
Rabbie returned with an armful of dark bottles. Munro uncapped and sniffed them, one by one. He handed a dark green vial to Maddie. “This should do.”
She placed the bottle to Logan’s lips. “Now drink this.”
He did as she asked, choking down the bitter liquid with barely a grimace. His eyelids began to grow heavier at once.
“Munro.” Logan turned his head from side to side, seeking the surgeon. “Munro, do you see this woman beside me?”
“Aye,” Munro answered. “I see her.”
“You see how bonny she is?”
Maddie blushed.
“Aye,” the surgeon said, smiling. “I do.”
“Well, we’ve been married for weeks now,” Logan said, lifting his head groggily. “I’ve only bedded her the one night. And I’ll be damned if that night will be the last. You had better mend me, Munro. I have a lot of pleasuring to do.”
“Understood, Captain.”
Maddie’s face burned, but she couldn’t help but laugh. She pressed a kiss to Logan’s forehead.
“Maddie . . .” His voice grew thick. He sounded as though he were speaking to her from a dark, deep well. “Mo chridhe, I . . . I . . .”
“Hush,” she told him, holding back tears. “I’ll stay with you, Logan. Always. Just please promise you’ll stay with me.”
Logan came through the surgery easily enough—-or so he later assumed, given that he could not remember it. It was the days afterward that threatened to dig him an early grave.
A fever set in the evening after Munro had removed the knife from his thigh.
The next few days were a blur of fitful sleep, racking chills, cool cloths swabbed over his body, weak broth offered to him on spoons . . .
And dreams.
His sleep was a riot of wild, vivid dreams. So many dreams that he suspected his mind was compensating for those lost years of darkness. He dreamed of -people and places he’d long forgotten. He dreamed of battlefields and bedsport.
Most of all, he dreamed of Madeline. Her dark eyes and her slender fingers, and her sweet, essential taste.
When he finally woke, his fever broken and his mind at rest, she was right there beside him.
But the woman would not let him get out of bed.
For anything.
Sponge baths were not nearly so amusing as a man might think they’d be. Not even when administered by a beautiful woman.
On the third straight day of his invalid treatment, Logan rebelled. “I hope you know I despise every moment of this.”
“I do know.” She swabbed him under the arm with a soapy sponge. “That’s why I’m enjoying it so much.”
“I’m perfectly able to do for myself now. I’m well.”
“Oh, no. I’m sentencing you to a full week of nursing in bed. If you do well with that, next Tuesday I might start letting you spoon your own parritch.”
Logan grumbled in response.
“That’s what you get for being heroic and saving my life.”
She leaned forward over him, plumping his pillow. The pose gave him an unobstructed view down the valley of her cleavage.
“Be careful, lass. You’re brushing close to danger.”
She smiled. “You’re no danger to me in this state.”
“That sounded like a challenge.”
“In all seriousness, Logan. You always work so hard taking care of everyone else. For a few days, I’m going to take care of you. And you will have to lie there and endure it.”
Logan tried not to seem too churlish. It wasn’t that he minded her presence, of course. He’d never known this kind of tenderness and attention. He simply despised the feeling of helplessness. He hated knowing that if someone charged through the door, he’d be powerless to stop it.
But he also had to admit to himself that there was a certain intoxicating pleasure to be found in surrender.
“You don’t need to sit here all day,” he said. “I know you probably have work to do. How are Rex and Fluffy?”
She set the sponge and basin aside. “Getting on very well indeed. She molted. They’ve mated and entered the tending phase.”
“And . . . ?” he prompted. “Don’t leave me in suspense. Which position do lobsters favor for their lovemaking?”