Page 101 of The Laird's Masked Passion

The word still felt strange in her mind, but in that moment it belonged there with a frightening certainty.

Fionn gripped the shaft. “This will hurt.”

Colin looked at Elspeth. “Dinnae watch.”

“Dinnae presume tae command where I put me eyes.”

“Elspeth.”

She came closer instead and set her hand on his uninjured arm. It was a small touch, a steadying touch. She meant to offer it as a kindness, perhaps even as defiance. Yet the instant her fingersclosed over him, she felt the violent tension in his body, the strength it took him to sit still, and the suffering he intended to conceal beneath his usual cold endurance.

He hated needing it. Somehow, that made her give it more firmly.

Fionn broke the shaft shorter, worked the head loose, and drew it out. Pain moved through Colin’s body like lightning.

His hand shot to the edge of the chair and gripped hard enough that the wood groaned. His head lowered. His jaw clenched until the muscle jumped. For one dreadful moment, Elspeth thought he might fall. The color drained from him, leaving his face almost grey beneath the dark fall of his hair.

He made no sound. That was worse.

A sound might have frightened her less than his silence. That stubborn, brutal refusal to admit pain made something inside her twist until she could scarcely breathe.

Her fingers tightened on his arm. “Colin.”

He dragged in a breath as if her voice had reached him through deep water. His eyes found hers.

“I am here.”

The words struck too hard. Elspeth had not known until then that she needed him to say them.

Her eyes shone too brightly, and she despised herself for it. “Ye are a very troublesome man.”

“Aye.”

“Dinnae dae that again.”

“Get shot?”

“Aye.”

“I will take it under advisement.”

Fionn pressed cloth hard to the wound. Colin’s breath left through his teeth. The healer worked quickly after that, cleaning, stitching where needed. Elspeth remained beside him, her hand still on his arm, because if she let go, she feared he might vanish behind pain, or worse, behind that cold self-command that always seemed determined to deny her any proof that he was flesh.

Colin endured it. Endurance, she was beginning to understand, was the most infuriating of his virtues. Pain had edges. Fear did not. And Elspeth knew, as she watched blood darken cloth after cloth, that she would rather have borne the cut at her ribs twice over than watch him sit there pale and silent beneath Fionn’s hands.

The potion came last. Fionn handed the cup to Colin with the expression of a man expecting war. “Drink.”

Colin smelled it and pushed it back. “Nay.”

Elspeth leaned over and took the cup from Fionn. “What is it?”

“Fer sleep,” the healer said. “Poppy, willow, a little whisky. He needs it. If he moves too much before the bleeding settles, he will tear the wound open again.”

“I dinnae need sleep,” Colin told them.

Elspeth turned to him slowly. There was a dangerous calm in her now, the sort that came when fear exhausted itself and left anger to keep house.

“Ye have an arrow hole in yer shoulder.”