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wound.”
    Torn between annoyance and pride in her sister, Serena smoothed down the skirts of her robe. “She has a gift, and a good heart. She would have stayed with him all night if I hadn’t bullied her off to bed.”
    “So you bully everyone, not just strangers?” He smiled and held up a hand before she could speak. “You can hardly tear into me now, my dear, or you will wake up your brother and the rest of your family.”
    “I’m not your dear.”
    “For which I shall go to my grave thankful. Merely a form of address.”
    Coll stirred, and Brigham moved to the side of the bed to place a cool hand on his brow. “Has he waked at all?”
    “A time or two, but not in his right head.” Because her conscience demanded it, she relented. “He asked for you.” She rose and wrung out a cloth to bathe her brother’s face with. “You should retire, and see him in the morning.”
    “And what of you?”
    Her hands were gentle on her brother, soothing, cooling. Despite himself, Brigham imagined how they might feel stroking his brow. “What of me?”
    “Have you no one to bully you to bed?”
    She glanced up, fully aware of his meaning. “I go when and where I choose.” Taking her seat again, she folded her hands. “You’re wasting your candle, Lord Ashburn.”
    Without a word, he snuffed it out. The light of the single taper by the bed plunged them into intimacy. “Quite right,” he murmured. “One candle is sufficient.”
    “I hope you can find your way to your room in the dark.”
    “I have excellent night vision, as it happens. But I don’t retire yet.” Idly he plucked the book from her lap.
“Macbeth?”
    “Don’t the fine ladies of your acquaintance read?”
    His lips twitched. “A few.” He opened the book and scanned the pages. “A grisly little tale.”
    “Murder and power?” She made a little gesture with her hands. “Life, my lord, can be grisly, as the English so often prove.”
    “Macbeth was a Scot,” he reminded her. “‘A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ Is that how you see life?”
    “I see it as what can be made of it.”
    Brigham leaned against a table, holding the book loosely. He believed she meant just what she said, and that interested him. Most of the women he knew could philosophize about no more than fashion.
    “You don’t see Macbeth as a villain?”
    “Why?” She hadn’t meant to speak to him, much less hold a conversation, but she couldn’t resist. “He took what he felt was his.”
    “And his methods?”
    “Ruthless. Perhaps kings need be. Charles won’t claim his throne by asking for it.”
    “No.” With a frown, Brigham closed the book. “But treachery differs from warfare.”
    “A sword is a sword, thrust in the back or in the heart.” She looked at him, her green eyes glowing in the light. “If I were a man I would fight to win, and the devil take the method.”
    “And honor?”
    “There is much honor in victory.” She soaked the cloth and wrung it out again. For all her talk, she had a woman’s way with illness, gentle, patient, thorough. “There was a time when the MacGregorswere hunted like vermin, with the Campbells paid in good British gold for each death. If you are hunted like something wild, you learn to fight like something wild. Women were raped and murdered, bairns not yet weaned slaughtered. We don’t forget, Lord Ashburn, nor forgive.”
    “This is a new time, Serena.”
    “Still, my brother’s blood was shed today.”
    On impulse he placed a hand over hers. “In a few months more will be shed, but for justice, not revenge.”
    “You can afford justice, my lord, not I.”
    Coll moaned and began to thrash. Serena turned her full attention to him again. Automatically Brigham held him down. “He’ll break open his wound again.”
    “Keep him still.” Serena poured more medicine into a wooden cup and held it to Coll’s lips. “Drink now, darling.” She poured what she could down his