“If you would stop squirming I could get a better look…oh, Batsfoam, I’m afraid there’s been a little accident—”

“You shot me! Intentionally!”

“A little accident,” Charlotte repeated with emphasis as she tore at the bloody hole in the outer side of Dare’s breeches. There wasn’t much blood, which, combined with the fact that Dare was still standing, gave her hope that she hadn’t wounded him too grievously. “I didn’t actually intend to fire the pistol.”

“She told me she was going to shoot me,” Dare said to Batsfoam. “She stood right there and warned me she was going to shoot me. Then she did. What sort of a wife shoots her crippled husband in cold blood?”

“One who is tired of his never-ending gloom and fitful depressions?” Batsfoam stared for a moment at Dare’s kilted eye patch, then bent over to examine the exposed flesh.

“That’s rich coming from you,” Dare said testily. “Ow! Charlotte!”

“Rip that little bit of material away…there. It doesn’t look too bad, does it, Batsfoam?”

Batsfoam pulled out a less than pristine handkerchief and dabbed at the blood welling from a small wound on the outer edge of Dare’s thigh. “It does not, ma’am. I would say your shot went a bit wide. It looks as if the ball barely scratched the skin.”

“She shot me!”

“Oh, stop being such a big baby.”

“She shot me with my own pistol!”

“Barely shot you. I barely shot you with your own pistol. It is such a small wound, it’s almost not there, isn’t it, Batsfoam?”

“Indeed, ma’am, I would dare to say—”

“There, you see? Batsfoam agrees with me. It’s almost a nonshot. Now, if you will sit down, I’ll clean your almost nonwound and you can toddle off to your workroom and see what is what with your machine.”

“Engine,” Dare said in a decidedly surly tone as Batsfoam helped him to the chair. Charlotte relaxed. If he was making such a fuss over a little thing like being shot in the leg, he must be on the road to recovery. He hadn’t so much as mumbled one word of complaint the entire time he was recovering from his other, much more grievous injuries.

“I shall want water and clean bandages and that tincture that worked so well on Alasdair’s face.” Charlotte considered her husband carefully. “And brandy, Batsfoam. He looks a bit shaken; I think his lordship would benefit from a stimulant.”

By the time she had his leg cleaned, anointed, and bandaged and Batsfoam had assisted him into a fresh pair of breeches, Dare was arguing virulently with her. She delighted in every frown and glare, often rewarding his temper—sadly missing these last four weeks—with adoring gazes and light kisses, not to mention loving pinches on an area of his anatomy not visible when sitting.

“I won’t forget this, wife, not for a very long time,” he warned as he hobbled down the stairs toward the subregions of the house. “Possibly never.”