Read Online A Lady's Guide to Skirting Scandal by Kelly Bowen - Free Book Online

on it,” he pointed out.
    “I didn’t much like this one anyway.” She said it without missing a beat.
    “Very well.” Nate was still stifling a smile when he grasped Robbie’s hand and placed it on the table as flat he could under the circumstances, the three mangled fingers a crumpled mess of shattered bone. Smoothly, he slid a towel beneath it to keep the blood from dripping over the edge.
    “I’ll take the fingers first.” He spoke quietly, ensuring Viola knew what to expect. Well, at the very least, the point in time that she should leave if this proved too much for her. “I don’t think the bones in the hand itself actually broke,” he mused out loud, turning the damaged hand palm up. “I’m going to need you to keep as still as you can, Robbie.”
    “Aye,” Robbie answered. His voice sounded faintly garbled.
    Without being asked to, Viola grasped Robbie’s wrist firmly in her own hands. “Do you have family still in Scotland?” she asked loudly.
    She met Nate’s eyes, and he nodded his encouragement.
    “Aye,” the sailor slurred. “Me sister and her husband. An’ their bairns. Six girls and another on the way.”
    “Good heavens,” Viola exclaimed. “Then is your sister hoping for another girl?”
    The sharp edge of Nate’s blade removed the smallest finger at the joint.
    “A boy,” Robbie gasped.
    “Ah. I suppose there should be a least one voice of reason in that brood. What will they name him?”
    Nate’s knife removed the second finger.
    “Christ,” the man groaned.
    “Well, now, that’s asking a lot of a small boy, don’t you think?” Viola remarked.
    Another quick flick of Nate’s blade, and the last of the crushed fingers was gone. Robbie choked on something Nate guessed was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “That was the worst of it,” Nate said. “You can let go of his wrist, my lady.”
    “Are ye done then?” Robbie panted.
    “Not quite. There’s a few stitches that you’ll be needing, though I’ll have to clean it first.”
    “Right,” Robbie wheezed. “That willna be so bad.”
    Nate reached for the bottle of rum still on the counter. Without giving his patient any warning, he simply dumped the alcohol into the open wound. Robbie jerked and let out an unearthly moan, suddenly going limp.
    “What did you do that for?” Viola demanded, looking at him with horror. The sharp scent of alcohol cut through the space.
    “Dr. Ambroise Paré also advocated the use of wine to cleanse a wound. I’ve applied his theory and seen remarkable success, though whisky or rum seems to work just as well.”
    Viola was staring at him, her mouth a perfect O.
    “At the very least, his state of insensibility will make it easier for you to cauterize and stitch his wound.”
    “Me?”
    “Haven’t we already had this conversation?”
    “No. Yes.” She stopped. “You’d really let me do it?”
    “You haven’t fainted yet.”
    “I do not faint.” Her eyes flashed. “In fact—”
    “Lady Viola!” The shriek came from the door, punctuated with a strangled, horrified gasp.
    Viola flinched, and Nate turned to the surgery door. The two sailors that had been watching had vanished, no doubt in the face of the oncoming cyclone that was Miss Yates.
    “What are you doing in here ? With Mr. Shaw ? And a man ?”
    Nate wondered what he was considered, if not a man.
    “Lady Viola is assisting me with this wounded sailor, Miss Yates,” he said. “I requested her help.”
    Viola shot him a look of gratitude.
    Another bout of wheezing gasps came from the door before Miss Yates found her words again. “My lady! You can’t be in here with a naked man! It is unconscionable! You must come with me at once!”
    “My patient still has his breeches on,” Nate pointed out evenly. “He’s hardly naked. Lady Viola’s assistance has been invaluable. I will require her presence for another while.”
    Miss Yates went purple, her fingers clutching the door. “I forbid it!”
    Nate