“Hold him down!”
Hands clamped down on his shoulders, wrists, legs.
A piece of leather shoved in his mouth.
“Bite!” Cooper shouted.
Seth’s eyes snapped open, lucidity slamming into him at the same time Cooper pressed down on his shoulders, amber-brown eyes blazing into his.
Beside him stood a surgeon with a scalpel in his hand, and grim determination on his face. “Three—”
“No!”Seth begged. “No! Don’t—”
“—two.Now!”
The scalpel pierced him andsliced.
Spasming, he screamed andwrithed.
“Hold him steady!”
And thendigging.
Pain exploded from his every nerve. White. Hot. His body would burst with it. His heart burned in his chest and, in a moment of clarity, he knew he was going to die.
“Comeon,Reeves!”
Thistime, he would die.
“Reeves!”
Pain faded to numbness. All he could smell was lavender and rosemary. All that remained of him faded into divine, radiant nothingness. Darkness crashed in and out like waves on a faraway shore, taking him with the tide, and there waspeace.
“No, you don’t! You keep your eyes open! You have to live! For mysister,you…”
***
“…bastard.” Matthew’s voice trailed off.
Reeves’ eyes drifted closed and his body fell limp.
The round dropped from the surgeon’s forceps into a metal pan with aclink.
Matthew Cooper became Viscount Lincolnshire in an instant. Watched the light fade from his father’s eyes. Knew how fast blood cooled when it hit the air.
“Quickly now!”
He watched a man he loved and respected fall, hit his head, and in the next breath, Matthew had two sisters to take care of.
“—linens! Everything in the house!”
Two baby sisters.
“Apply pressure, more—”
“—hot water!”
Two beautiful, perfect baby sisters he loved more than life.