She did not move, even to step away, and replied, “Nay, my lord, I do not—”
“Bitch!” he snarled.
The backhanded slap sent her head crashing into the stone wall, and sharp pain radiated along the side of her face. Warm, metallic liquid filled her mouth. A pounding reverberated in her temple where she’d struck stone.
He stared at her, his harsh breathing rasping in the air between them. “Do you dare to laugh at me? I would show you the error of your ways, Joanna. ”
Her fingers became ice and the room shifted. “My lord, please—”
“Did I not tell you to be silent?”
A fist plowed into her breast, and another into her abdomen. Her lungs emptied and she could not gather enough air to cry out. She sank to the floor, her hand splaying over the rough stone. Her fingers spasmed over the slate as his booted foot slammed into her hip.
“Where is the map?” Her stool crashed onto the floor next to her, splintering in pieces and barely missing her head.
The map. Somehow she dragged herself from the pain to realize that he would not kill her until he had it. Struggling to draw a breath, she whispered, “I do not have it. ”
“You do not have it?” he screamed, lashing out with his foot.
Joanna tried to roll away, but she found herself trapped between Ralf and the unyielding wall. Fists and feet pummeled her, driving her into a corner from which she had no escape but the warm memories of Bernard.
Bernard endured the excruciating pain inflicted upon him by Maris’s instructions to Harold and Rowan. His arm had become dislodged from his shoulder with Ralf’s last thrust, and it took the strength of the two men to pop it back into place.
That done, he promptly slid into the comfort of blackness even as he heard Maris giving more directions to Rowan.
When Bernard awoke, it was dusk, and well into the evening meal. Rowan, as a good squire should, stayed with him to tend to his needs, but ’twas obvious he was as hungery as Bernard. They went down to find a place at the long trestle tables, Bernard’s injured arm strapped to his torso by an adamant Maris.
Joanna was not at dinner—though her evil husband sat near her father, the Lord of Wyckford. Bernard flattened his lips at the thought of Ralf’s manipulations this day, and he felt that same penetrating fury he’d experienced earlier emanating from across the loud hall.
Once, Ralf turned to look at him, steadily, for a long moment, and Bernard felt prickles erupt along the back of his neck. There was a self-satisfied glint in the man’s eyes, accompanied by dark fury. Though he knew himself to be the stronger and more-skilled fighter, Bernard felt a queasiness curdle in his middle. The man was pure evil.
A sudden burning desire to see Joanna—to hold and kiss her, and to whisk her away from her monstrous husband—caused Bernard to bolt to his feet. Now, whilst Ralf busied himself with dinner…now, mayhap he could chance to find her in her chamber.
Lord Harold, who sat plotting with Maris of Langumont’s father, looked up and gave his son a knowing smile. Bernard drew his brows together in a glower and gave an angry shake of his head before turning to stalk out of the hall. When would his father give up the chance to meddle in his life?
It did not take much for Bernard to learn where the chamber of Ralf, Lord of Swerthmore, and his wife, Lady Joanna, boarded. One simple question to the stable boy Leonard, and Bernard found himself hurrying back into the keep and down a dark, torchlit passageway to a chamber on the second floor.
He knocked boldly, not caring whether anyone might hear him—wanting only to see the woman who had somehow become everything to him in the last two days.
There was a long pause, and then just as he raised his hand to pound again, the door cracked open…then was flung wide.
“Lady Maris. ” Bernard stepped in to find the room warm and sunny with a blazing fire and three candles. “What do you here?”
He did not need to wait for her answer, for in the wake of his words, he saw his Joanna lying on her side in a large bed. She was curled into a ball, her hand fisted under her cheek, her eyes closed and her breathing fast and shallow.
When he saw the cuts on her face and hand, the black and purpling on her face, he swayed and had to clutch at the bedpost as white rage poured through him.
“Joanna!” he choked, moving to her side to touch her clammy cheek, to trace gently an angry cut along her fair cheek.
“She is well hurt,” Maris told him. “She was beaten nearly to death by Ralf. ” Even as she spoke, her voice sharp and flat with fury, she ground herbs with a small mortar and pestle.
Joanna remained still, only the short puffs of air belying that she yet lived. Rage and guilt swelled within him as he looked down at her battered body. How could he have left her to this man’s anger? He should have known—known—that Ralf, having lost the battle, would take out his fury on Joanna.
“She must be taken from him, Lady Maris, and then I will kill him. ”
’Twas his own fault that Joanna now lay still as death, for if Bernard hadn’t angered Ralf so, the cock-sucker would not have been propelled to injure her thus.
Guilt, strong and sharp as the lash of a blade, made him ill and weak. How could he have left her to this? “We must take her from here, now,” he said.