Maris shook her head regretfully. “Nay, Bernard, ’twould not be best for her to be moved. She has two broken ribs and she is very, very weak. Can you not settle a guard here?”
Bernard snorted. “In the home of the father who wed her to this monster? Aye, I’ll do it, but I do not know how long he’ll allow it. ?
??
“Allow it?” Maris echoed. “When his daughter has been near beaten to the death, her own father will not allow her to be kept safe?”
Bernard shook his head, sick at heart. What could he do to ensure Joanna’s safety? With all his being, he desired nothing more than to stalk back to the great hall and plunge a dagger into the throat of Ralf.
Such an action would free Joanna from the man, certainly, but would leave Bernard hanging for murder and Joanna unencumbered—and sure to be wed to another man. Much as he had the blood lust to do away with Ralf, Bernard could not allow Joanna to belong to anyone but him.
Not now that he’d found her.
He stood, leaned to press a kiss to the cool, still cheek of his beloved, and turned to Maris. “I will fetch my father’s men-at-arms and send them here anon. Please have a care for yourself and my beloved. I will find some way to tend to this. ”
VI.
Through a heavy murkiness, Joanna heard a haze of voices…staccato bursts of anger.
She struggled to open her eyes, but it felt as though her lashes were plastered onto her cheeks. Pain radiated through her body, echoing everywhere so that she could not tell where it began and where it ended.
Her senses faded, and she slipped into the depths of darkness, buffered from the pain.
She heard the voices again, and they pulled her from her deepest, safest place. They tugged her relentlessly from the numb cocoon that kept the agony at bay, and as she became more aware, the heaviness of her hurts throbbed and battered her body, even though she lay still.
This time, she managed to pry her eyes open—the only part of her body that moved without pain—to see Ralf holding something in his hand, something flowing, and white. His face was a mask of fury, and even as she watched, he whirled in anger upon another figure in the room—a woman—and turned upon her, grabbing her shoulders and tossing her aside.
The other woman screamed, then fell to the floor, silenced.
And Ralf rounded upon her, Joanna, in her bed.
“Wake up, you cock-spittle bitch!”
Hands seized her shoulders, and she was jerked up, her head snapping back as a scream choked in the back of her throat. Red-hot pain stabbed her head, her abdomen, and flashed through her body like fire. She could not control the wail that erupted from her abdomen and burst from her mouth.
“What is this? What is this?” he was shrieking. Somehow, through all of the hazy pain, she felt the spittle fly from his mouth, flecking her face. “Whore!” He released her, and she fell back onto the bed, her teeth jarring together.
She struggled to make sense of what he raged about, fighting to focus her eyes on the white cloth that he brandished whilst she prepared herself for the blows and pain yet to come.
“You thought to cuckold me?”
He raged about the room, not yet deigning to take his fury out on her physically…but she knew ’twas only a matter of moments before the blows fell. What was he angry about?
“My squire heard you in the stable—with your lover! He saw you make the whore of yourself—and ’twill be the last time you do!” He leaned forward, menacing, over her. His eyes were wild and yellow in his face, and Joanna nearly fainted as his words penetrated.
His hand closed around her throat, squeezed and released, so that she coughed in agony. She gathered all of her strength, trying to twist away…but in its battered state, her pain-filled body was no match for his iron grip. His fingers closed again, and she reached to claw them away as spots of black light flashed at the corners of her eyes.
Death. ’Twould be welcome—’twould be heaven compared to living her life in this fear.
Bernard.
His face flashed before her as the life began to seep from her body.
And suddenly, Joanna realized she had one last chance. She forced herself to form the single syllable that might save her life.
“Map. ”
As though ’twere magic, the word, grating even to her ears, caused Ralf to lessen his grip. She sucked in a huge breath of air, her body shuddering with the effort, and gasped the word again. “Map. ”