Bastard.
V.
Joanna smoothed the crinkling paper, examining the black marks that identified the labyrinth of tunnels beneath Wyckford Heath Hall. Even as a young girl, she’d heard stories of the passages that led out of the keep, but had never been able to find them.
She’d also heard the tales that treasures hidden centuries earlier by the Saxons during the Anglo invasion were still in the tunnels below. Therein lay Ralf’s interest in the map—while hers rested only in the freedom it would gain her.
She rolled the map and tucked it behind a loose stone near the fireplace, for she hadn’t time to make a false sketch for Ralf before he returned from the tournament.
At the thought of the competition, a great rush of warmth surged through her as she recalled the mighty, powerful Bernard—how he rode his steed, and wielded his lance in too many challenges to count. She’d watched him, swelling with pride and nearly crying when he was struck with bone-shattering blows—yet he’d remained in his saddle as a fresh and untested Ralf had not.
Maris had rushed to see to his hurts after the last challenge while Joanna returned to her chamber, grieving the fact that she could not attend him as well.
Instead, she relived the gentle moment with him in the stable loft, where they’d come together in a passionate kiss that still caused her heart to race. She might be damned for wanting and kissing another man whilst she was bound to another, but in her heart of hearts, she believed that God—who helped those who helped themselves—would not judge her too harshly. For was not love the greatest gift?
Bernard was the first person in her life to truly show her love.
The door to the chamber flew open and Joanna turned, startled, to see Ralf limp in. His face held no expression as he stared at her. Her middle dropped and she moved to stand by her stool at the fire, keeping her expression carefully blank.
Without relieving her from his gaze, Ralf shoved the door behind him, and it closed with a dull thud that made sweat spring to her temples. Her voice wavered. “May I tend to you—”
“Silence!” His voice lashed across the room.
Joanna swallowed, her heart thumping so hard that she thought it would burst from her chest. Ralf took a step toward her…then another. “Do you gloat at my defeat this day?”
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.
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.