Chapter Sixteen #3
Garret couldn’t even respond. He was carrying Lyssa underneath the armpits, his big arms trying to hold on to her body without any pressure.
Bleeding from the mouth and from the ear was never a good sign; he knew that.
He’d seen enough injured men to know that blood, on any level, was never a good sign, and it was a struggle to keep himself in check as he and Zayin carried her all the way to his apartment on the first level of the two-storied apartment structure.
It was dark and cold inside the apartment block.
As they entered the building, they were in a room that acted like a foyer and there was a guard there to watch the doors to the apartments.
The guard had been half-asleep when Garret and Zayin entered, his eyes wide at the limp woman they were carrying between them.
But he quickly opened the door to one of the corridors and Garret and Zayin entered, pausing when they came to the first door on the left.
Garret freed a hand to open that door, spilling them into the inky darkness beyond.
These were Garret’s apartments, two chambers for his specific use.
There was an outer reception room and then a bedchamber attached to it.
Garret and Zayin stumbled through the darkened reception room and into the bedchamber beyond, very carefully laying Lyssa upon the messy bed.
Once Garret’s hands were free, he went straight to the table near the bed to light the taper there.
“Start a fire, please,” he told Zayin, sounding calmer than he had only moments before. “We must keep her warm if she is bleeding.”
As Garret lit one taper and then a second one, sending the golden glow of light into the chamber, Zayin did the same thing with the cold, dark hearth.
A few sticks of kindling lit up quickly and he carefully placed peat upon it to stoke the blaze.
Meanwhile, Garret took one of the tapers and moved over to the bed to get a better look at Lyssa.
She was ghostly pale. Even her lips were white.
With a breaking heart, Garret tenderly smoothed the hair out of her face and began a very careful examination of visible injuries.
The blood on her mouth was from a split lip, he could see, and her teeth seemed to be intact.
He didn’t feel any broken bones on her face or her neck, but she was very bruised.
When he came to her shoulders, he could see a massive welt on the right shoulder.
A bruise was already forming on her neck.
As he moved down her arms, he heard his name, very softly.
“G-Garret?”
His head snapped up and he could see that Lyssa was now awake, staring up at the ceiling. Heart in his throat, he stood up so he could look her in the face.
“I am here,” he murmured, touching her face. “You are safe, Lyssa. Do not worry.”
She lay there, staring. It was a moment before she was able to speak. “D-Did you save me? H-How did you know to come back for me?”
Tears stung Garret’s eyes. Dear God, he felt like such a failure at that moment.
How did you know to come back for me? Truth be told, he’d been reluctant to leave her.
He’d had a massive sense of uneasiness, something he brushed aside as foolish when he’d forced himself to leave her at The Wix.
As clear as day, he could recall that feeling, knowing now he should have given in to it.
He should have trusted his gut when it told him that something was amiss, that he should not have left Lyssa behind.
But he had. He’d left her and now she was gravely injured. He simply couldn’t stop the tears that filled his eyes.
“Rickard saved you,” he said hoarsely. “He brought you to me, sweet. Can you tell me what happened?”
Lyssa didn’t say anything for a moment. Her mind was muddled; Garret could see that.
As she struggled to remember, Zayin came up on the other side of the bed, looking at the woman with great concern.
Garret couldn’t even look at the man, fearful that if he did, he would lose his composure.
He’d never lost his composure in his life but, at this moment, he felt if he were to let everything go, there would be no return.
He would be awash on a flood of emotion and there would be no stemming the tide.
It wouldn’t stop until Colchester was dead.
Or, perhaps, if he was dead, too.
“Lyssa?” he asked again, gently. “What happened?”
Lyssa tried to draw in a deep breath but when she did, stabbing pain radiated throughout her body and she gasped, her arms going around her torso and her face contorting with agony.
Both Garret and Zayin tried to hold her down, preventing her from rolling up into a ball and possibly causing herself more pain.
Through her gasps of anguish, she spoke.
“T-The duke was in my chamber,” she breathed.
“H-He was waiting for me when you took me back to The Wix. S-Sir Rickard escorted me to my chamber and we both thought it was Juliana in the bed, but it wasn’t.
I-It was Colchester. H-He… he said terrible things, Garret.
H-He said that he saw us at the tavern and he knew I was a courtesan. ”
Garret’s brow furrowed in both surprise and dismay. “He saw us at The Drunken Cock?”
She closed her eyes against the pain. “A-Aye,” she breathed. “He called me a courtesan because he saw me with you and then he told me that he would make me wealthy and important if I became his mistress. T-That is what he wanted; for me to become his mistress.”
A ripple of disgust moved across Garret’s features but, in the same breath, he wasn’t particularly surprised.
Noblemen took mistresses all of the time and, in this case, Colchester had clearly set his sights on Lyssa.
Now, the situation was starting to make some sense, as repulsive as it was.
Colchester wasn’t simply after her to harass her; he was after her because he wanted something.
Her honor.
Gently, he stroked her face, her head, trying to comfort her in the face of such a horrible realization. “Naturally, you refused,” he said softly, “and he beat you for it.”
Lyssa finally looked at him, her swollen eyes locking with his. As he watched, tears welled and spilled over, and she burst into soft sobs.
“I-I was so frightened,” she wept. “H-He hit me and pulled my hair. H-He told me that he would kill Juliana if I did not submit. I-I do not know what happened to Juliana!”
Garret knew that Juliana was Gavin’s sister and he began to feel sick in more ways than he could possibly comprehend. He looked at Zayin, across the bed.
“Go and see how Gavin is faring,” he said quietly. “He must go to The Wix to see to his sister’s safety. I fear for the girl.”
Zayin’s expression was full of foreboding. “He cannot go, Salibi,” he muttered. “You know he cannot go, not in his current state.”
Garret’s jaw ticked. “The girl could be dying at this very moment,” he said, feeling some of the rage he was trying to keep at bay seep into his veins. “Someone has to go help her.”
Zayin knew that. He felt it as strongly as Garret did, but he also knew that charging into The Wix could be deadly for those noble men trying to save their women folk.
Before he could answer, however, the chamber door bumped back on its hinges and men were entering Garret’s reception room, charging into the bedchamber.
It was Knox, two of Garret’s junior knights, a few soldiers, and the physic.
Garret didn’t have to say a word. The physic, a large man with long, gray hair tied behind his head, went straight to the bed, setting his medicament satchel onto the floor as he bent over Lyssa.
He looked in both of her eyes, and her mouth, before turning to the men who were crowding into the chamber.
“Out,” he snapped in a heavy Scottish brogue. “All of ye. I canna examine the lady with a pack o’ dogs hanging about. Get out!”
The physic wasn’t the most tactful man but he knew his business.
He’d served at Westminster for quite some time, mostly for the soldiers, but he’d also been with Richard in The Levant and had worked on battle wounds that would have crumbled a lesser man.
With hands the size of a trencher and a commanding presence, he was a man to be reckoned with and Garret trusted Alpin MacAlpin, a Scotsman who was more reliable, more skilled, than almost anyone he knew.
At the booming command from the physic, men started backing out of the room.
In fact, Knox started shoving them out, far enough back so he could shut the door to the chamber.
But he remained inside the room, as did Zayin and Garret.
The physic didn’t seem to mind their presence as he bent over his patient.
He was focused on his patient, on her head and neck mostly, visually inspecting before poking here and prodding there. Finally, he looked Lyssa in the eye.
“Who did this to ye, lassie?” he asked, his tone surprisingly gentle with her. “What happened?”
Lyssa gazed up at the man with the Scots accent, tears swimming in her eyes. She didn’t reply right away but Garret was on the other side of the bed, putting a tender hand to her shoulder.
“You may tell him,” he said softly.
Lyssa blinked and the tears spilled down her temples. “T-The Duke of Colchester,” she whispered.
Alpin drew back from her a little, as if surprised by her answer. He looked at Garret, who nodded in response, sickened by the fact that he had to admit another man had beaten the woman he loved.
…loved.
There was that word again, stronger than before.
Was it possible to love someone after only knowing them so short a time?
He’d asked himself that question once before.
Now, he was asking it again, stronger than before.
Traits he’d admired in the beginning were now traits that he loved.
If he loved her traits – her warmth, her humor, her beauty – then surely that meant he loved her.