Page 64 of A Knight’s Reward

To think of her enduring such pain…

“Gisela?” In the silent room, Dominic’s anguished whisper sounded like a scream.

Raising his head, he looked at her. She sat with her arms folded over her bosom in a defensive posture. Her beautiful face contorted with grief.

“What happened to you?” He forced each word through his teeth.

She met his gaze with a blank stare. “Will you move away now?”

“What?”

“I said, will you move away now?”

His shock disintegrated, became cresting anger. Fury blazed—that she seemed so distant. That she held within her such terrible anguish. Above all, that she’d suffered through such an injury.

“I will not move.” He tried to speak calmly and keep his fury tightly leashed, but he couldn’t stop his tone from roughening. “Tell me what happened.”

Shrugging, she looked across her shop. Her body trembled, but she held herself taut, pride in the thrust of her chin. The pride of a woman who had faced… unspeakable horror.

Tears scalded his eyes. What had she endured? What had happened to his Sweet Daisy?

Vile possibilities seared through his mind. Clamping his jaw, he struggled to keep a clear mind and not make false assumptions. “How were you wounded? In an accident?”

A bitter laugh broke from her. “Nay.”

Someone had intentionally cut her.

Dominic’s stomach twisted. Bile scorched the back of his mouth. He wanted to vomit. Scream. Slam his fists into the wall and smash it into splinters.

“Who hurt you?” Disbelief pounded like an anvil against his skull. “Who?” Shocking realization crashed through him. “Your… husband?”

She flinched with such force, the table jolted. “I told you before, I have no husband.”

“The man you wed. He hurt you?” Dominic repeated, his voice rising. “Did he?”

He waited, unable to breathe. Scarcely able to see past the red haze flooding into his line of vision.

Silence strained, as tight as a thread about to snap.

She nodded.

A roar tore up from Dominic’s gut, ripped through him, exploded from his lips with such ferocity, he reeled. “Gisela!”

She flinched again. “Now you know, Dominic. I am flawed, for the rest of my living days.”

Her flat tone cut worse than a dagger. Did she hold herself responsible for her husband’s cruelty? How could she? The man was clearly a monster.

Dominic’s hand itched to seize a knife, to face her former husband man to man, to gouge a wound of equal size on the bastard’s body. How could he have disfigured a woman as beautiful as Gisela? Or any woman?

“Let me see your scar.”

Her watery gaze snapped to his.

“Let me see. I must know what he did to you.” Even as Dominic spoke, his hands reached for her crossed arms. He eased them away from her body.

He half-expected her to fight him, lash out at him, even. Yet, she sat motionless, resignation in the set of her mouth, while he eased his fingers inside her chemise, next to her skin. He gently drew aside the fabric to expose her breast.

God’s. Holy. Blood!