Page 54 of Deposed

Henry punched his fist into his palm. “Those bastards. If I ever get my hands on Carbuncle, he’ll be eating his meals through a straw and shitting through a colostomy bag.”

“Language,” said Edward. He brought my hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to my knuckles. “How did you know where to find Emilia?”

I blinked several times and stared at Blake, who gazed at Henry with furrowed brows. That was something I had also wondered about before the painkillers had dulled my thoughts.

Blake explained how he had arrived at Chelsea Heights to find a group of girls in party clothes wandering around the top floor and searching through the fire exits. I supposed those were the interns who had ridden in the back of Tom’s van. As soon as he discovered there was no number sixteen, he approached the girls, working out that the invitation had been a trap. While the reporters were liaising with the police, Blake knocked on doors until he found someone who recognized him from the papers and was willing to let him in to search the balconies.

All throughout the explanation, Henry stood at the foot of the bed, staring at me with anguish in his green eyes. I couldn’t tell if he would burst into tears, fall onto his knees, or smash the room up. He was clearly the most disturbed of the triumvirate and doing the worst job of holding back his feelings.

A soft knock reverberated on the door, and Henry broke away to see who wanted to come in. He opened it to reveal Nurse Priya, dressed in her navy blue uniform.

“Miss Hobson?” she said. “I’m here to check your dressings.”

“Right.” Blake rolled out of bed and stood in his silk pajama bottoms.

Nurse Priya turned her head and sucked in her cheeks while Blake padded to a mahogany closet and found a robe. He moved onto the dresser, where he pulled out another set of silk pajamas and placed them on the end of the bed before leaving with Henry and Edward.

I pushed my hands onto the mattress and swung out of bed, but a band of agony wrapped around my entire torso and made my muscles seize. Nurse Priya rushed forward and supported my body. When my feet hit the soft carpet, every single bruise screamed with protest, making me hiss through my teeth.

In Blake’s luxurious, marble bathroom, things became worse. An unfeasibly large, purple-black eye stretched across my entire left socket, the start of the bridge of my nose, and ended at my cheekbone. I was lucky he hadn’t broken my nose with the force of his punch. Most of the swelling concentrated in the area under the eye, but the rest of the left side of my face puffed and pulled the swollen part of my upper lip down into a permanent expression of melancholy. I looked as though I had developed an oversized jowl.

Dark fingermarks marred my neck from where Mr. Carbuncle had strangled me, and red streaks covered the rest of the skin. The bastard’s fingernails had also dug into my flesh, leaving crescent-shaped scabs. If he had held onto my neck for much longer, I would have—I turned from the mirror and let out several gasping breaths.

“Miss Hobson?” asked the nurse.

“I’m fine.” The words came out in a gasp. “Just shocked.”

“I can perform a bed bath if you’re not yet comfortable with seeing the rest of your body,” she said.

I gulped. Was she saying that because of what she had seen last night as she put me into the gown, or because of how I had reacted to the sight of my face? “I-I can manage.”

When Nurse Priya took off the bandages and revealed my purple skin, I hissed through my teeth and jerked away from the mirror. These bruises must have happened when Charlotte’s brother had dragged me down the stairs. I don’t remember Mr. Carbuncle hitting me so many times and in so many places that the bruises would have covered me everywhere.

She showed me the kind of tepid water best suited for the early days of bruising and advised me not to turn the shower onto the hottest settings for another two days unless I wanted even more burst blood vessels. I thanked her and climbed into the shower, letting the cool water run over my skin. Everything felt too sore and too raw to apply shower gel, so I didn’t stay long and winced as I dried myself off.

The nurse redressed my wounds, helped me into Blake’s silk pajamas, and back into the nest of pillows. Just before she left, I asked, “Mrs. Simpson-West said I should use her bruise ointment. What do you think?”

“Wait a few days before applying it, as some of its ingredients might aggravate your open wounds. But it should be fine to rub a small amount on your face four times a day.”

“Thanks.”

She paused at the door, and her gaze flickered from my face to the carpeted floor.

My brows drew together. “Was there anything else?”

“The abduction made the front page of the papers.” Before I could react, she added, “Your name wasn’t mentioned, but the article said that Mr. Carbuncle was caught sexually assaulting a girl in Mercia Academy, whose parents are pressing charges. And other girls are coming forward with complaints.”

“Oh.” I stared into her dark eyes.

“I brought the morning-after pill and an STD test kit. It won’t take—”

“H-he didn’t go that far,” I said. “I mean, he groped me over my clothes and threatened to rape me, but the other man stopped it.”

Her gaze dropped to a spot on the end of the bed. “But you were unconscious for some time in your abductors’ presence…”

Revulsion shuddered through my belly. Surely, I would have noticed something. Both times I had slept with Edward, I’d felt a pleasant ache afterward. If Mr. Carbuncle had done something to me while I’d been knocked out, I would definitely have felt something. Or he would have gloated about it, at least.

“I didn’t feel strange down there when I woke up.”