Free Web NovelChapter 95: Chapter 95 Ways to repay him
_Rowena’s POV_
The man was heavier than he looked.
I got my hands under his arms and moved him in stages, which was undignified for both of us but was what the situation required. He was semi-conscious, aware enough to make faint sounds when I shifted him but not aware enough to be useful about it.
The blood on his left side was dried at the edges which meant it wasn’t fresh, which meant he had been lying in that maintenance channel for several hours while the competition ran its full day above him and nobody had looked in the right direction.
I got him over the barrier. Then across the track.
I struggled to get him into the back seat of Pierre’s car, which was going to require an explanation. Pierre would give me an earful.
“This isn’t necessary. You don’t even know him.” Kyra grumbled.
“I’m a Marchioness, I have to be compassionate.” I sighed.
“Yeah, a Marchioness and not a paramedic.” Kyra mocked.
I ignored her before it got out of hand, then I got in and drove off. ƒгeewebnovёl.com
I’d let Silas know someone almost died in his territory later.
My phone rang before I reached the main road and it was exactly who I guessed it would be.
Pierre.
I picked up.
“Where are you?” he asked immediately the call connected. The one hour had apparently concluded.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m on my way to the hospital. I’ll be there soon.”
A pause. “The hospital?!” He whisper yelled. I could imagine how miserable he must look.
“I’ll explain when I get back,” I said. “I promise. One more hour.”
I ended the call before he could respond to that.
The man in the back seat made a sound.
“You’re going to be fine,” I said. “Stay still.”
He didn’t say anything coherent but the sounds he was making became slightly less alarming, which I chose to interpret as cooperation.
The hospital was twenty minutes away and I drove it in less.
The emergency entrance staff came out when I pulled up, because I did not pull up quietly, and there was a brief moment of adjustment when they saw me get out of a car that was not mine in dark clothes with blood on my shirt helping an injured man out of the back seat.
Then one of them recognized me.
The recognition traveled down the line of staff in the specific way it traveled when people understood that the situation they were looking at had a context they hadn’t expected.
“Marchioness,” the senior doctor said.
“He needs attention immediately,” I said. “Left side injury, blood loss, he’s been lying untreated for several hours, and his temperature is high.” I had been monitoring that last part during the drive, my hand against his forehead at a traffic stop. The heat was significant. “The fever concerns me more than the injury right now.”
They moved quickly and with careful steps, they understood that the situation was much more grave than it should have been.
I walked alongside the gurney until they took him through the internal doors.
Then I stood in the corridor and looked at my shirt.
White, originally. Not anymore.
I spoke to the administrator at the desk and gave my details and told them the account was to be billed to the Ashthorne household and that I wanted a report on his condition as soon as the initial assessment was complete. She wrote everything down with the calm attention of someone who had been asked to do something important by someone important and intended to do it correctly.
I went back to the car.
The drive back to the Ashthorne mansion gave me time to think about Pierre and the guards outside my room and the explanation I was going to have to deliver. I hated lying and I saw no reason to. I’d just let him know what happened.
But again, that was a question that didn’t have a clean answer yet.
I came through the service path the same way I had left and went up through the window.
Pierre was in the chair by the window where I had left him.
He looked down at me, releasing a sigh.
But soon, his eyes moved from my face to my shirt and back to my face.
“I’m fine,” I said. “The shirt isn’t.”
He was looking at the shirt with an expression that was somewhere between concern and the specific embarrassment of someone trying very hard not to notice something they had noticed.
I looked down. The singlet underneath was intact and white and I had apparently, at some point during the process of getting the man into the car and then into the hospital, removed the outer shirt without thinking about it. Now it clung to my small frame, a bit revealing.
“Blood stain,” I said. “It’s in your car. I need you to deal with it when you leave so nobody finds it and asks questions I don’t want to answer yet.”
Pierre made a sound that was not a word.
“It’s not my blood,” I said.
He breathed out.
“There was a man at the Starlight compound,” I said, pulling my hair up and securing it. “He was injured. Nobody had found him. I took him to the hospital.” I sat on the edge of the bed. “I need you to look into who he is and why he was there and why nobody found him during the entire competition day.”
Pierre had recovered his composure. Mostly.
He nodded.
“Tomorrow,” I said.
“Tomorrow,” he agreed. “But I still don’t understand how you ended up at Starlight compound.” He sighed.
He stood to leave and I noticed, as he moved toward the door, that he was looking at a point approximately six inches above my head rather than at me directly, which told me the half revealing cloth situation was still occupying some portion of his attention.
I grinned.
“Pierre,” I said.
He turned. He was visibly preparing for whatever I was about to say.
“Thank you,” I said. “For tonight. All of it.”
He relaxed slightly.
“Don’t make me do it again for at least a week,” he said, and left afterwards. I smiled, already thinking of ways to repay him.
