Constantine turned and took hold of the edge of the door and opened it, leaving her to follow him from the oratory and into whatever battle awaited him in the ward.
Chapter 16
Dori followed Constantine as he made his stealthy way up through the collapsed maze of the corridor beyond the oratory. He behaved as though she wasn’t behind him, but she’d expected that. He’d already warned her that he could not be responsible for protecting her if she insisted on following in his wake.
She pulled herself over the rubble as quickly as she could, hurrying over the wreckage just in time to see his black outline pause against the grayness of the doorway. He seemed to listen for a moment, and then he drew his sword without a sound, ducked through the doorway, and was gone.
Dori took his place in the doorway, her ears straining, her fingers rotating the handle of the knife against her palm nervously. If he was overtaken, she could not consider going to his aid. Absolutely not. Doing so might mean her death or, at the very least, her discovery.
Dori closed her eyes at the memory of his touch on her face.
I believe you . . .
A roar sounded suddenly from the ward beyond the corridor, and her eyes flashed open as she jumped. It sounded like the battle cry of scores of soldiers, and Dori immediately thought of Constantine’s green eyes gazing down into hers, the warm, smooth feel of his lips when she’d kissed him.
No matter who they had been before, the lives and family and status they had enjoyed, they only had each other now.
She slipped around the door frame and darted to the fall of stone, scrambling up it in a crouch before withdrawing her blade and standing fully upright, ready to fly down upon whatever fiend had Constantine subdued.
She saw below her not an army of men intent on destroying the earl of Chase but a motley group of folk with bowed heads, dropped to one knee before the man who stood before them.
Peasants. Villagers.
They rose as one and then seemed to mob Constantine, although their intention was obviously benign as the lord returned his sword to his sheath and clasped hands with several men and was embraced by one large woman. The rotund Jeremy hung to the rear of the advancing group, his expression anxious as he neared Constantine.
“Forgive me, milord,” the man was saying, his stringed hood twisted in his hands, revealing the mass of curly brown hair atop his head. “It was Nell who dragged it out of me—sorceress of a woman, she is! She must have used some foul charm, milord.” He dropped his head before Constantine.
“Foul charm,” the large woman sniffed as she drew away from the lord and turned to look at Jeremy with her hands on her wide hips. “You were thick enough to come traipsing through the village at midday with Harmon’s ladder, looking as though you’d just discovered St. George’s lance.”
Jeremy sent the woman a sideways glare. “You said you wouldn’t tell,” he hissed.
“You stole my best”—the woman stuttered to silence as she caught sight of Dori standing atop the pile of stone, Constantine’s blade still gripped in her hand—“apron.”
All eyes shifted up to her and Constantine turned.
Dori felt a lump of ice forming in her chest as the Benningsgate villagers stared at her, their eyes wide and wary, their distrust of her obvious as they took in the ill-fitting article of clothing wrapped several times around Dori’s middle. The apron seemed to suddenly weigh a hundred pounds.
“Milady,” Nell said stiffly and followed the greeting with an equally rigid bob.
Constantine looked to Jeremy with one tawny eyebrow elevated. “I assume they know about Lady Theodora as well.”
“A sorceress, milord,” Jeremy insisted in a desperate whisper.
Constantine only shook his head and then looked back to Dori. “Benningsgate folk, the lady Theodora Rosemont of Thurston Hold.”
No one made a sound, although they continued to stare at her openly. Dori couldn’t help but see hostility in their gaping, and she wondered how the rumors had been twisted by the time they had made their way around to Benningsgate.
She lifted her chin and her eyes scanned the individuals in the crowd just as brazenly as they regarded her. Besides Jeremy and Nell and Erasmus—bounding around the ward as usual—there were five other men and one old woman, wife to the most elderly of the males in the group if her leaning on his arm was any indication. It was the tall, thin man with a dark, bushy beard who chose to step forward from the group and give a short bow.
“I’m called Harmon, milady,” he said solemnly. He turned sideways and motioned toward the rear of the gathering, where a pimply-faced adolescent boy stood next to a short, squat man with eyes that didn’t quite point in the same direction but rolled in opposing circuits, seeming to scan the heavens and the horizon at once. “Dunny and his uncle, Garulf.” The boy bowed, but the older man only stood, his gaze seeming to wander about the ward aimlessly until Dunny yanked on the sleeve of his rough shirt.
Harmon then gestured to the other grown man, blond and middle-aged, his left sleeve tucked oddly across his chest and into his belt, beneath which Dori could only just see the ends of shriveled fingers. “Leland.”
“Milady.”
To the elderly couple, “Edgar and Edie.” They bobbed in Dori’s direction, but they did give her the brightest smiles of the group.
Finally, to the wide woman who still stared at Dori as if boldly taking her measure. “This is Nell. And you’ve met Jeremy,” Harmon finished.
