“There you are, milady,” Nell panted as she came to a stop.
Dori wadded up the apron and threw it at the woman, who barely caught it before her face. Then Dori picked up her skirts and tromped past Nell, heading toward Benningsgate once more.
“Lady Theodora?” Nell called after her.
But Dori did not slow, jerking her skirts free from the clinging vines. Erasmus bounded nimbly in and out of her path as she struggled forward.
“Lady Theodora, please wait!”
She was jolted to a stop by her traitorous skirts yet again, and this time her yanking did not free her. Dori pulled and leaned back against the resistance until she heard the fateful rending of the cloth, but then it was too late, for the angle of her body was so severe that she could not correct it in time. She gave a strangled cry as she toppled back into the weeds.
“Hold on, milady!” Nell called out. “I’m coming!”
But Dori was attended to immediately by the great gray beast that was Erasmus, the dog stepping across her midsection and thrusting his wide, damp head into Dori’s face, sniffing and snorting with great interest.
Dori threw up her hands, pushing at the long muzzle with gasping shrieks, but it was like trying to shoo away a sinking ship, and Erasmus seemed encouraged by the sounds coming from Dori’s mouth.
“Get off, you!” Nell shouted. “I said get . . . off!”
Dori gasped as the air before her face opened up at last. She looked up and saw the wide, rosy-cheeked Nell bent over her, a meaty fistful of Erasmus’s scruff in her left hand, and yet the animal didn’t seem chastised in the least, his ever-present pink tongue flopping from the side of his mouth in time to his pants.
“Are ye injured, milady?” the woman asked with a concerned frown.
“No.” Dori swiped at her mouth with the sleeve of her right forearm, but it did little in the way of cleansing, as it seemed the entire back half of her person had pressed down into the thick, soft forest tilth. She held her arms away from her body and looked at them with dismay.
“Come on, then.”
Dori raised her gaze back to the village woman, who circled her fingers at Dori and then reached out with the same hand and grasped her left arm just above her elbow. Dori couldn’t help but draw comparisons with the way the woman seized the dog, and although her pride made her want to jerk from the woman’s hold, it felt as if all the energy had burst out of her and flowed away along the ground when she’d fallen.
And so Dori reached across with her right hand and grasped the woman’s stout forearm, which was much like taking hold of a tree branch, and held tight while Nell pulled her to her feet.
“Mercy,” Nell said as she hesitantly let Dori go. “I’ve picked leeks thicker than you.”
Dori didn’t respond to the slight as she was too busy staring down at the asymmetric puddle of her skirts. The rip she’d heard the day before had been only the start and now Dori could feel the relative coarseness of her overskirt against the skin over her hips.
“Damn!” Dori said with a stomp of her foot. She raised her head to glare at the woman. “I hope you’re at last pleased.”
“Wha?” Nell looked up from regarding the same catastrophe with an expression of concern.
“You couldn’t wait to put me in my place by demanding your stupid apron back immediately, could you?” Dori accused, trying to muster all the anger she could to cover her humiliation and fear. “You had to . . . you had to pursue me even into the wood!”
Nell’s eyes went wide for a moment and then narrowed. “I followed you because I wanted to help, even as poorly behaved as you were. And I’ll have her highness know, the embroidery on that apron took me a year of saving scraps of thread and another year to sew! It’s my best piece, and better than anything you’re wearing at present.”
“I never said it wasn’t! And I happen to have admired the needlework very much to Lord Gerard!” Dori shouted.
“Well, I thank you!” Nell barked.
“You’re welcome!” Dori yelled.
Erasmus’s head had swiveled back and forth as if it was on a pivot throughout the exchange, and now that there was at last an uneasy silence, the dog gave a high, breathy whisper of a whine.
Dori looked back down at her skirts with a sigh. She bent over and tried to pull the remainder of the cloth that was still hanging somewhere near midthigh from beneath her overskirt, but it was stubbornly attached and only caused her to wobble on her feet. She stood on the thing with one foot and lifted the hem of her overskirt to gain a better hold but nearly fell over again, so she let the whole lot drop back to the ground as she stood aright and brought her hands to cover her face.
The first gasping sob took her so by surprise that she simply gave herself over to it. Dori bent her knees and sank to her bottom on the forest floor and wept loudly. It didn’t matter now that Nell saw her. Dori couldn’t be anymore humiliated if she tried.
She felt a warm, heavy weight collapse into her and push her sideways, and when she peeled her hands from her face to look, she saw that Erasmus had come to sit behind her and prop his great mass against her flank. His panting breaths jarred her so that she couldn’t even cry properly. She gave the dog her elbow unenthusiastically, but it only prompted him to turn his muzzle back against her face so forcefully that she saw stars, and then he licked her.
Which only caused Dori to wail all the more.
