Leland stepped closer and the fingernail of moon showed itself between the clouds so that Dori could make out the man’s features.
He shrugged. “Didn’t have aught else to occupy my time.” His face turned toward her. “Figured it’d be best if you didn’t go alone. No one’ll miss me in the village.”
Dori frowned at him, unsure as to whether she felt annoyed or thankful by his presence.
He waited a moment, perhaps to see if she would turn him away, before asking, “You’re going back to Thurston Hold, are you not?”
Dori hesitated. “Yes.”
“Hmm,” he said, as if she’d just told him something of high curiosity, although the man had surely guessed her destination when he’d decided to follow her from Benningsgate. He began walking. “All right, then.”
Dori felt as though she had little choice but to catch up and then walk along Leland’s left side, deciding she was rather glad she wouldn’t have to traverse the final stretch of wood, perhaps only a quarter mile ahead of them, alone. They walked in awkward silence for several minutes, but when he did not press her or chat idly, as if they were true companions, Dori’s shoulders began to creep down from her ears once more, and it caused curiosity about the man to rise up in her.
“What happened to your arm?” she asked. “If you don’t mind my inquiry.”
Leland glanced over at her, but Dori couldn’t make out his expression in the dark. “I don’t suppose I do, milady. Nothing at all happened to it. I’ve had it since birth.”
“I see,” Dori said. “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for, I reckon,” he said in an easy voice. “It’s saved me a lifetime of labor. Me mother left me and my father when I was a lad. It was just the two of us for a few years. Then he caught the fever that took Nell’s man and girl. No one ever expected much from me after that. I worked the portcullis most often. The pulleys made it an easy job. Sometimes I delivered messages. I was more trouble for the effort of giving me a task as not,” he finished, as if he was talking about nothing more important than the weather, but Dori could hear the underlying resentment in his words.
No wonder the man had developed such a caustic personality; he’d basically lived off Benningsgate folks’ charity his entire life, with no family, no purpose to fulfill him. Dori had the realization that it was how many noble children grew up, without responsibility or care for a task or other person, and she suspected it caused part of their souls to turn black and die. She realized it likely would have been her lot, too, had her father not become ill, and had Glayer Felsteppe not swooped in like a carrion bird to feed on them both.
“Do you hunger, milady?” Leland asked suddenly, reaching down with his right hand to lift the flap of his satchel. “I’ve brought a bit of ham and some other things.”
Dori felt her stomach rumble at the mention of food and remembered she had not finished her supper with Constantine Gerard. Thoughtful of the man to have brought enough for them both.
“Thank you,” she said. “In my haste to depart the swineherd’s cottage without being seen, I fear I didn’t think to take much in the way of sustenance.”
“Likely not much to be had in that glutton’s abode,” Leland muttered while rummaging in his bag. “Blast it.” He looked up at her and glanced at the knife on her apron. “Beggin’ your pardon, milady, but could I bother you for your blade?”
“Certainly.” Dori reached down and pulled it from the sheath and handed it to him as they entered the edge of the black wood. As his only good fingers wrapped around the handle, the last slice of moonlight flashed across the blade before being extinguished by the trees overhead, and Dori felt a frown move likewise across her forehead.
Her legs were abruptly and painfully kicked out from beneath her and Dori landed on her back, her skull bouncing against the dirt road and the breath knocked from her lungs. The point of her own blade—of Constantine Gerard’s blade—rested in the notch of her collarbone, pointed downward by Leland’s warm fingers, wrapped around the handle and laying alongside her cheek.
“Shh, now,” he whispered near her temple in a trembling voice, but she could detect no fear in his tone, only evil excitement. He squirmed against her, already thrusting his groin into her midsection. “It will be over soon, if you’re still and good.”
His heart was black and dead after all.
He’d played her well, asking if she was armed and then following her from the village. No one would know Dori was missing until well after sunrise, and Leland would be back in his own house before then.
And once her body was found, the crippled villager would likely be the last person ever suspected of her rape and murder; everyone knew Theodora Rosemont had died in her childbed months ago after all. There was no one to vouch for her existence save a handful of motley villagers and their lord, who was himself wanted as a criminal.
Her breath came back to her in painful wheezes, the jerking motion of her chest causing the knifepoint to prick her repeatedly, tiny stabs that, along with her coughs and fear and anger, caused tears to leak from the sides of her eyes and track into her hairline.
“Now, I wish to feel you moving beneath me, so I’ll ask you kindly to raise up your skirts—I’m at a disadvantage in doing it myself, you see,” he confided. “However, if you’re defiant, I’ll just open up a little hole in your throat. You’ll eventually run out. I might have a struggle at first, but I’ll get what I want.”
“You’ll kill me either way,” she rasped.
He licked her neck. “Raise your skirts.”
“No,” she said and tried to pull away from him even as the pressure on the blade increased. “I’ve never been taken without my consent and I’m not about to give it to the likes of a filthy, one-armed, lying parasite.”
Leland stilled against her. “That’s just fine, milady. Just fine. We can do it the other way certainly. For if you think such weak taunts move me after a lifetime of ridicule and pity, you’re wrong. And once everything is over, I’ll be the one who walks away.” He placed a noisy kiss on her cheek.
“Do you think so?” she asked.
“I do.”
