“Then before you continue on to what you are certain is your great triumph, allow me to divulge to you a little-known fact,” Theodora said.
“What’s that, lovely?” Leland said in a mockery of patience.
“Jeremy wasn’t the first to discover Lord Gerard at the ruin,” she said. “I was. And he, too, thought to subdue me, although with motivations much less criminal than yours.”
“And so you willingly gave it to him so that he wouldn’t kill you,” Leland finished with a darker tone. “Everyone in the village already knows it. Is that supposed to make me jealous of his lordship? I’m getting what he got, and I won’t have to put up with your mouth afterward.”
“You want what I gave him?” she asked.
“I do.”
Dori slammed her forehead into Leland’s face and shoved him off her as he screamed, but even though his right forearm went instinctively to his broken nose, it didn’t stay there for long, and he slashed out with the blade before Dori could completely drag her lower half from beneath him. She felt the cold slice on her left hip and thigh and kicked out wildly with her right leg, which found its mark by the man’s muffled shout.
She gained her feet and began to run, heading farther along the road into the darkest part of the wood, no longer feeling the knife wound on her leg, no longer caring about the darkness or its inhabitants, only seeking to escape the malevolent creature who had attacked her after feigning friendliness.
“You stop right now! Right now, you bitch!” Leland shouted, and Dori could tell by the jarring of his voice that he was running after her.
And just like that night in the Benningsgate ward when Constantine Gerard had chased her, Dori could feel her legs slowing.
“I’m going to kill you!” Leland promised in a furious voice that seemed right on her very heels now.
But then Dori heard the man give a strangled yelp, and there was a scuffling sound behind her. Dori thought he must have fallen, and the idea of it seemed to spur her flagging strength the tiniest bit, although the next sounds that reached her ears caused her to slow and turn, still staggering backward on the road toward Thurston Hold.
“No, no!” Leland was shouting. “Please, no—I’m only a poor cripple!”
“I know exactly what you are now,” a familiar deep voice said in the darkness.
Dori stopped, swaying on her feet. “Constantine?”
“Did he harm you, Theodora?”
She could feel the wetness on her leg, trickling down her calf, although it still did not pain her.
“He has your knife!” she warned
There were more scuffling sounds, then a series of anguished cries from the crippled man.
A shadow emerged from shadow, moving toward her, but this time Dori did not run.
“Did he harm you?” Constantine repeated, and Dori could barely make out the shape of him as he came to a halt still some six feet away.
“I’ve a cut on my leg,” she said.
Leland’s voice cried out in the darkness. “Don’t leave me here, milord! I beg of you!”
“I should go back and kill him,” Constantine said. “How bad is it?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I can tell that it’s bleeding, but it doesn’t pain me.”
He was quiet for a heartbeat of time and then said, “I’ll need to look at it.”
“All right,” she acceded.
Constantine took two steps toward her, until Dori could have reached out a hand and laid it on his chest, which she knew would be solid and warm. But it was he who reached out to her, scooping her up into his arms once more and carrying her from the black wood.
He walked with her in this manner until they were far enough from the forest that Leland’s pathetic cries had faded away. Then he tilted her to her feet near a rock at the edge of the road and helped her to sit.
The clouds had fled the sky, leaving the sliver of moon and glittering stars strewn across the field of black above them. He shrugged out of his satchel and knelt before her, his hands going to the skirts over her left leg. Dori looked down and saw the darker patch of wet in the already dark material and then met his gaze.
