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Her hand lifted from deep within the thick folds of her cloak, her fingers clutching the bark of the tree through her leather gloves. The forest would guide her. It had to.
Keep forward.
{ Chapter 2 }
Domnall Greyford muttered incoherent blasphemies under his breath as he walked to the east side door of Kirkmere Abbey. “Blasted pup, you couldn’t take care of this on the journey here?”
He looked down at his favorite deerhound. No longer a pup, Theodora was full grown now, the wiry grey hairs atop her head reaching the middle of his thigh. Though for how tall he was, she was equally tall among her breed.
She whined again, looking insistently from him to the door. He didn’t move quick enough and she nudged her nose under his hand.
Shaking his head, he opened the door. They’d just spent the last four hours making their way through the snowstorm to get to the abbey and he hadn’t even taken his greatcoat off. Somewhere in that time, Theodora could have stopped to do her business.
The deerhound took off into the eerie white of the snow under the moon. She bounded through the tall drifts, her long legs and compact body only slightly hindered by the banks of snow. The bitter wind had died down, no longer blinding the land, though sudden gusts of whirling snow still danced over the fields.
Theodora kept going. And going.
Directly away from the abbey.
“Theodora.”
He whistled.
She kept moving away, turning into a dark spec bouncing along the white blanket of snow.
“Little bugger.” The last thing he wanted was to go back out into the blasted cold. They’d only just made it here.
He looked over his shoulder with a sigh. It wasn’t as though it was any warmer in the abbey.
Two days from Christmastide, most of the staff had left the abbey to celebrate with their families. Only the head butler, the housekeeper, and the cook had stayed in residence.
Not that he minded.
He’d not sent word that he was arriving and he’d rather the employees enjoy the days away—the last thing he wanted with his new staff was to ruin their Christmastide. The only issue upon his arrival with three of his men was that there were only two fires burning in the abbey, and both were in the servants’ quarters.
It would take some time for his men to get the fires lit and for warmth to eke back into several of the main rooms.
Domnall stuck his head out the door, took a deep breath, and sent a long piercing whistle into the land. Theodora always came to that whistle. Always.
His eyes scanned the white terrain under the glow of the moon.
Nothing.
He whistled again.
Barking.
Short yippy barks, echoing over the fields. Like nothing he’d ever heard from the deerhound.
“Damn.” She hadn’t injured herself, had she? The dog liked trouble, or trouble liked her—he was never quite sure which flip of the coin fate intended on that score.
If she hadn’t endeared herself to him when she was a pup, he wouldn’t be so quick to save her from scrape after scrape. Years ago, while her littermates would crowd his legs demanding his attention, she would sit to the side, staring at him, not sinking to their level with their desperate yaps for attention. No, Theodora was always one to wait—regal—until he came to her, tossed her the prime bone or scuffed her ears. But she was also loyal like no other—never one to stray from his heel when the other dogs would run off in a pack, frenzied in a hunt for a squirrel or a rabbit.
He would—to his own disgust at times—do anything for that hound.
His heartbeat quickened and Domnall stepped out of the abbey. Damn that he’d set his gloves down on a table in the foyer. But he didn’t want to lose her in the snow if the moon decided to hide behind cloud cover, so he closed the door behind him, tucked his hands up into the sleeves of his greatcoat, and crunched into the first drift of snow. It reached up past his shins, just below his knees. Deeper than he’d thought it was. The horses had been champions earlier, trudging through the drifts with steadfast endurance.
The barking stopped and he whistled again.
