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The barks resumed.
He saw Theodora running toward him, leaping over the banks of snow. Good. Not injured.
He waited for her, another whistle poised on his lips if she thought to go rogue again.
A hundred paces away from him, she jerked to a stop, her short yippy barks firing into the air.
Barks, then she twisted in the snow, jumping high over a drift and running away from him again.
“Bloody mutt.” He pulled the lapels of his overcoat tight up against his chin and trudged forward. He would throttle the hound once he got a hold of her.
It wasn’t until he’d trudged—with every step requiring him to heave his legs up high to gain just a half foot—halfway across the field that led out to the east of the abbey that he realized he was doing exactly what Theodora wanted him to do.
Follow her.
He’d thought he’d been chasing the miscreant—a fun game for her and no one else—but after the fourth time she turned around, coming back for him and then ran away through the snow in front of him, he realized she was leading him.
Three quarters of the way across the field, Theodora stopped, barking, her wiry head popping up and down behind a drift to make sure he was still following.
He sped up his steps in her tracks.
His breath coming in pants for the exertion of plodding through the snow, he reached the last tall drift ten paces away from his hound.
He saw it.
Under the moonlight, a dark lump half buried in the snow. Theodora licking, her snout jabbed deep into the folds of the cape.
Domnall barreled his way through the last drift, sending snow flying.
A dark cloak covered the body, the head. A woman curled into a ball on her side. He bent over, brushing snow away from her shoulder and he rolled her onto her back.
Her body moved easily, not stiff. Possibly not even dead.
Theodora looked up at him and barked.
He nodded to the hound and looked down. His frozen fingers cracking as he bent them into motion, he shifted the hood of the cloak away from her face to set his hand at her nose to feel for breath.
Hell.
A face he recognized. A face he would always recognize, even under a sliver of moonlight.
No. Impossible. It couldn’t be.
But it was.
His hands fumbling through the folds of her cape, he found her shoulders and gripped them, shaking her. Too hard, he knew. But she couldn’t be dead. No.
He shook her again.
Her eyelashes crusted over with ice, she didn’t open her eyes. But her hand lifted, searching until she found the sturdiness of his arm and grabbed it with all her might, weak as it was.
Her mouth opened, her voice raw wisps. The wind howling through the trees just beyond them drowned whatever sound escaped her lips.
“What? Tell me again.” He leaned down close to her mouth, his ear next to her lips.
“Mag—Maggie—m—m—maid. Dying.” Her words stuttered as she gasped a breath that shook her whole body. “Everyone’s g—gone at the Leviton dower h—h—house. Doc—doctor. She needs a doctor. Send a doc...”
Her last words drifted into nothing.
