The moon was barely a sliver overhead, coyly skittering from cloud to wispy cloud in the starry sky, and didn’t seem to give forth much light until Dori walked through the patches of woods, whose branches before had been early spring bare and like walking beneath a web of thin shadows. Now in full leaf, entering the wooded sections of road was like traversing caves through a forbidding mountain range, where every woodland sound was magnified off the walls of thick greenery, and the nocturnal animals were long out of their hibernation and more than willing to investigate the presence of a trespasser in their domain.
She heard the crack of a stick and glanced with wide eyes over her shoulder at the black nothing behind her before facing forward once more and half-running the remainder of the forest path. Her breath only began to slow when she emerged from the wood between open fields. She fumbled with the blade in her hand and had to stop in order to properly return it beneath the ties of her apron lest she stumble and fall upon it, doing Glayer Felsteppe a great service by dying a second time.
She looked up and began walking again, but slowly now as she saw the blocky outline of Thurston Hold on the rise, the tall, black rectangles of the keep and inner buildings like a keep-shaped hole in the sparkling night sky.
If Glayer Felsteppe was keeping as close of a watch as he had before he’d thought to have her killed, the portcullis would be closed at the barbican, and she’d have to wait for the morning until the town was about its day. That would be many times more dangerous, for she would almost certainly be recognized, even with her chopped hair and peasant’s garb. Should she manage to gain the keep without detection, she would certainly be stopped as soon as she attempted to breach the family wing.
“Good evening, milady.”
Dori couldn’t help her strangled shriek as she spun around, pulling her blade from her apron once more and wielding it at the black shadow now standing before her on the road.
“Stay away from me!” she ordered, backing down the road.
The shadow seemed to grow an arm. “Don’t be frightened—”
“Drop your weapon,” she demanded.
“I don’t have one!”
“Show me your other hand!” Dori insisted.
“It’s fixed in me belt!”
Dori paused and lowered the blade, but only slightly. “Leland?”
“Great gods, I thought you’d know it was me,” the man said in exasperation. “Glad I am I thought better of calling out to you in the wood!”
“You’d have at least one hole in you by now had you,” Dori said with a sigh, standing aright and returning the blade. “Why are you following me?”
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 y
our 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.”
“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.
“I need to see it,” he reminded her.
Dori nodded and inched up the long skirts, bunching them in her hand until the length of her white, thin leg glowed in the meager moonlight. She saw the tracks of her blood, which looked black in the night, and the long, thin, arcing cut in her skin. It began to throb as soon as her eyes took in its full measure.
Constantine took her lower leg in his hands, his fingertips skimming alongside the wound, his warm, smooth palms cradling her flesh. She raised her eyes to over his head, looking at the dark barbican of Thurston Hold, her heart dropping into her stomach as she observed the lit torches on either side of the gate, the stones between them conspicuously bright and unadorned.
“It’s not deep,” Constantine said at last, lowering her foot to the ground and pulling her skirts down. He looked up at her. “I think it will be fine.”
“He’s not there,” she said and then turned her gaze once more toward the castle. “The banner is furled. Glayer Felsteppe isn’t at Thurston Hold.” She couldn’t bring herself to mention the little boy he kept always with him, her son, to the man before her. Constantine had already shown how little consideration he felt for her child.
“Well, I should say that makes things a bit easier for us,” he said to her surprise.
“Easier?”
“We certainly have a very good idea where he is, if he’s not at Thurston Hold, do we not?”
“With the king, I assume.”
“It must be,” he said, and then paused for several heartbeats. “Think you he would have left . . . your son behind?”
Dori shook her head.
“I’ll find out for certain,” Constantine said. “We must have mounts.”
Dori stared at him for several heartbeats. She could no longer contain the question. “Why did you come, Constantine?”
He met her gaze. “Because you were right in what you said at the cottage.”
She continued to look into his eyes, wishing him to say more, but her pride would not allow her to press him. Instead, she asked, “How did you know I had gone?”
“Christian told me.”
Dori blinked at him, and she knew her frown was obvious.
But Constantine only rose and placed the strap of his satchel over his head and then looked to the eastern horizon. “We have perhaps an hour before the sky begins to lighten.” He looked back at her. “Stay here. If you hear anyone approaching, hide as best you can.”
“Wait,” Dori called out. When Constantine paused and half-turned back toward her, her thoughts stammered with the sheer number of questions she wanted to ask.
Do you love me?
Will you love my son?
Where will we go?
She cleared her throat. “What did you do with Leland? I don’t want him sneaking up behind me after you’ve gone.”
“I doubt that will happen. I tethered his leg to a tree, then made a noose and hung it around his neck attached to his arm. If he attempts to get loose, he’ll likely choke to death.”
> “Won’t someone come along and free him? Take pity on him for being a cripple?”
Constantine shrugged. “Leland’s future is not my concern.”
“How will you get past the portcullis?”
Constantine gave her a smile of the sort she had never seen cross his face before—sly and charming and confident, transforming his already handsome face so that Dori’s heart stuttered in her chest.
“I’ve learned a thing or two from my friends,” he said. And then he abruptly stepped toward her once more and leaned down, cupping her jaw and kissing her lightly on the mouth. “It’s time I utilized that knowledge. What sort of general would I be otherwise?”
Dori’s lips were still parted as he turned and walked boldly down the center of the road toward Thurston Hold.
Chapter 21
Constantine rode through Thurston Hold’s open portcullis, the second mount tied behind him, in less than an hour. He wasted no time in urging the horse into a run after clearing the bridge, hoping to be past the keep once more by the time the sun had truly risen. In moments, he reined to a stop by the boulder, behind which Dori rose from where she’d been crouched.
Her expression was one of disbelief as she took in the pair of mounts and the equal number of bags across the saddles. “How did you manage this without being seen?” she asked as Constantine swung down from his horse and moved toward her.
“I didn’t.” He took her hand and guided her to the side of the horse and helped her into the saddle, mindful of her injured leg. He loosened the reins and placed them in her hands. “I was counting on Felsteppe’s arrogance and lack of leadership. The men left behind at Thurston Hold had no clear orders about their duties. I told them I’d been sent to fetch extra mounts for the lord’s return journey from London and the entire stable was mine for the taking.”
“And so now we know for certain where he is,” Dori realized as he swung onto his own saddle.
Constantine gave her a grin as he turned his horse. “Now we know for certain. No one should stop us, but if they do, don’t say a word. We’ll ride hard until dawn and then rest a bit. I plan to reach London by nightfall. It will be best if we can meet with the king after most have gone on to their evening pursuits.”
Constantine Page 22