She caught my hand and kissed it as she knelt; then rose to her feet and her dark eyes burned upon me in the gloom.
“You didn’t expect to see me?”
“How could I? Least of all here.”
“It’s on the road from Southampton. At least, if it isn’t, the woods drew me and I couldn’t help but go.”
“Why have you come from Southampton?”
“We fled there to escape him.”
“Him? Who?” Yet I had no need to ask.
“That horrible man. Oh, his white face and the eyes in it! Renny, I think Jason will die of that face.”
I remembered Duke’s words and was silent.
“It comes upon us in all places and at all hours. Wherever we go he finds means to track us and to follow—in the streets; in churches, where we sometimes sit now; at windows, staring in and never moving. Renny,” she came close up against me to whisper in my ear, and put her arm round my neck like the Zyp of old. Perhaps she was half-changeling again in that atmosphere of woodland leafiness. “Renny—once he tried to poison Jason!”