Preston took her purse and set it down on his desk. He didn’t open it or even peer inside. “Effy, why don’t you sit?”
“Why?” A bolt of panic shot up her spine. “I don’t want to.”
“Well,” Preston said, “that’s going to make this a lot more difficult.”
And then he knelt in front of her, and Effy was so shocked that she nearly did topple over. She had to put her hand on the desk to steady herself.
“What are you doing?” she choked out.
“If you don’t wipe away the dirt, your cuts will get infected. Infections can lead to blood poisoning, which, if it remains untreated, will eventually necessitate amputation. And in a way, it would be all my fault if you had to have your legs amputated at the knee, because I was the one who asked you to get the blueprints in the first place.”
He said all this with complete sincerity.
Effy took a breath—partly to steel herself, and partly so she wouldn’t laugh at him. True to his word, Preston began delicately picking the pebbles from her wounded knees. His touch was so gentle, she felt only the faintest nips of pain. His eyes were narrowed behind his glasses, as focused as he’d looked when poring over one of Myrddin’s books.
After a while he seemed satisfied that he had gotten out all the pebbles, and he reached up for the glass of water on his desk. Effy was still so baffled that she hardly reacted when he wet his shirtsleeve and began to dab at her gouged skin. That, finally, elicited a gasp from her.
“Ouch,” she whined. “That really stings.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Almost done.”
The pain was making her woozy again. Gingerly, she let her other hand rest on Preston’s shoulder for balance.
He paused in his ministrations, muscles tensing, and looked up at her. They locked eyes for several moments, but neither of them said a word. After another beat, Preston looked down again, returning to his work.
Effy curled her fingers into the fabric of his shirt. His skin, underneath, was warm, and she could feel his muscles flexing. “How many skinned knees have you treated in your career as an academic?”
“I have to say you’re my first.”
She laughed, almost in spite of herself. “You’re very strange, Preston Héloury.”
“You’re the one who jumped out of a moving car, Effy Sayre.”
“It’s only because I wasn’t wearing my seat belt,” she replied.
It was the second time she’d heard him laugh, and Effy remembered how much she liked the sound of it: low and breathy, his shoulder shaking just slightly under her grip.
In another moment, Preston got to his feet and said, “Let me see your hands.”
Effy held them out. Her palms were scratched but not badly. It looked like she’d tussled with a rosebush. With her fingers splayed like that, the absence of her ring finger seemed glaringly obvious.
She hoped Preston wouldn’t ask about it. That was another question she didn’t want to answer.
“They look all right,” Preston conceded. “I’m confident this will not be what does you in.”
He had a little smear of her blood on his cheek where he’d raised his red-stained hand to adjust his glasses. Effy decided not to tell him.
“That’s a relief,” she said. “I would hate for you to be responsible for my untimely demise.”
Preston laughed again. “I’d never overcome the guilt.”
Effy smiled, but she could not stop thinking of the look in Ianto’s eyes, the change in the tenor of his voice. Could she have imagined it all? Why had he hurried her out of the house, only to hurry her back again? He had driven so fast, with such determination, his words all snarled and low. Her brain had pulsed like a lighthouse beacon, every beat of her heart screaming, Danger. Danger. Danger.
She remembered how Ianto had told the story of the Drowning: how the inhabitants of the Bottom Hundred hadn’t realized they were going to die until they were neck-deep in the water. If she hadn’t flung herself out of the car, would she have drowned there?
Sometimes Effy had nightmares where she was sitting in Master Corbenic’s green office chair, her wrists strapped to the armrests, black, murky water rising around her. She couldn’t escape, and the water kept coming in—and worst of all, in those dreams, she didn’t even struggle. She just gulped down the water as if it were air.
“Do you think he’ll be angry at me?” Effy blurted out. “Ianto, I mean.”
The amusement in Preston’s eyes vanished. “Well . . . it’s not the most tactful way to escape an awkward conversation, I’ll give him that. What did he say to you?”