“My dear,” he said finally. “It’s our wedding day.”

“This boy will die if you don’t help him.”

“We’re supposed to be married . . .” His eyes lingered on her scar, a rather distressed expression flashing across his face. Clearing his throat, he added, “Everyone’s watching.”

“Please, Charles,” Dorothy said, grabbing his arm. “He needs you.”

There must’ve been something in her voice, some hint of the deep pain that she felt because, after a moment, Charles nodded and said, rather stiffly, “Of course. Lead the way.”

Dorothy took Charles and two of his groomsmen out back, to the flattened clearing where she’d left Ash lying in the dirt. She was still feet away, but, even so, she could see that his skin was paler than it’d been when she’d left him here, and nearly green. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

She stopped walking, her chest seizing. Was it already too late? Was he—

Charles pushed past her and came to kneel beside Ash’s body. He leaned close, checking for a pulse.

“It’s there, just barely,” he said, after a moment, and Dorothy felt some tension inside of her release.

Oh, thank God.

Charles straightened and began rolling up his sleeves. “I’ll need my kit. It’s in my dressing room—”

Dorothy turned to run for it, but a groomsman was already racing across the grass. Instead, she crouched beside Charles’s shoulder.

“What else?” she asked, anxious. “How can I help?”

Charles looked up at her like he’d forgotten she was there. He was in surgeon mode, she could see, his only goal to save the life before him.

“Hold your hand just here,” he said, and took her hand, pressing her palm to the wound below Ash’s ribs. “We have to stop the bleeding.”

They worked for hours. The wedding guests hovered for a while, watching in awe and murmuring to themselves, until Loretta said something about refreshments and space and ushered them back to the church. Dorothy supposed she was placating them with food before breaking the news that they could go home, that there would be no wedding after all. But, truthfully, she didn’t know or care. She only had eyes for Ash.

Dorothy had no idea what Charles was doing, but she was good at following directions. She mopped his brow and fetched him tools from his kit and, all the while, she felt like she was seeing him for the first time. By the time he started stitching Ash up, Dorothy’s legs were numb, and her shoulders were knotted around her ears, but she barely noticed the discomfort. Charles was like a master tailor, each stitch he placed into Ash’s body so tiny and perfectly even that it was practically a work of art.