Nottingham

by Anna Burke

  “It’s just—” She snatched the snare from Will, set it, and stood. “It’s just that you’re a woman.”

  “So are you.”

  “Does Marian know that?”

  Will remained crouched on the ground, looking up at Robyn through disconcertingly green eyes. “Yes,” she said at length. “Which is what gave her the idea that you might help us.”

  Robyn recalled the way she’d flirted with Marian: shamelessly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Marian had responded in kind. Had she known the whole time? And if not, when had she guessed? Why had she said nothing? Had anyone else seen through Robyn’s disguise?

  “She won’t give you away if that’s what you’re worried about,” Alanna said. “She’s kept our secrets.”

  “I’m not worried.” Robyn did not bother asking about the secrets Marian had kept for Alanna and Will. “Come on. We’ll set more snares on the other side of the thicket. Can either of you use a bow?”

  “I’m passable,” said Will.

  “I can’t, but I can use a slingshot,” said Alanna.

  “Then we’ll need to find two bow staves, too. You can’t hunt with a sword. Slingshots are good for rabbits, though, and I can teach you how to shoot, Alanna. Or Will can.”

  They circled the thicket, Will moving more quietly than she had thus far. Robyn’s thoughts were still on Marian as she watched Will set up the next snare without assistance. It was clumsy, but passable, and Robyn gave a nod of approval.

  “What is John’s story?” Alanna asked when she finished.

  With a start, Robyn remembered that John had not trusted them with his past. Without that knowledge, however, the reality of living near a powerfully built, unknown man would understandably unnerve the newcomers. She brushed off the momentary burst of pity. They’d get used to it. John’s past was not her story to tell.

  “He was a blacksmith. Now he’s not.”

  “She means, why is he here,” said Will.

  “I know what she meant.”

  “But you trust him?” Will fidgeted with a hawthorn leaf she’d plucked from a low branch and avoided Robyn’s eyes.

  “I wouldn’t be here with him otherwise.”

  “All right.” Will held up her hands defensively, the leaf crushed against her palm.

  “Look, Will,” she said. “When I first met John, he disarmed me and knocked me into a stream. He could have brought me back to the outlaw gang he was running with, or he could have killed me, or worse. But he didn’t. He’s the reason I’m still alive out here. There are plenty of bad men in the world. John isn’t one of them.”

  Will still didn’t look convinced. Robyn didn’t blame her; trusting too easily got a person killed anywhere, not just Sherwood. Will and Alanna would have to make their own decisions about John, just as Robyn would have to live with her decision to trust Marian. Even if that meant helping Will. “What’s your real name, anyway?” she asked.

  “Willa. Willa of Maunnesfeld.”

  Robyn swallowed hard. “Maunnesfeld? But you said your father wasn’t rich.”

  “He owes a lot of money to the crown,” she said, dismissing Robyn’s incredulity. “And my brother will inherit the estate, along with the debt, and my younger brothers after him. I have three older sisters who married well, and I am not . . . I am not ‘biddable.’” She spat out the last word.

  “Good,” said Robyn, feeling more sympathetic toward Will than she had thus far. “I don’t like biddable women.”

  “Really?” Will shot Robyn a grin. “I thought you said I had to follow your orders.”

  “That’s just to keep you alive. You can be as difficult as you want with anyone else you meet.”

  Alanna gave Will a light smack on the arm. “Don’t let that go to your head,” she said, smiling at Will in a way that made Robyn suddenly uncomfortable, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on why.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Marian knelt by the bank of the river. The water felt delightfully cold on her hands as she beat the stains out of her clothes with a smooth stone. Early morning sunlight stained the fields gold behind her, and she could hear the farmers calling to one another across the rippling wheat. She did not need to wash her own clothes. The washerwomen had made that plain with their horrified expressions, but she felt the need to cleanse something even if she could not cleanse herself. Watching the current carry the soiled particles away soothed her.

  “That’s the last of it,” Marian said as she pulled the shift out and wrung it dry. She had not quite been able to remove the bloodstain.

  “I should hope so,” said a servant named Maude. “And you don’t need to be helping with this again, m’lady. Get back to her ladyship or she’ll have my hide for turning your pretty hands to lumps like these.” She held up her chapped hands for Marian to see.

  “I’m quite all right.”

  The basket of damp clothes weighed as much as Henri when she hefted it onto her hip. She settled into the weight and began climbing the slope back toward the manor house. She hadn’t gotten more than a horse length before a stone whistled past her ear. Frowning, she turned back to the river. Another stone landed at her feet.

  Marian searched the reeds on the far bank. Motion caught her eye. A person stood in the shadow of a willow, and as she squinted to make them out, a flash of white teeth from beneath a hood sent her heart racing. Robyn.

  “I’ll be on my way shortly,” she called over her shoulder to the serving women. “Don’t wait.” Used to the arbitrary commands of the nobility, they obeyed. She made a show of examining the rushes by the water’s edge as if she were merely contemplating a future harvest. When she was sure the women had passed out of earshot, she set her basket down and stared at Robyn.

  The outlaw didn’t speak. Marian became extremely conscious of the way her hair escaped its braid and the muddied hem of her dress. She’s an outlaw. She doesn’t care about mud on my clothes. “I didn’t think you’d come,” she said.

  “I thought you might like to know that your friends were safe.”

  “You might have left word with Tuck.”

  “You told me I could find you here. I keep my word.” Robyn remained concealed in the shadow of the tree, but Marian thought she heard the grin in the other woman’s voice. You should go back to the manor, the sensible part of her mind cautioned. The cut on her thigh itched. Sensibility hadn’t gotten her anywhere so far. She pulled off her boots and her stockings, hiked her skirt over her knees, and waded through the shallowest part of the river.

  Robyn grasped her hand and pulled her up the bank when she emerged.

  “You’re going to think I spend all my time in rivers,” Marian said as she entered the sanctuary of the willow boughs.

  “There are worse ways to spend your time.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, outlawry?”

  The hood shadowed Robyn’s eyes. All Marian could see of her face was the mocking twist of her lips—lips that she vividly recalled kissing in her dream. Her body warmed despite the lingering chill of the river.

  “Lower your hood.”

  “Is that a command, m’lady?”

  Marian thrilled at the low timbre of Robyn’s voice. “Yes.”

  Robyn lifted the thin supple leather from her head and let it drop. Dappled sunlight fell across her eyes. Marian’s breath caught as she beheld the outlaw’s face for the third time in her waking life, though she saw it often enough when she closed her eyes.

  “Tell me something,” said Robyn. “When did you know?”

  “Know?” Marian thought of her dream and licked her suddenly dry lips. “Know what?”

  “That I was a woman.”

  Relief coursed through her, and she laughed. Robyn could not know what was in her head. “You’re prettier than any boy I’ve ever seen.”

  Robyn’s eyes widened, and Marian was gratified to see that she, too, was capable of blushing. It made her feel slightly more in
control.

  “I knew I should have let John break my nose,” said Robyn.

  “Please don’t.” Marian laid a finger alongside the perfect line of it, feeling the warmth of Robyn’s skin beneath her fingertip. She couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to this face. “It’s lovely.”

  Robyn didn’t pull away from her touch. Marian let her finger trace its way down Robyn’s cheek and jaw.

  “Lovely things get remembered.”

  “Would you rather I forgot you?” Marian asked.

  “I—” Robyn rubbed the back of her neck as the corners of her mouth curved upward. “No.”

  “I don’t think most people would notice. People see what they expect to see.”

  “And you expected to be rescued by one such as me?”

  “Hardly. But, if you recall, I had just received a blow to the head. My expectations were . . . distorted.”

  “That does explain a great deal. Normally, baron’s daughters don’t stoop to speak to my sort.”

  “Have you met many baron’s daughters then?” she asked.

  “Just your friend Will.”

  “Willa is the daughter of a duke.”

  “Which is obviously very different. Dukes and their daughters are notoriously gracious to outlaws.” Robyn shifted her weight to lean against the tree, and Marian fought an impulse to push her up against the trunk and press her lips to hers. The strength of the desire left her out of breath. She hid it behind a feigned interest in a passing butterfly.

  “That reminds me. I still haven’t repaid you for your help.”

  “And as I told you, I do not require payment,” said Robyn.

  “Is there nothing I can give you?” Marian raised her eyes to meet Robyn’s as she spoke. The intensity she found there stole the ground from under her, and she floated, tethered to the earth only by the amber green of Robyn’s irises.

  “Perhaps there’s something.”

  She could not tell if Robyn’s voice was getting softer, or if the sound of her heart hammering was simply drowning it out. “Name it, and it’s yours.”

  Robyn’s lips parted as if she were about to speak, and then she gave her head a slight shake and looked down. The broken eye contact left Marian reeling.

  “Name it,” she repeated.

  Robyn stared into the forest. Marian caught her hand in frustration, desperate to know what Robyn had decided not to say, and the outlaw’s eyes once more met hers. This time, the green had turned the dark of pines in shadow.

  “I would like to know you better, Marian.”

  Her fingers tightened around Robyn’s. Those words could mean so much, and also so little.

  “Marian?” A voice called her name from across the river.

  “God’s teeth,” she swore, and Robyn laughed. Marian hadn’t heard her laugh before, and a molten glow spread out from her chest to fill her body.

  “You should get back,” said Robyn.

  “I know. But I—” She broke off. She wanted to say too many things, and there was too little time. Instead, she leaned in and pressed her lips to Robyn’s cheek. Her kiss brushed the corner of Robyn’s mouth, and Marian pulled away before her body betrayed her.

  “I’d like to know you, too, Robyn Hood,” she said as she slid through the willow curtain and darted back into the river.

  • • •

  Her father’s summons came as a relief from Emmeline’s moods. The guardsman Gregor escorted her on her ride back to Nottingham, and while Marian suspected that he, too, was glad to be out of the shadow that had fallen over Harcourt in Willa and Alanna’s absence, neither of them mentioned it. Neither did they mention the looming prospect of war or the tax that Harcourt could not afford to pay. They spoke instead of the heights of wheat and rye and the first of the ripening plums, speculating about the harvest to come and the prospect of midsummer.

  “Did you ever go to the bonfires?” she asked him, observing his white mustache out of the corner of her eye. It twitched in a smile.

  “I did a great many things in my youth,” he answered. “I’ll answer for some of them in heaven, but not to you.”

  Marian laughed, delighted at the image of a younger Gregor courting anyone, let alone someone who was now as old as he was, perhaps stooped and hook nosed and still dreaming of summers past. It was a far more pleasing prospect than what lay before them or behind.

  “You should stay away from the fires,” he said, fixing her with a serious look.

  “I doubt I’ll be given a choice.” Dancing around the mid-summer bonfires wasn’t something the sheriff’s daughter or Emmeline’s handmaid would be allowed, even if she’d wanted to go. Still, the idea of total heathen abandonment had its appeals, especially when she thought about Robyn. She replayed the conversation they’d had the day before as she rode, remembering the feeling of Robyn’s cheek beneath her lips.

  Her smile faded as the forest road brought them out into the fields and pastures surrounding Nottingham. She didn’t know why her father had summoned her back to the city, but she had a feeling it was not for the pleasure of her company.

  “Ease up on those reins,” Gregor said.

  She looked down at her hands. They gripped the reins with white knuckles, and her horse tossed her head uncomfortably at the pressure on her mouth. She relaxed her hands and patted the horse’s neck. “I’m sorry, girl.”

  A few people hailed them as they approached the city gates. Marian didn’t recognize any of them. She hadn’t spent much time in Nottingham since her childhood, and most people didn’t equate her with the seven-year-old child clutching her father’s hand at her mother’s funeral.

  Her father lived just beneath the castle. Here, the winding refuse-clogged streets gave way to wider avenues lined with the houses of the wealthy. Even the chickens looked plump and content as they scratched through piles of manure for seeds.

  “I’ll be at the Stag’s Head,” Gregor said as she dismounted and handed her mare to the freckle-faced boy who had appeared the moment they halted. The last time she’d been here the stable hand was Tomas, a sullen youth with a stutter who had a way with animals that made up for his recalcitrance. Freed from her mare, she stared at the oak door of her father’s house, gathering her courage. At last, she raised the bronze knocker and let it fall.

  “Marian,” said Eliza, the straight-backed housekeeper with an iron jaw. “We’ve missed you.”

  She allowed herself to be led inside the hall and into the sitting room, where the housekeeper offered her a glass of wine and fussed over her hair. “You’ve been out in the sun too much,” she scolded her, patting her cheek. “And your gown. Surely Emmeline can afford to dress you in something a little more elegant?”

  Marian had worn her simplest dress, a pale blue riding skirt without embroidery that did little to draw the eye. There were only a few reasons her father would have called her back to the city, and she had no intention of making herself any easier to marry off. She sipped her wine and looked around the room. He’d added a new tapestry since she’d left: a hunting scene, purchased to flatter the prince. Real beeswax candles adorned the sconces instead of rush lights, and she had just stood to examine the illuminated manuscript on the shelf when the housekeeper returned to tell her that her father was ready to receive her.

  The climb to his study no longer carried the joy it had when she was a child, at last allowed by her nursemaid to visit her father at his work. She felt herself growing smaller with each step.

  “Marian,” he said when the door opened to admit her. He looked her up and down, his gaze critical, and motioned for her to stand before him.

  The sheriff of Nottingham embodied his office almost as much as the office embodied him. Social class dictated he could not wear the finery of the upper nobility, but the quality of his clothes and the silver ornaments adorning his desk spoke of his wealth and the privileges his position afforded him. His dark gold tunic was embroidered with leaves, and his belt, or at least what was visib
le beneath his stomach, bore intricate details of boar and stag. Marian looked into her father’s eyes and tried not to shudder.

  She loved her father. That was part of what made it hard to look at him. His eyes no longer saw faces, only coins stacked where loved ones used to be. He could measure a person’s worth by the way they tested the wind, and he had an unusual knack for bringing criminals to justice—or at least offering large enough rewards for those who turned them in and harsh enough punishments for those who didn’t that the criminals appeared outside his doorstep one way or another.

  “You look as though you’ve been out in the fields,” he said, his eyes lingering on her hands. “I sent you to Emmeline to learn how to be a lady, not to work like a mule.”

  “Yes, father.”

  “Do you please her?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Good. Do what you can to coax her back into society. I want as many eyes on you as possible before the winter, and with Willa of Harcourt out of the way, you’ll shine next to her. Do you need a new wardrobe?”

  She adjusted the fold of her riding skirts to hide the spasm of anger that twisted her face, along with the budding hope. Had he changed his mind about her betrothal? “No, father, but I did not wish to ruin a nice gown on the road.”

  “Any trouble with bandits?” When she shook her head, he gave a satisfied nod. “Then they’ve not gotten that bold yet.”

  “Are there many outlaws in the forest?” Marian pitched her voice as sweetly as possible.

  “There are always outlaws in Sherwood. Vermin. Every now and then they need exterminating, but a few rats here and there are to be expected.”

  Robyn is no rat, she thought, keeping her face smooth. “Of course.”

  “I have a question I need to ask you, daughter,” he said, folding his hands and leaning toward her. She swallowed. “You spoke with the victor of the archery contest, did you not?”

  “I did.”