by Sue Wilson
Thea felt his narrowed eyes penetrate her, study her, and dare her to rebut him. "Perhaps it is only because I have not been sufficiently tested, my lord." She gazed back at him with equal purpose, wondering why she should be so tested now, when her task was nearly complete.
"You see there," he said in a low, hypnotic voice. "Honesty. A kind of foolhardy courage. And skill whose measure is my very survival. There is little more I could ask, beyond your personal devotion, which may yet come in time." His fingers moved to touch her cheek, then curled into a fist as if he reconsidered and checked the gesture with an iron will. "As much as it pains me to say it, occasionally Gisborne does stumble over an inspired thought."
"My lord?" she asked, the full intent of the Sheriff's plan coming to her in a flash of unwelcome insight. He had plotted, every unstinting word of praise, his uncharacteristically humble thanks, probably even his kiss, all calculated to arrive at this end.
"I require your continued attendance as my personal surgeon. You shall stay."
"I shall not!" she responded without thinking, then shut her mouth at once over the indignant retort. "The villagers have come to depend on me," she said in a more placating tone. "I can hardly leave them when there are any number of skilled physicians to whom you could turn. If not in Nottingham, then surely in London-"
"I don't need you to provide a list of referrals!" He gritted his teeth over the angry remark and dismissed his outburst with a sharp exhale. "I have great need of your help. There is no one here competent to replace you. If it matters, I will pay you handsomely."
"As I've already said-"
"And you mustn't let your feelings for me stand in the way. There are my troops and my household staff to consider, not to mention the plague of citizenry who pound at the castle door day and night, dripping with all manner of foul suppurations and endless petitions for help. What are these people to do? Thea...Thea...." He circled her upper arm with a grip that made no pretense of gentleness and pulled her against him.
The sound of her name was a warm breath against her neck and ear, but she tensed beneath his hands.
"I need your allegiance!" he demanded in a harsh whisper.
She shook her head, unable to speak. Surely Nottingham knew that a deadly partisanship was burning like brushfire out of control through the shire, and that he and a dwindling number of supporters were encircled by the flames. She felt something akin to sympathy for his plight, yet she had always stood safely outside the ring of fire-she shuddered to think how safely-and she would never willingly step into Nottingham's self-made hell.
She braced herself against the sound of urgency in his voice and met his eyes squarely, unblinking, knowing he read her silence as refusal. The grip around her arms tightened.
"A promise of fealty would be so much more civilized than having to bind you to me with threats," he said, his manner subtly changed, hardened.
"Then send for me when it becomes necessary, when you or one of your people requires it. I will make available any remedy or skill I have-"
"A half day's journey from the castle? I want you here!"
She twisted futilely, her arm captured in the strong clasp of his hand, his closeness worse than any captivity. Like a wild animal, trapped, she felt desperation fray the edges of her patience.
"That is quite impossible." She lifted her chin and forced a cool hostility to calm her shaking limbs. "You said you valued my honesty? Perhaps you would hear more of it. I don't care for your methods, Lord Nottingham. What cowardice is it that sends your cousin and your men to accost me in the fields, to search-no, ransack-my home without cause? With what kind of presumptuous, overblown sense of importance did you force me to leave my home to come here, to be locked within the confines of this room day and night, to tend you and be intimidated, to have my every remedy challenged? Take this, Lord Sheriff, as an honest statement: My obligation to you is finished. I am done with Nottingham Castle. And I have most certainly spent my last evening in your chamber being plied with soft words and gentle caresses, only to find you believe you have somehow bought me."
"I told you I would pay you a fair price...whatever your going rate is-"
"My allegiance is not for sale! Nor am I your serf to be ordered about and maltreated." She lowered her eyes to his hand, still painfully constricting her arm, then confronted him again. Her voice lowered, and she framed her words in as much restraint as her defiance would bear. "And I am not your physician."
In the next instant, she saw the furious contortion of his dark features, his mercurial anger strained to the limits, boiling over into wrath. "My methods are not yours to question! And your obligation to me-"
He glowered at her with malevolent temper. "Damn you, woman, I am Sheriff! My word is law in this shire. I will not have a common peasant, a woman-"
A sharp rap sounded against the door, and nailed boots scraped against the timber floor.
"I will not have-not have-" The Sheriff fired the words at her in rapid succession until the annoying distraction at the door begged his strained attention. "Yes, what is it?" he yelled, not even bothering to look at the intruder.
Gisborne stepped forward from the shadows, milky-gray eyes taking in the scene in protracted silence. "You've trouble below, as well," he said finally.
The Sheriff released Thea quickly and stepped away from her.
"Baron Monteforte and his party were ambushed in Sherwood. His son, I fear, is dead. The Baron himself took a quarterstaff to the jaw and belly, and was forced to part with a sizable purse of silver. I'd be hard pressed to say which loss he feels more," Gisborne said, apparently undisturbed by the furor he'd interrupted or the tidings he bore. "The man's in a rage that is fair shaking the timbers of the great hall. He's demanding recompense, which is actually the least of your worries, and a quick, preferably brutal end to Sherwood's resident expert in thievery."
The Sheriff frowned and turned on Thea, pointing an accusing finger at her as if, somehow, the entire incident were her fault. "No woodsmen in Sherwood?" he said with a snarl, reminding her of the lie she now realized was terribly naive, if not altogether inept. To Gisborne, he said, "Tell the Baron I am sending my personal physician to look after whatever injury was done to his oversized gut, and regrets she can do naught for his son."
"My lord, I beg to remind you-" Thea began.
The Sheriff spun around, his robe hissing about him like a dusky whirlwind, his eyes narrowed to threatening, livid slits. "That was not a request! See to the bastard!"
He turned away again, the expanse of his back signaling an end to the debate. Thea noted with quiet horror that beneath his bowed head, his shoulders shook with ill-contained rage, and he clenched, loosened, and clenched his fists spasmodically beneath the full, fur-lined sleeves of his robe.
"It's a common mistake, peasant," Gisborne murmured to her. "You misunderstand your options." His smile was cruel and leering, and accomplished nothing more than to wash Thea with an icy realization: if the Sheriff of Nottingham had ever given her a choice, it was an illusion and nothing more. To think she could refuse him was fantasy.
One of the armed house guards approached, his hand hovering over the sheathed dagger at his waist as if Thea posed a far greater threat than she felt capable of, as if he would indeed have relished such a threat. Thea felt drained of strength and any resistance to fight, and not nearly suicidal enough to argue further with the quietly seething, brown-robed figure whose adamant posture offered no compromise.
She glanced from Nottingham's back, bent oddly in defeat despite the victory his cruel power had won for him, to Gisborne, who had barely managed to camouflage his amusement at his cousin's predicament with a look of mild disinterest. In that moment, it was impossible to know which of the men she despised more.
Finally, her glance rested on the guard who waited to escort her to the great hall and the hapless Monteforte. She swirled around, gathered her threadbare skirts about her with as much dignity as she could summon, an
d marched from the room.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"Come, sweet thing."
Baron Monteforte patted a well-cushioned knee and brushed aside the two hounds that swarmed his ankles. "Sit down and comfort me, wench. This day's been damnably long, and the heat as stifling as ever in the forest-hell-hole that it is."
The portly, white-haired noble wiped the perspiration from his upper lip, then crooked a chubby, bejeweled finger beneath Thea's braided doeskin girdle and dragged her onto his lap. "You know of it, do you? Sherwood, I mean. Or are you innocent of the ways of the wild?"
Thea brushed his too-familiar hand from her hip. "I know the wood, Sir."
She disliked the man immediately, not so much for his coarse fondling, which she fended off expertly, as for his cold-hearted reaction to his son's death. The lifeless body of young Monteforte had arrived draped over his sorrel mare, a single, gray-feathered arrow protruding from his back. Without sentiment, the Baron had abandoned his son's corpse to the bailiff and a goodly number of curious onlookers and made his way to the great hall, trumpeting his need for ale and a leech, in that order.
"Then you know the ilk of felon who inhabits that place," Monteforte continued, trapping Thea's hand in his own. "That Sheriff, damn him, absolutely useless to preserve law and order-what good is the man? I tell you, the king chose poorly when he put Nottingham in charge of this garrison. In more ways than one."
He chuckled as if his words were privately amusing. "Not that it matters now, of course. The Lionheart is as good as dead."
"I would hope not, my lord." Thea pulled away, but the baron wrapped his hands in her skirts and tucked two fingers beneath her girdle.
"Ah, can it be? One who is unaware of her Sheriff's allegiances? It cannot remain so for long, my dear. Not with Prince John practically at Nottingham's gate, and he and the Sheriff as tight as a dog and his tick. Cut of the same devious cloth, the two."
"I would not know, my lord."
"Clever, my dear. Play the innocent. It will fare you better, all told." The baron wheezed with impatience, then scanned the hall once more. "Damn it all, where is the man? He'd not keep de Stradley waiting like this or that miserable Earl of Huntingdon. God's teeth, but the man is a sore on the backside of the shire!"
"I fear the Sheriff is indisposed, my lord, and audience with him quite impossible. Perhaps on the morrow-"
"Nay, wench. I'll see him now or set my dogs on the bastard!" He slammed his fist down, and Thea used the opportunity to scurry off his lap. "Christ, if the barons cannot trust him to be hospitable, how can we trust him with a single farthing? He'll probably lose what tax silver he collects-if he doesn't spend it on himself first. Damn my eyes if it will ever see Lackland's purse!"
Lackland's purse? Was not the tax money bound for the Exchequer and King Richard's ransom? Thea frowned, then quickly smoothed her expression into the innocent one the baron seemed to prefer. "The Lord Sheriff is abed, Sir-"
"And when is he not?" Monteforte snarled. "Swyving his bevy of whores when-" Suddenly his jaw dropped open, chins folding into the fur trim of his tunic.
Thea felt the heat of a presence behind her. Turning slowly, she saw the Sheriff's somber-robed stillness and flint-hard features giving disrepute to her every word. He was ashen, as if the exertion to put in an appearance in the great hall had required a surfeit of strength, but in the single instant their eyes met, Thea knew she dared make no comment on his pallor or weakness.
"Ah, at long last, Nottingham," the baron carped. "I was finding conversation difficult with this peasant. Not one of your castle women, is she? Where's your leech? Your surgeon? What was his name?"
"Rotting on Sherwood's floor, at last report."
"Then your scribe, someone literate, someone...clean." The baron wrinkled his bulbous nose in disgust, dismissing Thea with a flick of his hand.
"My scribe is with the books, Monteforte, where his true talent lies. Making reasonable sense of the dwindling silver in the castle coffers, which, he informs me, are still minus the contribution of Wythestead taxes."
The baron bristled, obviously offended, but Nottingham dismissed the delinquent taxes with a shrug and a wan smile, apparently satisfied that the reminder had given him a position of dominance with which to handle Monteforte's complaints.
"She's more than adequate," he continued, indicating his opinion of Thea without looking at her.
"Then your standards are slipping. Where did you find her, for God's sake? Pick her out from the remains of Gisborne's last village rampage? There's not a soft spot on her. Peasant stock, Nottingham. Not a day out of the fields, I'd wager."
"She is my physician. And skilled in her trade."
"Your-"
"There is the matter of your son," the Sheriff interrupted, his voice as smooth and dangerous as cut glass. "My physician will see to his body, you will stay the night, and I shall have some of my men accompany you on your return to Wythestead on the morrow. My regrets, Baron. That Sherwood is teeming with the lawless is of no small concern to me." His hand strayed unconsciously to his side.
"Then I would ask what you intend to do about it," Monteforte huffed. "I've been robbed-"
"Gisborne's patrols are ever vigilant. Perhaps if you could give me the precise location of your attack-"
"Hard by Edwinstowe. Near the old gristmill."
"And the number of your attackers?"
"Impossible to say. Five. Six. A dozen. They were all over the place, and in the mayhem-"
"Faces, then? Any inkling as to their identities? A description? Anything?"
"Well, it was Locksley, of course. It had to be. Who else-? Besides," the baron continued, "there was that other one. His companion. The big one. That red-bearded oaf."
"You saw him?"
"That one, yes. The others...who can tell? The wood is positively crawling with the vermin. Damn you, Sheriff, there will be order in this shire, if Lackland must enforce it himself!"
Thea was certain she saw the Sheriff start, saw something break behind his well-guarded mask before he carefully pieced his composure together again. He smiled, a glint of ice and silver striking in dark, humorless eyes.
"If you must speak treason, Monteforte, perhaps you could squawk in more discreet surroundings."
"Why, you officious hypocrite! And you call yourself his man-"
"I know this outlaw," Nottingham continued, obliterating the baron's words. "We'll raise the bounty on his head. Post it in Nottingham Square and in Edwinstowe and-"
He paused and cast a brief, sidelong glance in Thea's direction. "Hathersage, isn't it? Fifty gold pieces for the capture of John Little, that he be remanded into my custody, preferably alive. Pity. I believed the man to be a mere tax evader, not unlike yourself, dear Baron. Locksley has him treading more dangerous waters to be wanted in the death of your sole heir."
The Sheriff turned stiffly to Thea. "You will see to the preparation of the body? His name was Hugh. Hugh Monteforte. Nineteen years of age. Am I correct, Baron? And to be wed at Michaelmas, I believe."
His gaze lingered on her, heavy with meaning, and she matched it with strained silence. What could she say in defense of outlaws she did not allow existed? What could she say in defense of murder?
Thea fled the answer she found in Nottingham's hardened face, her thoughts torn and scattered. When she was certain she could not bear his scrutiny a moment longer, he spoke again, sternly, as if she had not heard him the first time.
"Your aid, Thea. Might I count on it?" A question, perhaps a plea. But one that rang with the authority of an order.
She nodded, numbed by confusion and doubt, and found herself bracketed by a pair of armed guards prepared to escort her.
"But what of my purse?" The baron's demanding caterwaul continued as she turned to leave.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the Sheriff approach the baron, a thin look of forbearance tightening his lips into a grim smile. "What of your taxes, Monteforte?"
; ~*~
The door thudded shut behind the Sheriff, and for a moment, the silence of his chamber offered a rare, tantalizing peace. Nottingham rubbed his brow and gazed into the distance, absorbed in sullen introspection.
Damn Monteforte! Did Sherwood not offer enough woes without this latest debacle? To have traveled the Great North Road with so few soldiers was a witless thing to do. Why in Satan's name had the baron not brought more men or sent ahead for a properly armed escort?
"A spirited bit of trouble." Gisborne moved from the dark obscurity of a nearby corner, candlelight glinting off his sallow skin.
"Monteforte?"
"Your...surgeon." Hoisting himself upon the oaken table, Gisborne reached for the bowl of fruit in the center. He crunched noisily into an apple, the sound shattering what was left of the Sheriff's concentration. "Is she worth the risk?"
"She intrigues me."
"You have a castle full of wenches. Let one of them intrigue you."
The Sheriff's gaze skimmed over Gisborne with cautious suspicion. He remembered the man's bold welcome of Thea in the bailey, the way his hands had taken such shameless license with her. Gisborne was as much a fool as he to think he could tame the witch-woman into submission.
"Concerned for my safety, Cousin? She has saved my life."
"That may be. But then she was free to go, to return to Sherwood with whatever guilty secrets she acquired in your bedchamber, and now...." Gisborne shrugged. "Now she is trapped. You've left her no way out. Best be wary. She'll be more dangerous caged and cornered."
The Sheriff's brow arced as he recalled the tenderness of the woman who had held him through the night and the vitriolic she-wolf she'd become in the light of day. He had dealt with reluctant women before, had refined a manner of seduction and coercion that rarely failed him, and this creature seemed impervious to it, to him.
Damnable species! He was far safer in the cloistered green of Sherwood than imprisoned in Nottingham Castle with this woman. And yet she was what no other dared to be. A thing not so easily won. A challenge. Someone whose resistance he could unravel one touch at a time.
