Everything I Do: a Robin Hood romance (Rosa Fitzwalter Book 1)

by M. C. Frank

  Sir Hugh laughed harshly, and his laugh rang in the tense silence, sending chills down the men’s spines.

  “The Sheriff couldn’t wait,” Sir Hugh continued. “I was there, I remember it well, two years though it’s nearly been since then. I tried to reach him, to whisper in his ear to wait, but there was no time, he acted so quickly. Immediately he came at you with his dagger, straight for your heart. Then you were on the ground, and the Sheriff was bending over you and cursing loudly, the holy chapel ringing with profanities. When he stood up, shaking from head to toe, we all saw the reason.”

  Robin breathed in sharply, and Sir Hugh’s voice broke.

  “There she was, our sweet princess,” Sir Hugh said in a thick voice, looking at his boots, “dressed in all her finery, drenched in her own blood, the Sheriff’s dagger sticking from her heart. She’d fallen on the sorry thief, we discovered in horror, and her hair concealed the face of a coward, the one whose life she had saved, and who disappeared before we could lift her body from the floor. We did not know then whether this sudden turn of events was due to accident or calculation…”

  Sir Hugh turned his face aside, as though disgusted by the mere sight of Robin Hood. “I suppose your men had come to your rescue belatedly and drew you discreetly from the scene,” he spat at him. “No matter. All my thoughts were for her. I thought… I knew she was dead.”

  “No,” Robin muttered, his head in his hands, and he didn’t seem to be able to listen to any more after that. Still Sir Hugh went on with his tale, ignoring the tormented gulps of breath Robin was struggling to take in, like a drowning man.

  He looked about to break apart entirely, his entire body still as death, suspended in disbelief and horror at what he was hearing.

  “She lived, however,” Sir Hugh said. “She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t eat for months on end. And yet she lived. She suffered -still does, I’m sure, attacks of pain in her left side, unbearable torture of which none of you are worthy. And yet, she’s still loyal to her killers, to the men who left her to die on that cold chapel floor. Judge for yourselves this day whether you deserve her among you. Whether you deserve another chance at killing her in order to save your sorry lives.”

  Sir Hugh was finally done, and the men began to whisper excitedly to one another, eyeing Rosa with new-found respect. She noticed Robin get up on shaky feet and slip quietly away, but didn’t have time to see where he went, for Will Scarlet was beside her in a moment.

  “The day of the festival,” he began abruptly and she noticed his eyes shone strangely in the light of the fire. “When I was in the Sheriff’s dungeon, someone left a dagger next to me, a dagger that later would save my life. It was you.”

  She nodded, there was nothing else to do.

  “I thank you, mistress,” he said simply and knelt at her feet.

  “Don’t- don’t thank me,” she said quickly, horrified by his gesture. “Please. I was happy to be of service to you.”

  Will merely smiled and brought her hand to his lips.

  “You could have paid for that service with your life,” he said and his handsome face winced at the thought.

  “Still, that was what I chose to do,” Rosa insisted. “No need to thank me for that.”

  “Indeed there is,” Will said, refusing to release her fingers. “Even if you do not see it, I do. And,” he went on, gently retaining her when she would have gotten up, “furthermore, I find I wish to thank you for my master’s life.”

  “Do you think he…?” Rosa began to ask, but was interrupted by a resounding thunder that seemed to crash directly over their heads.

  They ran for shelter as the sudden rain began to pelt on them in torrents. Even though it was a short run to their makeshift rain shelter, and an even shorter wait until Little John could open its well-concealed entrance thickly concealed with rotten leaves and sticks, they were almost drenched when they finally stepped inside. It was a bit crowded, but they lit fires and prepared to make merry while they waited the storm out.

  They had been obliged to sleep in the earthen shelter before, and were not afraid of their confinement, however long, because for once they had something exciting to talk about, to wonder at and to exchange opinions on.

  “Where is the master?” Rosa asked a man who was sitting next to her.

  She was vigorously rubbing her arms to warm them and did not know exactly who it was she had posed this question to. As soon as she lifted her eyes, however, she almost jumped; for it was the only man in there she would have rather not ventured to talk to. It could not be helped now, of course, and it would be even worse to get up and leave. So she stayed, expecting his silence at best.

  When he answered she was surprised, and even more so when she found out there was not a trace of hostility in his voice.

  “I think he went to clear his head,” Julian told her. “I saw him galloping away on his horse, a couple of minutes before the rain began to pour. He’ll be back when he is drenched enough, I think,” he added with a smirk.

  Rosa didn’t know quite what to say to that, so she remained silent.

  Slowly the heat of the fires began to warm her, and someone passed her a pelt to wrap around herself. She would have liked to get up and away from Julian, maybe even say a few words to Sir Hugh, who sat sullenly in a corner, silent and pale. Indeed, she would have liked very well to have him know her opinion of his actions, but that seemed nearly impossible at the moment, for she would have to struggle to make her way through limbs and heads and laughing men’s bodies closely packed together in the close space.

  So she turned to Julian and asked him if he cared to share the pelt. He shook his head and said he was warm enough, but looked at her in a curious way, as if he was surprised at her kindness. They sat in silence for a while, not knowing what to talk about, and then he drew something from a pocket concealed in his tunic, his blond locks sending droplets of water to land on her arm.

  It appeared to be an object dangling from a roughly-tied piece of cord, perhaps in an effort to create a makeshift pendant.

  “Robin told me you heard the story -the story of my little sister, the other day,” he said.

  “I did,” she replied, “I overheard. I am sorry, I hadn’t meant to…”

  “He said you cried,” Julian interrupted her and his luminous eyes bore into hers with emotion.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he answered simply.

  She raised her eyebrows, thinking she had somehow misunderstood him and wondering whether he was mocking her again.

  “Thank you for crying for her,” he repeated. “Would you like to see her?”

  “See her?”

  “I have a miniature portrait of her, it was done when she was a child, before we set out on a journey that… that resulted in her death,” he pursed his lips and she wondered if she had heard of this story before, because it seemed vaguely familiar to her. “We lived in extreme poverty, but there seemed to be a particular reason for this miniature to be drawn and to travel with us -two of them actually, an original and a copy- although I never exactly understood its importance. I was little more than a child myself then, you see.”

  Rosa listened attentively to his story, but he seemed to have forgotten her presence, to have been transported to a place in the past.

  “Anyway, d’ you want to see her?” he asked gruffly after a brief silence.

  “I would be honored,” Rosa answered carefully.

  “This is the original,” he said and his voice trembled with pride.

  She opened the pendant delicately and gasped when she saw the picture inside.

  It couldn’t possibly be. She looked at it mesmerized, her eyes watering, her mind numb with the all the possible explanations.

  For the portrait of the little red-haired girl with the laughing emerald eyes, so like Julian’s own, was the same as the one that had hung in her own room at the castle for as long as she could remember.

&n
bsp; She blinked, and looked again, concentrating on every detail, trying to find even one difference, trying to make herself wake from the dream. But there were no differences to discover, there was no dream to wake from. The portrait that hung in a wall in her old bedchamber at the castle and this one were so much alike as only an original and its copy could be. They were the same portrait. They were the same girl.

  She gasped and immediately winced at the familiar throbbing at her side.

  “Are you unwell?” Julian asked with genuine concern, and at that precise moment, she recognized him.

  She recognized him from her memories, she recognized him from her dreams. It was he.

  And he was real; she hadn’t merely imagined him, the tall, lean boy with the golden hair and the strong arms. She hadn’t simply conjured him up because of her loneliness and danger, he wasn’t an imaginary prince who would one day come and rescue her from her unhappiness. For a long time she had imagined the boy to be a dream, a strange apparition her mind had made up in times of unbearable pain, in order to keep itself from going mad.

  But he hadn’t been a dream. He had been real all along, and he was here now before her.

  She opened her lips to tell him, and the pendant slipped from her fingers.

  With an oath he bent down to retrieve it.

  Immediately his eyes hardened with distrust and coldness.

  The illusion was gone. The boy from her dreams was nowhere to be seen.

  I was wrong after all, she thought, relieved, but somewhere deep down inside she was disappointed. Maybe she was so tired and anxious that she was imagining things. Such coincidences simply didn’t occur in real life. He couldn’t be the boy from her dreams, because that boy had never existed.

  It was an illusion born of pain and hurt, nothing more.

  Her breathing calmed, the pain subsided.

  “Forgive me for dropping it,” she said. “She was… beautiful,” she finished, for want of another word.

  “Women!” he cried bitterly, instead of another answer, “what did I expect? ‘Beautiful.’ Is outward beauty all you can see? Can’t you, for once, look deeper?”

  He turned his back on her and faced the wooden wall, cradling the little wooden square in the palm of his hand like a little boy.

  The illusion came again, and went, like a recurring dream.

  It was all the same to her, however, because she couldn’t have answered him just then. She had just realized that the fact remained, beyond certainty, beyond the haze of imagination or dream: the fact that the little girl in the portrait was she.

  More than an hour passed and Robin wasn’t back yet.

  The men had settled down to sleep. Even Sir Hugh, lulled by the warmth of the fire as well as the spicy wine Robin’s men graciously offered him, and exhausted by his exertions, had finally let his guard down and was fast asleep in his little corner. The men had tied him for safety and then promptly forgotten about him.

  Rosa got up and slipped out into the cold rain, unnoticed by anyone.

  She quickly saddled her horse and set out into the dark forest, through paths she knew so well she could find even blindfolded. Every so often, a bolt of lightning would lighten up the glistening trees and then she would raise her horse in its hind legs and glance quickly around for a glimpse of Robin or his huge black gelding. She couldn’t see any sign of him anywhere, but she knew where she would find him, with almost certainty.

  At the eastern edge of the forest there was a steep cliff, where the trees cleared for a few yards before the ground catapulted into the rocky abyss below. It was Robin’s favorite place of refuge from sadness and anxiety, but she had only heard of its whereabouts and never actually been there. Trying to follow the description someone had once given of the place, she finally reached it some time later, dripping and chilled to the bone.

  Sure enough, before she could recognize the actual place in the thick darkness of the forest, she saw Robin’s black beast, neatly tied to a tree.

  She dismounted and tied her own horse next to it.

  As she approached the cliff she could just make out Robin’s silhouette against the backdrop of the midnight-blue sky, his tall and narrow frame drooping, waves of grief and desperation almost visibly drifting from him. The raindrops in his hair glistened and his arms hung clenched tightly at his side, his muscles flexing beneath his soaked, clinging tunic. He was standing exactly on the edge, and she feared to call to him. She stayed and watched him until he looked over his shoulder, sensing her gaze, and saw her.

  He knew her at once, even though the night was black as a curse, and walked to her with a brusque step.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, angrily, as she knew he would. “Go back immediately.”

  “I wanted to see if you are well, master,” she answered, drawing back at his hostile tone.

  “Perfectly well, thank you,” Robin said, spitting raindrops that had nestled on his lips. “Just clearing my head. Thinking about your departure tomorrow, planning our journey.”

  “My -what?”

  “You are leaving tomorrow,” he replied immediately, in a matter-of-fact tone. “You are going to stay with our good friend, the Duke of Amsley. He’s a good man, he has supported me and my men for years, graciously giving us his gold and almost everything else that is in his power. I have also rendered him a service or two in the past, so he owes me in a way. You will live as the gentlewoman that you are there, and be taken care of. Don’t worry,” he added kindly, as an afterthought.

  “I am not leaving,” she said stubbornly.

  “Oh, I am afraid you must,” he said, without feeling. “The men are getting tired of you. And so am I.”

  It was spoken cruelly, and even though she knew it to be one more of his tricks, she found she couldn’t stand it. She stepped abruptly away from him and, before she knew it, he foot was slipping off the edge.

  She caught a glimpse of the gaping void beneath, and the next moment she felt herself sliding into it, its black mouth opening wide to swallow her. She tried to stop her fall, but there was nothing to hold on to, the grass wet and slippery beneath her thick boots.

  She had closed her eyes and prepared her body for the pain of the deathly impact, when Robin grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to the ground. Before she had even time to stand properly on shaking feet, he was dragging her to him and away from the edge, with a force that nearly knocked her breath out.

  “What are you doing?” he shouted. “Are you out of your mind?”

  He kept screaming oaths and curses and crushed her to his chest. And then his lips were on hers, his hands pressing into her hair, touching her hungrily.

  He was kissing her so hard it hurt.

  She tasted the rain on his lips, she tasted his desperation, his anger. His mouth traveled to her cheek, to her throat. He buried his head in her hair and his shoulders shook as he was gasping for air.

  She held him, threading her arms around his neck, holding on for dear life.

  “I understand why you’re angry,” she said.

  “Let me catch my breath a minute,” he choked against her ear, but she couldn’t stop once she had begun.

  “And I’m sorry I did not tell you,” she went on, “especially when you laid the story before me yourself, early on. But I didn’t want to make you feel guilty, as you do now.”

  He turned his head aside.

  “Don’t you see?” she said. “I would have died anyway. I couldn’t imagine living in a world where you didn’t exist.”

  He drew away at that and studied her face.

  Then he dropped his hands from her and she trembled with the piercing cold of his absence.

  “How am I to reconcile myself with what you did for me?” he quietly asked, tipping his head upwards as though he was directing his question to the dark skies. “How?” He repeated through gritted teeth, his Adam’s apple working.

  “Is sending me away a solution?” she asked gently.

  “It
is, somehow,” he answered. “For I cannot afford to have you put into any more danger, not after knowing what you have done, what you have been through. You deserve some respite after that, you deserve little red-headed children that are the picture of your beauty; you deserve a goose-feathered bed, fine dresses and jewels. You have done enough. I couldn’t let you do any more.”

  “I chose to do what I did, master,” Rosa said firmly, and not a little angrily. “No one, not even you, let me do it. I came to this forest by myself and I alone decided to stay. Forgive me, but I do not see how it is your decision where I chose to give my life and my… love.”

  “I am master of this forest, Stuart,” Robin said in a voice that shook slightly, “have you forgotten that?”

  “I have not forgotten, master,” she said. “It seems you have.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where would the forest and its men be now if you had died then? You know…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  He stood with his back to her and did not turn, but made an angry gesture.

  “So now you won’t tell me what you think?” he muttered through clenched teeth.

  “I will tell you,” Rosa said with a sigh. “Only you won’t like it.”

  “Try me.”

  “The first day I came to the forest dressed as Stuart, do you remember?”

  A snort answered her. As if he could ever forget!

  “You might have,” she murmured. “Anyway, can you imagine what my greatest fear was, what was my only reason for hesitation?”

  “Discovery.”

  “No, it wasn’t. Not fear that my father would find out, nor that you would discover that I was not a boy and feed me to the fire, like you were rumored to do to traitors.”

  At this he turned slightly, so that she could discern his profile.

  “‘Feed you to the fire’?” he raised an eyebrow.

  “There were tales,” she shrugged.