behind his ear. His skin had prickled all over at her touch, and had made him desperate to kiss her. He wished now that he had. He wished it with all of his heart and soul. But he had more to thank, with his heart and soul, that she had already left him to return to the princess’s tower when the two men had stepped out of the shadows and cornered him.
It had happened so fast, he had barely put a hand to his dagger when the blow to his head had knocked all of the fight and most of the sense out of him. He had been aware, in a dim, sickening sort of way, of being slung over a pair of shoulders and carried like a sack of flour down a few turns in the corridor. He remembered stairs and he remembered coarse laughter. He remembered being dumped on the floor hard enough to hit his head again, and when he had awakened, he had been bound hand and foot, blindfolded, and had a sour rag stuffed in his mouth.
The voices of Gallworm and Brevant had come later, as well as another drifting slide into blackness. Now he was fighting nausea, anger, and frustration in equal parts, chafing his wrists raw in an effort to loosen the ropes twisted around his wrists.
There was only one man in the castle Gallworm would address as master, and that one person had eyed him with a distinctly carnivorous hunger all through the evening meal. Robin was not a fool, nor was he completely naive. He had heard of men like Gisbourne who harboured secret perversions. He had even heard the rumours about King Richard, but having met the godlike warrior once, he had found it too horrific to believe.
Robin strained so hard to pull his knots apart, he could feel the sweat beading across his upper lip. He sawed his ankles back and forth, winning some slackness there, but whoever had caught and tied him had taken no chances in losing him.
He collapsed a moment, wheezing noisily through his nose. His back was up against a stone wall but he could find no rough edges, nothing that might snag or pick into the cords. His knife and falchion were gone, naturally. He had his teeth if he could get to them. And if he could get to them in time.
Surely someone was due to come out and check on him again. With sweat on his face and a heartbeat that banged like an ironmonger working on his anvil, he could not hope to trick the next clammy hand that poked and prodded.
A volley of muted laughter spurred Robin into a burst of furious activity. He stretched his arms down and rounded them as much as they would go in an effort to wriggle his hips through the loop they made. He got stuck halfway through and rolled hard enough to bang his knee on the wall, but he persevered, grunting, straining, sweating his hips, then his legs and feet through.
He tore at the blindfold first and tossed it aside, then uncorked the filthy gag from his mouth, hawking and spitting twice to rid himself of the spurious taste. He had guessed— correctly—that he was in a small room adjoining Gisbourne’s main quarters. It proved to be no larger than a hound’s room, and indeed, from the smell of the floor and stains in the corners, he half-expected to see the bristled face of a wolfhound standing guard over him.
Wary of the closed door only a few paces away, he brought his wrists to his mouth and started chewing on the knots in the jute, widening his visual search as he did so, hunting for anything that could be used as a weapon.
There was nothing. Not even a stick of furniture to break over someone’s head. The walls were bare stone with iron cressets bolted into the mortar. The room was lit by thick wax candles, not torches, one on either side of the doorway. The ceiling was high, rising in an arch that was probably continued in the main chamber. No door blocked the exit to the stairs, which were wide and well lit to ensure a safe descent. The upper reaches were naturally gloomier, with the walls and beams mossed with the ghostly weavings of a colony of spiders.
Robin was gaining some success with the knots when he heard a dull thud on the far side of the door. It