had mastered each new skill a tiny bit faster than he had, and not once had he resented her for it. She could not imagine drawing a bow again without fear and grief choking her.
How could she fulfill her duty to the people of Locksley? It wasn’t a legal duty, not anymore—she was no longer their future Lady. But she’d been Robin’s betrothed for so long that she felt Locksley was a part of her soul as much as her father’s own lands. And Robin would want her to make sure all was well until he came ho—She caught herself and made her thoughts cold and still.
The town was as bustling as ever, gray wisps rising from a few chimneys despite the warm day. The smell of wood smoke mixed with the smell of burning coal in the smithy, almost masking the aroma of blackberries and baking dough coming from Gisla’s house. Laurie, whose difficult birth Marian had assisted in years ago, when she was little more than a child herself, was a lad of seven now—she spied him chasing a cluster of chickens down one of the laneways, trying to herd them back toward his parents’ house. A herd of cows lowed in the distance, gently stirring their comments into the hum of the summer insects in the air.
Everything was as it ought to be, as it ever was. Except that it wasn’t. It could never be again, because Robin was dead.
Marian tugged on Jonquille’s reins and veered away from the town, taking the long way around toward the Locksley manor house. She could not quite bear to face the townspeople, not yet. She knew they’d want comfort from her, assurances despite the death of their Lord—or, worse, they’d want to give her sympathy. She wanted none, and had none to offer.
Guilt slid like rancid oil into her stomach, for Robin would want her to help them. But she could not make herself go.
During Robin’s absence, the private side of the manor house lay mostly empty. Most of the servants had families in town who they lived with when their services weren’t required, though a few lived at the house full-time. There was the groundskeeper, who lived in a cottage behind the house, and the steward, Bellden, who had quarters belowstairs and oversaw the rest of the staff when the house was fully occupied. She shrank from the idea of confronting them. The door would be barred, Marian knew, but she’d snuck in and out of Robin’s house so many times in her life that she automatically made for the first-floor dining room, where one of the shutters that allowed air to circulate during the heat of evening meals was loose. Robin knew of the problem but had never mentioned it to Bellden or to any of his staff. It was the easiest, quickest route for Marian to enter undetected. She left Jonquille to lip at the dandelion and meadowsweet growing in the lee of the manor walls and continued on foot.
Marian had only gone once or twice to the house since Robin had left to fight at the King’s side. While much of it still bustled with life, too much a fixture of the town to be abandoned completely, she hated to see any of the rooms dark and empty, for it had been a second home to her as a child, and her mind painted the walls with the glow of beeswax candles. It made her long to rip the dust covers off the furniture to let it breathe and live again.
But as she shimmied her way through the low, broad cutout into the hall, she felt a sense of calm and quiet settle over her. She replaced the shutter behind her and rose to her feet, breathing the still air and the smell of dust. The long table and its chairs were all stacked in the corners, the tapestries missing from the walls. She drifted from the hall into the gallery, passing the suit of armor worn by Robin’s grandfather, feeling it watch her, ghostlike, through the ethereal drape of its shroud of linen.
The whole house watched her, unmoved, until Marian began to feel she was the ghost—no more than a restless spirit, glancing from room to room, the veil between worlds too thick for her to see the life and vitality that ought to be here in this house she’d loved since she was a little girl. She could see only pallor, and stillness, and