tool like any other. I serve the law, but the law is not always just. Speaking out against the landed nobility would earn me ridicule at best, or at worst a fate to match my father’s. The only way of effecting true change is to rise among them, by their own rules, until they cannot deny my right to stand where they do. Until I have my own lands to govern, my own world to shape as I wish it had been when I was a boy, and my father still lived.”
Marian looked at him across the pool of firelight, her cheeks hot from the flames, her fingertips numb and tingling. If he had not reclaimed the cup from her, she would have dropped it. “You’re not a rebel,” she whispered. “You want revolution.”
Gisborne’s eyes met hers for a long moment, registering her surprise, the warmth in her cheeks, the breathlessness of her voice. Then he glanced down, though he could not in that moment prevent the smile that transformed his face. No little wry twist of his lips, but a true smile that spilled across his features like dawn spreading across the forest. “My Lady,” he said in a low voice, “I believe that is the kindest thing you have ever said to me.”
Marian could think of nothing to say, so she was forced to dwell in the silence that stretched, beckoning and tempting, between them. She wanted to flee, to think of some carefully worded insult that would drive him away again, to tear open the shutters and let the cold shock her from this strange sympathy.
Use it, said a voice in her mind. Not Robin’s. Not her own. Something else entirely. Use him.
“Sir Guy . . . you speak of change, of unjust laws, of the hunger and oppression the people of this land face. How—how can you hate Robin Hood so very much, when you are fighting for the same things?”
Gisborne’s head snapped up. “The same things?” He barked a short laugh, gripping the cup so tightly Marian feared it would crack in his hands. “Is that how you see it?”
Marian felt her own ire rising in response, and could not entirely keep the heat from her voice. “He wants change as you do—he keeps none of his stolen wealth, he gives it to the people who need it. He’s helping them, that grain—”
“That grain was bound for market,” Gisborne interrupted. “Do you know why?”
“For coin,” Marian replied sullenly.
“Yes.” Gisborne’s eyes were narrowed, and chilly, but intent. “And do you know where the coin was bound?”
“For the Sheriff’s coffers.”
“For the King.” Gisborne’s contradiction was whip-sharp, and it drew Marian up short. “The amount of money it takes to feed an army in a foreign land—you cannot imagine it, Marian. I could not, had I not seen it for myself. Yes, the Sheriff takes his cut, and yes, he lives as comfortably as any man could want. But most of that coin is bound for the east, to feed the men dying at the King’s side.”
Men like Robin.
Marian swayed. It was as though the chair beneath her had become insubstantial, as if all the muscles in her body had ceased to function. As if, in another breath, she would melt away entirely.
Gisborne, oblivious to her sudden horror, rose restlessly from his chair and leaned against the stone wall above the fireplace, palm flat against the mantel. The other still held the cup, and he sipped at it absently. “Robin Hood is . . . a symptom. People would not rally so to a man who flouts the laws and traditions of a land if that land was not diseased already.”
He turned and saw Marian’s face, and his own shifted to reflect some measure of her emotion—though he could not know the reason for it. “For God’s sake, Marian,” he blurted, “do you think I don’t wish I could be their hero? You think I don’t wish I could put on a mask and a cloak and give food to those who need it, and see their gratitude and their admiration, feel some return for my service?” He drained the cup again and then, regarding it with sudden anger, he hurled it into the fireplace. The dregs of the wine sizzled and spat, and Gisborne braced himself with both hands against the stone, head down and hidden from Marian.
“Do you think,” he said, voice quieter and muffled, “that any man wakes in the morning and decides to take