arm there, holding her against him. She could only run, but there were guards outside her door, and a castle of guards beyond them, and Gisborne somewhere among them, and she knew, with the kind of certainty that only came with the most irrational of thoughts, that if he saw her face in this moment, he would see all her secrets.
She had to flee. To fly.
Marian had one leg over the sill of the window before she stopped, pulled one breath back toward sanity by the sight of the drop to the courtyard below. She froze. She waited. And then, slowly, shaking, she dragged herself back inside the room.
She picked up the note, which she’d dropped in her rush for the window, and looked at it again.
Alan, she thought, feeling distant and pale within her own mind. Alan knows how to read and write. He was “Robin” once before, and he knows I am he.
Elena would have gone to find him and the others as soon as she could get out of the house upon their return to Edwinstowe. Even if the men had not leaped at the prospect of rescuing Marian, Elena would not have let them wait for a Robin Hood who couldn’t come. Neither would Alan, now that he knew the truth.
They would come for her, and Gisborne would stop them. And they would die.
Gisborne would kill Robin Hood after all.
Marian carefully leaned down and placed the note in the fireplace, where the remnants of the wooden cup smoldered. She waited to make sure the parchment had turned to ash, and then she went to the night table, where rested a few of the letters Gisborne had brought for her. She picked up one of the pages and folded it until only the blank space showed, and then carefully retrieved a piece of charcoal from the fireplace.
Carefully, her heart a stone, she wrote:
Gisborne—
I think she would have married you, if not for me.
—Robin Hood
She placed the note carefully upon her untouched bed, where it could not be missed. She went to the window, took off her shoes, and tossed them to the courtyard far, far below. Before they struck the cobblestones, Marian slipped out the window, finding minute toeholds in the sheer limestone, and began to climb down.
THIRTY-SEVEN
THE HOUR WAS LATE, but not so late that the courtyard was abandoned. Guards prowled the gates and the doors, their numbers greater than they had been during the council meetings. Marian watched them from the shadows as she retrieved her shoes and stamped to bring circulation back to her numbed toes. The castle entrance nearest Marian’s window was conspicuously unguarded, as was the south gate. A clever outlaw might see the pattern of surveillance and make for those weak points—but a clever lawman might leave openings to tempt a would-be thief and abductor, lying in wait on the other side.
Gisborne’s precautions assumed Robin Hood would attempt to gain access to the castle as he had seemed to do before: by the doors, in disguise. While the usual detachment of guards patrolled the castle perimeter, none of them were looking up. No one had told them to keep an eye on the windows. Gisborne would surely deduce that Robin Hood had climbed the limestone wall and stolen Marian away via the window, once he came in the morning to find her missing and the guards at her door still in place. She wouldn’t be able to use the window again, that much was certain.
But Marian didn’t know if she was coming back.
She kept to the shadows, slinking along the outskirts of the courtyard until she could slip into the stables. Jonquille whickered in recognition as she picked up Marian’s scent, and Marian hurried to the mare’s side to stroke her nose and quiet her. She waited but heard no footsteps approaching to investigate the sound.
Marian saddled her in darkness, muscles quivering still from her climb. She had no disguise, nothing to protect her should someone spot her riding out, but the guards were focused on detecting someone trying to gain entry to the castle—not someone escaping. She led Jonquille slowly, suppressing the desire to simply mount and break into a gallop. The clipped, sharp tapping of hooves on cobblestone rang like the clanging of a bell in Marian’s ears, but when she paused after reaching the gate to the pastures, she could hear no sounds of pursuit.
She mounted, turning Jonquille toward the distant trees. The grasses in the field rippled