shivering, and her body ached from the grueling bareback ride, and the weight of Robin’s cloak suddenly seemed heavy enough to drag her to her knees. She wanted to ask Gisborne why he’d brought her here, for she had expected a detachment of guards to emerge from the trees to arrest her on sight and drag her to Nottingham’s jails. But she waited.
Gisborne, still stroking his horse’s neck, broke the silence. “I serve the law.”
Marian took a step, abandoning the support of Jonquille at her side, so she could stand straight in the moonlight. “So you’ve said.”
“Whom do you serve, Marian?”
A dozen answers swarmed into her mind, and she dismissed them all. Robin of Locksley, said one voice. My own heart, said another. In the silence that followed, she thought with crystal clarity: I serve everyone.
Gisborne leaned his head against the horse’s neck, looking as if he were embracing darkness itself. “Shall I tell you the answer?” he asked.
“You’ll tell me I serve chaos.” Marian’s voice was taut.
Gisborne’s head rose, and she caught the glitter of dark eyes in the scattered, dappled moonlight. “I would have said justice.”
Marian’s heart was not so hardened as she’d thought. Her arm ached, and pain made it easier for tears to sting her eyes. She breathed sharply, willing them away, willing everything away. She needed nothing but to stand there, straight and tall, unfettered. “Then why are we enemies?”
Gisborne’s head dropped again. The horse raised a hoof and stamped, perhaps picking up on intangible cues from his rider’s body so close by. “Because the law will never be just. Perhaps it can come close—so close the line is hard to see. But laws are written by men, who are imperfect by nature, and justice belongs to something beyond the power of men.”
“I am not a man.” Sophistry, Marian knew. But the words came before she could stop herself.
Gisborne turned, and Marian’s skin prickled in a wave that swept over her as he looked at her. “A fact that escaped my notice for far too long.” There was something in his voice then, a softness almost like amusement. Marian realized why he’d brought her here, in darkness, alone. His control was not so complete as she had believed when he came to her home with threats and indifference. He needed the night to hide his face.
“Nevertheless,” Gisborne continued, “the law will see you hanged, man or woman. And so too everyone you love for helping you.”
Marian stood still, ignoring the tremble in her knees that warned her she was weakening, that she was not recovered enough for this. “You told me you admired Robin Hood. That you and he were not so different.”
“My feelings have no bearing on your fate.” Gisborne’s voice was cold again. “Even if I wished to spare you, the well of suspicion you have dug for yourself is too deep. Did you think all this time the Sheriff was content to simply oversee his council, ignorant and powerless? Every night I reported to him. Every night I told him my suspicions, the names and families and associates of the people I believed could lead us to Robin Hood. Every night I told him—” His voice stopped.
“You told him you suspected me.”
Gisborne’s silhouette shifted. “He knows what I knew. That you were connected to Robin Hood by some means, a bond I could not break. He believes, as I did, that you are . . . intimately involved with him.” He paused for breath. “He does not know how intimately.”
A breeze came and found its way beneath the edge of Marian’s hood, running its cool fingers along her clammy skin. She’d been right. She could have killed Gisborne, had she brought the dagger and found the right moment. But killing him wouldn’t have saved anyone.
“I thought your duty was to report all to your master.”
“Perhaps duty is no longer what drives me.” His voice cracked in a quick, bitter laugh. “I am changed, and not for the better.”
“If this is not who you wish to be, then turn back.” Marian’s words were flat, for she could not have taken her own advice—she could not have stopped being Robin Hood for anyone.
“I can’t.” His voice flared like tinder. “I am changed, Marian. Every move I made, Robin Hood was there ahead of me. Each attempt to catch him took me further from myself—he led me step by step until I found myself using the woman I loved as bait in a trap.”