your head for claiming to be . . .” She waited, but still Gisborne didn’t speak, or move, or do anything but lie there still and cold as stone. “I have relatives in Aquitaine—I could send money. . . .”
Her voice petered out, and a trickle of alarm shivered down her neck, for Gisborne was still not moving. She dug one elbow into the mud and raised herself, shaking, so that she could look at his face.
His eyes were open, staring skyward with such empty serenity that Marian’s heart froze. Then his mouth opened, and he said in a hoarse, ruined voice, “I could kill you right here.”
Relief made Marian’s elbow slip, and she fell back against him, making him grunt irritably. “It’d make a waste of the trouble you’ve gone to.”
“Good God, Marian, how could you—” He had to stop to cough, but he was too tired to cough, so he just shook, and groaned.
Marian felt her jaw clench. “I knew if I jumped, you would jump.”
Gisborne’s hand moved to encircle her arm. “If you had waited half a breath longer—”
“You would’ve told me not to take the risk, that you’d hold them off while I escaped, that at least one of us might live—something like that?”
She lifted her head and saw that he’d abandoned his study of the overcast sky and was glaring at her. “I would’ve told you how much a fall from that height was going to hurt when you hit the water.”
Marian’s breath burbled out in a laugh, and she dropped her head against his chest. “It might take them a day, maybe two, to regroup and send men to Edwinstowe. Time enough to rest a little. We’ll give you a horse, and food, and—”
Gisborne’s arm tightened, squeezing her battered ribs, and the rest of Marian’s speech emerged as a breathless squeak. He grinned at that wordless victory, black eyes wicked and gleaming. “I’ve broken no laws, Marian.” He paused, considering. “None the Sheriff can prove, at any rate. At most, I lied to save the woman I love from an unjust sentence. I don’t think he can have me killed for that.”
Marian’s body had begun to warm, but with warmth came sensation, and she noticed a sharp, familiar burning at her shoulder. She squeaked again and gurgled, “Let me go—I think I’m bleeding again.”
Gisborne swore, releasing her so abruptly that she slid down into the muck again. He bent over her, peeling away the torn, sodden wool and linen so that he could inspect her shoulder. It was bleeding, but only sluggishly. It would scab once her skin dried. “Forgive me,” Gisborne muttered, frowning at the wound.
“For squeezing me, or for shooting me?”
Gisborne’s eyes flicked up, the twitch of his cheek acknowledging the point she’d scored. “Take one of each.” He smoothed the edge of her wet dress back away from the wound, and as he started to withdraw, Marian caught his wrist with a muted cry of alarm.
“Your hand!” Three of his fingers were swollen and blistered at the first knuckle, where a bowstring would sit. She’d seen such an injury before—she’d had such an injury before, more than once, when her enthusiasm for archery practice overtook her good sense.
“How was I to prove I was Robin Hood, if I could not shoot like him?” Gisborne muttered, trying to pull his hand away from her. “What did you think I was doing all that time before I came to arrest you?”
Marian cradled his hand in hers, conscious of heat rising into her face as her breath steamed the air between them. “Planning my death. Swearing revenge. Rallying your men. Leaving me to tortured purgatory for the pure pleasure of it.”
“That, too,” he acknowledged. He grimaced, and gave up trying to free his hand from her grasp. “I was practicing. For all the good it did.”
“That arrow through the Sheriff’s crest was beautifully shot,” she murmured dreamily, fingertips caressing his palm.
Gisborne muttered darkly, “I was aiming for his head.”
Marian found she had breath enough to laugh, and once she began, she could not stop—she laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks, until her breath tangled in her throat, until Gisborne, in rising alarm, sat up and lifted his hand to slap her. Instinct seized her muscles and she sat up too, swatting his hand away before it could connect.
Movement had sobered her, and she wiped her cheeks, searching for breath and watching Gisborne. She let her eyes linger, noticing details in his features she