on the rug by the hearth in her room.
The physician explained very carefully to Marian that she was having hysterical episodes of fear now that she’d lost the stability promised by her betrothal, that it was common for some women, especially those particularly dependent upon their husbands, to experience similar terrors in the wake of such a loss.
Marian didn’t see him again after that and knew her father had sent him away. She might have been foggy and confused from the sleeping draughts, but she’d seen the way her father’s face grew tighter and grimmer with each word the man spoke. She felt like laughing. Instead she began to weep, and soon she was asleep again.
She lost track of the days, but it was some time later that she sat with Elena, leaning against her knee as her maid brushed her hair—it was tangle-free, but the touch of her maid’s hands and the feel of the brush were soothing. And it was with a jolt of her heart that she remembered what had brought her to Locksley that day, and she sat bolt upright. “Elena!” Marian gasped, ashamed she hadn’t thought of it sooner, that she’d been so buried in her own grief while her maid attended her tirelessly. “Your brother—Will—”
Elena had tensed at Marian’s sudden shift, reaching for the bottle of herb-laced wine in case Marian was about to have another of her “episodes,” as the physician had called them. But she paused, swallowing. “No word, my Lady,” she said softly. But Marian could see the hope in her eyes. No word was good. No word meant they hadn’t found him. No word meant he might still be alive.
The jolt of realization had made Marian’s heart flip over, but she was able to take a few quick, sharp breaths, and the fear that usually came surging in after such a jolt faded. Though her shame at having forgotten her maid’s own woes burned, it was the first time she’d felt something other than panic or numbness.
After that Marian only took the draught to sleep at night, but for a few occasions when the panic returned. It always came from something innocuous, like working at her loom or visiting Jonquille in the stables. Only later would she realize that she’d been weaving foliage of the type of tree by which Robin had first kissed her; or that Jonquille had stamped her urgency to be ridden, for Marian usually took her at least once a week to Locksley town.
Marian tried to practice her archery, for—with the exception of Robin—standing before a target with a bow in her hands was the only thing that ever made her feel real, and alive, and herself. But her hands shook when they gripped her bow, and her thoughts could not settle. To shoot with abandon and precision required surrender, and she could not force her mind to quiet. Her arrows went wide of the mark most days and sometimes missed the target altogether, and she added one more fear to the sea of countless, nameless terrors in her heart: Have I lost this, too?
She joined her father at dinner but kept to herself and to Elena most days, and her father let her. But one afternoon she sought him out in his study, where he was poring over a stack of documents and muttering under his breath as he squinted and frowned.
“Father?” She hovered in the doorway.
“Marian, my dear.” He lifted his head, blinking at her.
“Am I interrupting?”
“You are,” he said, and closed his sheaf of papers with a hefty slam. “Please continue.”
Marian slipped through the doorway, feeling strangely awkward in his study. As a child she’d learned numbers by watching him wrestle with his accounts. Her father had not been born with a head for numbers and was often frustrated with the mathematical side of running his lands. Marian remembered her mother used to come into the study with a mug of watered ale and a kiss for his receding hairline, and soon he’d be relaxed again, his accounts in order, the tension gone from his brow.
But she wasn’t a child anymore, and her mother had been gone for some years now. And she hadn’t thought to bring him something to drink.
“What is it, my dear?” Her father was leaning back in his heavy carven chair, watching her with patient concern.
Marian went to the window. The view overlooked the eastern pastures, and she could see Jonquille and a few of the other mares grazing,