with pearls to sell, no doubt—darted inside. The carts moved along, and though Marian’s gaze kept darting back toward the gates, no one emerged to follow them.
Movement caught Marian’s eye, and she scanned the carts. Every word of her instructions had been followed, to the letter. There were no large bags, no convenient places for soldiers to hide. And yet something nagged at her, something she’d seen out of the corner of her eye that was the tiniest bit . . .
There. The driver of the third cart. There was nothing strange about his appearance—from this distance she could see only dark hair, a nondescript build, a slump in his spine as if of nervous resignation, like that of the other servants driving. But while Marian watched, he took one hand off the reins and slipped it into his tunic. He withdrew something, and with a jolt, Marian realized it was the note from Jonquille’s bridle, and that he was scanning the words on it, head bowed.
What kitchen servant knew how to read?
In one movement, Marian launched herself to her feet and nocked an arrow to the bowstring. “I said no guards!” she shouted, voice low and harsh, cutting through the rain and across the scattered conversations among the people between her and the cart.
She spoke without thinking, too intent to fear betraying herself with her voice. The effect was instantaneous and unmistakable—but no one recognized her woman’s voice. Instead they saw a man in Robin’s green hood, bow drawn. Conversation ceased and people fell back with exclamations of fear and amazement. A few scrambled out of the way, although the path away from Nottingham led downhill, and on the higher ground she could fire at the carts without worry of hitting anyone in between.
She hesitated only a moment, remembering that flash of cold calculation that had led to her nearly shooting Gisborne in the back, and then let the arrow fly. It hummed through the air—distantly, in her own mind, Marian made a note to teach Alan how to properly fletch an arrow so it would fly silently—and struck its target.
The driver fell back with a cry into the sacks of grain as the horse, startled by the sound of the arrow thudding home, skipped up into a trot for a few paces.
The man in the cart sat up, head turned toward the arrow that had whistled past his nose, pierced the paper in his hand, and pinned it to the wood of the cart. Marian was aware of murmurs of admiration and excitement among the people around her, but she had eyes only for the guard disguised as a servant. He was still staring at the note and the arrow, but then he started to turn in search of the source of the missile, and that was when Marian’s heart sank.
It wasn’t a guard at all. It was Gisborne, and his dark, biting eyes had gone straight to her.
TWENTY-THREE
FOR A LONG MOMENT they stared at each other across the mud and the huddled watchers. Rain drove the rim of Marian’s hood low and plastered Gisborne’s hair to his brow. A wind rose sluggishly, etching a curving sheet of water into the air that stretched between them. They were so far apart Marian could not be certain he had heard her voice, and yet she saw his chest rising and falling as he breathed, saw the scarred flesh at his throat move as he swallowed. She saw his eyes burning.
A voice from the crowd, thin and sharp with sullen fury, shouted, “You missed! Kill ’im, Robin!”
Marian whirled to run, slipped in the mud, and fell hard onto her knees. A glance over her shoulder told her that the shout had broken the spell for Gisborne, too—he dove into the sacks of grain and emerged with his sword in his hand, scrambling amid the cargo until he could vault out of the back of the cart. He might walk with a limp, but he could run fleet as a foxhound when he chose—she’d seen him on Alan’s heels in the forest. “Keep driving,” he shouted at the other carts. “If they have the lady, you must make the exchange.”
Marian scrambled upright and broke into a sprint, dropping the bow and wrenching the quiver free so she could move unimpeded. Her boots slid with every step, and the muscles of her hips and inner thighs screamed with the effort of staying upright.
When she’d been planning for the possibility that she’d need