that she could best the future Lord of Locksley in combat at twelve years old but that she could not stand next to other girls without drawing attention. Though Robin seemed oblivious, the other young ladies of Nottinghamshire were all so dainty that she felt rather like a troll or an ogre out of legend, lumbering around and banging into doorways and accidentally knocking over half the dishes at supper when an uncontrollably long leg kicked the table. And she’d begun to resent Robin, too, for being entirely unbothered by their height difference, for the rough-and-tumble nature of their friendship. She couldn’t have explained why she was upset, not then—she only knew that he didn’t seem to see her, not the way he ought to.
But then he hit his own growth spurt, though he never did catch up to her in height. Their wrestling matches became evenings spent by a fire after long rides through the wood. And archery competitions became excuses to sneak away into the field, where the long stalks of wheat concealed their conversations from the world. And he saw her, as she was, as she wanted him to.
She’d asked him, once, if it bothered him that she was taller than he, and he’d lifted his head from his fletching and eyed her through the firelight as though she’d asked him to sprout wings and fly.
“That,” he’d said finally, “is ridiculous. If you were shorter, who would keep me on my toes? Come hold this arrow for me—the glue keeps smearing while I’m stitching.”
The memory was so vivid Marian’s breath caught, and her father let his arms relax enough that he could pull back and scan her face. “You lost Robin so quickly,” he said quietly, “and so unjustly, that of course you feel lost. Of course your heart panics. That physician”—and his lip curled a little with distaste—“attributes these floods of fear you’ve been suffering to some feminine weakness. But one thing you have never been, my dear, is weak.”
Or feminine.
It was Robin’s voice, and so real that Marian’s heart thumped with fear and longing both, and she almost turned to search for Robin standing somewhere behind her. Confusion momentarily robbed her of sense.
Her father continued, stroking a piece of hair from his daughter’s eyes. “I was able to talk to your mother, before she—before she left us. I was able to listen to her, know what she wanted for me, for us. You never had that with Robin, but that doesn’t mean he’s not still with you. It doesn’t mean he can’t still help you in that way.”
Still with me. As a voice in her mind? Her father had not heard, had not noticed the stiffening of his daughter’s frame. Marian swallowed hard, vision blurry as she tried to focus on her father’s face. “How?”
“You know him better than you know yourself, my dear. Ask yourself what Robin would want for you, and you’ll find your way.”
“Stop fussing at your tunic, Robert,” chides his mother, her face calm but her eyes sparking as she tugs Robin’s hand away from his collar. Her ring glints in the light reflected off the emerald leaves of the forest outside.
“But it’s too tight,” he protests, the lacings digging into his neck. “I don’t want to go live in a castle.”
“It’s not a castle, it’s a manor house. Your father writes that you will have your own grand suite of rooms, and you can choose any of the horses for your own—won’t that be fun? And look around us—you will have all of Sherwood Forest to explore.”
Robin glances at the leaves passing the window of their carriage. “I guess.”
Abruptly the leaves give way to fields, and the house is there, with figures arrayed in front like an army of tiny wooden knights. Robin leans out of the carriage window and his mother catches hold of his tunic to keep him from toppling out, protests spilling from her lips.
“Who’s that?” Robin asks, watching as one of the gathered people—even tinier than the other distant figures—makes a break for freedom, reaching as far as the edge of the drive before someone chases it down and hauls it back.
His mother is leaning out of the carriage window now too, forgetting that she was chastising her son moments before for the same behavior. “Those will be the manor servants—oh, and some of the other families from this part of Nottinghamshire. Your uncle was much liked, before he went to be with God.”