stretches of discussion, lengthy and pompous speeches of learned men and landed nobles alike. But he and the other noblemen, dancing attendance upon the Sheriff all day, never saw the faces of the beggars outside Nottingham’s gates. They didn’t see how blinding was the flare of rekindled hope in the face of someone who’d abandoned it long ago. He didn’t know.
Her mind roiled, as turbulent as the clouds outside, and she tried to pull her disjointed thoughts together. She’d never before wanted to tell her father what she was doing, but now, ever since that moment in Sherwood when she’d stood with the outlaws and realized what she and they could do for the people of Nottingham, she wanted him to know. She wanted him to approve. She wanted him to be proud of Robin Hood’s deeds, even if he never knew that the face under the outlaw’s mask was his daughter’s.
She opened her mouth and then stopped abruptly, her eyes on the window. She must have stiffened, for her father lifted his head. “Marian?”
“I promise.” She blinked away the last of her tears. They made her vision blur, made it difficult to tell true sight from imagination. “I promise never to speak to Robin Hood again.”
Her father’s lips pressed together and then relaxed, and he leaned forward to kiss her on the brow.
Marian, heart abruptly light and giddy with relief, glanced back toward the window as he drew her away back toward the hearth. She could not resist checking one last time that what she’d seen through the window was real: a tiny, distant glow of orange blossoming on the slope before Sherwood Forest. The signal fire.
She’s different today. Marian’s distracted all through their battle games, letting him beat her soundly at swordplay, and when he calls her on it, she turns red.
“I’m not feeling well,” she mumbles, driving the point of her practice blade into the leaf litter.
“Right,” Robin scoffs, brandishing his sword. “Claim you’re feeling faint because I’m winning—just like a girl.”
Her face goes redder. “Well, I am a girl. As easy as it might be to forget it.”
All Robin’s joy at victory drains away, and he lets the tip of the sword fall. She looks different today, too—her lips are redder, her eyes darker, her hair unusually tame and shiny. “I know that,” he mumbles.
Marian’s eyes close, and she fingers the end of her braid, drawing her shoulders back after a few moments. “If I have to hear one more lecture about what life will be like after I’m married, how I’ll be expected to act, what I’ll be expected to do . . .”
Robin’s hand steals inside the pocket he wears at his waist. His mother’s ring settles onto his fingertip as if drawn there by a lodestone. They’ve never talked about the fact that everyone expects them to marry—Robin has never had the courage. And on any given day he’s not sure which prospect is more frightening: that she’d respond by kissing him, or by killing him.
She paces a few steps away, then turns, regarding Robin with a curious gaze, her darkened lashes lowering a little. “Did you mean it? That day here in Sherwood, when we were children. When you promised you’d never make me be anything, act a certain way.”
Robin swallows. “I meant it.”
Her eyes change while she watches him—her lashes lift, her gaze softens. Her lips curve, the smile there different from the grin she usually flashes him over their clashed swords. “Then pick up your sword, Locksley.”
Robin must suppress the urge to grin wildly, a strange rush of feeling making him want to shout. “As my Lady commands,” he answers, with a sweeping bow that makes Marian laugh.
TWENTY-FIVE
NOTTINGHAM CASTLE WAS QUIET the next day, and for several days after. Marian kept to her room at first, conscious of the role she had to play as victim, except for one excursion, late in the night, to retrieve Robin’s cloak. But when she made it to the edges of town, the cloak was gone.
She took to walking the corridors of Nottingham Castle, venting her restless energy and learning its twists and turns all the more intimately. She came across Gisborne once and managed to retreat around a corner before he saw her—but she could hear the orders he was giving to the men who stood at his side.
“The Sheriff has decreed it, and no expense spared. The jails must be expanded. We’ll need stoneworkers, locksmiths, blacksmiths—we must triple the available cells by