think I was actually glad to have my chest bound up tight.”
They walked, leading Jonquille and laughing, and Marian began to realize that there had been iron bands of tension squeezing her ribs and throat that she hadn’t known were there. Each step she took with Elena chipped away at that cage, until she tipped her head back in a patch of dappled sunlight and took a deep breath for what felt like the first time in weeks. To speak openly about Robin, about the things she’d done, was like surfacing from a dark, cold pool.
The forest started to thin ahead, where woods gave way to tilled land and eventually the road toward Nottingham’s gates. Marian stopped. “I can’t go back as Robin. And we probably shouldn’t return together.”
“I get in and out through the servants’ entrances anyway,” replied Elena ruefully. “You’d be conspicuous in either costume.” She hesitated, her eyes flicking up to meet Marian’s. “You mustn’t tell them who you are,” she whispered.
“Who?”
“The others. Alan and Will and John.”
Marian blinked, stung. “I hadn’t planned on it.” And yet she could feel those iron bonds tightening back up. No, she hadn’t planned on it. But as soon as Elena spoke, she’d known she wanted to.
Elena’s expression was taut and full of sympathy. “To them, I’m Alan’s betrothed. They accept me as part of him, I suppose—but not in any real way. I’m not one of them. I never can be. Not like you are.”
Robin Hood’s mask was still up over her brow, and as her throat tightened, Marian reached up to yank it off. In her haste the mask became tangled in her hair, and she swore, frustration making her fingers clumsy.
Elena stepped toward her and drew her hands away with the firm, gentle touch she’d always used when helping Marian dress. Marian clung to Jonquille’s reins and dropped her eyes. How strange they both were, standing in their men’s clothing, in the woods, a noblewoman and her maid.
“They respect you. They follow you and admire you. As Robin.”
“I know.” Marian kept staring at the ground, the patterns of fallen leaves swimming in her vision. Every tiny tug and pull at her hair made the colors dance in her eyes until it seemed the whole clearing was ablaze. “I didn’t intend for anyone to find out.”
Elena smoothed Marian’s hair with a gentle touch and then took her hand so she could slip the mask into it. “I’m glad I know.”
Marian lifted her eyes to find Elena smiling at her, her eyes sympathetic and full of admiration all at once. “I’m glad too,” Marian said quietly.
Elena offered to help her change, but Marian assured her she could manage the transformation on her own. She watched her maid until she vanished between the trees, thinking of the dress rolled neatly in Jonquille’s saddlebag. Elena’s choice of words—either costume—kept ringing in her ears.
Robin’s clothes felt more and more comfortable every time she put them on—but it was still a masquerade. And as Elena had reminded her, one she could not shed even around the men she trusted with her life. But she hadn’t gone so far as to think of the clothes she wore every day as a costume—as unreal as her mask and her hood.
Slowly, she pulled the crumpled shift and kirtle and veil from the saddlebags and began to change. Jonquille, reading her heart in that way animals could do, stamped impatiently and nuzzled, confused, at her shoulder. Marian unstrung her bow and painstakingly slid it back into concealment among Jonquille’s tack. She smoothed her veil and carefully remounted the mare.
She did trust them with her life, John and Alan and Will. But she couldn’t trust them with who she really was.
TWENTY-EIGHT
THE STABLES WERE IN an uproar when she returned to the castle, for Gisborne had returned, and with him a number of men he’d taken along. Their horses were still dull with sweat and dust, and people scurried here and there with arms full of tack and brushes. Midge was nowhere to be seen, and the stable boy who took Jonquille’s reins from Marian looked so harried that she knew he wasn’t about to waste time investigating the horse’s packs. Marian slipped away and headed for her room, hoping to reach safety before anyone could take note of her rumpled clothes or her own layer of sweat and grime.
She passed a few of the guards who now patrolled every corridor of the castle, but they took little notice of