Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] (4 page)

Marian arched black brows. “So, you have brought her here in hopes of interesting Robert of Locksley.”

“In hopes of interesting the
earl
; I care little enough what Locksley thinks of the girl. He has no say in the matter.” Impatiently, William deLacey frowned down the line. “If Huntington is the man they say he is, he will see to it soon. There is talk of the boy already.”

Marian was astonished. “He has only just come home!”

DeLacey flicked his fingers. “You know as well as I how servants carry tales. They all of them are peasants; they have no sense of decorum.”

“And perhaps they are only tales.” Marian looked toward the dais. “I cannot imagine there is anything anyone could say of Robert that impugns his honor. The king
knighted
him—”

“In war,” the sheriff said grimly, “honor is often lacking. Survival is what matters.”

“And if there is truth in these stories,” she retorted, “why are you so eager to wed Eleanor to him?”

The sheriff laughed aloud. Brown eyes glinted. “You know better than that: he is still the son of an earl.” Amusement faded, replaced by a quiet intensity. “
Did
you come for Locksley?”

Marian drew a constricted breath, conscious of her reddened face. How could she explain? She herself did not know all the reasons she had come. “I came ...” She hesitated. “I came because my father would have wished it. You knew him, my lord ... would he not have wished it?”
Neatly done,
she thought.
Let deLacey deal with it.

He smiled, saluting her with a raised goblet. “Indeed, he would have.” Before she could answer, he squeezed her shoulder briefly. “You will excuse me, I pray—I must present Eleanor now.”

He left her, gliding smoothly through the throng to gather up his youngest daughter and escort her to the dais. He ignored those before him, depending on authority to take the place of rank. He was not a lord by ancient ancestral heritage, being of a minor Norman family, but the Conqueror had rewarded exemplary service in the defeat of England by distributing confiscated land and titles. Thus the sheriff had been born into the new nobility and had, with each wife, married above himself. His appetite for power was obvious to Marian, but oddly enough it did not diminish him. He was the sort of man who survived no matter the odds.

Marian looked to the dais.
Much as Robert did.

Unlike the sheriff, she waited her turn. She drank wine, gave the empty goblet to a servant, and eventually reached the dais where she looked fully into the face that was devoid of all expression, into pale hazel eyes masked to all of those before him. Indeed, the fires were banked. There was little left save an ember.

She opened her mouth to ask him her single, simple question, but no words came out. She was utterly bereft of speech, robbed by cowardice. Who was
she
to ask him anything, and why should he know the answer?

He doesn’t care. Look at him—he’d rather be somewhere else than wasting time with sycophants!
Self-consciousness sealed her throat. But she was there before them both, duly presented to the earl and his son. Short of turning and fleeing, the least she could do was blurt out the words of welcome she’d practiced at Ravenskeep. She’d meant them to break the ice; now they would save face, a little.

“My lord Earl.” She curtseyed. By rote she said her little piece, uninspired by the subject for whom she had invented it. She hardly heard the words herself; they contained something of gratitude and honor, a scrap of piety. She cared no more than Locksley, who stood so bored beside his father.

And then the boredom vanished. A hand was on her arm even as she turned to go. The wrist, she saw clearly, was no longer thin and bony, but sheathed in firm muscle. The fingers were taut as wire. “Marian of
Ravenskeep?
”

Baffled, she nodded—and saw rage blossom in his eyes.

Locksley’s clasp on her arm hurt but Marian let it go, offering yet another curtsey, briefly startled by his question as well as the contact. She looked more closely at him, baffled by the unexpected tension. The rage had dissipated, replaced with impatience; he did not require the honor everyone gave his father.

“Yes,” she told him clearly, wondering what it was about her name that drove him out of silence into abrupt intensity. “Marian of Ravenskeep; Sir Hugh is—” she checked, “
was
my father.”

The hand remained on her arm as if he had forgotten. Through the fabric of her clothing she felt the grip of his fingers. “It was to you I sent the letter. I trust you received it.”

She turned slightly, twisting her wrist to free it. He released it at once, but made no apology. He was too intent on her answer. “I received no letter, my lord.”

Clearly it was not what he expected. He frowned. Beneath a shock of white-blond hair his brows knitted together over a good, even nose without the prominence of his father’s. “I sent it,” he declared, leaving no room for doubt. “Months ago. I thought you should know how your father died.”

The bluntness took her breath away.
How can he know that was my question?
Jerkily she shook her head. “I received no letter—”

“Robert.” It was the earl himself, briskly cutting off her words. “Robert, others are waiting. ”If you must speak with this girl, perhaps another time—?”

Blankly, she said, “It must have gone astray—” And then a servant was at her side, urging her away. Her time with the earl was done. His son’s attention was needed elsewhere.

She acquiesced to the servant, too distracted to delay. It had not occurred to her that Locksley would readily recall her or her father. It had not occurred to her he might have met her father on Crusade. It had never occurred to her that Robert of Locksley might really know the details of her father’s death. She had merely meant to ask him out of a childish need to
ask,
not really expecting an answer, expecting nothing of what he’d implied.

If he knows—if he
knows. Abruptly she stopped and swung back, meaning to force her way to the dais. As abruptly, she halted. Locksley’s attention was elsewhere. His face, and his eyes, were empty of all emotion save an abiding, helpless impatience.

 

Faces, with moving mouths.
Locksley heard almost none of them. He hadn’t heard the woman, either, until she said her name. The first part hadn’t touched him. But the second,
FitzWalter,
had exploded in his ears like a wall besieged by sappers.

Marian of Ravenskeep. Hugh FitzWalter’s daughter.
What would my father say, were I sick all over the dais?
Marian of Ravenskeep. The dead knight’s daughter.

She had vanished into the crowd. With her had gone forbearance. “How many more?” he asked, as yet another guest left the dais.

His father’s smile was for the hall. “As many as are here.”

It was a tone from his childhood, cloaked in quiet courtesy, framed upon cold steel. He had spent too many years under its sway to withstand it easily even now, or to protest its need.

He looked out again at the hall. What he saw was a Saracen battlefield, and dead men dying. Among them Hugh FitzWalter.

 

Eventually, when food and tables were cleared away, there was dancing. Marian would have preferred to remain inconspicious, but this was prevented by William deLacey, who insisted she partner him. Her year of mourning was done, he reminded her, and her father would not require such rigorous devotion when there was dancing to be done.

And so she danced, if circumspectly, with deLacey and a handful of others, and eventually Sir Guy of Gisbourne, who presented himself to her in good Norman French, betraying his origins. She knew little about him save he was deLacey’s man and had been spared from the Crusade by the sheriff himself, who paid the shield-tax in order to keep his office effective in the administration of the shire.

Gisbourne was an intense, dark, compact man, short of limb and, she thought, imagination, to judge by his conversation. He danced a trifle stiffly, obviously ill at ease even in simple patterns, but undoubtedly he was more fluid in the activities of his service. He said very little of consequence, being more disposed to stare, which she found unsettling. She did her best to avoid his eyes as she glided through the pattern.

As a knight, Gisbourne was entitled to some honor. She was a knight’s daughter and understood that very well. But Gisbourne was of an entirely unprepossessing merchant family who had bought him the rank, and was too young to have legitimately earned any lands in royal service. He therefore had no property, no manor, and had taken service with the sheriff of Nottingham two years prior to Richard’s latest Crusade, because the sheriff required a steward to supervise his household. In time Gisbourne might earn his own holdings, but for now he was dependent upon the largesse of Nottinghamshire.

His expression was ferocious, low of brow and hairline. The features were strong and blunt, lacking refinement, and his posture was blocky. He wore good wool dyed black. “Lady,” Gisbourne rasped. “Methinks you forget the pattern.”

She
had
forgotten. In her reverie, she had turned the wrong way. It brought them close,
too
close; she fell back a step, hot-faced, and saw the glint in his eyes.
Boar’s eyes,
she thought.
Too small, too black, too bright.

“Lady,” he repeated. “Do you wish to stop?”

There was nothing in his words save a self-conscious courtesy she did not expect from a man with the eyes of a boar. Marian felt ashamed, conscious of heat in her face.

She managed a casual tone. “I think we had better stop. I am a trifle overwarm—perhaps a cup of cool wine ... ?” She asked it deliberately, knowing he would go and she could make her escape.

It seemed Gisbourne knew it also, by the glitter in his eyes. He bowed his departure stiffly. Marian watched him go, then turned to hide herself in the revelers. She had wanted nothing to do with the dancing from the beginning, and less to do with conversation. It was rude to desert a knight who ostensibly did her bidding, but at that moment Marian wanted nothing more than to find a quiet corner.

In the distance she heard a lute and the clear voice of the minstrel soaring over the muddy music of too many people talking. She could go to him, she knew, and linger to listen. But he had gathered a loyal knot of women and girls, and joining them did not appeal to her. Perhaps her best choice would be to go find her old nurse, Matilda, and sit quietly with the woman.

She halted, brought up short by a tall man just before her, and opened her mouth to beg pardon. Then she shut it; it was Locksley. His hazel eyes were oddly intense.

“Come with me,” he said. “This is not the place to talk.” No, it was not, but she had not expected to. “This way,” he declared, and closed her right wrist in his hand.

 

Gisbourne knew it the moment he returned to the place he had left her: she
was
gone. And of her own choice, seeking to escape him.

It burned within his belly. He clung to both goblets, smelling the stink of strong wine, and hated himself. He was a false man, jumped up via a corrupt preferment system, and the woman knew it.

Everyone
knew it.

He gulped down the contents of one goblet, then gave it away to a servant. He clung to the other, nursing the wine, flagellating himself with the knowledge of his lack. He knew very well that had he been taken into the household of a man other than William deLacey, it would not be so painful to name himself what he was: a landless knight with few prospects for advancement.

Things had changed since old Henry had died. Richard the Lionheart, had handed out knighthoods like a hengirl throwing grain. The rank once attainable only through feats of skill no longer meant quite so much. The sheriff of Nottingham, requiring an able steward, had further sealed Gisbourne’s fate by buying him out of battle; therefore his only claim to knighthood was a feat of passing the purse.

He bit into his lip.
Sir
Guy; no less. But no more, either. He sincerely doubted serving William deLacey would ever result in anything more than what he had, with no land in the offing.

Sir
Guy of Gisbourne.

He gritted teeth. He wasn’t like the sheriff. He didn’t want or need nobility. He merely desired land of his own, a manor, a name—and a woman to bear him sons.

 

Locksley’s manner was proprietary, intent, and more than a trifle selfish. He did not ask, he told.
But then,
Marian decided in fairness,
he is the son of an earl.

Through the throng he took her, very nearly dragging her, but the throng made way for him, noting who he was, then noting who
she
was. In wry amusement she reflected,
The sheriff will be dismayed.

But it faded quickly, overruled by an acknowledgment that what she did—rather, what he did
to
her—was the sort of thing others would note, consider, remark upon, within the context of their natures. Even now, eyebrows arched. Skirts were pulled aside. Mouths murmured comments into attentive ears.

Her face flamed and her breasts prickled. She did not think again of the sheriff or of his unmarried daughter. She thought instead of herself, and of the man who led her so unerringly through the hall to an adjoining antechamber. They passed even the minstrel, watching over his lute. Blue eyes were brightly knowing; his smile was meant for her.

Inside the chamber Locksley boomed shut the door behind her. Marian looked past him, noting chairs, candle racks, tapestried walls.
At least,
she thought wryly,
it does not have a bed. That much he will spare me.

He swung back, stopped short, and nearly tripped her as she moved from the door. His tone was laced with bitter defensiveness. “Do you know what it is like coming home a stranger, and finding everything changed?”

She was not certain he wanted an answer. He was not looking at her.

And then, as abruptly, he was. “
Do
you?”

She folded hands into kirtle skirts, seeking the proper demeanor, the words he might want to hear. “When I have been away, I have a ritual. I reacquaint myself, to see if things have altered. Room by room. Hall by hall.” She shrugged defensively, unsettled by the unrelenting stare. “Perhaps you might do the same.”

“A ritual,” he echoed. “Such as a knight riding into battle, seeking victory, honor, and glory ... and the approval of a king?”

It was not meant for her, she knew. Perhaps for himself. “I don’t know, my lord. I have never gone to war.”

Her forthright tone and words startled him out of whatever privacy he might have wished to retain. She saw it plainly: the sharpening of his gaze, the hardening of his mouth. “No. They do not send women to war.”

She did not hesitate. “Only into marriage.”

Beneath pale hair, brows arched. She could see only their movement, not their color, though she remembered it. “Is that why you came?” he asked. “To cast the lure for the lost falcon at last returned to its mews?”

The bitter vehemence startled her. She had come for no such thing, not even contemplating it in a brief, fleeting daydream. She had been consumed with her father, determined to learn what she could, and only that. She did not blame Locksley for his assumption. Not one bit. It struck the mark cleanly. But she was not the arrow, loosed to catch a man. She was not Eleanor deLacey.

Marian smiled. Her teeth were good; she showed them. “Better to ask the sheriff. Better to ask the others, trailing chains of bright-clad daughters.”

The flesh by his eyes creased. She thought at first it might be amusement, but the mouth did not smile. “What of you, then?”

“What of me?” she countered. “
You
brought me here.”

He sighed and turned away, scrubbing one hand through his mane of blond hair. She saw how the breadth of his shoulders stretched the fabric of his samite tunic, checkered green-and-gold. The belt clasping lean hips shone with worked gold and the meat-knife at his right hip.

He swung back. “I brought you here,” he agreed. And then, yet again, he frowned. “We have met before.”

Marian managed to nod. “At Ravenskeep, my lord. One Christmas Eve”—it was harder than she’d expected—“you and your lord father rode home from London, but a storm brought you up short. You came instead to my father’s manor and spent the night with us.”
Perhaps that will content him. Perhaps he recalls nothing more.

“Ravenskeep ...” The eyes were unrelenting. “You dragged me under the mistletoe and claimed the forfeit of me.”

He does remember.
Heat washed through her face, leaving color in its wake. It took all her courage to meet his gaze, to smile; to hide with great effort the self-consciousness his intensity engendered. She was not so certain of men’s regard that she knew how to conduct the conversational conflict so many other women relished. “I was very young, as you were,” she began, relying on the truth no matter how embarrassing, “and I had kissed everyone else. You were the only one left.”

She thought he might laugh, but he didn’t. She thought he might at least smile. But all he did was dismiss the recollection with an autocratic gesture reminiscent of his father. “I sent a letter,” he told her flatly. “After your father died, I wrote.”

The wave of heat and color faded. Self-conscious amusement died. Locksley’s manner, relegating her own feelings and responses to those meant merely to answer his questions, annoyed her intensely.

In her own way, Marian fought back. “Why you, my lord? Surely there was someone else. Someone of lesser rank—”