Everything I Do: a Robin Hood romance (Rosa Fitzwalter Book 1) (33 page)

She did.

Her cheeks flushed slightly with embarrassment, but she met his gaze bravely.

“That’s my girl,” he said, and his voice sounded a bit breathless. “How are you feeling?” he continued, his eyebrows meeting in concern. “You were suffering acutely yesterday.”

He let go of her chin, for his fingers were trembling suddenly.

“I am better,” she said. “All thanks to you.”

“I have to tell you,” he said, with a rueful laugh, “I have never felt so inadequate in my life. Or so damn scared.”

“I am sorry I was the cause of it.”

“I am not. And you know how much I enjoy feeling inadequate. Or scared.”

She laughed.

Right then he suddenly felt that if he never did anything good with his life anymore, he would be content with this small triumph. To have made her laugh.

Then she stopped laughing with a sharp intake of breath.

He swore under his breath.

“Promise me something?” he asked in a minute.

“Yes.”

“Promise me you won’t climb down today. I’m only asking this of you in selfishness, for my own peace of mind. I’ll bring you food, and keep you entertained, I promise, when you are not resting.”

She did not speak for a while, and he worried that he had somehow offended her.

“Do not think,” he added, “that I am presuming to command you, or ordering you what to do, I am simply-”

“It is not that,” she interrupted him.

“Then what?”

She turned to look at him again.

“What will everyone say about me?”

He wanted to laugh her concern away, but he knew it was important to her. He bent down until his head was right above hers, and he took her hands in his own, gently placing a kiss on each one.

“If they think as I do, they will think that you are the kindest, bravest, most generous person they have ever known. If they do not, they are idiots and fools, and you know that I detest letting any of those set foot inside my forest.”

She nodded.

“Do you hate me for what I did to you yesterday?” she asked finally, in so reluctant a voice, that he hardly caught the words.

He had to check himself not to take her in his arms and kiss her right then. He bit hard on his lower lip and exhaled sharply.

When he thought his voice might be in control, he spoke.

“Nay, I do not hate you, my lady, as you well know.” He took a shuddering breath, and stood up to leave.

“Indeed, I do not,” he murmured to himself, his lips curving around a bitter smile as he descended the makeshift steps to the ground. He thought of how far, how opposite his true feelings were from hate, even from mere indifference, and wanted to scream in frustration.

He went about his chores that day cursing himself without cease.

…

Right now, looking back at this bittersweet memory, he hated himself for a coward.

I should have told her then how I loved her
, he thought,
and to hell with the consequences.

That had been the first time he’d seriously considered asking her to be his wife. Immediately afterwards of course he’d been disgusted with himself, the mere idea of her being stuck living in the forest forever sending chills of guilt down his spine.

After this incident, he was very careful with her every month, looking for any signs that would alert him that her time was upon her. He looked for paleness, or drowsiness, but most of the time he could hardly tell. He took care to provide her with water and clothes secretly, when he guessed she might need them, and not once did she turn him away.

And she did not sleep in the little tree-house ever again.

The closeness they had achieved that first time when she had confided in him, and let him take care of her, was never again found, for as soon as she was well, Robin began to feel remorseful again, and kept his distance.

Some months she’d stay inside her cabin for so much as two days, and Robin always managed to make up an excuse for her. She was grateful to him for that, but she never again needed his assistance as she had that night.

Once only he saw her grit her teeth as she was mounting her horse, and so he idly made a comment about the weather looking like rain and how it would probably be prudent for them to stay at the camp that day. Then he helped her dismount and, although usually she was reluctant to accept any help from him -especially in front of others-, this time she let him carry her down from her horse, and then pressed his hand gratefully.

He’d bent down and placed a small kiss on her hair, shutting his eyes at the pain of being near her and still so far away.

“You are a wonderful man,” she stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear, a shy, muffled whisper, but he heard it, and the rest of his day passed in a daze.

“I am madly in love with you,” he whispered back as soon as she was gone.

The next day he’d stayed as far away from her as possible. And the day after that.

…

When Rosa woke up in her spacious, sunlit room the next morning she was feeling a bit stronger, and the maids pushed Robin out the door to help her take a bath.

He stood right outside, wincing at the pain the water must inflict on her every cut, almost feeling it burn his own skin. The maids dressed her, and told him he could go inside again, as long as he let her rest, for “her bath had been rather painful on her, poor lass”.

Robin walked softly to her bed, but she was expecting him, sitting up against the feathered pillows. Her hair hung in loose, wet strands on the white sheets all around her and he reached out a hand to remove a thick curl that had found its way to cling to her cheek.

She smiled at him and the sun came out in his heart.

“Rest,” he said.

He did not dare call her ‘Rosa’, or ‘my lady’ as he once had. He felt he had forfeited the right to call her anything. “I’ll be here when you wake up. Your ladies tell me you had a hard time of it. I am sorry for your pain.”

“I will not be able to rest until you tell me,” she said, and it was the first time he was hearing her voice properly after all this time. Emotions so strong assaulted him, he felt as though his heart would burst.

Before he could speak, he found himself sinking to his knees beside her bed, gasping for breath.

Rosa wondered what was wrong, and then she saw that he was crying.

She hadn’t seen him cry like that, ever. It was bitter tears that flowed down his cheeks, his weeping so silent and despairing that it frightened her.

With difficulty, she raised herself on one elbow, and leaned over to cover his hands with her slender fingers.

“What is it?” she whispered, and made as if to get up.

At that he finally lifted his head. His eyes, luminous with tears, pleading and sad, met hers. She saw that he was thinner than before, his tall frame swaying from exhaustion.

“No,” he said quickly as he saw what she was about, “no, do not distress yourself.”

He got up and helped her lay back on her pillows. She breathed heavily with the pain of the sudden motion, but her worried eyes never left his.

“How are you?” he asked tightly.

“Anxious,” she said.

“For what?” he replied immediately. “You are safe now, and I will never again let you from my sight. I’ll swear it if you like,” he added with fire.

“I am anxious for you, master,” she said, the affectionate word she always used for him from the beginning, when she was still ‘Stuart’, melting his heart.

“I am yours,” he said fervently, “as I have always been. Coward at heart and foolish and headstrong, but still yours.”

She looked at him, but he could see that she did not understand the true meaning behind his words.

“I mean to know,” she said firmly, “I need to know why you are here. Is because you pity me? Do you feel sorry for me, because I’m again in trouble? Or do you feel responsible in some way because I once spent some months in your forest camp? Mayhap you…”

“Stop, please, stop,” he moaned, dropping to one knee beside her. “Please,” he repeated hoarsely, once she had fallen silent, “my heart is breaking.”

Robin Hood took a deep breath and lifted his eyes to Rosa’s.

In that moment he knew; he knew that she loved him.

He knew that no matter what he did to her, how horribly he behaved to her, how much he betrayed her and let her down and pushed her away, he knew she would always forgive him.

She would always sacrifice herself for him, as she had done then, all that time ago, as she had done just now, as she had done in countless small and great ways.

She would give and expect nothing in return.

Because that was who she was and how she loved.

Loved him.

Him
.

“I came to find you,” he began slowly, looking at her with fierce eyes, “as soon as I heard where you were. I would have come even if you hadn’t been in danger, I’d have leapt over mountains to reach you. I searched and searched for you, I haven’t slept or eaten or thought of anything else since I… since I lost you.”

His voice broke at the last phrase, but he was past caring. He ran his hand through his wild, overlong hair and took a deep breath.

“I don’t feel sorry for you nor do I pity you,” he went on, feeling his eyes burn with unshed tears. “I did not spend this eternity fasting and watching and looking for you to the ends of England, unearthing every informant I have in a each tiny little village in case anyone had seen you… I didn’t do it because I knew it would be entirely my fault if you were somewhere injured, or unhappy, or dead.”

He swallowed and shut his eyes briefly.

“It
would
have been my fault, of course,” he said, “but that was not the reason… When I learned you were the girl who had saved me that day, when I learned the price you’d had to pay simply to save the life of a worthless outlaw…”

“No, do not…” she tried to interrupt, but he stopped her with a finger on her lips.

“To save a worthless human being, little more than a thief and a beggar,” he repeated. “When I found that out, I did not know what to do with that knowledge. It was so great, it threatened to swallow me whole. How do you thank someone who did that for you? How do you repay? How do you atone? How do you accept it? And then, how do you
live
with a burden like that? It… it was too much for me. I couldn’t handle it. So I did the worst thing I could do. I drove you away.”

He smiled mournfully.

“Of course, if you knew me better, you would know, as I did, that I was too weak to send you from me forever. The household I was proposing to place you at, it was at very close distance from the forest, and I swear to you, as I know myself, I would make a nuisance of myself to you there, visiting you every other day on some pretext or other, unable to live without seeing you for more than a couple of days.”

She lifted wondering eyes to him.

“Master,” she said, “if I had known all of this, if I had waited… I simply thought what I was taught to think as a child, that I was not wanted, that I was not…”

Tears were running freely down her face now, and he pressed his lips on her cheeks, kissing them away, drinking them like precious wine. He reached out and folded her in his arms, careful not to crush her cuts and hurt her.

“You
are
wanted,” he said gruffly against her hair. “You are loved.”

He released her, only to look deep into her eyes.

“Rosa,” he said, tasting the name on his tongue like it was the first time he was uttering it. “My precious girl.”

A lone tear traveled down from his left eye, then an identical one from his right. She started to exclaim.

“Shh,” he whispered. “I have loved you from the day you came to me dressed as a boy. Did you know that?”

“What?” her eyes had opened enormously, as though these were the last words she had expected to hear fall from his lips. He laughed quietly, in spite of his tears. He wiped them roughly away, but as he spoke, new ones followed them.

“I did not come to find you because I had driven you away, or because you were in danger and I could not live with the thought of something happening to you. I did not come here because it pains me to see you suffer and I wish, I wish with all of my heart there was something I could do to ease your path through life, although the most I am able to do seems to be making it harder for you. All of these are true, but they are not the reason I sit beside you as you sleep and count your breaths, ready to run to the healer if your heart so much as misses a beat.”

He stopped, and lifted a shaking hand to her hair.

“Then… Why?” she asked slowly, as though he was a problem she was trying to figure out. 

“Don’t you know?” he replied, and he looked like a little boy right then, in spite of the unkempt, torn state of his clothes and the roughness of his unshaven jaw.