Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] (3 page)

Inwardly he surrendered, releasing the intransigence which was as newborn to himself, who had always been dutiful, as it was frustrating to his father. It was not worth the battle. He had fought too many already. Let his father win this one: In captivity Locksley had become adept at not caring. Caring too much hurt.

The son acquiesced. The earl, seeing that, smiled in relief, then triumph, then complacent satisfaction.

Sighing, Locksley pulled wide the door. Beyond milled the multitude, telling stories of his captivity, his heroism, his valor. Making up what they could not know, to be certain of their reception in the eyes of those who knew no more, but would not admit to less.

The son, seeing that, cursed himself for a fool.

Marian pressed damp palms against her kirtle. Locksley was here at last and she was after all no different from the others despite her high-flown ideas. She was as curious and fascinated as everyone else.

It galled her, because she had desired him to be—
counted
on him to be—no more than merely a boy come home from playing at war. That sort of person she could approach without feeling so obviously self-serving.

She swallowed the lump of increasing nervousness.
Other women lost fathers. I have no more right than they have to ask this man a question.

But no less right, either.

He stood before them all, poised upon the dais. Her instinctive, unexpected response was unspoken, but loud inside her mind:
He is much changed.
The boy, having gone to war, had returned from it a man. She wondered if anyone else saw him as she did, sensing what she felt, or if they were utterly blind.
How could they miss it? They have only to look at him!

And they looked, even as she did, but saw what they wanted to see: the Earl of Huntington’s heir returned from the dead; a live man in place of a corpse, wearing rich Norman garments instead of dull linen shroud and flesh in place of the steel of a dead Englishman’s sword taken back from a Saracen thief.

He had gone on Crusade with the Lionheart as so many of them had, forsaking in the hot pride of youth his noble father’s attempt to buy back his service by paying honorable scutage. It was a thing done often enough among high houses and unremarked upon, and he was his father’s only son, heir to an important title and vast fortune. Fortunately, though King Richard needed men, he needed money more, and in place of flesh he would accept shield-tax.

The earl had tried to pay. His son had other ideas.

Marian nodded.
He is much changed.

Robert of Locksley stood on the low stone dais next to his father, beneath the heavy dark beams bedecked with green-and-gold Huntington colors. Torches from wall cressets and tripod dais stands behind both men did little to illuminate their faces, painting only heads and shoulders. From a distance, all Marian saw clearly as she looked at the earl’s son was the blazing spill of white-blond hair worn much too long for fashion. He had always been fair, she recalled, pale as an Easter lily except for his hazel eyes.

I remember him from that Christmas ...
It gave her an unexpected spurt of renewed conviction.
I
will
ask him ... surely he can’t begrudge me a single, simple question.

 

Sir Guy of Gisbourne stared. With effort he shut his mouth, wiped the smear of perspiration from his upper lip, and bathed the dryness of his mouth with wine, too much wine, gulping all of it down until the cup was empty. He thrust the cup toward a passing servant-girl and saw how it trembled; he stilled it as best he could, daring the girl to indicate she saw his state. She did not. She merely poured him more wine, then took herself off.

He stared again at the woman who had stolen his wits away. He could not stop looking at her.
Who
—
?
He did not finish the question even within his thoughts. It would serve no purpose.

He had seen her arrive, attended by an aged maidservant now asleep on a bench by a wall. He had watched her make her way into the throng, exchanging greetings with few, keeping her own counsel. He had noted the fit and color of kirtle (a lustrous rich blue silk embroidered in silver at neckline and cuffs, bound slim at her waist by a beaded Norman girdle); the elegance of her posture; the glory of coif-shrouded hair; the richness of blue eyes—and, unexpectedly, the stubborn set of her delicate jaw as she gazed at the dais.

Shaking, Gisbourne scrubbed a hand across his brow. He swallowed painfully, sucked a breath through constricted lungs, and tried to master himself. His thighs and belly bunched, aching with erection; he more than wanted the woman, he
needed
the woman.

It had been months. There was an occasional serving-girl to ease him, but he found such women lacking and therefore the act as well. He wanted more, but knew not how to find it. Emptiness and frustration had become intimates of his spirit, leaving him with nothing but his obsessive attention to detail. His was the kind of temperament men like the sheriff treasured, because
someone
had to organize the administration of castle and shire. The sheriff of Nottingham dispensed justice. Sir Guy of Gisbourne, his seneschal, carried it out.

He had never been overly ambitious, nor was he an acquisitive man. His mistress was duty; his master William deLacey. But now, he would forsake all other vows if it put
her
in his bed.
Not the knightly code ... no chivalry, in this.

Self-contempt flagellated him. He was, after all,
not
a knight as a knight used to be reckoned—that is, before the reign of Richard the Lionheart, whose compulsive need to go on Crusade had moved him to begin the practice of
selling
knighthoods to anyone who could afford them, along with lands and titles.

A knight is sworn to many things, among them courtesy.
Gisbourne was not innately a discourteous or unkind man. He knew himself humorless, old for his age, consumed with conducting his life—and the life of Nottingham Castle—with an obsessive dedication that rendered him invaluable to deLacey, but annoying to others. They couldn’t see that what he did was needful in the ordering of their lives. They saw only that he was hard and uncompromising and incapable of reducing his personal standards to suit their whims.

But when he looked at the woman he forgot all of that. He thought only of her body, of her beauty, and what it promised him.

 

For Marian, the dais ceremony did not grow tedious. She watched fixedly as Robert of Locksley without hesitation accepted the welcome of each man and woman who came to the dais for presentation. His manner was quietly gracious but oddly restrained, as if he performed the ritual solely for the sake of his father. He was taller than the earl by half a head or more, which had not been the case when Marian had last seen him, two years before. Then he had been a youth with narrow shoulders and bony wrists. The shoulders now were broader; she could not predict the wrists.

Memory warred with reality. More than a decade had passed. People changed. Children grew up. Women married and bore children, while men went to war. But she recalled the past so well she couldn’t reconcile it with the present.
One night only, one kiss, one Christmas Eve.
But he would never recall it, not as she did.

From where she stood, buried in the throng, Marian could hear nothing of what was said. She saw the earl’s broad smile, the movement of his mouth, the clasping of hands and arms as each man came forward to pay his respects, presenting wives and blushing daughters. But the son didn’t smile. The son merely waited in watchful silence as each guest approached. He clasped arms if they insisted, murmured something back, but his mouth never curved. The eyes never lighted.

It was as if, Marian decided, the fire inside had died. Or perhaps it was merely banked.

 

William deLacey, the Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham, caught his youngest daughter’s arm and steered her away from the knot of women clustered near the minstrel. It wasn’t that he disliked music or was deaf to the minstrel’s skill, but there were far more important things with which to concern himself.

“Eleanor,” he said as she opened her mouth to protest.

She subsided quickly enough, but he was not blind to her resentment. She was plain, not pretty, with no promise of improvement as the years went by. It was no wonder she threw herself at the head of every girlish musician. They were invariably more beautiful than she, and certainly more talented.

But possibly less intelligent. What Eleanor lacked in looks, she made up for in cunning.

He drew her behind a screen and released her arm. A quick glance ascertained that she had not yet spilled wine on her dull saffron kirtle—
could she not have dressed more brightly?
—and her lank brown hair—
could she not have crimped it more?
—had not yet begun to come down from an elaborate coiffure. “You are here for a purpose,” he reminded her.

She dipped briefly in a mocking curtsey, lids lowered over angry brown eyes.

“Your future depends on it.”

Lids flickered. Lifted. She looked directly at him. “
Your
future depends on it.”

His mouth thinned. “Yes. Certainly. You know what I want, just as I know what you want—”

“You don’t know the first thing about what I want.” The tone was quiet but virulent. “You never have, and you never will, because you never
listen
—”

“Enough!” It shut her mouth instantly, as he intended. “You will behave yourself, Eleanor. I will not have you demeaning me by playing the mooncalf over that minstrel, when you are here for another purpose.”

Eleanor smiled calmly. “The minstrel is exquisite.”

A flicker of irritation flared briefly into anger. “I don’t care if he played for Henry himself at his deathbed, Eleanor! You are to conduct yourself as befits a woman of your station.”

“But you are, as always, more concerned about
your
station.” She showed teeth briefly, and an overbite. “If you understood music, you would know how good he is.”

He caught her elbow and squeezed. “Eleanor ...” But he bit back the impatience, channeling it into a quieter passion that would touch even his stubborn daughter. “I want what’s best for you. I want a man for you who can give you what you deserve.”

Eleanor nodded sagely. “So that I can share it with you.”

He shook his head slowly. “Don’t waste yourself, Eleanor. Look in the mirror I gave you.”

She blinked. “In the—mirror?”

“In lieu of lands and dowry, a man will marry for beauty. I have no lands of my own, your dowry went to the king, and your beauty is nonexistent.”

Eleanor’s color vanished.

DeLacey patted her arm kindly. “I’m sure you understand that what I do is as good for
you
as it is for me.”

 

It was expected that everyone would greet the earl’s son. It was why Huntington insisted they stand on the dais, he and his heir, greeting everyone. His son was back from the dead. His son was on display. See how the son lived in defiance of the tale of his death at Richard the Lionheart’s side?

Marian, too, had heard the tale, grieving for his death. For one night she had cried because her father also had died, and because she recalled a Christmas no one else would. But Robert of Locksley was home, against all odds. Her father never could be. Only his sword had been sent.

She closed her eyes as fingers curled into fists against her skirts. It wasn’t fair, she knew. Locksley’s survival merited prayers and gratitude, not resentment. Not jealousy.

Grimly she chided herself:
Be pleased the boy survived. Too many others did not.
She opened her eyes again.
No, not ‘the boy.’ There is nothing boyish about him.

A man stopped at her side. The voice was quiet and cultured. “I have brought you wine, to cool your pretty throat.”

She glanced up sharply. William deLacey pressed a goblet into her hand, smiling warmly. Condensation on the goblet very nearly caused her to drop it; she closed both hands around it and thanked him with a nod.

The sheriffs brown eyes were compassionate. “I miss him as well, Marian. And I would, given the chance, trade that boy for your father. Hugh of Ravenskeep is worth three of him.”

She was surprised by his bluntness as well as his presumption. They were in the earl’s hall. Anyone wanting favor might carry the words to the earl; or worse, to his son, who no doubt would find them churlish as well as humiliating. “We should give thanks God was merciful in sending
one
of them home.”

DeLacey smiled. “Your kindness does you credit, but you know I speak the truth. Locksley is nothing to you. Your father was everything.”

Was. Not is;
was.
Her father was of the past, while she was of the present.

What now was her future? She was Hugh FitzWalter’s only heir, and on his death she had become a ward of the Crown. By English law she held the manor in trust for her future husband, and although she had had no plans to marry, certainly it would be suggested very soon, now that her mourning was done. Ravenskeep, as other manors, was a valuable source of revenue. Marian FitzWalter, ward of the Crown, was one as well. At the moment she was unencumbered because the Crown, in Richard’s person, was imprisoned in Germany.

Treason,
she mocked herself,
to be grateful for the time while the king is being held.
She drank, swallowing rapidly, trying to ward off the bitter taste of the future she despised.
If I were a man ...
But she broke it off at once, knowing it served no purpose.

The hand brushed her shoulder. “You didn’t have to come.”

Marian summoned a smile over the rim of the goblet. “I came, like everyone else, to pay the earl honor.”

“Not to impress his son?”

“To impress—?” Seeing his eyes, she laughed. “You brought Eleanor.”

A rueful smile replaced the guardedness of his manner. “I am found out.”

Marian matched his smile. “You must not be so anxious, my lord Sheriff. Eleanor will marry, just as her sisters did.”

One corner of his mouth flattened. “Eleanor is plainer than her sisters, as well as headstrong. And older; time is running out.”

It was not what she expected a father to say of his daughter, even his least favorite one. Eleanor was, she thought, too much like her father. They detested one another, while needing each other’s regard.