“He well might, Scarlet. But say he is telling the truth. There are other ways he could hurt you.”
I remembered listening to the things my sister had to do in London, the way men touched her. It pushed blood into my cheeks and made me shiver. “Not if he wants an annulment.”
“You want the annulment. What if he doesn’t really want an annulment?”
My shoulders shrugged up, but I didn’t answer him.
“You’re already married, Scar. If he can’t—or won’t—swear before a priest that you’re still a virgin, there is no annulment. That’s all it takes. He outweighs you by more than a hundred pounds, at least. If he comes after you in close quarters, there isn’t much you and your knives can do about it.”
I were starting to sway, my head dizzying round.
“I know I’m scaring you, Scar, even if you can’t admit it. You should be scared. You have a lot of fight ahead of you no matter which way you go.”
Rubbing my arms didn’t do nothing for the cold, for the hot swirl in my head. “I’m tired of fighting, John.”
“We’ve all been fighting more than our fair share, Scar. Maybe both of us should start fighting for our happy ending.”
My eyes shut and my eyeballs felt like ice behind them, like little bits of my eye had gone to frost. “What if there ain’t an end, and it ain’t happy besides?” I asked him. “How could it be, after all this?”
“I don’t know, Scar.”
“Can we stop?” I said. My stomach were overtight and rolling and twisting. “I think … ugh,” I whined, bending over, ready to cast up anything that remained in my belly. Nothing came up, but the pain didn’t ease and the world were sliding round me.
“Come on, we need to get you out of the cold,” he said, tugging my arm.
I straightened, standing on wobbly knees. My head beat a cruel tattoo, and it were choking me. “J-John—” I never got a chance to finish the thought, as the dark trees and bright day pushed together and changed to total dark.
My eyes were bare open before my belly twisted and I retched. I were in a bed, and the best place seemed to be off the side of it. Lucky there were a pot there, and someone set my face toward it.
When I were done, I looked, and it were Ellie, one of Tuck’s girls. She petted the duck feathers left of my hair where I’d cut it off months before. “You all right?” she asked.
I shut my eyes and hugged the pillow, but the lumps Rob had put on me yelled in protest and I rolled onto my back. “Christ,” I moaned.
“Sit up a bit,” she told me. “Tuck sent some broth up.”
I obeyed, though I didn’t much feel like it. She pushed a bowl at me and I reached to grab it when I saw one hand was covered with bandages hard and stiff. “What …” I asked her.
She shrugged. “Brother from the monastery said you broke your hand.”
My chest felt like it cracked open. My hand were broken? I couldn’t throw knives. I couldn’t … Christ, I could barely defend myself. My hands shook as I took the bowl from her.
Ellie leaned back on her hands. “So strange,” she said, staring at me. “Never would have even thought you’re a girl, but now that I know I feel stupid for not seeing it before.”
I frowned. She were more stupid for hussing her bits at me so often.
“Robin’s downstairs, you know,” she told me. “Stalking outside like a lion. John won’t let him in.”
Coughing a bit, I shrugged. “He won’t never, not with Bess in here.”
Ellie sat up straighter. “You think? Do you reckon he’s serious about her, then? I told her John is just a boy, and a stupid, disloyal one at that.”
I didn’t throw the soup at her. I felt right proud for that. “You don’t know nothing, Ellie,” I snapped at her. “John is the most loyal. The most protective. He chooses Bess and he’ll love her till he rots. He deserves a family.”
Now her eyes narrowed. “Have you and John fooled around, then? Living in the woods with all them boys, must be just like everyone says, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be a fool. I ain’t never done nothing with John. You have.”
She shrugged. “So?”
I put the soup down and tossed the blanket off. “I’m going to see Rob,” I told her.
She didn’t stop me. I went down the stairs and near the door, but I stopped. I went to the window, looking outside.
He were there. He were pacing, just as she said. Looking fair miserable.
I didn’t want him to know what he’d done. Sure, he knew, but seeing me were a different thing. The hand were bad, and he’d know just how bad. He’d know what it meant for me. And he couldn’t know.
Most because, as I watched him, sad and hurting and the kind of alone that I couldn’t be a part of, I knew what I had to do. I knew what I wanted to do. And Rob wouldn’t never rest if he knew I were going to Gisbourne and couldn’t bare throw a knife.
Rob wouldn’t never forgive himself, neither, if I died.