I started to tell her I’d never be disloyal, but I wondered if that’s what it meant to marry another man, to run to another country, when my heart were firm in Rob’s chest. “No,” I told her.
She shook her head. “It’s wonderful,” she said. “Arthur—he loved her. He loved everything about her. And even when she hurt him and was cruel to him, he still loved her. It seems a precious thing, for someone to know the very worst part of you and love you anyway.”
I frowned.
“You don’t think?” she asked.
“It’s hard to argue when you say it so prettily,” I told her.
She smiled.
“And it seems strange that you’d have a care for the worst in people. You don’t seem to have much in the way of darkness,” I told her.
Her smile went watery. “That’s good, I suppose—you don’t want everyone to see your darkness, do you?”
I frowned deeper.
“That man—yesterday—” she said, halting. “He would have taken me. Moments more, he would have done it. And I wonder if my—someone would still have me if that happened.”
I looked at her. Were she betrothed? “Marriage is just about money,” I told her. “If you still had that, you’d be well enough. Unless you have a particular man.”
She bit her lip, glancing back at the abbey like someone might hear. “Saer loves me. And I love him.”
“Oh.” Rob. “Well, loving someone makes you forgive just about everything,” I told her. My chest felt tight and out of breath. “Besides, willing and unwilling are two very different forms of being disloyal.”
She shivered. “I’d never been so frightened in my life,” she whispered. “And my first worry was that somehow this whole thing made me less in his eyes.” She shook her head.
“Will you tell him?” I asked.
She nodded quick. “I can’t imagine keeping it from him.”
My thoughts ran back to the last night I saw Gisbourne alive, and how he’d tried to hurt me the same as that man tried to hurt Margaret, and how I knew then I could never tell Rob. I wondered if that meant I loved Rob less than she loved this Saer.
“I can’t imagine keeping anything from him. You know.”
“I don’t think I do.” I sighed, still remembering Rob that night, how he’d touched me and my fear had rushed away and I still hadn’t told him.
“Well, you know Saer so well,” she said, glancing around again.
“I do?”
She nodded, and her words tumbled out in a rush like a secret she’d been waiting to tell me. “He speaks so highly of you. He even gave me a knife when he heard I’d travel with the queen, in case of something just like this, even though I don’t know how to use it. I don’t even carry it with me. But he did that because he said you used one so well.”
“And I know him? He hasn’t just heard something about me?”
She laughed. “My lady, do you not know my lord Winchester’s Christian name?”
“Winchester?” I repeated. “Saer—Winchester is your Saer?”
She flushed, but smiled and nodded.
“Oh. Yes, of course, you know I know him.”
“But that wasn’t the first time you met him, was it? He said you’re beloved of his dear friend.”
Rob.
“Robin Hood,” she told me, with a grand smile, like she knew my secret. “Or Locksley, as he insists on calling him. So much less romantic!”
I stood, hampered a bit by the dress. “I don’t want to talk of . . . him,” I said. I wished it didn’t sound like a plea on my lips.
“I’m sorry!” she cried. “I didn’t mean—I just—I never get to speak about him. My father hasn’t agreed to the match, and we’re not supposed to be seen together. I can’t tell anyone, and I thought—” She stopped, and I knew I’d silenced her.
“I would like to hear of Winchester,” I told her. “He’s been an incredibly kind friend to me, and I have nothing but loyalty for him. But the other—Robin Hood—I don’t want to speak of him.” It were easier to say Robin Hood. That didn’t bring to mind Rob’s face, his eyes, his hands on my skin.
She lifted a shoulder. “I have enough to say about Saer to fill several days.”
My brows pushed together at this comment, but she didn’t notice. She simply took my hand and started to walk, chattering on about every detail of their lovely, traditional, perfect courtship. There were kisses and gifts and secret walks that were the closest they got to scandal.
There weren’t no death, no torture and nightmares and bruises and cuts. There weren’t nights when they were so close together and kept apart by a husband that would have sooner seen me dead than loved me.
“You were married, weren’t you?” she asked me, tugging on my arm. She knew I weren’t paying enough mind to her.
It weren’t really a good question to ask if she wanted me to talk more. “Yes,” I said.
“When were you engaged?”
I frowned. “A lifetime ago.” Then my frowning got worse. “You said I was married, not that I am.”