She gave one final sharp nod. “In the morning, we’ll send the girls for flowers. Perfect time of year for it.”
“Flowers?” I questioned, but she already went to the kitchen, and Bess sat me down.
“You heard her,” Bess said with a smile. “Time to scrub!”
They were at me for hours. I had little idea what they were doing, only that I had no modesty by the end of it. Bess cleaned my hands careful, especially the half hand with the damaged stumps. I told her she didn’t have to, that she should rest, and she just smiled and pushed off my protests.
I’d lost my sister far too early in life, and in running from home with Joanna, I’d given up my only chance at a mother. I’d never had this, females that wanted to be part of my life. That wanted to be part of all my life.
“Thank you,” I whispered to Bess. “Thank you for . . . this.”
She beamed at me. “Don’t be silly,” she told me. “We’re family now. We’ll be family as long as you want it.”
“Even though I’m some stuck-up lady now?” I asked her.
She laughed. “In truth, you’re a lot nicer now than when you were a thief pretending to be a boy. So if it’s the ladyship part of you, I’ll take it.” I frowned, and she laughed again, gentler. “I think you just have so many more people that care for you than you’ve ever been willing to admit, Scar.”
It were strange, and wondrous, and made water push up behind my eyes, that maybe she weren’t wrong.
Missy popped her head round the corner into the kitchen. “Is she done? It’s done!”
I frowned. “What?”
“Yes,” Bess said, toweling my clean, soft hands dry.
Missy hopped into the kitchen with a dress. My dress, sort of—it were made from a blue dress I’d worn the night Rob became sheriff, that last happy night with him—but it were different, the light blue underskirts repurposed to make the whole dress, and the old velvet overlay changed to just bare edge it in dark blue, shot through with silver. The skirt were layers of soft blue fabrics that must have come from still other dresses. The whole thing shimmered and looked soft and sweet.
My breath caught. Were this meant to be something I could wear? Could I be soft and sweet? Were I meant to be, once I were a wife?
“Look,” Missy told me, flipping it round. She stuck her finger through two small loops. “For your knives!”
I laughed. I laughed so hard I started crying, and I hugged her close to me.
When they finally let me rest, I curled up in a chair by a dying fire. There, in the slow-darkening light and quiet, I finally pulled out Rob’s letter.
SCARLET, 132.
I wish I could paint. I’m awful at it, and I’m sorry. Or even sketch. I’ll try with words, pale though they are.
I left the castle early today. There was frost on the ground, hopefully our last, and the cold made my breath plume out in these big clouds. It seemed like a fairy story, or like Avalon, shrouding me in mist. Like if I just kept breathing, I could will magic into being. I could make things change for us, or I could make you appear to me.
The frost made everything glitter. It was one of those perfect frosts, where every blade of grass looks special and beautiful because of ice like lace on it. Even with the frost, the forest is green again, and this was like a crystal green, like a prism around the green.
We buried John in the graveyard of the monastery, and this morning—like many others—I went to visit him. To talk. To tell him he was right about us all along. He knew I loved you from the first. He said I was being an ass and should just tell you, and I told him to stop meddling—which led to a rather massive fight. You’ll remember it, that first winter—you and Tuck and Much had a hard time pulling us apart. John slugged Much in the face by accident and you wouldn’t speak to him for a week. You two thought we were fighting about one of the tavern girls, and that started the fight—but really, we were fighting about you. And what I should do.
I never told John that I’d said you should marry him. Mostly because I thought he’d take me up on it, and once things were good between us, I never got the chance. So I confessed it to his tombstone. That it should have been him to love you, to marry you. He would have taken you away from Nottingham and gotten started on a family with you straight off.
He would have been alive; you wouldn’t be hidden away, in whatever hell Prince John is keeping you in. Maybe then I could have forgotten you.
Maybe not. You’re not easy to forget, Scar.
The point of all these sketches is that I know you’re not coming back. I have faith that Prince John won’t hold you captive forever; you’ll find a way out of that prison. You will beat him, because you never give up hope. But you won’t risk returning here and bringing his fury down on Nottingham.