“How so? If you don’t mind my asking?” John leaned against the spear.
To have any chance of successfully entering that castle, they needed Nixie with them. Which meant his men could not afford to think badly of her. They needed to all be on her side. Crafting up a plausible and very reasonable story, he said, “She’s the woman in the glass.”
“Who?” Doing a full-face squint, John glanced quickly over his shoulder, as if he could conjure Nixie up by thought alone. “Marian? The woman in the glass? But I saw no—”
“It is as I’ve said, she was cursed by Crispin. I know not how, but he wished to keep her beauty as his own, and so trapped her years within a wall of glass. I found her.”
“When?” He didn’t look quite convinced.
There wasn’t a story of a woman trapped in glass, but sometimes making someone believe a story was as simple as doling out just enough honest facts as possible while portraying a look of total honesty while doing it.
“When you and Maurice were out on a hunt. I surveyed the castle—”
John growled. “You went to the castle alone?”
Robin shrugged. “I’m not your child, John. Friend or no, if I’ve a mind toward investigation, I will. But no, I did not go to the castle. I saw a caravan not five miles from here. I too was sussing out game that day. The caravan held a tarp-covered wagon, and I moved in to investigate. There were only two men, and easily dispatched.”
John’s eyes widened. “You could have been caught, Robin.” He snapped his fingers. “You could have been—”
“Aye. But the fact was I wasn’t. No trail will lead Crispin’s men here.”
Swallowing hard, John’s nostrils were flared, but his shoulders were no longer so tense as he asked, “And how did you free her?”
His mind instantly flashed to the moment he’d seen Nixie come out of the lamp. Surrounded by the glow of genie magic, her beautiful, ripe body beckoning him. Her wide, guileless brown eyes—so gentle and graceful looking, reminding him of a majestic doe—that long spill of inky hair down her breasts and shoulders.
“I broke the glass. It was the only thing I could think to do. Upon its shattering, she stepped out and—” The world turned completely off its axis.
“Don’t worry, my friend.” John clapped his shoulder. “I understand the rest. If you truly believe her your mate, then I shall guard her life with my own.”
“Thank you.” John punched his friend in the shoulder. “Now, let us go and eat and tell tales.”
Chapter 13
Nixie wanted to hunch in on herself as she went to sit at the campfire with Robin and some of his men later that evening. They’d all been laughing, and generally having a good time, until she’d sat down with her plate of food. And like someone had switched off a light switch, all talking ceased.
Looking at the faces of men, both young and old, and reading clearly their mistrust of her.
The boys had accepted her, but it seemed the men’s minds hadn’t changed at all.
Robin sat beside her, his leg brushing against her own. Just that small touch helped to settle her nerves a little.
Little John took a seat directly opposite her and Robin, firelight cast deep shadows into the hollows of his face, making him appear larger than normal and twice as sinister.
She picked at her meat—something pinkish and smelling sort of like steak, but not really—not sure if she was brave enough to try it, when a voice interrupted her silent musings.
“Well then, woman, tell us a tale.”
“What?” She glanced up, wondering who’d said that, shocked to discover that it was none other than John.
Her first few meetings with him hadn’t exactly been cordial. To put it mildly. Crazy, that even with his memories stripped, he still seemed determined to not like her. And yet…
“You want me to tell a story?”
Robin licked his thumb, setting a half eaten leg of meat down and nodded. “‘Tis customary to tell tales around the campfire. And since you’re new—”
“It means you’ll have stories to tell we haven’t heard a thousand times over.” A short, dark skinned man of maybe forty years (although in Kingdom, who the hell really knew) smirked at her. One of his eyes was completely clouded over with obvious cataract, but the other was a very striking shade of tawny yellow.
His laughter seemed to ease some of the tension of the others. There were several other campfires with other men around, and it’d not gone unnoticed by her that the one Robin had led her to didn’t have near so many men. As though he wanted to try and put her somewhat at ease.
There were just three sets of eyes she didn’t know. She could do this. Nixie had never been the storyteller in her house. It’d always been her father, but his ability to captivate an audience had been innate.
Praying that she’d somehow gotten even a tenth of his storytelling skills, she gave John and the others a brief smile.