CHAPTER Nine
The servants were laying out a fancy dress and brushing it flat and free of dust and dirt when I came back to the room. The long bit were gold,
shimmering and bright, and the shorter bit that fit over it were tufted red velvet, the same color as my old ribbons. It were an awful expensive thing,
and it felt like soft moss beneath my hand.
“You would like to dress now, my lady?”
“No,” I said quick, pulling my hand back from it. “Where can I bathe?”
“We’ll fetch the bath for you, my lady.”
I forgot about this—the silly labor of baths. Fair shamed by it, I stashed my knives by the shutter as they left, then watched as the servants first
brought the basin to the chambers, then pail after pail of water warmed in the kitchens and sloshed cold by the time it made it to me. I didn’t mind
that much—I were used to bathing in colder waters—but I were meant to sit in the half-empty basin while they poured it over me, slow and waiting for
more water.
Then the lady servant set upon me with soap and cloths, and that part were a far cry better than bathing in the lake.
Course, Gisbourne walked in half through this ordeal, and I weren’t none too pleased by him seeing all my bits again. And he just folded his arms and
watched me. I covered myself in the water as best I could with my knees and such, but it didn’t make me feel much better.
“Quite a gentleman, aren’t you,” I spat at him.
“What?” he asked. “A man can’t look upon his wife? From what I’m told it’s the same as looking upon my arm, or my foot. You belong to my body,
Marian, and I shall look at you how I choose.”
Blood were creeping up my neck and cheeks, and I stared at the water as the maid finished, fetching a sheet for me.
“You were missed at supper last night,” he said.
“I’m sure.”
“I realize I wasn’t specific about this before, but court suppers are part of our bargain. Every function you are expected to attend as my wife you
shall attend, or our deal is off. Do you understand?”
The servant shook the sheet open, standing off to the side. I motioned her over, to stand between me and Gisbourne, but she just looked confused.
Gisbourne laughed, damn him.
Full of hate and shame, I stood, wrapping the sheet round me as quick as I could. Gisbourne came forward as I stood there, putting his hand on my stomach
where the big bruise lay, pulsing and sore under the thin cover of the sheet. My whole skin shivered with the touch of a hand through so little fabric.
He looked at me, his eyes dark. “Seems you know a lot of gentlemen.”
It should have shamed me, but that weren’t the way of it. It made me think of Robin, of his mouth and his hands and his body all along mine.
“Hold on,” he ordered abruptly, and without more word he grasped my middle and pulled me from the bath. Swallowing a gasp, my hand shot out to his
shoulder as he lifted me up over the edge and set my feet down.
He let me go immediately, and I pulled away from him, holding the sheet tight to me.
He pulled the tunic off over his head. “Send up more water,” he said to Eadric. “No reason to let this waste.”
I dragged the long, loose dress over my head as more of his clothes came off. He bared his chest, staring at me. I looked away, but I felt his eyes on me
as he stripped down completely.
“And here I thought what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” he goaded with a laugh. “Don’t want to peek, love?”
Rob’s kiss burned over me again. “Don’t call me that. You don’t love me. It’s a mock.”
“Yes,” he said. “It is. Love.”
I shook my head, keeping turned away from him and letting my maid tug and pull and tie me. I heard the splash of the water and the sounds of washing, and
I felt like I were fair pinned in the corner of the room, unable to move.
The servant sat me on the edge of the bed and brushed what there were of my hair—long bits in front that fluffed about my face, and the short bunches in
back that didn’t lay flat. It behaved a bit more for her, and she did some trick with pins and it stayed back, like it were all gathered about the bun
that weren’t there anymore.
“Thank you,” I murmured to her.
Gisbourne stood from the bath. “Last chance,” he said before his manservant put the cloth around him. I stayed still, and he laughed at me. I sat on
the bed while his manservant dressed him in black velvet, stark and fine against the white of his shirt, his body big and wide and hard with muscle that
seemed odd to be dressed in velvet.
I looked away. He weren’t ugly.
Not liking the thought, I went to the window, retrieving my knife when he weren’t looking and hiding it in the back of the shorter overdress.
Finished, he held out his hand and I took it, letting him pull me in front of him. He stared me over, but not the same as when I wasn’t dressed.
“Perfect,” he said. “The dress suits you nicely. Now if you just don’t open your mouth, we may be able to pull this off.”
“What is there to pull?” I asked, taking my hand back. “It ain’t as if we’re fixing to steal something from the prince.” I looked at him. “Are
you?”
“I’m trying to convince him that you’re a well-bred lady instead of a heathen,” he told me. “It’s a little bit harder than stealing bread.”
“Why should he care?”
“I care. You should care.”
“Why?”
“Christ, you’re little better than a toddler.” Shaking his head, he came toward me till my back hit the wall, and he leaned close to my ear. “You
want an annulment, Marian, yes?”
My hand curled around the knife I had hidden, but I nodded.
“Do you know what the only thing is that will allow for our marriage to be annulled?”
My mug went hot and red but I didn’t say nothing to him.
He leaned even closer so his lips touched my ear. “Lack of consummation.”
Stepping back a pace, his eyes went over me in a different way, a way that made me hold my breath because breathing made my chest move too much. Though
my heart were hammering hard enough that it might have been a fair exchange, the cloth beating with the pulse of what lay beneath.
“You’ll be a good girl tonight, won’t you?” he told me with a sneer.
He moved away. I looked at the window, at the sliver of dark night I could see, and I turned and followed my husband.
I weren’t full aware of how many nobles had come to Nottingham. The Great Hall were filled to bursting, with huge long tables running the length of it.
There were one larger table up on the dais, with fewer seats than the rest.
Gisbourne led me to the royal table and a breath fluttered within me. Were my husband so favored that we would have to eat with these people? Gisbourne
did the dutiful bit and pulled out the chair till I swept into it, and pushed it forward for me. I reckoned that the tradition were for the damn weight
of the things—I were strong as girls came, but I couldn’t have lifted such a chair.
Seated in the wooden trap that kept me at the table, I stared at the spectacle. There were huge plates of animals in garish display, giant turkeys
sitting golden and steaming, platters heaped with cuts of meat the like I’d never seen. Antlers of the stag they had killed were draped with jewels and
pearls above the meat from his body. There were a whole table of falsely colored sweets.
Flour. Sugar. Eggs. Game. All this belonged to the people of Nottingham, who were starving while these people fatted themselves.
Horns blared out into the hall while the men stood, welcoming the prince and princess to the table. The prince were meant to look handsome—with his fine
clothes, and the certain bearing and surety that handsome men had—but he weren’t. He were more than ten years my elder but he looked like a spoiled,
milk-faced boy.
“Welcome, lords and ladies, to the humble supper I have been able to give to you. Please enjoy, and let us first drink to the health and safe return of
my brother abroad. To King Richard!” he bellowed.
“King Richard!” we all answered. That I was fair fine with drinking to.
A cup touched mine to my right. I looked and nodded to Winchester. “Your Grace,” I greeted.
“My lady,” he said. A servant stepped between us with an offering of venison stew, and Winchester ladled a bowl for me and then himself. “I am
grateful to see you much improved from last night.”
“Last night?” I asked.
“Your lord husband informed me that you weren’t well.”
I looked down. Gisbourne hadn’t cared, but it were close to truth. “No, I wasn’t.”
“My lady,” he said quiet, so much so that I had to lean toward him. “I’m more than aware of your husband’s ungallantries. Should you ever wish for
my assistance, you shall have it upon a moment.”
My eyes lifted. “Thank you, your Grace.”
“Now, I believe you know another dear friend of mine.”
“I do?”
“The former earl of Huntingdon?” he whispered to me.
My blood ran fast. “You know Rob?”
He smiled, tasting his soup. “So I imagine the stories are true, then. It’s him that truly has your heart.”
Allan had said as much before. “Who the hell is telling these stories?” I asked.
He chuckled. “More than likely, Eleanor of Aquitaine and her minstrels,” he told me, nodding down the table. I could see past Gisbourne and the
princess to the prince; he leaned back and gave glimpse of an elegant grayed lady.
“That’s the dowager queen?” I asked.
He nodded. “There is no fairer personage to serve in the royal court,” he whispered to me. “Her youngest son may know little of what honor and grace
truly represent, but trust me, she is the font of such qualities.”
Like a cloud, the prince blocked my view of her again.
“And she loves nothing more than a well-told story. She encourages such amongst the royal court. Courtly loves are always her favorites.”
“The love me and Rob have ain’t so courtly,” I told him.
He laughed. “God will judge you, not I,” he said. “But I would love to see him again. We knew each other well when we were boys.”
Perhaps he were true, and he loved Rob, but it were equal as likely that he weren’t, and this were some trick to find Rob—another wolf in the royal
court. “I’ll speak of it when I see him, your Grace, but as he’s a bit of an outlaw he ain’t so easy to find,” I told him.
“Thank you,” he said, patting my hand.
“What are you two whispering about?” Gisbourne asked, but his eyes were on our touching hands.
Winchester released me. “The lady was assuring me her bruises didn’t hurt overmuch,” he said. “I had inquired after her welfare.”
“Your gallantry is misplaced,” the prince fair shouted round a mouthful of food. “The lady isn’t some delicate flower in need of chivalry, but rather
the firmness of her husband’s hand, Winchester.”
“Surely no woman should lack for chivalry, my son.”
The prince looked to his side and I reckoned it must have been Eleanor that had spoken.
“Hardly a woman at all, is she, though?” he said, and a bit of food spat out. Even the princess made a stuck-up little face at that. “She’s a thief.
A criminal. An outlaw—hardly falls into the same category.”
“The gentility befitting her sex should be inalienable,” Winchester said.
“Don’t be silly,” the prince railed on. “I suppose you bow and scrape for peasant women too, Winchester?”
“My wife is no peasant,” Gisbourne said.
I frowned. Honestly, why bother piping up at all?
“No, of course not. She elevated you, in fact, didn’t she?” the prince crowed. My husband’s face went dark. Didn’t much think he liked to be
reminded of that.
The far ends of the tables were still talking amongst themselves, but the closer bits were listening to the prince make sport of me. “But my prince,”
someone spoke up. “Surely you must take deportment into account. If anything, dear Gisbourne has lowered himself by his association. It’s like mating
with a wild animal.”
“And what should we take into account about a person that so lowers the conversation during such a lovely meal, my lord de Lacy?” the queen said.
“If you can call de Lacy a lord, my lady queen,” said another man.
“Lord enough to see you on the field, Wendeval!” de Lacy roared back at him.
“My dear mother,” the princess said. “You must forgive him. We are all so confused about what to do with such a curiosity in our midst. We have all
heard such stories about her, and now it seems she cannot even muster the words to speak. You must understand how this lends a certain air of savagery.”
“And yet the court’s ability to discuss a young lady as if she were an object seems savage also,” the queen said. “Most unbecoming, Isabel.”
I saw the princess flush at this rebuke, and Gisbourne looked to her.
“My dear mother,” she tried again, “I only meant to allay his thoughtless words. I, of course, have been eager to get to know the lady Leaford and am
eager to hear what must be such … colorful stories. In her own words.”
“Ah, yes, you do love a good story, Mother. Come, Lady Marian, regale us,” the prince sneered at me.
Gisbourne’s vengeful gaze settled on me, and I licked my lips, pressing them tight together. I pushed up my chin and clutched my hands tight. “I won’t
perform for you,” I said, pushing the words careful through my teeth. God knows they weren’t natural on my mouth. “Perhaps you think me a fool, and
who could blame you, as I sit here and listen to you call me a wild animal, a peasant. But I am wise enough to know when my words will only be met with
derision and scorn.” I looked to the side a small bit. “So no, my prince, I would prefer not to regale you.”
My husband’s hand settled on mine, his fingers clawing in and cutting. I didn’t much dare to look at him, to breathe.
Out the edge of my eye I saw a pale face lean forward. Her blue eyes were bright, and there were a stark, harsh beauty to her face. Eleanor of Aquitaine
inclined her head to me, and I flushed.
“Well said, my lady Marian,” she said.
Gisbourne released the bear clamp on my hand and I tucked my head down to the dowager queen.