Greenwood

Chapter 1

Nottinghamshire, August 1193

She noticed the thunder first, a rumble echoing between hillocks, threading through the valley. "Rain! Blessed Virgin!" Thea sank to her knees with a sigh that was less prayer than protest. Nineteen years she had lived in this midland meadow, and crops gone foul more often than she cared to count. From the rise of a small hill, she gazed toward the green and gold patchwork of ripening fields. To the north, black-bottomed clouds mushroomed along the horizon. It was not unfamiliar, this wetness. Just unwanted, with harvest upon the land and the seasons gone mad. She reached for her baskets, brimming with newly gathered herbs, and the sound came again, closer, a whipcrack through charged, humid air. Thea placed her hand against the ground and watched the water well up around her fingers. Beneath the sodden ground, the earth shuddered, some muffled rhythm, unnatural, as threatening as another downpour on overripe fields. She scrambled to her feet, breath frozen in her throat, and turned in time to see the backlit figures crest the ridge above her. They drove their horses mercilessly, four, five--no, a half dozen of them--with the day's frail sunlight glinting off tarnished mail and sword hilts. Soldiers, damn them! They would see her--had seen her--and now turned as one, their course directed toward her. Fear razored through her belly, then hatred, as she watched the umber swath of soil ribbon out behind them. A woman alone was not safe in the shire, not with King Richard imprisoned and lawlessness ruling in his stead. In a time when knighthood was purchased with coin more often than noble deed, no soldier offered guarantee of safety. She knew she should run, but there was nowhere to hide in the openness. No cover she could reach in time. Even Sherwood-The forest was a dark green haze in the distance, striped layers of emerald and viridian blanketing the land around her lea. Silent and still. She was alone. She released the breath she'd been holding, made ragged with rage, and touched the leather-sheathed dagger at her side. It was a paltry blade, used for herbal cuttings and

reaching stubborn roots her digging stick could not unearth, hardly a weapon to best crossbows or broadswords, but it was all she had--save her wit. Her fist closed instinctively around the knife's bone hilt, and she lifted her chin. This was her valley, legally deeded, taxes paid. The rider in front plunged his steed through standing water, spraying an arc of mud across her kirtle. Amid curses and the clank of armor, his men plowed to an abrupt stop behind him, their horses neighing in protest. Hooves ripped through fragile clumps of clover, thickening the air with the wild smell of sod torn open. The knight drew his mount in a tight circle around her. "You are the one they call Thea? The Sherwood healing woman?" She looked at the men in Norman helms, then back at their leader. She did not know him, this rogue in mail with sharply pointed chin and sallow skin stretched tightly over angled cheekbones, but she could not have lived in the shire without recognizing the soldiers. These were the Sheriff of Nottingham's men. "I am," she replied, gripping the dagger more tightly. The minute motion was not lost on the horseman. "That is unwise, wench," he said, icy eyes trained on her hand. Thea let go of the blade, burying her fingers in the wool of her skirts, and met his inspection without flinching. "Word has it you're the herb witch who tends this misbegotten flock of peasants. One of your brood was in Nottingham this morning, wreaking havoc in Market Square. Perhaps you know him. A scrawny, runny-nosed runt with hair the color of straw and ambitions toward robbery." He let the reins slide through his hands and urged his horse forward until the animal's muzzle was inches from her face. The beast's breath blasted hot against her cheek. "A child, my lord?" "A mute, a half-wit. We hear he's the miller's son. Some call him Much." "And what did your thief steal, my lord?" "The little bastard made off with the Sheriff of Nottingham's purse." Thea curbed a smile. She could easily imagine Much, ruddy cheeks alight and cornflower eyes boasting silently as he shook the prized leather pouch whose thongs he had severed from the Sheriff's waist. He had outdone himself this time to have Nottingham's men still in relentless pursuit. "I see," she said carefully. "And why would your thief seek me out, my lord? I could offer little past a prayer and a charm for protection."

One of his men laughed derisively. "That's not what we hear, is it, Sir Guy?" Thea's breath stopped, and she looked sharply at the man questioning her. Of course. How could she not have known? The man fit every description she had heard, from his hawk-like face to the lank hair captured at the nape of his neck and left to stream down his back. Woad tattoos coiled around his wrists and forearms like blue serpents. There was even the unmistakable trademark: a small gold hoop adorning his left earlobe. Little was left of Norman nobility past the stained silk surcoat he wore--that and the oily, superior manner of one who presumed himself more important than those he oppressed. So she had met, finally, with Gisborne, the lieutenant of the guard at Nottingham Castle, the henchman so firmly attached to the Sheriff's ambitions. "No, it is not what we hear." His lips curved into a half-smile, and he chuckled, a gurgling growl deep in his throat, the sound of something not quite tame, or human. His men joined him in a rough chorus of laughter as, one by one, they closed rank around her. She stepped backward, and felt a metal boot tip dig into the small of her back. "Where you going, lassie?" "You'd not be thinking of running now, would you? There's six of us--" "And only one of you." The laughter rose again, lifting above the sour smell of unwashed men. She shuddered, but glared up into the eyes of their leader. "Call off your hounds, Sir, Guy," she demanded. One brow arched delicately, the knight's only show of surprise. Clearly he expected what he had come to receive from countless other victims: a reaction of fear, some small spark of terror. When it was not forthcoming, he raised his gloved hand and waved his soldiers back. With a single, fluid move, he dismounted and approached her. "Do you know the punishment for thievery, woman? Your Much fled with his hands intact. Alas, as swift as the half-wit was, he did not escape the bite of my sword. Sooner or later, the lad would have had to stop for help." He pulled his weapon from the scabbard slung across his back, stabbed into her gathering basket, and brought a speared sprig of costmary close enough to Thea's face for her to smell its balsam-mint fragrance. A mirthless smile creased his face. "Perhaps from you." Thea looked down the sword's length to Gisborne's knowing, sleet-gray eyes. "There is a boy such as you describe," she said warily, "a lad of fifteen years perhaps, but with the mind of a child. I assure you, my lord, he is not the criminal you seek. Much is harmless." "You would swear to his innocence?"

"I would, my lord." "And would you swear to your own? Before the Sheriff himself?" "If need be. If your Sheriff could not be persuaded to find some humor in a small, nimble-fingered prankster--" "A thief," Gisborne corrected her coldly. "And I can assure you, the Sheriff finds little humor in thievery. Nor do I think he will be amused to find some peasant has given aid to his enemy." He lowered his sword and bent his head close to hers. "You might save yourself, if you've a mind to. Tell us where the lad went. And I'd suggest the truth," he murmured, glancing at his soldiers with a canted smile. "They're hungry today." Thea turned her head aside, avoiding his lips if not the series of warm, rancid breaths that crawled along her neck. "I have no idea, my lord. Much is a child, and children are like quicksilver. Here one moment, gone the next." "The forest, perhaps? Where you dig your herbs?" Thea glanced in the direction he indicated with his outstretched sword to the expanse of trees rimming the horizon. She drew a long breath and steeled herself, already sensing where this line of questioning would lead. "I doubt it, my lord," she said. "Sherwood Forest is haunted, certainly no place for a child." "But you go there, do you not?" "Sometimes," she admitted, "if I must. For woodruff or cherry bark--" "But not for trysts with outlaw woodsmen?" She met his charge squarely. "There are no thieves in Sherwood Forest, sir. Only ghosts--and they do not appear interested in my digging." Gisborne's brows drew low over hooded, milky eyes; full lips thinned and hardened. Thea heard the groan of saddle leather as his men leaned forward, antici-pating, eager. "You'll not get the truth from the likes of her," one called out, blood-lust in his voice. "She's protecting the little bastard. Any fool can see that." Gisborne did not acknowledge the soldiers or their stupidly voiced opinion of his strategy. He slid his sword delicately beneath the woolen head covering Thea wore and flipped the fabric over her shoulder, baring her neck. "You do remember your pickpocket's wound, do you not?" he said, plucking the scarf from her head.

Thea snatched the ragged cloth from his swordtip. Gisborne favored her with a mild show of surprise at her daring, and his gaze raked over her with deliberate slowness. The corners of his lips lifted in an appreciative smile. "A small slice, regrettably. It barely grazed the skin." He directed his sword between her breasts, threading it into the fibers of her kirtle, and paused as if letting his intent sink in. His eyes narrowed, her only warning, and he slashed viciously upward through the cloth. Thea gasped as the sword tip stung her skin. The scarf she held fluttered from her nerveless fingers and settled in a gray puddle on the ground. Gisborne's brow arched as his stare trailed to Thea's lips, to her throat, to the fabric laid open by his sword. "I believe she's remembering, Morgan." He grinned as if privately amused and inclined his head toward her in mock deference. Unexpectedly, he sheathed his sword and prepared to mount. "You're not letting her go?" the soldier asked in disbelief. "This one's a liar for certain. I say finish her--now!" "It's not the healer the Sheriff wants," Gisborne replied, sliding his booted foot into the stirrup and lifting himself into the saddle. "But she aided the thief! Tended his wound, I'll wager, and though you'll wring no confession from her, you know she helped him escape. Not to arrest her, my lord-Nottingham will have your gizzard for dinner--" "A risk I'll have to take. I said she is not the one we're after." His horse pranced impatiently, and Gisborne tightened his grip on the reins. He pointed to the faint red line that had seeped through her kirtle and lapped at the edges of her tunic. "Think carefully, wench. There is a price on the head of every Sherwood bandit, and to aid them is treason. We wouldn't want to find your lovely neck in a noose." Gisborne dug his heels into his horse's side, and the animal reared. "To Nottingham!" he shouted to his troops and rode off, not once glancing back. Several minutes passed before Thea unclenched her fists and drew a deeper breath. The wind whipped her skirts about her legs, and a roll of thunder sounded in the distance, bringing her to her senses. She stooped to rescue her muddy scarf, trampled and torn by the horses' hooves. A drop of blood fell on the ground, and Thea put her fingers to her rent kirtle. "I'll show you treason, you Norman swine." ***

Thea had only heard of him, Gisborne's master, the tyrant who lorded over Nottingham. By practice, she never ventured close to the city, let alone the brooding gray castle the Sheriff claimed for himself. Caution and distrust limited her travels to the fields near her home and to the forest, where her herbs, roots, and barks grew in abundance. Upon occasion, the villagers of Edwinstowe urged her to make the journey to town. Some suggested she could show a tidy profit if she brought a cart filled with herbs and simples and set up beside the gaily decorated booths that lined the Square on market days. Others boasted of the minstrels and mummers, wrestlers and archers, and ale flowing freely at the Trip to Jerusalem Inn, a favorite haunt of returning Crusaders. She weighed these temptations carefully against one single, sufficient deterrent--the Sheriff of Nottingham, murderer, madman--and chose to stay away. No one knew who the man was, save he was a Norman. That alone was enough to condemn him. Whatever else she'd heard was no doubt embellished by fear and peasant hatred. Yet in Thea's mind the man was the very embodiment of evil: a dark figure, stalking the castle ramparts under a midnight moon, sacrificing his last traces of humanity for inhuman power. It was a child's image, not unlike the ones she recalled from her father's stories of other bestial, war-thirsty Normans, invading and taking what was never theirs to take. Nothing Thea had seen as a woman convinced her the image was a false one. She had lived her entire life in Sherwood's shadow on a remnant of a once-great Saxon holding. Thur-leah, it was called then. Thor's meadow. The arable land was gone now, usurped by the Crown after the Conquest and maintained as part of the royal hunting preserve. Her father's kin had been left with only a ridge of rocky meadow. They were never certain whether the generosity of the invading forces was meant as a kindness or merely as additional insult. It was impossible to farm the remaining perches, as generations of her family had discovered, putting back and shoulder to the plow only to blunt the share against the wide striation of stone just below the surface soil. By the time the acreage had passed to Thea's father, Ruhleah Aelredson had abandoned any hope of eking a prosperous living from the earth. He lived out his life reminiscing about the injustices done to his family and partaking in an excess of mead some said was his undoing. Only her mother's will had preserved the land for her. She showed Thea that amidst the boulders and rubble grew calamint and feverfew, and revealed to her that even stinging nettles had their uses. In time, Thea realized that the land her father presumed so valueless flourished with its own wealth, and if their meadow was but a small parcel, there was also the forest, rife with herbal specimens. She discovered the merits of coltsfoot and mallow, the phases of the moon and hours of the day or night for gathering, the herbs which would ensure fidelity and those that would drive out witches. She memorized the recipes for decoctions and infusions in rhyme, and through experimentation grew skilled in devising simples and nostrums.

The art of herbal healing, laced liberally with prayer and incantation, gave her something far more precious than material wealth: respect for the gifts of the earth and rare self-sufficiency; knowledge that could not be robbed from her when land was; a trade and mastery over the world around her at a time when power and authority belonged to a privileged few. Her mother died when Thea was fifteen. A year later come Twelfthtide, Thea laid her husband in Edwinstowe churchyard's frozen sod. Poor, gentle Brand, gifted with a carpenter's skill for shaping wood, and filled with the wild, foolish notions of a dreamer, born to the forest. Taken from her too soon, unfairly, in Sherwood's silent, oaken depths. She comforted herself with the only constants she knew: the scent of lily hanging in the air; the knowledge that betony still had power over evil spirits; the truth that knapwort took bruising from the skin, if not the soul. She clung to the changeless rhythms of the earth, of seeding and flowering and harvest. There had been times in the years since when she had longed for the companionship of her mother on her gathering journeys or missed the comfort of Brand's shy, awkward embraces, but there had never been a time when she had been afraid to be alone. Until today. Thea hastened home, the eerie half-light of dusk on her heels. She wanted nothing more than to be inside her cottage, to let her encounter with Guy of Gisborne pass, along with the imminent storm. Yet she had no sooner cleared the top of the last hill when she stopped and looked in dismay at the tiny hut nestled in the vale below. Even from a distance, she could see she had been visited by the Sheriff's minion and his men. The low wall that marked her acreage had been breached in several places. Layers of unmortared fieldstone had been knocked away, as if the men, for sport, had made slipshod jumps across the wall's breadth. The trailing rosemary that spilled over the wall lay crushed beneath the debris; the air was filled with the strong, piney scent of its resin. Thea started forward again more cautiously, moving toward the small, single-room dwelling in stunned silence. The gate stood open; she latched it behind her. The meticulously arranged fieldstones that lined the path to her door had been scattered, the border of lavender crushed. The lemon balm, hyssop, tansy, and purple basil that grew around the cottage in colorful profusion had been trampled and--Thea knelt to touch the fallen plants tenderly--deliberately sliced at ground level. Images of Gisborne and his deft swordplay came to mind, and Thea pressed her lips together in a grim line. She looked at the wattle and daub walls and the steeply pitched roof and said a quick prayer of thanksgiving that her crime--whatever it had been--had not provoked the soldiers to fire the thatch. Her home had been invaded, but it was intact. Far too many others had suffered a worse fate for less cause.

The door was ajar, and Thea sidled into the cottage with care, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light before entering fully. It would be like Gisborne to leave a man lying in wait for her, she thought, touching the dagger at her hip for reassurance. The interior of the cottage felt unfamiliar, defiled, full of the indistinct shapes of overturned furniture. She braved another step, one bare foot exploring the hard earthen floor. Her heart sank as she looked around. Gisborne's swath of destruction had not ended at her door. Her cupboard and shelves had been randomly emptied, crockery broken, one of her stools smashed into kindling, and the straw stuffing of her bedding strewn across the floor. Even the ashes of the central open hearth had been stirred viciously; a fine dusting of gray powder had settled over every surface and the odor of woodsmoke hung in the air. "There ye are, sweet lass. Where have ye been hiding yerself since this morn?" The male voice caused her heart to lurch wildly, and with lightning reflex, she slid the dagger from its sheath. Before she could turn toward the intruder, a large log of an arm circled her from behind, squeezing the breath from her body and pinning her arms helplessly at her sides. Thea felt herself crushed back against a massive figure. A man's rigid form insinu-ated itself into the length of her spine and the curve of her hips. Wiry-bearded lips scratched a kiss into the soft flesh of her neck. She cried out, a rasp of hysteria giving way to indig-nation, and kicked behind her, fighting the woolen skirts of her kirtle. Her resistance met with nothing but air and a tightening of muscle and sinew around her ribs as the man behind her shifted his hold to gain better purchase. One hand released its grip on her midriff, came near to stroke her tangle of hair, nearer to touch her face. Thea twisted, squirmed, and sank her teeth into the skin of the man's fist. "God's blood, lass! Be still, will ye? I have no wish to wrestle with a wild Celt!" "John?" The arms loosened about her, and she swirled around, dizzy with the return of air to her lungs. A giant shadow separated from the dimness that blurred all but form and figure, a lumbering bear of a man. The last yellowed light of day fell across his features. "Aye, what's left of me. Damn ye, lass. Ye bit me clean through to the bone! Now how do ye suppose I can spar with Scathlocke, my knuckles naught but a bloody pulp?" Relief poured through Thea, making her feel ridiculously weak, as if her muscles suddenly refused to hold her body togeth-er. Had Gisborne truly frightened her so much that she did not recognize the one man of such height and girth who would enter her cottage unannounced, whose bass-timbre'd voice would address her with such familiarity?

"Damn you, John Little," she said, quaking voice pretending at outrage. "What were you thinking, sneaking up on me like that?" The dagger dropped to the floor, and she let herself be cradled in his iron-thewed arms. She clutched his doeskin tunic and rested her head wearily against the hard muscles of his chest, reassuring herself with the faint scent of him--leather and evergreen, like the forest. "I was thinking to visit with ye, lass," he crooned softly, the rhythm of his heart thumping against her cheek like a soothing lullaby. He touched his lips to the spill of roan curls at her temple, and Thea pushed herself away slightly, hands splayed over his wide chest. "A foolish idea, John, in the best of times. You take no care." "I was bringing ye word of--" John's voice dropped suddenly as, for the first time, he saw in the gloaming the chaos of the cottage. "God's blood, Thea! What happened here?" "The Sheriff's men, I suppose." She turned from his embrace, surveying the room with a growing sense of violation. Her clothes lay in a pathetic heap at her feet, dirtied, trampled upon, but oddly still folded, as if someone had cleared her shelves with a mighty sweep. Nothing appeared to have been examined closely, not her clothes, not her herbs or medicines. The house had not been methodically searched by soldiers in need of information or incriminating evidence; it had been vandalized, ransacked for the entertainment of the Sheriff's men, and probably for Gisborne's amusement as well. "Clearly I have annoyed his soldiers past their limits for well-reasoned behavior," she said sarcastically, bending to pick a woolen tunic from the floor. "Annoyed the Sheriff's men, have ye? Aye, well that makes all the sense in the world. And there I was, thinking ye a sane and cautious woman. Have ye turned she-wolf with the full moon or is there some other reason ye've brought the Sheriff's pet dogs down on yer head?" Thea folded the garment over her arm and looked up into the giant's face. His skin, what was visible beneath the scruffy beard and untamed hair, was tanned, the cheeks weathered with the crimson flush of one who lived at the mercy of the earth and elements. "They suspect me, John," she said simply. "Aye, lass," he grinned, "but of what? Feistiness and bad temper? Poor judgment, mayhap?" Thea stabbed his chest meaningfully with her finger. "Of tending Much, their latest wanted criminal."

"Ah . . . um . . ." The crimson flush deepened, and John tucked his head to his chest. His weight shifted from one foot to the other, and he ran his roughened hand through the unruly mat of hair, visibly searching for a reply. "And how is the lad?" Thea said, almost enjoying his discomfiture. "Safe?" "Aye . . . well . . . there's the very reason I came to see ye, lass. To let ye know--" The fumble of words stopped the minute he looked into Thea's disapproving glare. "Aye, the lad's safe, safer than he's a right to be. I'd wring his neck myself if it would put one whit of sense in his fool head." "You would?" Thea asked doubtfully. "The thing is, he was right proud of it, lass. Waving the bloody purse under my nose, under Robin's. Could hardly have taken that away from him, could I?" John's face glowed with excitement, and there was no keeping a grin from crinkling the corners of his eyes. Thea crossed her arms in front of her. The man was incorrigible. The whole lot of them. He cleared his throat, and cocked his head sheepishly to one side. "Of course, I should've given him a good walloping, I should've, right then and there." "You should've stopped him," Thea said, her voice low and serious. "Well, lass, the boy wouldn't listen--" "Wouldn't he, John? He listens right enough when it's you or Will or Robin bragging on yourselves, running on as you do with your tales." "Ye're saying I put him up to it?" "I'm saying your talk put him up to it. These idiotic risks you've been taking lately--and for what?" John drew himself up to full height and knitted his brows together sternly. "Fer King Richard's ransom, lass." "Is it, John?" she challenged. "I mean, it wouldn't be for the thrill of it? For the adventure?" "Now, lass--" "Honestly, John, you don't know what you're stirring up from one day to the next." Thea sighed heavily. "Ye worry too much, lass. To be sure, it's serious business we do. I'll not lie to ye. But Much knows it. Oh, don't be jerking yer chin at me. He does. So it was a risk. Nottingham Square and all! The boy craves an audience, don't he? And so if it was just

a few silver pence. It was fine work, and even ye can't deny that. Stealing the Sheriff's pretty purse and his pride, as well. Not a bad take fer a morning's work." "You're defending him!" she said. "John, you encouraged him!" "The little bugger don't need encouragement from the likes of me." "But he's a child!" she insisted. "He knows nothing of the danger, the subtleties, the precautions--" "No? Why, lass, he outran Nottingham's guards clean past the city gates and into Sherwood. He's born to it. The thieving just comes natural to him." "John--" The tall woodsman took the woolen tunic from her hands and laid it aside, then turned her toward him. "He's one of us, lass. Same as you and me," he said softly, something final in his words and tone that stole the argument from her lips. His large hand closed gently around her shoulder, and he put two fingers beneath her chin and tilted her head up until Thea had no choice but to look at him. "And not because we force him," he continued. "Much chooses. To be sure, he can't count the coin he steals, but loyalty he understands right enough. Loyalty to Robin. There's no question there. Ye just need to stop fretting, lass. Stop mothering the lad. Let him go. Sherwood takes care of her own." How she wished that were true! For Much . . . for John . . . Dark lashes swept closed over her eyes for the merest fraction of a second. For Brand . . . She swallowed hard and willed the burning tears to dry. In a distant place in her mind, she won-dered how long the tears would be there, springing forth unbidden from a well of pain she thought she'd cried dry months ago. Why now? Why today did the mere mention of Sherwood call forth images of danger and dread and not the peaceful, majestic sanctuary she knew it to be? It was Gisborne, of course. Gisborne, damn him, who had set her fears on edge, made her remember Brand and forget John and his fierce protection and concern. "That was a clumsy remark, lass," he was saying, his eyes full of remorse. He shook his woolly head and scuffed one battered boot toe along the ground. "I'm sorry. I meant ye no harm. I'll have a word with the boy, if it'll ease yer mind." He touched her face lightly, as if he were afraid the feel of his roughened fingers would bring her more pain, and when he spoke, there was something of penance paid in his voice. Thea's heart tightened, and for a moment, she did not trust herself to speak. "'Tis a fool's tongue I have, always getting the best of me," he concluded. "And I, as much to blame, I'm sure," she said, knowing it was not John or his clumsysweet ways that had unsettled her so. John was good. John was brave. And in his own

way, John was noble--if thieves and outlaws could be noble. She felt a smile tug at the corners of her lips. Damn Gisborne. He was nothing. Nothing. "I didn't mean to go on so about Much," she said. "I don't suppose there is any stopping him, now he has the taste for it, and you, John, puffing up with pride over his antics. But I do worry about him, about all of you. It's the Sheriff's men. Made me throw my wits to the wind, I fear. But John, if you could have seen them. And I--trying so hard to be their match. Pray it wasn't my tongue that hangs us all." John looked at her blankly. "Ye saw them, lass? The Sheriff's dogs? In the flesh?" "Yes--" "But I thought--I thought," he stammered. "God's bones!" He kicked the wooden scrap of a stool aside and paced the length of the room. "Why did ye not tell me, lass? I thought the bloody rascals just came here to spy on ye, with ye safely away." At the end of the room, he pivoted and bounded back to her in three long strides. "And ye saw them? Where, lass? Here?" "Nay, John, nay," she assured him. "They must've come looking for me here, but, nay. They found me in the lea." "And?" "Questioned me, that's all. About Much. About Sherwood." John scraped a callused hand over his face, digging his fingers into the scruff of cinnamon whiskers. "And you told them--?" "I told them the truth, John," Thea said. "That I have a way with herbs and charms and simples. That the villagers know of me and come to me from time to time. Nothing they did not already know." "And about Much?" "That I dabbed the wound of a boy . . . but I did not know him to be a thief." She saw his face darken, and knew he believed her honesty to be mistaken, at best. "Well, it was the truth at the time," she said defensively. John looked heavenward as if pleading for patience. The oath he muttered was not as heaven-inspired. "So ye admit to helping Much, and plead ignorance to the Sheriff." "Innocence, John," she replied firmly. "Innocence." "Aye, well, that's a fine defense, lass. I'm sure the Sheriff will be more'n fair with yer sentence for having confessed so neatly." "It won't come to that, John," she promised, wishing she could be so certain herself. "Besides, they weren't interested in answers, just in getting back to Nottingham before

the storm blew in, and in devising some excuse why they chased their suspect no further than Sherwood's oaks. I was but a distraction." John looked at her sharply, the tenderness in his face subtly altered. His comprehension shattered the playful camaraderie she'd spent months erecting between them. "A danger unto itself, lass," he said gruffly. She looked away, uncomfortable with the meaning implied in John's words, with the low, private resonance of his voice, too intense to be mistaken for mere friendship. Her fingers twisted in her tunic, then suddenly she turned to right the trestle table, wanting nothing more than to ignore his remark. She dragged the remaining stool over beside the table, sat, and pulled the muddied kerchief from her throat. John moved to her side, nimble and surprisingly quick for a man of his size, but now he made his giant's strength known. "Come with us. With me, lass," he said, bracing one arm flat-palmed on the table beside her as he leaned close. "Maybe it's time, with all this going on and ye deeper in it than is wise. At least in Sherwood, there'll be no harm come to ye. On my oath--" She could not face this today, this persistence as large and unrelenting as the man himself. She rested her head in her hands for a long moment, soft words and gentle rebuffs eluding her. John brushed aside the curtain of hair that fell across her shoulder. Determined she could not let him continue in this mad fantasy of his, Thea lifted her head. Her lips curved into a careworn smile too forced and bright to be anything but refusal. "I'm fine, John," she said simply. But John's eyes were not on hers. He touched the rent bodice of her kirtle, wool bloodying his fingertips. "Like hell ye are!" he blustered, scraping away the locks of hair that clung to her shoulder. "Which one of the buggering bastards did that?" He pointed an index finger at the stark, red stain seeping wetly through the fabric. "John--" "Who?" "Sir Guy of Gisborne," she replied, trying to balance the thunder of his question with a quiet tone. "Himself? God's blood, Thea! If it was Gisborne, if he let ye live--ye know he marked ye fer some foul purpose." "I'm fine," she repeated. She stroked his gingered whiskers with the backs of her fingers and watched as the tense muscles of his jaw relaxed at her touch and the wrath bled out

of him. "Besides, John," she said, hoping she sounded con-vincing and sensible, "think how impossible it would be: a woman living in the wood with a horde of outlaws." "I would marry ye, lass. Soon enough. I swear it." She knew he meant it. John was as good as his word, as simple and strong and true as the quarterstaff he carried. Nor was she blind to the fact that his ardent devotion to her since Brand's death had turned tender, infused with amorous hopes. It was the single uncomfortable thing between them. "What? And secure for me the respectability of marriage to a wanted felon?" she teased gently. "Secure yer safety," he muttered, rugged face crestfallen with defeat. Thea was quiet for a moment, thinking long and hard before she spoke. "You've done that already, John. More than you know," she said, laying her hand on his muscled forearm. John straightened and looked over his shoulder at the shambles made of Thea's home. "Have I?" he asked, unconvinced. "More than you know," she repeated firmly, taking his large hands in hers. How much easier it would be if she loved him, if she returned but a fraction of what he felt for her, easier still if their feelings of friendship and devotion could remain safe and unchanged. She looked up at him, knowing the dilemma was written on her face, that her silent confusion and regret said more than any words. "Aye," he said presently, and although he nodded and bowed his head, she had no doubt the concession was merely temporary. "You said before that Much understands," she said, "that when he acts, it's his decision, his choice. And you permit it, do you not? Even boast on it, as I recall?" "But--" "John, hear me out," she pleaded. "I must make my own choices, too. I must. To help Much, though I knew the risks. To help you, and Robin. To deliver myself from Gisborne and his men. To go . . . or to stay. I choose." "Aye, that ye do. But lately less with thinking than with feeling. And ye without Much's poor sense to blame." "But you do let me decide, John. You do let me choose." "Hmmph," he snorted. "And pity the poor man who tries to stop ye. Ye'd turn wild Celt on him, too, wouldn't ye, lass?" "Did I hurt you then with that little bite?" She smiled.

"Drew blood, ye sweet bitch," he grumbled, and held out his affronted paw as proof. "Ah, lass, ye weren't careful enough." "I'll be more careful." "If they come fer ye--" "Then I'll swear I do not know you." "Lass--" "And you must do the same. Nothing foolish. No heroics, John. Promise me." "Bastard Sheriff!" he swore, slamming his fist on the table, his brows drawn together in impotent rage. "Promise me!" She waited until he looked at her again, his eyes the clear green of Sherwood's streams, holding hers, sobering. She felt their unspoken agreement forged in the silence that followed, and if it was reluctant on John's part, as she suspected it was, she knew he would honor her wishes. For her part, she would never betray him, or his lot of wayward companions, trapped in Sherwood by the Sheriff's brutal justice. How could she? She was one of them. It was not the love he wanted, but her loyalty to him was as unyielding as any blood vow. She let him touch his lips to her cheekbone, sign of their sealed pact, then chased him away with a flutter of her hand. "Now be gone with you, John Little. The Sheriff's men have made waste of my home, and you are far too large and too clumsy to be of use in this chaos. Leave, before you damage something yourself." "I understand ye, lass," he said quietly. "Why ye can't come. Or won't, is more like it. He's here, isn't he, even now?" She did not reply. John knew, had always known, and her silence was all the answer he needed. "Aye, well, he was a good man, Brand was. And he cared fer ye, that I know. Whatever he did, he didna deserve to die fer it. And ye, Thea, ye do not deserve to be grieving so long." He stepped closer to her and twirled a tendril of her hair around his overgrown forefinger. "Three years, lass. And still he is here." Gently his finger tapped her temple, then slid lower as he reached out boldly to stroke her breast where her heart thumped. "And here," he added. "But with a ghost, that makes fer a sure and empty space--a space what needs filling. Ye can fill it up with yer plants, maybe, or lavish yer touches on the village young'uns and fool-whelps what thinks themselves thieves. But it ain't the same. And sooner or later, 'twill come to ye. The need to be filled with a man." Thea glanced into his eyes, and a blush heated her face.

"Aye," he said, and nodded knowingly. "And I won't be mincing words with one what I've loved fer so long. Now ye keep to yerself, lass. That's yer choice, if ye make it so, and I'll leave ye to it. But, damn ye, lass, I be aching fer ye now. And ye cannot choose else for me." He wrapped her in his arms, cloaking her in the forest, in its sweet darkness and the smell of earth and moss. She clung to him as she always had, savoring his strength, reveling in the shelter his arms gave her, knowing there was no one who could impart to her the security John could, for John was trustworthy, and somehow blessedly knowable. For the first time since her encounter with Gisborne, Thea felt truly safe. And then it was gone. The feeling of being protected dissolved, replaced by knowledge that he craved her for things she could not give. He pressed his body into hers, a lover's embrace, and she knew. It had changed for John, and there was no going back. What had been simple between them, and sufficient for her, was now complex and riddled with John's desire. His body spoke to her without words; the unashamed hardness of him spoke loudest. There was a moment when she wanted desperately to reciprocate, to feel some faint stirring she could give him to kindle, but there was nothing. Nothing save numbness and, worse, loss, for this unwanted turn toward passion had robbed her of what she valued most in John: his friendship. "Don't do this, John. Don't make of this something it can never be." She muffled her frustrated words against the worn softness of his leather tunic. "I will not--I cannot--" He released her then, slowly, as if it hurt to move his arms from the warm substance of her body. Disappointment dissolved upon his face, replaced with a lazy smile and eyes full of wise understanding. He slid one hand behind her neck, under her hair. "Ye have just forgotten how, lass," he murmured. His hand dropped benignly to his side. Thea looked away, unable to bear his kindness or his patience or her own awkward dread that what John wanted most was to help her remember. "Go," she managed. "It's not safe for you here." "Aye," he agreed cryptically. "See to Much, and let this day pass and be forgotten before either of you ventures out again." "Lass--" "It will, in time," she interrupted. "All things . . . in time," he reminded her.

Her cheeks grew warm with color, for she knew his bull-headed tenacity would bring him to her door again soon, his feelings grown taut and intense with denial. She watched as John stooped to pick up his quarterstaff, wondering how she could be of two minds: missing already the strength and safety he'd carry with him when he left; relieved to see him go. He bent nearly double to leave her low door, and Thea followed to the doorway. Outside, he turned, his rough hands caressing the sturdy length of ash. Abruptly his face broke into a devilish grin. He twirled the wooden staff grace-fully, a jongleur's trick, caught it mid-spin, and nocked one end beneath her chin. She gasped unavoidably, raw nerves on end, and bit back a stinging retort. She felt the pole prod her chin and lifted her face. "John--" "Take care, lass," he said, voice quietly at odds with his bulk and coarse demeanor. "And remember . . . Sherwood is there fer ye." With that, he spun around, layers of tattered cloak whipping out behind him. Thea caught herself at the doorway, nails digging into the wood of the doorpost to prevent her leaving, and watched him raise his hood over his head. Gradually, the darkness obscured him, and she waited until she was certain Sherwood had swallowed him up as well. Shaking, she leaned against the doorjamb and closed her eyes, blanking out the day--all of it. Gisborne. John. Her throbbing shoulder. Her home in ruins. Her uncertain future. Inhaling deeply, she drew in the aromatic scent of crushed lavender that curled on the night breeze, calming herself with the fragrance and ripple of cool air. Drugged with the languor of terror quelled, she opened her eyes and gazed out over the meadow. The moon had risen, full and low on the horizon. Metal gray clouds chased across the silver disc as the storm's impending wrath passed with no more than a fury of wind and silent lightning that played across the forested horizon. They had escaped the worst of it. The storm was driving hellishly southward.

Chapter 2 Lightning broke the darkness as the narrow windows of the great hall flared with an unearthly light, and the Sheriff of Nottingham winced, anticipating the crack of thunder that would follow. Sheets of rain hammered against the castle walls, and a pennant, torn loose from its moorings, slapped wetly against the window, keeping time with the pounding in his head. He raked his hands through raven hair that had fallen over his forehead. Three and a half years ago, he had made the gravest error of his life by coming to this damnable place. Three and half years, and it was still as uninhabitable, as inhospitable, as on the day of his arrival.

He waved his meat dagger in the direction of the irksome flapping, and a servant scurried from the hall to tend to the matter. Now if only one of them would do something with the slab of meat the cook promised was venison. The haunch was cold, swimming in a puddle of red juices, and it reeked with a heavy mixture of spices intended to mask the flavor and odor of rancid game. The steward was undoubtedly purchasing goods on the edge of spoilage and pocketing the savings himself. He stabbed his dagger through the undercooked meat and shoved the trencher away with disgust. Pouring another mug of ale, the Sheriff turned his attention to the other reason his supper had become less pleasant. "You're telling me the little wretch got away?" Guy of Gisborne shrugged, scrubbed at the stubble of beard on his chin, and with a muttered curse, threw himself into a chair at the Sheriff's side. Nottingham took in Gisborne's muddy boots and foul humor with a single, discerning glance. "I take it that means yes." "Yes, damn it," Gisborne growled, reaching for the ale without invitation. "The cutpurse is gone. Disappeared." He downed a pint in noisy gulps and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Nottingham smoothed his cup thoughtfully against his lower lip. For the moment, he made no comment other than a raised brow and a faint smirk of disapproval. Guy of Gisborne. Lieutenant of the soldiers garrisoned at Notting-ham Castle. How had the man acquired such coarseness of manner? Had they not, as children, suffered the same instruction in civilized behavior? Or had Gisborne's purchased knighthood cost him all notion of propriety? Nottingham turned the carved wood cup with deliberate slowness and pretended to study the topaz liquid within as if indifferent to the news. "No trail of my silver left behind to follow?" "None." Gisborne reached across the table, speared the uneaten venison, and dragged the trencher toward him. "And the informant?" "We were misled, Cousin. What we found, I would not call an informant." Gisborne's lips curled around the word as if it were distasteful. "A witness, perhaps?" Gisborne's face hardened into a defensive mask, pale eyes glaring hotly beneath a lowered brow. "There was a healer of sorts," he replied tersely. "A collector of herbs, a brewer of potions living alone in old Thur-leah . . . at Sherwood's edge." "What? Some monk mixing remedies and catechism?"

"No," Gisborne replied. "A woman." The Sheriff glanced up. "Alone in that accursed place? You haven't been 'misled' again, have you, Cousin? How did you find this 'healer of sorts'?" "She's known in the wood. Frequents Edwinstowe, Papplewick, Blidworth. Some weakkneed bastard who valued his sow more than the woman's safekeeping directed us to her cottage." "And?" "We found her in the fields. Coming back from Sherwood--" Gisborne sniffed cynically, "her baskets loaded and a lie for every question." The Sheriff frowned, pushed away from the table, and paced the length of the dais. "So your only information comes from a liar?" "She travels the wood freely enough in search of her herbs," Gisborne explained. "Somehow manages to keep peace with Sherwood's spirits . . . and woodsmen she claims do not exist." "Not one of these mad wiccan hermits? Some simple-minded hag?" "No crone, I assure you. And wise enough to keep her tongue." "Her virtue, as well, I gather." Nottingham smiled at the edge of irritation in Gisborne's voice. "Then tell me, what possible use is she to us, this virtuous woman who divulges no secrets?" "The peasants go to her, and some of the townsfolk. The thief was wounded. We thought he'd seek her out." "And did he?" A cunning smile slipped across Gisborne's lips, and he tilted his chair back, bringing booted feet atop the table. "She didn't admit it . . . at first. I had to show her the merits of telling the truth." "I see." The phrase was but a muted echo, a hollow disguise of forbearance left to linger on the damp drafts that swept through the great hall. The quiet control of it stopped Gisborne in mid-swallow, and a cold prickle of perspiration spiked the ale foam on his upper lip. The Sheriff shook his head slowly and walked back to the table in careful, measured paces. "You, Gisborne, a knight of the realm," he said smoothly as he sat down on the table's edge next to his cousin. "You haven't stooped to terrorizing defenseless women, have you? It's a waste of your considerable talent."

Without warning, his fist thundered down on the table, rattling the candlesticks and sending Gisborne's mug spinning in a pool of spilled ale. "And my time! Why were your men not in the forest tracking the brigand down?" "There are limits to our jurisdiction, Cousin. Sherwood is Richard's and the royal foresters--" "The forest laws are consistently broken! Ask any of the outlaws who hides there. Sherwood is a nest of vipers, their crimes a poison that needs leeching from this land. And Richard--" Nottingham spat the name, then stopped and corrected himself, overlaying the title with false respect. "His Majesty the King is away. Who would you charge with the safety of this God-forsaken shire?" He leaned close until Gisborne squirmed in his chair. "The thief and my money are in Sherwood, Cousin, and not for the first time, I might add. I'm well within my rights to track him down to the very gates of hell, if I choose." He stood, flinging his ebony cloak behind him. "But there are ghosts. They say Sherwood Forest--" Nottingham dismissed Gisborne's superstitions with a wave of his hand. "Sherwood Forest is nothing but a few trees, a creek or two, and some deer. Anything else is a product of overactive imagina-tion." "Is it?" Gisborne's voice cut through the furor, freezing the Sheriff in mid-stride. "You forget. I was there." Nottingham felt the rhythmic throb in his temples, could hear the roar of blood through constricted veins. He closed his eyes against the guttering candlelight, his hand gripping the hilt of his sword. For a moment, beneath the weight of his cloak, his body grew taut with remembered chill and scraps of recollection. Sherwood in January. A tangle of frozen bracken beneath; bare, ice-encased branches overhead. The hoary landscape of winter and twilight's muffled stillness. Outside, the black skies emptied themselves over the castle. Like the drone of the rain, the memories poured forth, stealing back from all the places he had imperfectly buried them. Breath that froze in his beard. Hot scarlet droplets hissing into the snow underfoot, the only sound. The Sheriff felt the pull of scar tissue across his back and shoulders, a reminder etched into flesh, as if the visions-sounds-smells he carried in his mind were not enough. He noticed it in the rain or cold, this dull, ache of damaged skin. It was worse in winter. Worse when he remembered.

Nottingham shuddered beneath the voluminous folds of his cloak, trying to dispel the ache, and the memory. The hall had grown silent. Even the minstrel had stopped playing, the discordant strain of his lute dying in the still air. Slowly, the Sheriff turned his head and glanced back over his shoulder at Gisborne. "Yes, you were there," he acknowledged, a whisper forged in steel. "So you know. Sherwood's ghosts are nothing more than men. Untrained peasants. A rabble of delinquent taxpayers and neophyte robbers." "And murderers." "Is that what it is, then? Are your men afraid? Are you?" "Cousin--" "Or is it merely incompetence? I would understand that, you see, surrounded by it as I am. Forest wardens who stumble over themselves in order to avoid taking responsibility for the king's wood. Troops of sniveling cowards--my own men, damn them!--eager to run at the first sound of wind in the trees and a few animal noises." "But Robin Ho--" "Robin Hood is a thief and nothing more! A petty thief with a band of petty thieves. A piddling horde of common criminals has outsmarted you! My God, man, a woman dares Sherwood's paths while you and your men hide behind weak excuses about ghosts and evil spirits. Damn it all, she stole your courage? Did she take your ballocks as well?" The Sheriff rounded on Gisborne. "Your cowardice has cost us this one. Cowardice!" he repeated, flinging the word at Gisborne as if it were a curse upon him. "When did it happen, Cousin? When did you turn? Was it that day? Or sometime later, when you realized what this lawless shire would make of both of us?" He fixed Gisborne with a disbelieving stare, as if he did not know the man or recognize what he had become. "You have not learned, have you, Sir Gisborne, knight of the realm? Fear is not the enemy. Fear makes you strong. Try encountering it one day, instead of fleeing. Who can tell? Perhaps, put to the test, your courage will return. Until then, you are more a menace to me than the sum of Locksley's men." "Cousin--" "Enough!" Nottingham descended the dais and cut a swath through servants and soldiers to the arched entrance of the hall. "Have my horse saddled and ready to ride at first light. And alert my guard. I'll lead the troops tomorrow, turn some of these yellowbellied fools into men. Mark my words, Gisborne. I sent you after a pathetic little pickpocket? I'll have him and that hooded serpent in my custody by nightfall. You can busy yourself here, preparing the gallows." He turned to leave. "And the woman who aided them?" Gisborne called out.

"She worries you, does she? Somehow, Cousin, I am not surprised." He smiled silkily. "Do not fear. Should I come across her in my travels, I'll do what you should have done to start with." Gisborne frowned, confused, speechless. "Swyve her, and be done with it!"

It was madness, of course, and the Sheriff knew it the moment he boasted his intent to Gisborne. He was the Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham, a post he had paid for dearly and earned thrice over. The day had long since passed when he derived any satisfaction from performing the menial work of a common soldier, work he preferred to leave to Gisborne and his troops. Yet tatters of suppressed visions had tortured Nottingham throughout the night, and no amount of wretched tossing upon his bed, no amount of ale, not even the nameless wench whose supple body he held close had been enough to blur his gray-edged dreams. Be it madness or no, he had risen at dawn, lashed his rage about him like armor, and set forth wordlessly on his quest, while Gisborne-Damn the man for the insidious creature he was! Gisborne was back at Nottingham Castle, undoubtedly warming himself with furs and some wench from the kitchen, while he was here in a watery mist that saturated his surcoat and drizzled between the links of his mail coif and hauberk. Merde! Had he actually sought an appointment in this loathsome place? Surrounding him, Sherwood was a vast sea of undulating green hills that crested in waves of birch and oak, in whose troughs ran a myriad of stone-strewn streams. To any other soul, the view would be majestic: an ancient forest, awesome in its quiet splendor, a mystical force of nature to be revered. To Nottingham, there was no hell more certain than the leagues of woodland that lapped at the edges of his domain. Even before his arrival, the place crawled with dissident taxpayers turned highwaymen, who honed their skills in banditry on unsuspecting travelers. Indeed, Nottingham Castle owed its very existence to the need to protect the northern trade routes from such thieves. The Norman fortress cut an imposing presence, its lime-washed stone rising like a ghostly apparition from sandstone heights along the River Trent, but it was, the Sheriff knew, merely a facade of order. His authority, though it was conferred upon him by the king himself, ended at Sherwood's tree line. The murderous brigands who lived in the forest caves or dwelt among the towering oaks had been there, waiting on him, when the thick gold chain of office was still an

unfamiliar weight across his chest. And, damn them all, they were there still, despite his best efforts to rake the assortment of crimi-nals from Sherwood's mossy floor. It was disastrous enough that the expanse of woodland invading his shire was purportedly haunted. There was enough of the old religion left that even his best men-even Guy, it would seem--evidenced a decided disinclination to visit Sherwood. Lately, however, there was a nuisance far more substantial than rumored specters: one Robert of Locksley, misguided son of the Earl of Huntingdon, misguided Crusader, and now, to hear the reports, misguided organizer of thieves. The Sheriff had known Robert only briefly--a somewhat arrogant youth, as boys were wont to be at his age, at odds with his father and sparing no amount of embarrassing vocal protest to make their differences known. Two years under the Saracen sun and another in the Infidel's prison had only hardened the young man. He was no longer the same brash boy who had left England bound for the Holy Land with the fiery ideals of youth, but a veteran of violence, seasoned in the dry heat of Acre's sands. He had seen his beloved king slay women and children, had, himself, silenced the cries of "Allah, be merciful!" in God's name. Now he had returned from that fruitless war, and even his father did not know him, or the thing he had become. The Sheriff could name it easily enough, for the word was simple and its meaning not difficult to comprehend. The earl's son was an outlaw, and had, for his efforts, acquired a price on his noble head. Locksley had done what the Sheriff believed to be impossi-ble. He had gathered together a disenchanted throng of fugitives, men who swore loyalty to no one save themselves, and won their allegiance. He had taken a rabble of robbers, pickpockets, and runaway serfs and made of them an efficient assembly of thieves. The Sheriff was never sure with which promises Locksley tempted and bound his cohorts, whether it was the reward of a waylaid chest of silver or the feel of a longbow, and power, in hands that had known only the plow. Regardless, Locksley and his men were inarguably dangerous. Now there was no guaranteeing safe passage through Sherwood, not even with an armed guard--and Nottingham had lost the men to prove it. The thieves spared no one, not noble citizen, not wagon of tax moneys en route to London. For pity's sake, they were even robbing the Church! Abbot Seward had just this week made griev-ance of the loss of a cart bearing two casks of the abbey's finest ale and an assortment of precious relics. Nottingham's soldiers proved incompetent to overcome either Locksley or their fear of Sherwood's evil spirits. The thieves had earned a self-made amnesty, and Sherwood a reputation as the one area where the Sheriff was powerless to impose justice. He glanced around uneasily, his vitals gnawing with suspicion at each stirring of shadow-dappled leaves. The lush growth of the forest had been pushed back to form a well-trod route, but there was not a stretch of road that the wilderness did not threaten to vanquish. Night was falling, and whatever tenuous connection to civilization Sherwood could claim had been severed hours ago.

Fingers of fog curled around the trees and beckoned him further into the wood's depths. The Sheriff peered into the shifting mists and leaned forward in his saddle, urging his horse ahead. The trail had narrowed, and his men were forced to ride single-file along the overgrown footpath. The day's last pale light filtered eerily through the dense stand of trees. Behind him, the rear guard was swallowed by the vapor that threaded up from the forest floor. Even the sounds of shod hooves were muffled by the carpet of decaying leaves and mosses. Nottingham considered turning back. The forest, despite its renown as a supposed haunt for ghosts and haven for Hood's follow-ers, offered evidence of neither. His pursuit had proved useless, nothing but a too-damp tour of Richard's royal hunting grounds, flora and fauna alike abandoned by the king, as Richard had, indeed, abandoned all of England. If they reversed course now, it was possible to make the inn at Blidworth by Compline. He could appease his men with a hearty meal and an evening of wagering among themselves who would bed the innkeeper's poxy daughter. They would forget Sherwood and why they had come. But would Gisborne? And, more importantly, would he? Nottingham felt unease crawl down his spine. To have been driven into Sherwood by his own obses-sion without exacting some price in vengeance was unthinkable. To return home without an example of how justice was served in his shire would be humiliating. Mist blanketed him in cold moisture. The sun had faded from sight and with it, the last light and warmth of day. It was impossible to see more than a few paces ahead, and then what he saw, or thought he saw, shimmered with the distortion of fine drizzle and twilight's unearthly color. Beneath his armor, his skin felt slick with rain and sweat. "Place is filled with Saxon spirits!" a soldier muttered under his breath, as if the Sheriff were deaf to his words as well as to reason. "God's blood, let's leave!" Nottingham's lips tightened. It was like this then, he remembered. The fog, like thick smoke. An impenetrable vapor blinding them with drifts and coils of whiteness. His party, unable to see or move. Their voices and random wood-sounds, echoing back . . . then nothing. A preternatural silence. Sharply, his mind countered the recollection, consigned it to some dim part of his memory. The Sheriff swiped at his face and rubbed his bleary eyes. He found himself in a clearing, and brought his horse to a halt. Christ! He had let this journey continue too long. Nothing more to do than bed down for the night and let this mad mingling of air and water pass. Not the inn, and no ale or female belly-warmer to be certain, but he was a soldier, and not so long from the days of muddy bivouacs that he'd forgot-ten, though certainly he had tried. "Here!" he signaled.

Perhaps they could procure a deer, while away the night with a haunch of roasted venison and regale one another with battle tales grown more glorious over time. Perhaps a fire would chase away the cold that had settled in the pit of his stomach. He heard the jangle of reins and armor as men dismounted behind him. There were grunts of relief, curses of disappointment, familiar welcome sounds. Beneath him, Chimera, his black war-horse, stepped backward, tossed his head, and snorted, nostrils flaring. The Sheriff reined him in, guiding the stallion with the steady pressure of his knees and thighs along the horse's sides. Tension streaked from the destrier to the Sheriff as if the pair were one, and Nottingham felt a sting of alarm race through his limbs. The animal knew, was bred and trained to know. The air was filled with more than mist. It reeked of alien scent. Swiftly, he drew his sword, the metallic screech against the scabbard silencing the hubbub of men and horses. From a hedge of hawthorn, a covey of quail rose, shattering the quiet with squawk-ing and the drum of beating wings. Through the clamor, he heard another sound, more ominous--the sound his ears would never forget: the warning whistle of air parting. A mounted soldier next to him slumped forward, an arrow shaft vibrating from impact, embedded in his back. Trained for war, the Sheriff's horse responded immediately to the ambush, circling tightly as Nottingham squinted through the miasma of fog. "Draw on them, damn you!" he yelled, sweeping his sword in a wide arc through the air to rally his men. It was in vain, he knew; his sword was impotent against English longbows. Their arrows were loosed from a distance, by an unseen enemy, while his soldiers still struggled to winch crossbows. The hum of arrows filled the air. Soldiers scrambled to their frightened mounts, only to have their horses cut from under them. A few arrows skidded harmlessly across the clearing. Far more found their marks with solid, precise thumps. A guardsman clutched his chest, another his belly. The Sheriff knew retaliation was impossible, yet he heard himself call to his troops, his voice oddly resounding in his ears. He made a final effort to direct his mount away from the clearing, to find means to retreat along the narrow trail clogged with bodies and frightened horses. His animal neighed and reared in terror as an arrow furrowed through its shoulder. Nottingham molded himself to the stallion's back, ducking branches and arrows as he tried to calm the wild beast. And then he saw. A human blur of faded green and brown among the leaves, longbow raised. As if events were playing themselves out in slower time, he saw the weapon poised, arrow nocked and loosed, every detail steel-sharp in his mind. He was not even surprised when he felt the hot strike in his side, only dazed, wondering what phlegmatic curse prevented him from dodging the arrow or crying out in pain.

His wounded horse reared again, threatening to unseat him. Disoriented, he saw and heard the pandemonium of defeat: animals tearing at the ground; men shouting, moaning; some, he was certain, fleeing the scene of chaos in panic. "Locksley!" he cried out. "Show yourself!" The demand sounded weak, as if his voice knew what his mind had yet to reckon. His head swam with the echoes of confused shouting and vertigo. He felt himself tumbling backward as the reins slid through fingers grown numb, and he waited for the ground to rush up to him. Disgust at his mistakes swept through him. The same oversights, repeated. Too few men . . . clumsy crossbows. Impossi-ble even to see the enemy in this ghastly fog . . . impossible to know-His head struck the ground, and he felt the bite of mail at his temple as blood and mud spattered his face. Arrows swarmed above him, and far away, as if the sound were lost in the mist, he heard the tumult of soldiers scattering in disor-ganized retreat, the screams of men and horses dying. His vision blurred red and yet he could not raise his hand to wipe the blood from his eyes. The Sheriff lay very still, remarking how little pain he felt, how the ache of remembrance was far, far worse. He sobbed once, and prayed incoherently for release from the nightmare, for darkness, for nothingness. For once, he was blessed. Unconsciousness folded around him. *** He was not sure what roused him. Not light or movement certainly, for the day was spent and the forest was deathly still. There was no rustle of leaves overhead, no moan or ragged breath below. It was as if the wind itself had been chased away by the tornado of activity and feared to return, though the furor of battle was over. Nottingham lay without moving, deadened to the patter of rain on his face and the churned black earth soaking through his mail and the quilted padding beneath. His hand felt staked to the earth by the weight of his gauntlet, but he struggled to lift it and touched the gash at his temple. In an instant, the full range of physical sensation returned and washed through him. He grimaced at the bolt of pain his probing caused, moaned as he felt a more fiery agony emanating from below his left rib. He gritted his teeth, raised his head a few inches off the forest floor, and looked in the direction of the fire. A feather-tipped arrow protruded from his side. He let his head collapse to the pillow of mud and leaves, swearing at the helplessness and indignity that had pierced him as miserably as the woodsman's shaft. "Locksley!" he brayed at the canopy of trees overhead. His rival did not answer, and the Sheriff found that the breath it took to roar the man's name was wasted except to renew his anguish. Moonlight reflected off the bodies of his men, strewn across the muddied path like broken poppets. He swallowed a chestful of air and called out again. "Farrington . . . ? Colcourt . . . ? Mallory . . . ?"

None of them stirred, though he could hear the soft whinny of a horse nearby. He was alone then? The only survivor? Damn Locksley! The man was a cutthroat. Why had he not ended his life quickly with the blade instead of leaving him to die slowly, pitifully, on Sherwood's floor? Nottingham's mind reeled with silent curses, then with determination. "The devil take you, Locksley," he hissed, pushing the pain away. "You have made your last fatal error." He reached for a thick twig, placed it between his teeth, and bit into the wood. His hand shook as it closed around the arrow, grasping it as close to the skin as possible. He paused, steadying himself, eyes closed. Then with a sharp intake of breath, he snapped the wooden shaft close to the skin of his belly. The Sheriff felt the tearing of muscle tissue, and the world grayed as he struggled to cling to the edge of consciousness. A warm gush of blood covered his fingers, and he clenched his jaw, willing his senses not to leave him. Bursts of yellow light bloomed and sparkled before his eyes, but he dug his fingers into the tangle of vines at his head and held tightly until the lights faded and the urge to retch had passed. Another interval passed--had he slept or merely lain there, lulled by the rhythm of his own breathing?--before he dared move again. He sucked in air, raised himself to one elbow, and rolled to his hands and knees, groaning with the torture of movement. There he waited, head sagging, eyes fixed on the drip of blood from his gut. Needles of cold sweat pricked his forehead. He needed something to stanch the flow . . . something . . . anything . . . and spied, lying on torn moss and leaves amidst the carnage, a banner emblazoned with the triple horseshoe crest of his office. He crawled to it, tore the silk standard from its staff, and wadded it beneath his hauberk. Then he heard the moan. Hope surged through his veins. Through the dark, he sensed movement, pushed himself to stand, and hobbled unsteadily over crumpled bodies and discarded weapons to the soldier. "Morgan?" he said, sinking to knees that no longer braced to hold him. The crossbowman's chest was a pool of red, and pink froth gathered at the corners of his mouth. Hope died. "Mortal, my lord," the soldier gasped. "Not while I have breath! There are two of us, Morgan, still alive. By the saints, he has not taken us yet!" He slid his arm beneath the fallen soldier's back and lifted his head and chest off the ground. For a moment, Morgan seemed to breathe easier; his ashen face took on the tautness of feigned bravery. "It was him, Sir? Robin of the Hood?" "And his men." The reply was curt, distracted. The Sheriff's glance fell to the scarlet blood on Morgan's lips, darker with each word.

"So it was them what left us to die. I never saw--" "You aren't going to die, Morgan," Nottingham interrupted, the words an emphatic order. He thought briefly of his surgeon, wondered which blood-bespattered body was his, then surrendered the prospect of any aid close at hand. "There is help," he said aloud, as much to convince himself as the wounded archer. "Somewhere. At the inn? The alewife, perhaps? Think, man! In all of this plagued forest, is there no one--?" The Sheriff stopped abruptly and pulled the soldier upright. "The peasant healing woman," he said, eyes narrowing with memory. "Gisborne's problem. From the other day. Damn it, Morgan! You were with him. You know the one!" The soldier's body was racked with coughing. Black-blood spittle dyed his lips and bubbled with each gasping breath. "Aye," he managed, grimacing. "Know the one. But, my lord, not her. She's not to be trusted. Gisborne thinks--" "Where is she?" "Too far," Morgan gasped. "Leagues from here." "Where?" The words gurgled in the soldier's throat. "Her cottage . . . in the high lea . . . hard by the crags at the wood's edge." He swallowed convulsive-ly, wheezing blood and air, choking on both. The Sheriff nodded, pretending to understand. Morgan shook his head, and his hand tightened around the Sheriff's forearm as if to detain him. "My lord," he whispered hoarsely. "Don't." The man's eyes opened wide, as if describing some unseen threat or unspeakable terror, but he voiced no protest save the fingers that clutched the Sheriff's arm and buried themselves in the mail sleeve. Just as swiftly, the man's face froze, mouth open in silent warning, and the eyes dulled. Nottingham felt the slight shudder of life departing and the stiffening stillness that remained in his arms. He did not bother to cross himself. He did not know how long he knelt there, cradling the corpse, listening to the solitary rasp of his own breathing. His mind whirled in eddies of thought. Of Sherwood. And he, the Sheriff, condemned to ceaseless combat to secure it. How utterly useless to battle this monster of oak and moss and bracken, this giant in sleepy disguise, this dragon who blew forth mist and fog from its nostrils and made obeisance only to outlaws. To one outlaw. The squawk of scavenger ravens circling overhead put to death the whirlpool of dismal thoughts. He looked up sharply, daring the birds to light. "Sherwood will take nothing more from me today!" The snuffling of a nearby horse heartened him, and he resolved not to feel the stab of pain as he drew in breath and whistled softly to the animal.

"Gisborne's traitor-wench will have to suffice, my dead friend," he muttered as he pried the archer's fingers from their adamant grip on his sleeve. With effort, he pulled himself to his feet and embraced the trunk of an oak for support. The bay stallion, still unnerved from the ambush, picked a timorous path through the debris of battle until the Sheriff reached out and grabbed the reins. Not his midnight-hued war-horse, not Chimera, Nottingham realized with keen regret, not even a particularly well-trained beast. He let his weight sag against the sturdy strength of the horse's flank and grasped a hank of mane as he gathered himself to mount. "But alive," he murmured, and hauled himself up into the saddle. "At least until we encounter this woman and her physic of the wood." Damn Gisborne for his piecemeal knowledge--enough to find the wench, not enough to convict her. And damn Locksley for making him needful of her in the first place! "Some Druid priestess," he said aloud, knowing Gisborne's penchant for the arcane beliefs of the native people. "Dabbling in the forbidden, and he's stumbled upon her--" His words slurred into one another, but speaking aloud kept consciousness from leaving him. "Disturbed her . . . and now she's intent on nothing less than human sacrifice." His laugh was surly, humorless. "In which case, you, my equine friend, are quite safe. And I . . ." He did not finish the sentence, but put heels to the bay, dismissing the viscous warmth that spread across his belly. He was a despised officer of the crown, alone in the land of the enemy. What Fate was not set against him?

Chapter 3 The knock at her door was faint, obscured by the drone of the wind; the metal cacophony of armor and sword and the neigh of a horse shattered her sleep. Thea sat up at once, heart hammering. The hour was late, and the weather outside had turned foul and treacherous. Who would be about on such a night without urgent cause? John? She shook her head free of dreams and confusion. No, John was far too skilled at stealthy approaches to raise such a clamor, and too poor for mail or mount. Gisborne, then. With time to have made his report, received orders-She felt a stab of alarm that left her thoroughly awake. "Come for my arrest," she murmured aloud. He, with his allegations based on nothing but suspicion, and she, without a single, tenable defense.

She threw aside the woolen blanket, gathered her legs underneath her, and pushed herself up from the straw pallet where she slept. He'd not see panic, she determined, scraping her palms against the thin fabric of her shift, building resolve. Take her if he must, but not John, not Robin-"Open! In the name of the Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham! Open!" Not the dreaded guttural of Gisborne's voice, but an order nonetheless, rasping, half heard between the rise and fall of the wind. With the last word, the voice broke, its forcefulness edged in pain. Thea hurried to the door and flung it open. Wind and rain rushed inward, plastering her shift wetly against her body and lifting a storm of errant curls about her face. Mail-covered flesh collapsed into her arms, and she staggered under a man's full weight. She saw little in that instant of confusion--mesh of armor that covered sprawling arms and torso, the cowl lowered from a shock of hair as dark as the night, illumined by the crimson glow of banked coals in the hearth. Heavily booted feet planted themselves in a wide stance, and his hands gripped her shoulders as he struggled for balance. This was not a man accustomed to accepting help, she guessed, even less accustomed to asking for it. He pushed away from her, demanding to stand on his own. His hands left bloodied stains on her shoulders, and her shift turned red and mudstreaked his unseen injury. Yet in the firelight, Thea saw only one thing: a line of thick gold links draped from shoulder to shoulder, hung askew across a broad chest laboring to draw breath. She looked from the noble chain of office to the man's face and knew him instantly. Hatred curled her hands into tight fists at her side, and a hundred curses filled her mouth gone suddenly dry. "You are a healer, are you not? Tell me now, for I'll have no outlaw's bitch with a blade in my belly." She could feel her body heating with the slow, dizzying drip of some nameless venom. "I will pay, damn you--gold--tell me what you want!" She met him with silence. "For Christ's sake, woman! I am injured!" His slim-fingered hand strayed to a spot on his side and hovered above a gape in the mail where broken metal rings gleamed with a dark, spreading stain. His knees buckled slightly, and a grimace tore at his features. She caught him before he fell, instinctively offering him the brace of her body. "You need a surgeon." "Yes, and I would have one, were he not spilling his lifeblood on Sherwood's floor."

An accusation couched in ambiguity. She hesitated, mind racing with thoughts for John's safety. "I am no--" "I have heard what you are, wench." He glanced around the dim interior of her cottage, peering suspiciously into its unlighted recesses, as wary as a wounded animal, cornered, with no visible means of escape. Finally, his search fell back on Thea. She felt him silently weighing the seriousness of his predicament against the unfamiliar surroundings, measuring his trust against the possibility of treachery. She met his review with an unwavering assessment of her own. His eyes shone with the brilliance of jet and sweat already stippled his high forehead, both evidence of the pain of his wound, precursors of the fever that would likely follow were he left untended. "Am I safe here?" "Safer than in Sherwood at midnight," she replied under her breath. He fixed her with a penetrating stare, a gaze that promised danger despite his injury, and Thea immediately regretted her foolish quip. She bit her lip and let the quiet stand solidly between them. "Ah, silence--an honest, if somewhat less than reassuring, answer." He stepped past her into the room, his mind made up. "Close the door, before you have every ruffian in the wood following me here." Thea paused, then barred the door and turned toward her intruder. "If you are safe enough to be here, you are certainly safe enough to be unarmed." She nodded toward his sword. Reluctance and distrust warred in his eyes. She drew a deep breath. "I have no traffick with outlaws, my lord, despite what you must have heard. I am, myself, without weapon. If my word is not enough--" He unbuckled the leather strap that help his sheathed sword. "Gisborne says you are a liar." "Yes. And the woman whose cow I could not deliver of a breech calf calls me a witch. Listen to whatever tales you wish." With a barely masked hiss of effort, he held out the sword in surrender. Thea took the weapon and quickly laid it aside. She lit the lantern she kept at her bedside and raised the horn slat until a thin beam of light shone in the darkness.

The Sheriff had unclasped his fur-lined cloak and dropped it carelessly to the floor. She did not wait for him to divest himself of armor, but set about the task of unbuckling and removing the heavy hauberk. The quilted tunic beneath was sodden with rain and blood, rent below the ribs where an arrow had penetrated. She freed him from the garment until only a black shirt remained slicked against his skin. Laced at the throat, there was only one easy way to remove it. "Greyfeathers," he said the word like a curse. "Damned English longbows. Can't even see your enemy. Arrows pouring out of the air like rain. Do you know the penalty for such lawlessness, woman?" Thea took a small knife and slit the shirt from neck to hem. The rending of cloth and the proximity of razor-sharpness to his belly silenced the Sheriff's rambling discourse. In reflex, the hard plane of muscles in his abdomen contracted, away from her blade. "One hears you favor hanging." He gathered decorum around him again and glowered at her. "Only when the offense warrants it. Desertion. Treason. Crimes against the Crown." He wrapped his hand around her wrist and brought the knife between their shared line of vision. "Careless surgical practices." His voice, for all his pain, was low, melodic, and oddly seductive. A muscle in her jaw tensed. "Lie by the light then, and release my hand. I'd like to avoid your dungeon." "A tongue as sharp as any blade," he muttered to himself. He dropped her wrist, his face suddenly haggard, and stretched out on the straw-stuffed mattress. The wound was caked with crusts of blood, but oozing fresh rivulets from the Sheriff's stubborn exertions. She swabbed it with scraps of cloth soaked in a solution of golden seal and powdered iris root in boiled water and probed the area around the torn skin. The rib below seemed miraculously intact, but she could detect the buried shard of metal beneath her fingertips. The Sheriff tried in vain to smother a quick, indrawn breath. When she looked up, he was watching her, his eyes like flint. She could tell he knew full well the extent of his injury. She had seen men die of less. Doubtless so had he. "Mortal?" "I cannot tell," she answered honestly. "Are you shriven?" His face darkened into a scowl, as if the question were as much a barb as the arrow's head. "I need no priest, woman. Just someone sufficiently skilled in field surgery." "Then permit me to go and fetch someone--" His hand closed around her wrist immediately, crushing it in a hot steel circle. "You'll send for no one!" he warned in a harsh breath. "No man of the cloth. No villager." He paused and rose up on one elbow, oblivious to the red stream that poured afresh from

his wound. "And no woodsmen," he added, words pushed out between clenched teeth. "Keep your illegal assortment of night visitors away from this door, and tend the wound yourself." "I cannot promise success, my lord. Your wound is serious--too deep--and I haven't the skill." "You are adequate." It was a brief argument, quickly ended. Thea felt tangled in the irony of the situation-the Sheriff, forced to trust his life to someone whose loyalty he had not earned, or bought; she, alone with the man, given the opportunity to take his life, or let it ebb from him as it might if she did nothing. She said nothing more, but looked down deliberately at the hand which held her until he released her abruptly. A bruise was already settling in a dark bracelet around her wrist. He lay back down, the action eliciting no more than a stifled moan, and appeared to study the rafters of the ceiling. Whatever the Sheriff's intentions for the night--a clandestine excursion into the woodsmen's domain, a foray into some luckless village to relieve its denizens of their material goods, or an assault of a more amorous nature--it was clear his expectations did not include being felled by an unwelcome arrow. Thea did not ask the name of the poor marksman who lodged the piece of metal beneath Nottingham's rib. She turned to her medicines and selected those she would need. Neither she nor the Sheriff spoke as she went through the ritual of grinding mandrake root to make a soporific brew, but Thea knew the Sheriff watched her, his dark eyes following every movement of her hands as she measured herbs, steeped them in liquid, and strained the contents into a wooden cup. "Mandrake ale," she said, though he'd asked nothing of her. "Had I wine, the taste would be more palatable." She approached him with the cup still steaming and placed it against his lips. "I prefer to be conscious," he demanded. "I prefer that you sleep." His face was an odd mixture of arrogance and vulnerability only his injury permitted. Perspiration stood out clearly on his forehead and cheekbones. His full lips thinned into a tight line of resistance. Somewhere in the back of her mind, it occurred to her that she should be frightened of this man, if not of what he was capable of doing to her in his present state--a repertoire of horrors she imagined to be barely limited by the arrow's point--then surely of the multitude of strategies he could employ later should he suffer too greatly, heal too slowly, or scar too badly. And if he died--

She was on the verge of withdrawing the cup, after all, when Nottingham opened his mouth and let the drugged liquid seep between his lips. He never moved his eyes from hers, not even as he gulped the last bitter dregs of the potion. "You haven't slain me with some poisonous 'remedy'?" he asked, his eyes mocking her in a caustic way. "Most wish they had when given the chance." "Yes," she said, "but I've no need of poison." He started, and Thea could not help but derive a moment's satisfaction from the fear that crossed his unguarded face. "You've entrusted your life to an unskilled village herb woman whose practice extends to farmers with blisters on their hands and not altogether successful midwifery for cows. The surgery will probably kill you." "I am not a cow," he grunted, "and I doubt you are as unskilled as you profess. Besides, I intend to live to see the morrow, if only to prove you the liar Gisborne says you are." His voice resonated in the small space between them. She could not tell if his words were declaration or warning, but already they were softly slurred. "And come morn--" The Sheriff seized Thea's hand and pressed the bruised flesh of her wrist against his still damp lips. His other hand brushed the threadbare linen above her breast. Weaving his fingers through the crisscrossed ribbons of her shift, he drew her forward. "You will show me who you really are . . . ." Thea gasped, all her endeavors toward composure shattered in a single breath. She had expected his abruptness, his harshness, his utter indifference to all but his own needs and wishes. She had even expected violence if it suited his purpose. She had not expected this, this threat couched equally in accusation and enticement. Least of all did she expect the spear of forgotten sensation that shot from her breast to her belly and lay coiled there, stinging sharp. Holding her breath, she cursed him soundly in her mind and willed the sleep inducer to take effect, willed away the unwanted heat from the pressure of his fingertips against his flesh. Blessedly, his hold on her slackened, and his lids drooped lazily over his dark eyes. "You will tell me . . . all . . . ." She removed his hands from her laces and laid it by his side, then pushed herself a safe distance from the bed. In his drowsiness, he muttered a final word. "Witch . . ."

Thea took a step away from the thin, straw-ticked pallet. The Sheriff breathed evenly through slightly parted lips, no threat. Powerless, really. How easy it would be to slide her blade beneath his heart or stifle his breath with her pillow! Her hand itched to do so. Wouldn't that be justice, at least? For John? For Brand? And if it meant braving the hangman's noose . . . She shivered violently and swirled away from the bed, her arms wrapped around herself tightly as if she were holding together the last shreds of resolve. The room seemed cold, and she, chilled to the marrow. It was the opportunity John and the others had long awaited, a brief opening in the chink of things when they could possibly tip the scale in their favor. She had tried to avoid viewing the Sheriff apart from his office and renowned ill temper--easier to think of him as the monster he was--but now he was injured, and the mandrake had captured him in a deathly calm. Thea turned around and knelt beside the spot on the floor where he lay. Something about the stark stillness of the man dared her to look at him, and her gaze traveled the length of his body in slow, tentative increments, as if the beast might awaken at any moment. He was not as old as she had imagined, perhaps in his early thirties, and he bore no visible assortment of scars or blemishes that made him unbearable to look upon. Nor did he appear softened by the indolence which castle life and his position could well afford him. There was a lean hardness to his form, the definition of musculature found in a man who rode often and was well-practiced with the sword. The lantern lent a soft, burnished glow to the sculpting of muscle across his chest and shoulders, in marked contrast to the mud that had dried in black streaks down his arms and threatened to disguise the grace of long fingers on a large, well-shaped hand. Although he was smeared with blood, there was nothing beneath the remnants of his lost battle, nothing of the grotesque knots of muscle and deformity of body, that her mind had cursed him with. His face was slender and sharply chiseled at cheek and jaw, and at least in sleep, free of the choler she imagined would mar it. A carefully groomed beard darkened his chin and the edge of his jaw; a black mustache swept over full lips. His hair, equally black, was not shorn in the Norman style, but a tumble of carelessly tousled waves that swept away from his face and fell to his shoulders. Sweat-soaked tendrils draped across a high forehead. Odd that a cruel man had been gifted with such handsome features. She wondered if it were some ironic curse of birth to have such harsh beauty at constant war with an angry temperament. Gently, she laid her hand against the center of the Sheriff's chest. The man's heart thumped powerfully beneath her palm. He would not die on his own. Too strong for that. It would take something deliberate.

She picked up her blade, quickly before determination fled, and held the knife to the pulsing point below his earlobe. A single slice. Swiftly done, he would feel nothing, and she-Terrified, Thea dropped the knife to the pallet. She had claimed to be no surgeon, an outright lie. Was there any truth that she were murderess as well? Oh, God, she wanted him dead. How blameless was that? Her hesitation grew, doubling with the rhythmic rise and fall of the Sheriff's shallow breathing. There was Sir Guy, of course, already too curious about her motives. That he had reported his encounter with her to the Sheriff was certain, for how else had Nottingham known to come to her? It was doubtful the Sheriff could die now at her hands, either through design or lack of skill, without bringing Gisborne and his hounds to her door. Yet it was not fear for her own life that stayed her hand. It was another choice, the instinct that came to her first, always, before killing was even a thought. She could save him. John and the others would damn her for that, and she would never be able to explain, wasn't even certain she understood the decision herself, except that it had little to do with reason. Thea spread her fingers over the expanse of flesh, feeling the body's warmth and the pliancy of living tissue beneath her hand. She did not know how many minutes passed as she knelt there, staring at him, feeling confusion spin into conviction. All she knew was that she could not turn him away. She certainly could not be the instrument of his death. Drawing a slow, deep breath, she reached again for the blade, and let it hover over the wound until her hand steadied. Best she wait and calm herself and not kill the man with ineptitude if she could not kill him by intent. Her knife reached to open the wound. *** Fortune smiled on Lord Nottingham. The arrowhead had not pierced a vital organ, nor were there any bleeders within that would make short shrift of the Sheriff's life. The arrow was deep, and there were links of mail carried with it--when would these Normans learn that armor was no protection against a loosed bow?--but Thea had seen worse, had tended worse, if the truth were known. As she worked over the wounded man, her focus sharpened, and she shut out all distractions around her. She heard neither the wind-driven rain outside nor the crackle of fire within. Her sense of where and when and who she was coalesced into a very small fragment of space and time: only she and Nottingham existed.

No, not even Nottingham. Just a part of him, the torn and damaged flesh that was without guilt as much as she was without conscience to kill him. Somehow she would right the wound and see him alive. After that, she didn't care. Let the devil take him. Or Robin. Or John. But she would not. She reached the metal point, removed it, and laid it aside with a sob. Her hand shook then, uncontrollably, until there was nothing to do but drop the blade and clench her hands together tightly in her lap until they stilled. His color was good, not the pallor of those who had fared poorly under the knife, and his breathing had slowed, deepened. He was even stirring a little. His fingers stretched out into empty air, then not finding what they sought, curled under again. His lips pressed together and he swallowed, a sign of thirst. Thea caught herself staring, watching the minute movements as if he were some curious creature she had trapped. She could give him nothing to drink now, not while the mandrake still wove its sleeping spell around him, but she must continue. There was still much to do, and she preferred to do it before he woke. He would need a poultice and strips of linen to bind the poultice to him. She scraped back the hair loosened from her braid and wiped her brow with her forearm. After a moment's deliberation, she chose agrimony for the injury. Its leaves and stems were perfect for sword-wound because they offered protection from an enemy blade. Thea reckoned they would work as well for an enemy arrow and the harm she had done retrieving it. She pounded the shoots she had found growing wild in Sherwood the day before and pressed the pulp into the wound. She wondered if she should use a charm, or a prayer, but she knew any words she could think of would be spoken half-heartedly at best. "Damn you, Sheriff, don't die on me," was all she could manage, and she doubted it was an incantation the priest would approve. A layer of moss covered the agrimony and over that, strips of gauze soaked in vinegar. Thea laced the bandages across Nottingham's midsection and reached underneath to bring the strips behind his back--and stopped. Not the sleekness of his chest and arms-Her fingers stretched out along the Sheriff's back, feeling the slight swell of muscle and the indented valley of his spine, then explored further, from his narrow waist to the flare of broad shoulders. She dared not roll him over or move him in any way merely to satisfy her own curiosity, but she was certain of what she felt. She slid her hands from beneath him and pressed her palms hard against the pallet, the tactile memory boring into her. There was not a scar or blemish on him, save the one the arrow would cost him--that and the horrible etching that covered his back. Overlaying strong muscle was skin whose every inch was furrowed and ridged. No sword slashes those, no lance wound,

nothing she doubted the Sheriff had won in tournament or battle, but the uneven streaks of flesh torn by the whip. She could not explain it, no matter how long she thought on the injury, but there was no lie in the man's skin. The Lord High Sheriff had been flogged. High-born, noble Nottingham had been striped by the same mean weapon reserved for slave or recalcitrant serf. Tenderness welled alongside horror, the fainter emotion winning out. Thea touched the wet strands of hair plastered to his forehead, more dare than gentleness. Beneath her fingertips, the Sheriff's skin was warm and moist--and alive. She dared more, dabbing his mud-streaked cheek with the skirt of her shift. A stab of feeling, like a phantom touch, streaked across her breast. Her hand jolted back into a tight fist in her lap. She had nearly forgotten that strange rush of sensation he'd caused, and there it was again, a haunting reminder of his touch. How dare he find with his stray caress the very traces of desire she had thought were gone? How dare he touch her at all! She let out an uneven breath. Steeling herself, she slid her hands beneath him again, picked up the linen bandages, and continued wrapping them around him until the poultice was held firmly in place. Mercifully, despite her movements as she cleaned and bandaged his head wound, Nottingham still slept under the effects of the draught. Thea prayed his slumber would last well into the morn; it would spare them both further confrontation. After that-She looked up suddenly, questions pouring through her mind. After that . . . what? He could not stay there, lie there like that, while she waited for Gisborne to come and indict her for making mincemeat of the Sheriff's gut. Or worse, for John to return and find them both, she holding a cool wet cloth to Nottingham's fevered brow and the Sheriff with his hand tangled in the ribbons of her shift. Nor could he leave, a man in his condition, who had survived the arrow and her ungentle probing and still had the wound-fever to face. Where would he go with the forest between him and his castle? She wondered if she shouldn't have dispatched the scoundrel after all, then called for John to dispose of the body that now claimed her bed, long arms and legs draped over the edges. The man was too tall, and he looked rather ridiculous, booted feet hanging off the pallet's edge and one arm flopping indecorously across his bandaged belly. He didn't fit. Not in her bed. Not in her life. Most certainly not in her bed-And she stopped herself with that thought, because John would not have fit either, but she had never thought of John there, not once in three years, much less twice in one breath. He would have to go, this Sheriff, and soon. That's all there was to it. He was inconvenience personified. No, worse. Trouble.

There was firewood to be gathered for the night to chase away his chill, his horse to be untacked and watered, bloody rags to be boiled clean, or burned if she'd a mind for destroying evidence. Crusts of mud from his boots to be swept from her floor, and his shirt--what remained of it--to be washed. And feeding. Was there ever a man who didn't demand something to sup on the moment he waked? She looked into the broth she had prepared for her own dinner, forgotten and left simmering in an iron cauldron pushed to one side of the fire. Thin, vegetable broth--not the sturdy fare the Sheriff would need to recover from his wound and rebuild his strength. She added a handful of grain and fresh greens, then several precious bits of dried pork she had stored. Not what the man was used to certainly, but he was lucky it was not mid-winter when there would have been only weak cabbage soup to quiet his belly. Luckier still that she'd share her best provisions with such a heartless varmint when his people had nothing but watery gruel with which to break their fasts. She stirred the kettle, then sank, cross-legged, to the floor beside the Sheriff's pallet, wearied muscles screaming with fatigue. She wiped her hands across her face. He wasn't worth the work. Moreover, it was hopeless to think that any amount of frantic effort would correct the disarray Nottingham's descent had visited upon her house. There was no explaining this unreasonable concern for the man, save she'd lost her common sense along with her nerve. From an earthenware bowl, she retrieved the arrowhead she had removed and examined it closely. The horribly familiar triangular shape--how was it possible to forget the damage one of these vicious devils could cause? Her mind filled with questions. How had the Sheriff been wounded? And why was he alone on this miserable night? Who had done the slipshod shooting? There were no answers for any of her questions, and Thea felt her world had been tipped over on its side, unsettled somehow, her anonymity and safety evaporated. She was past speculation on Nottingham's plight, past thinking, past anything but sleep. Even as she stared at the deadly metal tip, her vision blurred and her eyes burned from too many hours spent in close work, from the smoke that curled up from the fire through the smokehole in the thatching. She put the arrow's point in her pocket, wondering if she dared face Nottingham with the mystery in the morning. Somehow, she doubted he would relish telling her the story of how he came to be hurt; he would probably stand for an interview even less. Maybe it was not even important. She rested her head in the heels of her palms and rubbed her eyes. When she looked up, she spied the one thing she'd forgotten to right in her whirlwind of activity. The heavy, full-length mantle the Sheriff had worn over his armor lay where he'd dropped it. She grabbed the hem of it, dragged it over to where she sat, and laid it across her lap. It was the most magnificent cloak she had seen, wide stripes of black wool and silverstudded leather, the whole of it fur-lined. She fingered the intricate silver beadwork that adorned the capelet. Layers of mud flaked away at her touch. The hem was soaked with

water, and a tear marred the perfect symmetry of the stripes. Had someone sliced him with sword after all, only to have the mantle and mail he wore beneath keep him intact? Strange, this whole business of warring and killing, of a soldier who should have looked like a demon but slept peacefully, like some kind of fallen god, at her side. Thea drew the mantle over the Sheriff, laying the dry inner lining of fur against his skin. She lowered the slats of the lantern to darken the room and watched as its flame danced hypnotically, casting an eerie array of shadows upon the walls. Glancing at Nottingham, she observed his even, unlabored breathing. No fever raged upon his brow, and the pulse below his jaw was steady and strong. What would it matter if she slept for a few minutes? She lay down on the hard, earth floor, careful to keep her distance from the pallet, from him, and crossed her arms beneath her cheek as a pillow. She watched the flickering shadows gray, then blacken. His rhythmic breathing filled her mind and led her toward sleep. *** Something about the smell . . . or the sound . . . Rows of herbs swayed gently in the rafters above his head, their dried leaves fluttering in the early morning breeze. The Sheriff struggled to wakefulness, then regretted leaving sleep, and oblivion, behind. The euphoria he had felt momentarily as the drugged ale took effect was gone, and he felt the horrible gravity of being pulled back into a sore and weary body. The rustle of herbs drying upside down, even the sough of the breeze, seeped through his fogged mind. He winced at the throbbing in his head, and put one hand to his temple as if to drive the ache out. His fingers met the ragged cloth that circled his forehead. He remembered then: the incident in the forest, fragments of his journey out of Sherwood's trap and across the lea. This place . . . the herb witch. He slid his fingers beneath the bandage and slipped it off. His head still swam with the aftereffects of whatever herbs the woman had used, and he felt not quite part of the world around him. She lay beside him, Gisborne's suspected traitoress, the wench who had saved him instead of ending his miserable life, which might have been easier for them both. A curled up pile of shapeless shift that scratched his side, sleeping with the soundness that came from exhaustion. Yes, Gisborne, a certain danger this one. The sarcasm in his thought lanced through his head, a fireflash of pain. Although her herbs are poison enough.

He flipped his mantle off them both and noticed she huddled closer to him, burying herself beneath his arm for warmth until little was visible but her stained shift, one small hand fisted on his chest, and a riot of untamed curls loosed from braids in the night. On any other morn, his thoughts would have strayed to baser instinct, but he felt pressed to the straw by his own weight and lethargy. She had drugged him, no doubt, deprived him of manhood as well as the alertness that should have him on guard in such a state. Yet he was alive and oddly content to do nothing more than lie still, washed by the morning breeze, feeling a woman's soft curves snug against him. She smelled like the lavender flowers that dangled overhead, and her breath fell in small, warm bursts against his chest. Nottingham Castle was miles-hours-another lifetime away. For a moment, just for a moment, he imagined what it would be like never to return, never to have to return, but to live out life in this bucolic simplicity, where things were as plain and uncomplicated as the earth itself. He fought the inertia that claimed his body and edged the fingers of his right hand down until they touched the braid of hair that lay across her shoulder. Odd hair, the darkest brown he could remember seeing, shot through with strands the color of burgundy wine. He coiled the serpentine length of the braid around his hand and brought it to his face. It smelled of the same sweet fragrance as the herbs waving above him. Damnable plants! She'd spared him just to charm him with the witching things. Sucked the very strength and will from him. Ah, Gisborne! Worse than you ever suspected. An underhanded plot, worthy of the Britons. He rubbed the braid across his lips--and stopped. His hand was clean, absent of the blood and grime of battle that had covered it the night before, as were his forearms and chest. She'd bathed him then, or part of him; he still wore his leather breeches and muddy boots. The Sheriff was amused at the woman's unnecessary attention to his cleanliness and the clear limit of the areas to which she wished to extend such attention. "Not even remotely curious, were you, healer?" he asked aloud, stroking her hair in a gesture that was hypnotically soothing to him. She did not stir. "Healer?" he said again, louder. One finger traced the tendril curled against her ear.

Chapter 4 "Healer!"

The voice, full and throaty, cut through Thea's sleep with its insistence. Her eyes flew open to daylight streaming through the chinks in the wattle, to his lips at her ear and the sultry sound of his voice. The events of the past night rushed back at once, hazy of detail, as if her mind refused to grasp the unlikely turn of her circumstances. The solid length of his body against hers was far more distinct. She was, at once, awash with a cold dread, imagining the worst. She had slept the entire night through at his side, not once waking to tend him. Her neglect had brought on the fever--how else could his body be so hot?--and fever this delirium. She pushed herself away from him and up on her elbows only to feel a sharp tug on her scalp. He held the length of her braid coiled around the back of his hand, and even as she watched, slowly wrapped another loop of disheveled hair around his palm. She saw in the dark gleam of his eyes a lucidity that was anything but febrile. "What the hell kind of surgeon do you suppose yourself to be?" he launched at her. It should have been an accusation, not the smoky-toned taunt she heard. She could feel her cheeks growing warm from embarrassment, and her fists closed in indignation in the skirts of her threadbare shift. "The kind that has saved your life!" she retorted without thinking. Too late, she realized she had overstepped her bounds in every conceivable way. "My lord," she added, with a soft emphasis he could never interpret as respect. He raised one eyebrow, whether in mild surprise or disdain she could not tell, and released his hold on her hair. "Ah, salvation where one least expects it," he said wryly. "Now help me out of this damnable bed of torture or I will leave your place in worse shape than when I came in." He twisted around and rose up on one elbow, grimacing violently at the stab of pain this action cost him. "Saved my life, my ass," he muttered. "Feels like you added an arrow's point or two for good measure." Thea's hand flew to his shoulder to restrain him. "Gratitude is unnecessary, but you will at least heed my counsel. You're going nowhere, my lord. You are injured, and seriously so." The Sheriff stopped in mid-motion, regarding Thea mildly. "That may be, woman," he said, "but I'm not so near death's door that I am incapable of relieving myself outside. Now if you would kindly direct me to the proper place." Thea crossed her arms in front of her and shook her head in bemusement. Only a Norman would be so crude, and only the Sheriff so adamant. He was behaving like any invalid who had recovered sufficiently to chafe at being restricted, for all that it had been only hours since her knife was slicing into his side. She had seen children deal with confinement with more patience, but no one with greater recuperative power. "If you insist, since you seem to lack even a trace of good judgment." She indicated the door with a tilt of her head. "Just beyond the garden, in back. There's a willow screen for privacy."

"Why this rare caution, woman?" he quipped. "Could it be the fool who pierced me yesterday is lying in wait for me now, even as we speak?" "It's doubtful he would be so lucky twice." Thea clamped her mouth shut. Was it fear or anger that had loosed this veritable barrage of disrespect, or merely that the man's dry jests demanded an equally acerbic reply? He placed his hand under her chin and lifted her face, making it impossible to avoid his dark, penetrating eyes. "You are a quick and witty wench. But I could have your tongue for it." As indeed he could. She stared back with equal resolve. If the truth be told, she enjoyed the role she had assumed as verbal combatant. It kept her from tearing him limb from limb. "Mm." He grunted as if reaching some inner decision, and released her. "Out back, you say?" She stood and offered her hand, but he was on his feet without help, pulling himself together in small ways--a scratch to his unruly black hair and a stroke to his dark beard-and headed out the door. He did not ask about his shirt, but met the early morning air impervious to its chill. She saw then the crosshatch of scarring across the Sheriff's bared back and shoulders, and bit into her lip to keep from gasping. Feeling the poorly healed skin with her own fingers had not prepared her for the sight. The welts--for surely that was what they were--were faded and smoothed with age, the remnant of harm inflicted upon him long ago, brutal enough to leave a lasting imprint. Even after he'd rounded the corner and was out of view, she was unable to move, the after-image of what she'd seen burning her eyes. He was a Norman, she told herself, and to have attained his position, he was most likely a soldier, as well. And surely soldiers were scarredBut to imagine that Englishmen had done that, or even the Welsh, whom everyone knew were savage-She shuddered and hugged her thin shift to her. From appearances, the Sheriff considered himself well enough to be up and about, for all that the injury he had sustained would require several days' bed rest and close attention to keep the wound clean and healing properly. Already Thea was learning that he would offer her no compliance during his confinement--if confinement were anything one could force upon him to begin with. He would walk to the latrine and back--that much she would allow him, if only for modesty's sake--but she would have to take a staunch position against his moving about for any other reason. She had nearly fortified herself with the stubbornness she was sure this task would require when Nottingham strode by her on his return.

"Breakfast," he ordered as he walked past, not bothering to slow his pace in the least. He acknowledged her with only a dismissive gesture toward the shift she wore, still stained from surgery. "And change that thing before you serve me." Thea felt irritation roil within her again, devouring the brief sympathy she had felt. The man was impossible! Obviously, it never occurred to the Sheriff that having barged in on her in demand of her services, he was not also entitled to demand hospitality and a comely wench to sate his appetite. She had saved the bastard's life. Was that not enough? She turned around to protest and was met by a shift flung full in her face. "This one," he ordered, as he rummaged through the contents of a shelf where she stored her few pieces of clothing. "Those are my things," she said with level coolness. "Yes. I can see that." He held out a second nubby-textured shift. She snatched the garment from him, folded it brusquely, and returned it to the shelf. Rude, arrogant ... impossible! And he obviously knew nothing about women's clothing. She grabbed a kirtle and tunic and clutched them together with the shift he'd tossed at her. "Your things are over there." She nodded toward the back of the chair where his freshly laundered shirt hung, the leather swordbelt and scabbard slung across it. She prayed he would dress himself and leave her some small amount of privacy to do the same. Thea turned her back to him and tried her best to wriggle out of and into her clothes without baring too much of herself to him. "Your modesty is quite unnecessary. I've seen a woman's body before." "Undoubtedly," she said, "but spare me the numerous accounts. I'm not one of your wenches." "Saints be praised." Thea glanced over her shoulder, intending to burn him with a smoldering glare, but the Sheriff merely held up the remnant of shirt he had slipped into. "Your blade is quite lethal," he said, indicating the tear that sliced it from neck to hem. She jerked the ties of her kirtle tight and pulled the loose tunic over her head, her cheeks foolishly burning. "If you expect it mended--" "Just breakfast," he said, affable enough. She pushed past him to the fire, portioned out a serving of porridge into a crockery bowl, and set the bowl on the table. "Your breakfast, my lord," she said, the look on her face forbidding him to complain.

The Sheriff met and held her eyes. "I suppose conversation is out of the question." Thea glared at him, then turned silently to add wood to the fire, which had burned down to a bed of hot coals during the night. "Then have I your permission to return to Nottingham, woman?" "My name is Thea," she replied, "and somehow I did not gather you were interested in my . . . permission." She stoked the fire with a hearty, well-aimed thrust on the last word, then straightened and turned to face him. "Thea," he said deliberately, lingering over the sound of the word. "Yes, of course." He took another spoonful of broth. "Somehow, Thea--" he put delicate emphasis on her name, "I sense I have overstayed my welcome." He held up his hand to prevent her from objecting--an objection she had not considered uttering. "Now, don't feel the need to be kind. I'm accustomed to it." "You are not well, my lord," she offered with a trifle more benevolence. "As much as it grieves me, you must remain here two or three days more--" "Two or three days? Have you lost your mind? Do you know who I am?" Thea sighed. He was, indeed, going to be difficult. "The arrowhead is out, is it not?" he continued. "Yes, but--" "And I'm trussed up sufficiently to ride?" Mentally, Thea considered the effort returning to the castle would entail. If he managed to mount his horse, could he ride the miles to Nottingham without damage to his wound? Try as she might, she could not imagine the man riding at anything less than breakneck speed. "I'm not certain of that, my lord--" "Well, you did bandage me," he said, as if daring her to make a poor evaluation of the job she'd done. "The wound is open and needs to drain before it is stitched," she explained patiently. "It must be bathed frequently and an astringent poultice applied. And you must be in bed, as still as possible, not dashing across the hills. Two or three more days," she repeated with all the firmness she could muster. "That is your recommendation," the Sheriff said. "It is." "And it is so noted. Your concern is touching. Your recommendation, however, is quite impossible." He was suddenly very serious, and looked past her, lost in thought for a moment. "I can ill afford to be away now."

"My lord--" Thea stopped suddenly. He had not even heard her. She remembered the arrowhead she had saved, wondering if it would give him pause to reconsider or only make him more determined to leave. "Then I think there is something you need to see." Nottingham pushed his chair back from the table and stood, looking around the cottage, his thoughts clearly elsewhere. "Yes, what is it?" he asked. Thea fished the arrow's tip out of the pocket of her discarded tunic and held it in the well of her palm. The Sheriff stopped his distracted search and focused on the barbed point. He looked down at Thea for a long moment before picking up the piece and turning it over between his fingers. "How did you say you came to be wounded?" Thea ventured, knowing full well he had not said and certainly did not need to divulge such details to her. "An ambush . . . in the forest," he replied absently. He did not take his eyes off the arrowhead. "But that is not a woodsman's arrow," she said with muted certainty. "It bears the mark of the castle forge." Nottingham turned the metal tip over in his palm a few more times, then closed his fist over the offending shrapnel. His lip curled up in a strange half-smile. "So it is. You are most observant . . . for a woman who observed on another occasion that there were no woodsmen in Sherwood." Thea felt her breath freeze in her throat, and a quick stab of fear shot through her. So he knew, had known all along. Gisborne's tales had reached the Sheriff's ears, and whether he believed them or not, her innocence was now in question. She waited, expecting something--a direct accusation, arrest, maybe a swift end to her life if the Sheriff decided to rid himself of her impertinence as well as whatever threat he imagined she presented. She didn't expect him to do nothing. "My cloak?" he asked, as his eyes searched the peg on her wall where her threadbare cape hung. He spied his own mantle lying crumpled on the pallet they had shared, and simultaneously they bent to pick it up. He grimaced with the effort, hissing at the sudden spear of pain in his side. Without speaking, Thea gathered up the mantle and shook the bits of straw from the luxurious fur. She placed the cloak over him and brought its heavy folds around his arms to make the brooch closure more accessible to him. Seeing no need to bring further attention to his helplessness, she did not offer to clasp it. It was doubtful her fingers would have stopped trembling long enough anyway. Her cheeks burned, and she knew their heat was not caused by the fire any more than it was caused by her treacherous secrets. "With luck then, Nottingham by dusk," he was saying. "My lord, I must protest. It's unwise to leave now. I strongly advise bedrest, here where I can tend you."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you, Thea?" he said, his voice low and full of suggestion. "Such a journey is fraught with danger," she said, ignoring his seductive intent. "It would be foolhardy to undertake it alone and--" She stopped and tried to gather her wits about her, unable to understand why she was trying so hard to persuade him to stay. "You will have to return by Sherwood, as you know, and I would guess you are quite unable to defend yourself." "And you think that would be necessary?" A certain trap. She decided to sidestep it altogether. "What is more, you said yourself, you aren't sure your surgeon survived the ambush." "True," the Sheriff said, brows drawn together, "but irrelevant. If he did, he'll find himself in irons for leaving me there to die--" "Then who will see to your wound?" she asked, surprised she had conjured such a reasonable argument for a thing she was not at all certain she wanted. "My scribe is literate. I suppose he could consult with the surgeon's medical texts. And there's a wench or two whose hands--" Could the man do naught but jest, even about a matter as serious as this? "Then go," she said, infuriated. "Please. Leave here." "You seem genuinely concerned--" "Concerned that I have saved your life only to have you fall prey to someone else's questionable expertise. Concerned that you will send your dogs after me should your healing go poorly." "Ah, I see. Altruism at its most noble." The cocksure smile he flashed in her direction unsettled her far more than the thought of the Sheriff riding off to do himself further injury. "And altruism should be rewarded," he said. With a swift, decisive flash, he grabbed her hand. "No!" she cried, instinctively jerking her hand back, but he held her tightly, strong fingers imprisoning hers. A fiery, fathomless light burned in his eyes. Suddenly, she knew she had crossed the line of his tolerance. He had used her--no, worse, she had made herself available to him--and now she was quite expendable. He brought her hand to his lips. "You are unaware of the most sensible solution," he whispered. "Unaware . . . of . . ." she stammered, thinking how wrong he was, because she was intensely aware of many, many things: the tickle of his beard on her fingers; the warm sigh of his breath; the full softness of his lips on her skin, in odd contrast to the hard,

unyielding grip with which he held her hand. She was even aware of her tattered sleeve hem draped across her wrist, in blatant contrast with the rich, ebony silk he wore. She would have withdrawn her hand had he not just at that moment released it. Her heart hammered at an unforgiving pace. "You shall come with me." She stood mute, not even certain he'd spoken, for all that he'd moved on, taken up his sword belt, and was making a circle of it about his waist. "Did you hear me, woman? Collect your things--a minimum of your things. My horse is not a pack animal, and as it is, he will have to carry two riders." "What?" "Well, it does seem to be the only way to satisfy your need to nursemaid me through my injury." "My need--" "And what better guide through Sherwood than a wench so loyal to Hood she would not lead me within two days of his camp?" "You're mistaken, my lord--" She wanted to tell him in exactly how many ways, but he rushed through her protests as if they were nonexistent. "Come now, woman. Don't dawdle. I'm still in relatively good spirits for a man you feel too feeble to make it back to his own castle." The Sheriff punctuated his warning with a raised brow, then opened the door, and stepped outside. Thea stood rooted to the same spot in her cottage, unable to move for all that her mind was racing. What had happened to the argument she thought she had constructed with such convincing sanity? Nottingham Castle was easily the last place she wanted to be. Surely he didn't expect her to accompany him simply because he had a flash of ill-born inspiration, just because he ordered it. "My horse?" she heard him call from outside. But of course, he expected it, she realized with a sinking feeling in her stomach that obliterated the last shred of anything pleasant she had felt with his kiss. And one did not stand around like a fool, trying to second-guess how seriously the Sheriff of Nottingham meant his orders to be taken. "You are coming, aren't you, woman?" Her body filled with tension, every instinct clamoring to resist him. Her mind offered no way out, short of consoling herself that the Sheriff was a healthy man, bristling with far

more stamina than was required for recuperation and an attitude which would not allow for anything less than a full and speedy recovery. A few days at the most, she comforted herself. A few days of being very careful and keeping her wits about her. Surely she could manage that. She glanced around the cottage, considering and eliminating items she would need to bring. Nottingham's surgeon would have bandages, most certainly a mortar and pestle, a number of the more common herbs. She quickly took a scarf and filled it with a variety of barks, leaves, roots, and mosses, and tied the ends of the cloth together. "Thea, isn't it? For Christ's sake, woman, what is taking you?" It would serve him right if she did come, the pompous brute! She would ply him with the most noxious nostrums she could concoct; a purgative for his arrogant ill-temper came quickly to mind. She paused, full of innumerable misgivings, then closed the cottage door firmly behind her and hoisted her knotted kerchief over one shoulder. "My lord." The Sheriff had already mounted his horse, how she could never guess. She was glad she had stayed in the cottage long enough to spare him her audience. If the action pained him, his face bore no evidence of it. He sat atop the bay stallion with regal bearing, indulging the animal as it pranced and pawed at the ground, but reining it in the minute he saw Thea's step falter. She considered the huge beast, and the equally beastly figure who rode him, with due skepticism. She thought she saw him smile. "Yes, well, get on with it," he said, reaching down for her. She clasped his forearm and felt him lift her up. She struggled with her skirts, her unwieldy package of herbs, and her own lack of knowledge of riding, and straddled the horse in front of the Sheriff. It felt unseemly, her woolen kirtle pulled up about her thighs, her bare feet dangling without stirrups. Belatedly, she realized she should have seated herself behind him or sideways, as a noble lady would have done. She pulled one leg up slightly, hoping to change her position without calling much attention to her blunder, but the Sheriff stroked her thigh with infuriating familiarity. "You're quite all right as you are," he said. She brushed his hand away and tugged at her skirt, trying to ignore his deep rumble of laughter as his arm snaked around her midsection and he accommodated himself to her presence in front of him. He readjusted the reins in his hands, holding them closeunnecessarily close-to her midriff.

"I am not coming along for your private amusement." "Of course not." Thea quieted immediately at the careless, teasing tone of his voice, suspecting he lied. The man was undoubtedly going to ride back to Nottingham for the better part of the day, worsen his injury, and philander his way through it all. She pushed his hands away from their too intimate position beneath her breasts and vowed silently that, though the Sheriff be laid open by an archer's arrow and her own surgery, he would find an elbow in his rib if he used this occasion for more liberties. Abruptly, he leaned back and pulled on the reins. His horse reared up on its hind legs and neighed, and Thea felt her body drop solidly into Nottingham's embrace. With a sudden lurch, the steed leapt forward and galloped off through the meadow. She tried to look back, to see her cottage again and watch it shrink to a small dot on the horizon; there was nothing behind her but the Sheriff's black cloak flapping out behind them in the wind. *** "Report, deLancey?" Guy of Gisborne favored the exhausted soldier with a withering look. "Please tell me these rumors of attack are the half-baked imaginings of castle gossip." "God's blood, Sir Guy," the soldier panted, doffing his helm. "Not just attack--a massacre! They killed everything-men, horses." "'They?' Who did you see, deLancey?" "No one, my lord. Not a living soul. Couldn't see nothing for the fog. And then-arrows--coming from nowhere. The air was thick with them, as thick as summer rain and over as fast. It was like the ghosts of Sherwood themselves had loosed upon us!" Gisborne looked at the soldier, at the pale line of skin that covered the man's forehead and ran the length of his nose, where the helm had protected him. The rest of the man's face was darkened by black grime and dried blood. Only the forehead, the nose, and horror-filled eyes stared out at Gisborne, a skull-mask of bone bled white from fear. "Survivors?" "None, my lord." "But you are here, deLancey. Or are you so uncertain of your own fate? If my cousin survived--" The soldier bowed his chin to his armored chest and made a clumsy cross-like gesture with his gauntleted hand. "God's mercy, my lord. I saw the Sheriff hit, saw his horse cut from beneath him--" The soldier swallowed convulsively. "There was no way he could have lived through what I witnessed."

Gisborne pierced the soldier with a cool, speculative stare. "You are certain of that? Don't underestimate him, deLancey. I've seen him survive worse. Seen him given up for dead and yet return, like some resurrected mongrel, to haunt the living further." "Haunt he may, Sir Guy, but with Sherwood's own. There was none left from the battle to draw breath, that I swear. None but I," he added awkwardly. "How fortunate for you, deLancey." "Sir?" "That you were spared to lead the troops to recover his body," Gisborne said, a sneer warping the edges of tightened lips. "But, sir--" "You don't think I'd leave him out there for those cutthroats, do you? My cousin, the Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham! Not fodder for the vultures, man. Now be gone with you." "But, sir--" "Gone, I say!" Gisborne's fist pounded the oaken table. The soldier nodded stiffly, a reluctant bow of obeisance, and turned on his heel to leave the hall. Gisborne waited until the man departed and the metallic clanging of mail and sword died to a mournful echo. He looked up slowly. Dark, amber eyes, kohl-rimmed, peered back at him from across the table, and he studied those eyes, watching the shift of liquid gold within their depths. "Do you trust the report?" A mellifluous voice floated on the air, sweet and intoxicating, like mead to the lips and mind. "Do you?" Long, tapered fingers plucked at a pair of gold tassels threaded through the neck of a kidskin pouch. The woman said nothing, but upended the pouch and let the carved runes spill out upon the oak. Gisborne winced at the clatter the bone pieces made and rubbed his eyes with thumb and index finger. "Answer enough," he heard his companion say. He opened bleary eyes and focused on the pattern made by the runes. The glyphs swirled, meaningless in his ale-fogged vision. The woman touched a row of pieces,

right to left, and came to rest on a single, uncarved square. The blank rune stared back at him--a stark promise of death. "A lie!" he growled, sweeping the runes from the table. "I will not believe it any more than I believe that fool deLancey." "Then another interpretation, perhaps," the woman offered coolly, thin hand at her swan-like neck. "A symbolic death. Or an ending. A portent of unknowable change." "We need no changes here, Aelwynn. Only reassurance that our plan will go forward, that we will meet with success. Where are those signs?" The woman's glance slid to the floor where the scattered runes lay among the rushes and leavings of an earlier meal. She shrugged her shoulders with a sensual languor that sent a thread of fire down Gisborne's spine to his loins. "Perhaps I should try again," she suggested. He reached across the table suddenly, rough hand weaving through the coil of braid at her nape, and drew her toward him, his mouth silencing hers. He drank in the taste of her, the bitter taste of the lips whose reading he dared not believe, and found less assurance there than in the runes. Abruptly, he severed the kiss, leaving the woman gasping, her lips still open, as if she had expected anything from his mood except sullenness and rancor. She closed her mouth, teeth toying with the unfinished sting in her lower lip. "You need not fear," she murmured. "The bastard's quite indestructible." Gisborne took a long draught of ale and tried to swallow the bile that had risen in the back of his throat. "Is he?" Nottingham Castle loomed in the distance, rising from its rocky prominence above the city like a forbidding sentry. The stone towers were partly obscured by the fog, but ocher lights still shone at its narrow windows. Its brooding aspect did not bring one a sense of warmth or hospitality, nor had it been built with that in mind. It was a fortress, a stalwart protection designed more to intimidate than to welcome. Town dwellers lived and worked in its domineering shadow, crouching slightly as they went about their business, as if burdened by its presence. The streets were filled with the usual hustle and bustle of a city, but people hurried on their way without lingering. The Sheriff's guard dotted the city landscape, unavoidable, garbed in mail and arms. In truth, few citizens of Nottingham would have dared approach the castle gates. They made whatever rounds were necessary for their business giving wide berth to the place they knew to be the Sheriff's residence. On this morning, Nottingham felt an urgency to be home. He did not think of his domicile as particularly inviting, nor was he a social creature with intentions of making the castle an extension of the court. While Nottingham Castle housed lords and barons and even royalty on occasion, it was rarely at the Sheriff's invitation. He suffered the arrival of caravans of guests and their households as a supreme intrusion, and while he

gave his visitors whatever hospitality their stations warranted, he did nothing to earn himself the fame of a gracious host or Nottingham Castle the reputation of a warm retreat. The Sheriff was relieved that his home was not currently besieged with guests. He had great need of privacy. There was, he was forced to admit, the damnable physical distress caused by his injury. While he was not ready to concede that he'd been in error to ride back to Nottingham when the healing woman had advised against it, the miles he'd traveled to reach the city had stretched out longer than he'd anticipated. His wound plagued him, a sharp reminder no matter which gait he directed his horse to employ. He had finally resigned himself to a slow, plodding walk, under pretense that he had not for some time made a thorough inspection of the fields they passed. If his healer were fooled--and Nottingham felt quite certain she was not--she said nothing. Nor did she fuss over him with unwanted, solicitous behavior. She seemed aware of every uncomfortable movement, of the small grimaces of pain he let slip, of the occasional indrawn breath, but she remained silent. A curious creature, he mused. She had been so forthright and outspoken before, a pleasant change from wenches who cowered before him and barely spoke when what he craved was something quick and sharp of wit. As the ache of his injury became more of a distraction, she had quieted. Hers was not the silence of fear, for not once had he felt her tremble in his arms. It was instead the silence of good judgment, betraying an intellect and manner rarely found in peasant stock. She had been too intelligent to slay him, too quick to realize the utter futility of murder, although she had the spirit for it. Even now she evidenced, if not kindheartedness, at least the uncommon discretion not to call attention to his incapacity, as if she knew somehow he could not bear her chatter and his pain at once. The Sheriff could not describe the impulse that had driven him to bring her with him, but he hoped it was one spontaneous decision he would not regret. Her physic was crude--he was not of a mind to suffer the odor of whatever foul substance she had spackled into the crevice of his gut much longer than would be required to order a bath-and the outcome of her ministrations was still dubious at best. His surgeon's methods would have been no mystery to him. The leech demonstrated a propensity for invocations and incantations and, if the moon were right and his ruling planet in the proper house, Nottingham knew he would be bled. He had accepted this matter-of-factly. The surgeon had served him for years, and his practice of the healing arts had settled predictably into the commonplace procedures of the day, sprinkled with superstition to render them more impressive. Now the leech was gone, and this other option-The Sheriff looked down at the woman in his arms. At some point in the tedious journey, she had fallen asleep, lulled by the sun's steady heat and the sonorous drone of insects. Her body slumped against him, warm, limply relaxed, her hips moving rhythmically with the motion of the horse. No, she was not his competent, skilled

surgeon, but the thought of the healer's hands stroking warmed honey salve on his belly was nearly consolation enough. By journey's end, to the merciless ache in his side was added a relentless throbbing in his temple and the slight nausea that presaged a violent headache. Yesterday's attempt on his life had left him with a solitary feeling of fear and dread, more real, less easily cured than the wound in his side. But for good fortune, he would be dead now. Nottingham thought of the arrowhead the healer had dug from his gut. The castle forge, she had said quite clearly, as if he did not recognize his own armory's mold. While he fully conceded he was loathed by the public, he was surprised to find such a lethal attitude among his own men. Surely some of them shared a moderate contempt for him, but none would have taken the initiative, or had the mettle, to ambush him. None he knew, at least. Who would dare betray him? A single, disgruntled soldier annoyed by low pay, hard work, and ill-fitting boots? The cuckolded husband of some scullery maid he'd bedded and long since forgotten? Maybe a woodsman, after all, with an inside supplier of castle armaments? But how could that be? One of his spies would have informed him, or Gisborne would have picked up on some unrest from which such violence might have sprung. There were never any answers in this unending hell where he found himself. The Sheriff shuddered, suddenly cold despite the heat of the day. The healing woman woke with a start, turned slowly in his arms, and regarded him with an unspoken question. Nottingham pointed ahead to the city gates. "There." She made no reply, but the Sheriff noticed she sat slightly forward now, away from him, sparing him the weight or movement of her body. An odd feeling encompassed him. He had traveled the entire morning and well into the afternoon and was now arriving at a destination he was not at all certain he wanted to reach. With effort, he straightened in his saddle and did his best to ignore the odors and sounds of city life that assaulted him. As he wended his way through the town, people scurried out of his way, or bowed and scraped in an obsequious manner, their faces written with shock as much as fear. Clearly he was not expected to return. A day's absence had already fueled suspicion, if not hope, of his death. He ignored the sea of surprised townspeople and held his face in impassive stoniness, his eyes fixed on the crenelated towers of Nottingham Castle. His murderer was within that castle--he felt it. Somewhere in its depths or along one of its dimly lit corridors, within the heart of the fortress which should have been his sanctuary, his assailant would strike again. The Sheriff felt a cold sweat envelope him. His shirt clung to his skin, and he wanted nothing more than to shrug off the pretense of invincibility he wore, along with clothes suddenly too damp and too heavy.

He did not acknowledge the guard's dutiful "M'lord," as the portcullis opened to admit him, then clanged shut, trapping him within the castle's stony embrace. He could see Gisborne striding toward him, his cousin's face mirroring the same astonishment he had seen in the city. So even Gisborne had not anticipated his return, although he covered his unpreparedness with a barrage of orders shouted across the bailey to stablehand and servant alike. With considerable effort, holding his bandaged side, the Sheriff dismounted. He felt the pressure in his temples explode across his brow. For the briefest of moments, he let his forehead rest against the saddle's leather, then abruptly he straightened, unwilling to allow his fatigue or pain to show. The very motion sent the world spinning around him. He held tightly to the horse's bridle, thankful that Gisborne reached him at just the moment a stableboy came to hold the horse. The Sheriff watched, curiously detached, as his lieutenant lifted Thea down. He saw the glint in Gisborne's eye and noted the way his cousin's hands brushed up her sides and across her breasts before he released her. The woman shoved him away roughly, not bothering to disguise her hatred. Gisborne laughed, a hollow show of nonchalance. "Well, I see you've not come back empty-handed," he said to the Sheriff. Nottingham put a shaking hand on Gisborne's shoulder as if taking his cousin into his confidence, hoping Guy did not sense the weakness that in truth made the gesture necessary. "Oh ye of little faith," Nottingham managed, his irritation with Gisborne's folly only slightly less than the fire he felt stabbing through his rib. "Have you caught the bastards that ambushed us?" The lieutenant shook his head. "Only deLancey made it back, and he was raving like a lunatic. Muttering about ghosts and spirits--" Nottingham silenced him with a forbidding look. "With real enough arrows, damn you! Keep looking! I want the vermin found!" "Hood and his people?" The Sheriff swayed slightly, the remembered image of the telltale arrowhead doubling, blurring, before his eyes. "If not Locksley--" He stopped, lips tightening over the remainder of his suspicions. "Of course Hood," he spat. "Aided by his outlaw army. Spirits, be damned! They're mortal enough. Flush Locksley out of his wooded lair with as many men as it takes--but find him!" The brief bellow of rage quickly exhausted him. "Your surgeon, Cousin--there's been no report of him."

The Sheriff fought back a scowl as he reached instinctively toward the source of slicing pain. His hand came away bloody. "No," he said, wearily subdued. "I assumed not. But no matter, Gisborne. She is to tend me." He held out the blood-covered hand to Thea. He was not sure which surprised--or gratified--him more: the shocked look on his cousin's face or the way the healer took his hand and laced her fingers through his.

Chapter 5 It happened far too quickly for Thea to absorb. Only moments before, the Sheriff appeared conquered by weakness; now he summoned a veneer of vigor about him. He took her arm and pulled her along behind him, into the castle and through its dark corridors. The passageways of the castle were a blur of stone and torchlight, of servants and soldiers pressing their backs against the walls to let the Sheriff pass. He acknowledged no one as he climbed the spiral stairway to his lair, his stride long and impatient, as if he could not reach his destination soon enough. When at last they paused on a landing at the top of one of the castle towers, Nottingham snarled unintelligibly and shoved the lance-bearing guard aside. He kicked open the oaken door and hauled Thea in behind him. Only then did he release her. She stood panting, rubbing her raw wrist, a thousand retorts on her tongue and not one she had breath to fling at him. They'd entered darkness, relieved only by the hearth where flames lapped lazily at a bed of hotly glowing coals. Thea glanced from the fire to the stone walls, where their shadows stretched overhead to the vaulted ceiling. Rushes gilded by firelight covered the floor, and the faint aroma of woodruff battled with that of candle wax, smoldering oak, and an unfamiliar incense. The Sheriff's harsh breathing echoed within the chamber. He removed his cloak and peeled off his shirt, flinging them on the long table that dominated the room. Blood soaked his bandages, but he paced around the room with such frenetic motion that Thea dared not approach him. At last, he climbed the four stone steps, two at a time, to a separate alcove and flung back the faded tapestry that hung there. In the middle of a large bed, a woman sat amid rumpled bedclothes. Candles played over a cloud of auburn hair and pale, naked shoulders. "Out of here, woman! Get the hell out of my bed!" She frowned petulantly, but slid off the bed with the sheet clasped insecurely to her. Seeing Thea, she drew herself to a posture both proud and fiercely territorial.

"So that's how it is," she said, her words clearly meant for the Sheriff, but a gaze of evaluation directed at Thea. Thea suffered the inspection and the woman's disdain in silence, feeling as much the unwelcome intruder as unwilling guest. "Aelwynn!" Nottingham's voice rang out sharply. The woman's angular face filled with a cool, haughty intensity. Gold-flecked eyes traveled to the sodden bandages wrapped below the Sheriff's ribs, observing in silence the damage done there. With a huff of indignation at her dismissal, she turned and left the room. The Sheriff whirled around, sank his hands into the down-filled coverlets and furs, and tore them from the bed, wild movements punctuated with an angry roar. "Damn the shewolf! Can she not spare me tonight?" Although she was well out of his reach, Thea instinctively stepped back, away from the circle of fury around him. The bedclothes landed in a pile at her feet. She was vaguely aware of a servant bearing a tray laden with food and drink nudging the door open with her hip-"Leave us!" the Sheriff bellowed. --and bowing low as she backed out the door. "And tell that miserable excuse of a guard I will have no further intrusions!" He pulled his dagger from its sheath at his waist and hurled it, somersaulting, through the air. It splintered into the closing door, embedded halfway to the hilt. Thea froze motionless, stunned by the whirring path the blade had sliced through the air and the solid vibration of steel that rang in her ears more loudly, more revealing, than any of the Sheriff's curses. She stared at him in silence. Was he bent on annihilating all around him with his temper, or just himself? Nottingham grabbed a flagon from the bedside table and tilted it to his lips. Burgundy wine coursed down his beard and neck, then forked, like twin rivers, to stream down his chest. Blood dripped through the bandage, and Thea knew he would do untold harm to his wound were he not stopped. She followed him to the alcove, reached out, and laid her hand across his forearm. "I will need the wine for your wound." He stopped in mid-swallow, regarding her with a baleful eye. "What price privacy, do you think? Or is that a commodity the Sheriff cannot afford?" Suddenly his body sagged, as if he'd spent the last of his energy on his useless rage and could no longer stand on his own. Thea rescued the flagon from his fingers as he

collapsed on the bed's edge, elbows braced on his knees, head buried in his hands. His fingers raked through his mane of hair and dug into his scalp. It was odd seeing him depleted, stripped of the stubborn defensiveness he believed to be strength, odder still feeling the flood of sympathy that stirred within her. "They're worried. Your servants--your wife--" He flashed her a look of irritated distaste that was an eloquent contradiction. "That was no wife," he said acidly. "Damn woman! Worse than a stray cat one mistakenly feeds-forever underfoot. Likely she imagined herself a welcoming sight, curled and purring contentedly in a place that is not hers. Seeing herself as a cure for what ails me--a lustful woman to warm my bed. More likely, she warmed my bed with one of my guards, traitorous wench." He looked away, and Thea could see the muscle in his jaw tense. "Better she have her claws in deGeoffrey's backside. I tire of wondering whose cream is on her lips--" Thea cleared her throat, wishing she had not stumbled into whatever unresolved conflict existed between Nottingham and his leman. "I see-" "Oh, spare me your wearisome observations!" "I would not presume-" "Of course you would," he argued. "When have you not?" "I will speak only on the matter of your injury, my lord. You've not been helped by your ride back. To try such a wound with a day in the saddle--" She bit off the admonishment about his frenzied display of choler. "But you're here now, and here you'll stay--resting calmly, if it be at all in my power--until you're well." "And after that?" "You may rant and rave to your heart's content, bay at the moon, if you wish, hang your faithless bedmate from the tallest tower in the castle. It's of no concern to me." To her surprise, he laughed, swallowing a grimace at the discomfort it must have caused him. It was a change so sudden and so thorough that it startled her. Tension fled his shoulders and the knotted muscles of his back, as if he had finally managed to shrug off some unseen burden. "Hang her?" he asked, a wicked smile of complicity brushing across his bearded lips. "Brilliant!" "It was a jest, my lord." "Indeed, Thea? Not one of the opinions you would never presume to utter disguised as wit?" Thea met his dark-clouded eyes, now lit from behind with a spark of perverse amusement. Even his face was different, more relaxed than before, with a trace of eager

expectation as he tempted her to respond. By the saints, the man's humor was black! More shocking still was the palliative effect it had on him. "Ah, you're a delightful wench!" He grinned. "If you cannot cure me, at least you can entertain me. Although carefully. There are few people in Nottingham Castle who will appreciate your sharpness of tongue. Likely someone will carve it out the first time it vexes them." "Who?" she braved, seeing the opportunity to distract him with the question as she gestured for him to lie back. She took her knife and cut through the bloody bandages. "You mean if I don't get to you first? Well, Gisborne comes to mind. Although I doubt from that little spectacle in the bailey, he's content to stop at your tongue." "Gisborne's a fool." She peeled away the linen strips and agrimony poultice. "Sir Gisborne," he corrected her, "is my cousin and lieutenant of my guard. He demands more respect from his women." "I am not his woman." "Then perhaps you should explain that to him. He seemed to take a rather proprietary way with you." Thea felt her cheeks grow warm, not knowing which was more dangerous: keeping pace with the Sheriff's banter--a game at which she was feeling increasingly inept--or continuing her examination of him. The wound had torn, as she feared, and was bleeding afresh. She took a clean linen square from her knotted kerchief of supplies, soaked it in wine, and dabbed at the ragged skin. She forced herself to continue her part of the conversation, hoping her voice did not quiver as much as her hands. "And that disturbs you, my lord?" "I know my cousin--a man of relentless pursuit, insatiable appetite--" He hissed at the sharp sting of wine and gritted his teeth. "A most ungentle way of appeasing that appetite--" "Then it is a family trait, my lord?" He looked at her sharply. For a moment, Thea feared--knew--she had committed a flagrant breach of whatever unwritten code ruled the Sheriff's game of words. She shut her mouth abruptly, wondering if it would be better to plead forgiveness or feign ignorance that she had insulted him or perhaps say nothing at all, since she had said too much already. He merely laughed, a series of deep-throated chuckles. "We really must do something to correct this vicious rumor. These falsehoods spread about me." His voice dropped to a low whisper, as intent as the unwavering gaze that swept over her in a single, unsettling caress. "To think such lies have already reached as far as Edwinstowe. You must believe me, Thea. I am much maligned."

The privacy he had begged for seemed all around them now, the air close and far too warm. The silence expanded and contracted like the sputter of the tallow candle beside the bed. "You're feverish," she said adamantly. The heat seemed to pour from him in waves; perspiration glistened across his face and pooled in the hollow of his throat. "I will give you something for that, and for the pain if you require it." "None of your brew, woman," he cautioned. "I prefer strong ale. Or better yet, the wine you seem determined to pour on my gut. And perhaps--" He reached out and took a fold of her skirt in his hand. It was the faded, nondescript hue of all undyed wool, its fibers coarsely woven, worn to smoothness by repeated washing against creek stones. He brushed his fingertips along a raveled tear, across the darker shade of a square patch, and pulled more of the kirtle into his hand. "You shall have rest, my lord," she replied, looking at his cloth-filled hand, then back to his teasing eyes. "Total immobility. A warm poultice, changed frequently. And, after the wound has drained and your fever gone, a seamstress to sew you back together again." "Nothing more?" he asked, pulling her skirt more tightly until no slack remained and the fabric was taut across her hips. "Maybe a lustful wench to warm my bed, after all?" A slow grin stole across his lips. "It would take my mind off the pain." She yanked the cloth from his hand and stepped back out of his reach. "It would split you from gorge to gut," she promised, her rebuke a whisper of feigned seduction that mimicked his. "Ah, indeed." His eyes were dark with lascivious glee, as if the notion thoroughly appealed to him. "Then, woman, you can heal me again." *** He proved to be a temperamental patient at best. He was ill enough, to be sure, but while he seemed aware of his physical limitations, it was clear he despised his weakness, and Thea for witnessing it. By the evening of their arrival at Nottingham Castle, he was unquestionably feverish, and as delirious with rage as he was with fever. He cursed the woodsmen, Locksley in particular, swore at the girl who brought him trays of food, and sent Gisborne off with a string of epithets that effectively kept his cousin at a distance. Nor did Thea escape his wrath. He forbade her to leave, but refused to permit her to care for him. If she tried to wipe his brow, he slapped her hand away. He sent a cup of chamomile tea, sailing across the room. His fitful tossing upon the bed threatened to undo the new poultice and bandages Thea had applied and reduced the linens to sweatsoaked ropes entwined about his legs. When she tried to loosen the bed clothes and cover him more fully, he kicked out fiercely at her. Pressed past her limit of tolerance, she swore softly at him, then caught herself with a quick gasp, horrified at what he'd provoked within her. One did not refer to the Sheriff

of Nottingham as a bastard, even under the most trying of circumstances, and surely never to his face. Recognizing the futility of a tug-of-war with the Sheriff over his own comfort, she left him to his misery and seated herself at the far corner of his alcove, where she watched the fever progress with crumbling detachment. Night, and the fever always came. It had been like this with Brand, fever making him a stranger to her. And she a stranger to him. And when he died, raving at the last, she had been helpless to prevent it. Thea shook her head fiercely, sweeping away the memories like unwanted cobwebs in her mind. The Sheriff was not Brand. How could she even compare the two? Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, her surroundings had pushed her into tension-filled vigilance. She started at the alien castle sounds. Armor and weaponry clanged outside the solar door even as the evening waned, and bawdy, drunken laughter filled the night. The occasional screech of a falcon in some other apartment jangled her already raw nerves even more than the creaking of carts outside or the rusty, metallic scraping of the portcullis on its chains. When she found she could sit no longer, Thea paced the alcove to the recessed sitting area created by one of two arrow loops along the perimeter of the wall. She traced the cross-shaped opening with her fingertip, imagining the position an archer would take to defend the portal, then shivered at the blatant reminder. This was a fortress designed for defense, strong and impregnable against outside assault. Ironically, being within the dwelling lent her no sense of security. And the Sheriff-Thea glanced around his chamber. If his solar were any indication, Lord Nottingham, for all his noble title and reputed wealth, was not a man given to much thought of comfort. Only a minimum of faded tapestries and drapes relieved the bleak texture of his stone and mortar surroundings. The rushes that covered his floor were stale, the furs spread out in front of the hearth trampled and muddied, and candles made of animal tallow spewed smoke more than flame. There was no evidence of books, no game boards for diversion, no crucifix for prayer. Instead, a tangible sense of danger filled the void created by this Spartan existence. It permeated the room like the miasma of smoky air from the fire and the faint, but discernible, odor of foreign incense. With her toe, Thea traced the trio of murder-holes in the floor, bewildered by the workings of the mind of a man who saw no incongruity in having such devices in his bedchamber. She wondered if the Sheriff felt imperiled in his own well-fortified keep. Had he considered the possibility of a second arrow or blade or poison? Perhaps he had managed to push the thought of mortal danger aside as one would a bothersome insect, the threat as unavoidable in his position as a gnat on a summer's day. Maybe he thrived on the peril, fed off the sinister, ill-boding vapors that hung in the air. Maybe he created them.

By all accounts, he was a dangerous man. She knew his reputation, his methods and underhanded strategy, his ambition and renowned cruelty. She also knew that he was a powerful man, someone with authority so absolute that no one dared question him, until Robin. Yet she had been so foolish as to let him engage her in a veritable duel of wit and word since they first met. Why? He'd killed others with less provocation. She stared at the scarred back turned toward her, and shivered--not with fear, but with sympathy and compassion that alarmed her even more, because they were so unfounded. Her throat tightened. God, he had as much as ordered her husband's death! She could ill afford to harbor such feelings for him; anything gentle, anything less than fear, than utter hatred, was treason to Brand's memory. Thea walked back across the chamber, approaching the bed with a kind of numbed resolve. She touched his shoulder lightly, wondering if Nottingham slept and therefore might spare her the unbearable tension he seemed to generate whenever he was awake. When he did not move, she felt his cheek, just above the line where his precisely trimmed beard was beginning to blur from the past days' growth. The skin was alarmingly warm. He rolled to his back, his head turned away from her touch. He did not wake. "So he has exhausted himself." Startled, Thea turned toward the door. An older woman, wrapped in a linen headrail and soft buff tunic, stood just inside the solar. "Aye, well, 'tis the only way--to fight with himself till the fight's gone out of him." Thea turned back to the Sheriff. True, he did sleep more soundly at last, arms flung out carelessly at his sides, legs spread-eagled through the tangle of sheets. She could not help but notice that Nottingham required--or took--three times over the space her small bed had provided the night before. He was, indeed, a man given to expansiveness, in every form. "And fight he has," Thea agreed. "Will it be enough to save him?" Thea glanced back over her shoulder. The woman stood rooted to the spot just inside the door where she had first appeared--a single soul, brazen enough to defy the Sheriff's orders. But it wasn't the woman's daring disobedience that struck Thea as unusual. Something in her voice-Thea searched the older face, seeing careworn lines mixed equally with stubbornness. Clear, ageless, blue eyes crinkled at the corners, and silvery brows furrowed with uncertainty. Why, the woman was concerned! No, more than that--worried. As impossible as it seemed, someone in Nottingham Castle actually cared for the fate of this man!

In the pause that followed, Thea knew the woman sensed her every failing. She wanted to confess that she was just a simple herb woman, that she could not save her own husband, whom she loved, much less Nottingham, whom she hated. Yet something in the woman's face allowed her no shortcomings. She sat on the bed and mopped the Sheriff's sweat-drenched brow. "The man is too willful to die," she said, half-believing the words she offered as reassurance. "And I am too willful to let him." "Aye," the older woman said, "I thought as much." Thea looked up in time to see a satisfied smile erase the last trace of apprehension from the woman's face as she held up a basket. "I know his orders, but someone needs to look after you, lamb, and he knows full well I don't turn tail and run on account of his barks. I brought you some bread and a good chunk of cheese and a skin of cold ale. And these linens for the monster himself, should you get soft-hearted and feel he's deserving of comfort." Thea mumbled her thanks, but the woman backed out the door as quickly and silently as she had come. Gratefully stretching the ache from her neck and shoulders, Thea rose and stepped down from the alcove to retrieve the basket and linens. She had not even asked the woman's name, yet she felt a strange admiration for the servant whose caring and common sense overrode the Sheriff's ultimatums. "Monster," she had called him, but with obvious misplaced affection. Thea looked up at the sleeping alcove where the Sheriff sprawled among his sheets. He did not appear particularly maleficent, unless, of course, her judgment had fled completely. He was, she was certain, more than the evil madman the villagers talked about, more complex and intricately wrought than John or even Robin could understand. She had never known a man so vehemently determined to control himself and those about him, and so compelled to shroud his abysmal failure with violent rage. Did he mean to make of his anger, his intimidation, and his ruthlessness a defense more impenetrable than that of his castle? And if so, exactly what did he hope to defend?

"Who the hell do you think you are, boy?" He saw the gloved hand, large, clenched, raised, and knew he would be struck. His mind was already far away, remembering his hard-won victory over Guy, hearing the clash of their swords, feeling his chest tighten and his lungs scream for air. He had never bested him . . . Guy . . . the lord's son . . . not once in seven years, but now Guy's

sword clattered to the ground. His cousin had conceded, turning empty palms to the air, earning but a wrathful glare from his father. Lord Gisborne would not strike his son, but he-He had dared too much in winning. He saw the lord's dark visage, like a warning fragment of some portentous nightmare, and then he felt the impact against his cheek. The second blow caught his lip. He smelled the faint aroma of leather as the gloved fist drove him stumbling backward, felt the crash of the timber floor drive his breath from him. He scrambled away, afraid now, hands and feet unable to make purchase among the rushes. Clumsily, he rolled to his knees, tasting blood, watching it splatter onto the straw . . . . . . Onto the snow. He counted time with the rhythmic plops . . . one droplet . . . two . . . blotting out all else. He was already frozen, his new tunic torn from his shoulders, sagging low over his hips only because they had not cut his belt from him when they had robbed him of his sword. His skin was blanched white from the cold. Bloodless. Even his wrists, where the ropes bound him, bled no longer. He did not feel that sting or the torn muscles in his shoulders when they had jerked his arms overhead and left him hanging there, a barely living effigy in the oak. His mind seemed separate from the sizzle of pain across his back. He counted the cracks in the air, marveling at the echoes made in the silent, icy world. Those, too, he measured, for it was easier to listen than to feel. A single thread of fire sliced across his bared shoulders, angrier than the rest, a viper's tongue of flame that licked across his bared shoulders and lanced into his left side, under his rib-"Stop!" Consciousness broke over him with a suddenness he felt, and heard. He had cried out; his own voice still rang shamefully in his ears. He lay very still, staring at the ribbed vaulting in the ceiling and trying to calm his strident breathing. Already the nightmare was dissolving, receding into the grayness of distant memory, but the pain was vivid, raw, and real. His hand moved to his side, and he moaned. "Sh-h-h." Someone hushed his cry with a whisper, pressed a cup of something cold to his parched lips, held his head up to drink. The healing woman. Her smaller hand closed over his, cool against his skin, and pulled his fingers away from the scalding pain along his side. "Be still," she whispered with gentle insistence. "All is well, my lord." "The hell it is." As he remembered, she was a liar. He wrenched his hand from hers and flung his arm across his face. "How is it possible to feel like this and still be alive?" he grumbled, thinking his complaint as good a disguise as any to mask the horror of his dream and the ignominy of having called out like a coward. "Did you drag me back from the gates of hell just to let me feel this torment?" "Is that where you've been?" The Sheriff lifted his arm away from his face and peered at Thea from beneath its shadow. "To hell and back, if you must know."

He watched as the herb woman silently dipped a wadding of sheep's wool into the basin of water and wrung it out. When her hand approached him, he blocked her with his arm. "This is all you can do for me? A compress across my brow?" He snatched the wool from her hand and glared at it as if it personally offended him with its inefficacy. Straining, he rose up on one elbow, and met her hand against his chest, fingers splayed. "We've done it your way, my lord," she said. "Rides cross country when you should not have moved, cups of my brew sent sailing across the room because the aroma offended you--" He considered the stubborn set of her mouth and the firm, unyielding pressure of her hand, and lay back down. "--Antics the likes of which I have never seen," she continued. She reached for the damp sheet tangled about him and pulled it away. "You are consumed with fever, and lest you think it so minor an aggravation you can ignore my suggestions or chase it away with your foul humor, then I should warn you: I have seen fever take more lives than a wayward arrow." She regarded him with a fierce stubbornness and held out her hand for the wool. After a moment, he dropped it into her palm. "Lack of sleep does not become you, Thea," he muttered. "You instructed me to rest. I rested. I do not need to be awakened by pain and a shrewish woman." "What I observed could hardly be called rest," she said, wiping his forehead and the planes of his cheeks. "You've done naught but toss and turn for hours." "It is not morn?" "Vigils are done, my lord, but the night is not." He looked at the lit taper on the bedside table. It had burned but half its measured length and now sputtered accusingly at him. "Stop fighting the fever. It is the only way to escape its hold. Sleep with it, through it." "This is the way I sleep, if I sleep," he said gruffly, irritated that he felt compelled to explain his personal habits to the healer merely to avoid one of her noxious potions. "Restlessly?" she asked. The Sheriff sneered at her choice of words. What did she know of the dreams? "Tell me, my lord," she was saying, "if, by nature, you are not sleeping at this late hour, what occupies your time?" "Trying to find new ways to flush the outlaws from Sherwood." He glared at her malevolently. "Wondering where the silver will come from to make up for the deficit in the treasury. Attempting to second guess which scheme my steward has devised to make

this dungeon an even less fit place to live than it already is. Contemplating the dilemma of serving both Crown and Church, something I fear I am not as adept at as our dearly, departed sovereign." He felt the cool, wet glide of the wool against the side of his neck and across his shoulder, a soothing distraction. She betrayed no emotion, but brought the rag and its wetness beneath his bearded chin to his throat and wiped down the length of his breastbone. When she spoke, her voice was carefully neutral. "Do you believe King Richard's Crusades are a useless quest?" "Not to him, certainly. The man's made himself a saint in his own time, won the enduring hearts of his people." The Sheriff frowned as he added, "And bankrupted his country. Who does he thinks finances his spirited adventures among the Saracens if not his vassals? Or maybe he has been so long from English soil he has forgotten the effects heavy taxation wreaks on the populace. And now, to ransom him back--with what, I pray you?" "These are dangerous words, my lord." "They are truth. And I am a fool to discuss politics with a peasant. If they come for me, Thea--" His voice dropped to a deep timbre as if he were sharing some intimate secret with her. "Tell them it was the fever, and I was quite delirious." "Which you very nearly are. Or must be, to be an officer of the Crown and say such things aloud. Such motives do not make Richard a criminal." "He is as much an outlaw as the woodsmen you claim do not exist." Thea wiped down the length of his arm slowly, methodically, overly focused on her task. Nottingham watched her cheeks flame, could imagine their heat, as palpable as the seething fever that rose from his skin as she bathed him. "I have gathered forest plants for years, my lord, and have yet to come upon them or their supposed hideaway." "That is a poor refutation of their existence, woman. They have eluded Gisborne and the best of my men. They have, in fact, eluded me. But exist they do. I know their names and their crimes and, on any given day, the bounty on their thieving heads." He looked at Thea darkly. "And Gisborne says you do, as well." She fingered the damp swab of wool, carefully avoiding him. "We've already discussed my opinion of your cousin, my lord." "That is no answer." Dark blue eyes flashed at him. "Is this an interrogation?"

The Sheriff closed his mouth over a reflexive denial and raised a brow at the indignant tone that had crept into the healer's voice. He had heard that tone before; it was nearly always defensive. "Not yet," he answered smoothly. He met her eyes and the defiant set of her lips, a curious thrill stirring in him, knowing he had abraded her with his words. A faint smile played about the corner of his lips as he stretched one arm lazily behind him, pillowing his head. His voice fell to a muted whisper as he arched his back slightly. "Do continue." *** Thea begged her common sense to intervene. After all, here she was at his side, thinking to do no more than cool his fevered body, and he was turning it into an opportunity to air his thinly veiled suspicions. And this latest petitionDo continue, indeed, she thought, refusing to be intimidated by his questions or the feline grace of his movements. The man should die of self-indulgence! She shifted her weight away from him, not easy on the plump, feather-stuffed mattress that wanted to swallow them both. "Damn you, Sheriff. I am not one of your wenches you can order to--to bathe you." She moved to lay the sheep's wool aside, but he captured her hand in a lightning-quick movement. Before she could stop him, he wrested the wadding of wool from her fingers. His eyes held her immobile as he leaned forward slightly, dunked the wool into the basin of water, and brought it up again, streaming. "Then permit me," he said. Without warning, he laid the wool against her temple, wiped across the curve of her cheek, and drew it down to the slight cleft in her chin. She could not breathe. She'd heard of elixirs that wrought paralysis, and for a moment she wondered if he had somehow transformed simple water into such witch's brew, charmed with the black, magical curse of his voice ringing in her ears. He held the dripping wool beneath her chin, examining the trail the water had cut through the dust of the day's journey. Drops of water trickled down her neck, wetting her kirtle and the valley between her breasts. Thea sat frozen, suspended by his actions and the stark, evaluative gaze of his eyes. He dabbed at her slightly upturned nose and the shallow indentation below it. When he reached her lips, he put the wool aside, dipped his fingers into the water, and traced their soft fullness with dripping fingertips.

The water pooled between her lips, cool, wet, the first imitation of drink she had had in hours, and though she suspected it was another of his manipulative gestures, she was quite unable to prevent herself from opening her lips slightly and taking the wetness into her mouth. Unable to move, she exhaled shakily against the length of his index finger. His eyes widened, clearly unprepared for and astonished at her response. "You are . . . quite beautiful," he said, his voice for once devoid of artifice. "Beneath the peasant grime, when finally you are at a loss for words . . ." The remark did not sting as it should have, not nearly as much as the trail of wetness he had drawn across her face and mouth. Its coolness had evaporated almost as soon as it touched her skin; what remained was a fiery, liquid warmth. She felt her thoughts dissolve in it, her reservations drown in it. Every safe refuge and escape streamed away from her. "My lord--" "Sh-h-h." How much effort it had taken to utter that futile protest; how easily he had wiped it aside, his thumb stroking her lower lip. He moved his wet fingers through her hair, beneath her heavy braids to the back of her neck, and pulled her to him. In truth, she did not think to stop him. A savage hiss of pain escaped him, and his fingers tightened in her hair. "Damn you!" he swore. He released a ragged breath, so close that Thea felt its warmth against her slightly parted lips. "You're not here to kill me with your plants, after all, but to ply me with some fatal passion." His hand dropped to her shoulder where its heat seared through her, then to his wounded side. He gestured helplessly toward the bandage, staring at his trembling fingers as if they did not belong to him. Suddenly, the hypnotic trance broke around her, reality descending like icy shock over the warmth that lapped at her body. "You are ill, my lord," she said, wondering silently, if Nottingham had forgotten or denied that truth, how could she? His features were drawn, whether from the soreness of his injury or the frustration of their broken embrace, she could not tell. His brows drew together and his lips whitened into a grim line as she eased him back against the array of down-filled pillows. Beneath her fingertips, his muscles shook in an uncontrollable palsy. Had she chilled him overmuch with the bath, or was this just the way of the fever? The Sheriff could swear at her, but she had already cursed herself a thousand times for forgetting his illness, for letting him make her forget. For letting him make her remember.

"You'll find your strength in a day or two, my lord, and no maiden in Nottingham will be safe," she tried to reassure him in a voice that was none too steady. Forcing a small smile, she settled a fur wrap around him. His hand on her skirt detained her. "And you, Thea?" he murmured. "If saved for the moment, what of later?" Slowly she turned around, watching as the fever glazed his eyes with unfathomable meaning. She pried his hand from her skirt and returned it to his side, saying nothing. Between the threat of interrogation and the assault of his touch, she faced a very present jeopardy. Chapter 6 Chamomile . . . elder . . . mugwort . . . nettle . . . Fever. Of all the possible consequences of the Sheriff's surgery, it was the one Thea most dreaded. She knew the herbs to brew to make the fever abate somewhat, knew that the fire must be kept blazing, knew that he must be bathed, then dried and kept warm. St.-John's-wort . . . tansy . . . thyme . . . valerian. Yes, valerian to calm him. If only he would sleep and not frenzy so. Beyond that, she knew little, save that fever had claimed her husband on the third day. And this was the third day that the Sheriff's fever had consumed him, despite her every effort. She wiped perspiration from her forehead and brushed one long braid back behind her shoulder. Brand. Impossible that she not think of him now, although in truth it had not been the fever that had been his death sentence. Brand had been lost to her from the moment the giant outlaw from Hathersage had, in stealth and by night, borne her husband's broken body home from the forest. John Little, a towering oak of a man, his plain face full of sympathy as if he, too, knew she could do naught to save her husband. Brand lay limp but alive in John's massive arms. Pierced twice, once below the lung, again through the belly, he had lived on, horribly, through futile surgery and three days of delirium. Thea could not touch the Sheriff's fevered face or put her arms around his shaking shoulders without remembering, but she did both, burying whatever private terror she felt. Brand was gone, and if John had gently reminded her of that just days ago, this man declared it. Now, to Thea's amazement, it was not the haunting memory of Brand's death that filled her with trepidation, but a baffling sentiment that stirred even greater qualms within her because she had been so sure it had died with her husband. She found it increasingly difficult to observe Nottingham's body, much less minister to it, with anything resembling objective disinterest, yet the fever demanded it and his

wound required it. She did what was necessary, resolving not to let her glance linger on the tautly molded muscles of his chest and shoulders. No pretense to virginal innocence prevented her from appreciating the definition of his narrow waist or the thin braies, laced low over slim hips, or the lean-muscled tension in his thighs. She had seen the smooth, fluid lines of his muscles in repose, but she also knew how quickly tension could coil within him, how unexpectedly he could strike. The unpredictability of his movements and of the moment in which he would abandon tightly held control for undisciplined wildness forced her into a state of ever-readiness that kept the sting of excitement pouring through her veins. When she bathed him, she could not help but recall his reciprocal touch and her readiness to yield to him at that touch. Now she approached him only when he slept, and then with uncertainty. Would his eyes open, and at what moment? In the next instant, would her sore wrist find itself clamped in his vice-like grip? And if he discerned her fear or any other concealed feeling, would he use the occasion to badger her, cajole her, ridicule her, or pull her beneath him? Most frightening of all, would she resist him with another witty line, offer some nominal resistance, or surrender herself to him with the wanton abandon he elicited within her? For the first time since Brand's death, Thea did not know her own mind. It brought her untold distress that the man who imparted to her such torment of conscience was a man she should hate without question. A man whose soldiers had killed Brand. Nottingham toyed with her, of course, playing a superb game of cat and mouse. It was a game that exhausted her, but upon which he expended little effort and less thought. Likely as not, his carefully worded innuendoes meant nothing to him. Perhaps the Sheriff engaged in such sexual challenges merely to amuse himself, to provide a stimulating distraction, not unlike chess or dice. Perhaps he only wished to distract her. She would have to remind him that such distraction could be a serious liability for someone he had commissioned to cut and sew his hide. She would do well to remember the same thing for her own sake. Determinedly, Thea turned her back on the negligent openness with which the Sheriff lay sprawled on the bed and walked over to the opposite side of the room where two arched windows rose between the arrow loops. She pushed aside the shutters and sat on the cushioned seat beneath the windows, her elbows on the ledge, her chin resting in her palm, as the night air cooled her face. She breathed deeply, drinking in the impressive view of the courtyard below and miles of countryside beyond. In the distance, the orange glow of far-off campfires and the pale, golden lights from clusters of cottages rivaled the endless stream of stars across the night sky. She imagined she could see Sherwood, as well, a solid darkness against the spangled horizon.

Incongruous, she thought. The man lived in nothing more than an ugly, military garrison, with arrow loops and murder holes and an armed guard at his door--but this. Odd as it seemed, the spectacular view of the Sheriff's dominion seemed no less a part of the man than the battlements used to defend it. She shook her head and sighed. Vanity to attempt to comprehend any man, least of all one with such a complex and contrary nature. What mattered was not that she understand him, which was undoubtedly impossible anyway, but that she finish the job she had begun in her cottage and see him through recovery. Making sense of her response to him was even less necessary, and entertaining desirous thoughts about him clearly hazardous. Not for the first time, Thea reminded herself who he was, who she was, and why anything but cold and swift distance from him was the most perilous of risks. When she turned back around, he was awake and observing her quietly from beneath heavy-lidded, dark-lashed eyes. The intense, acutely focused stare she had grown used to was gone, a glazed, febrile look in its stead. Florid splotches reddened the ivory of his face and chest. Strands of raven hair were plastered to his forehead, while the tousled waves that fell away from his face clung wetly to his neck. The effort he had expended to combat whatever menace had overtaken his body had emptied him of strength. Having exhausted himself from an outpouring of fever and personal venom, he was strangely subdued. For the first time, lines of worry creased his brow and he did not bother to hide them or disguise his weariness. "I feel like the devil himself." Thea nodded, pressing her lips together. "Cannot sleep . . . even your potions . . . useless." "The fever is strong." "Stronger than I?" She smiled crookedly. "No, my lord." "Then I will not die in the night?" She did not answer, could not answer. When it had been his time, Brand had gone so quickly. She felt tears burn her eyes and willed them away. Without speaking, she came to his side, good judgment and caution fleeing, and gathered him gently in her arms. She drew the fur and down coverings about them both, murmuring soft words of comfort into his hair, and held his shuddering body through the night. The fever broke at dawn.

*** Over the course of the next several days, Thea stayed by the Sheriff's side, wandering through the unknown twists and turns of his recuperation with him. She was never certain it was anything she did or didn't do that made a difference in the Sheriff's progress. As with many things, Nottingham seemed in charge of his own recovery. In the end, Nottingham had simply had his fill of sickness. The day after the fever broke, he slept deeply and soundly, awakening only to take broth or herbal draughts, and making of himself such a picture of compliance that word quickly spread throughout the castle: yes, the Lord Sheriff had survived, but his travail had transfigured him into something infinitely more docile. Either that or the herb woman who had been seen riding with him had bewitched him with some mystical decoction. The second conjecture, of course, was totally false; the first only a rumor born of premature reports and no small amount of wishful thinking. Soon the Sheriff had recovered not only a good deal of his strength, but most of his vile humor as well. He spared few words on the discomfort of bedding grown lumpy, bed coverings too numerous or too few, the stale odor of sickroom air, and a prolonged enforced fast of broth and weak ale when his taste was decidedly bent toward suckling pig. He criticized the bandages for being too constricting or too loose and declared the poultices to be no more than disgusting globs of decaying plant matter, set to ferment in wine--a truly unfortunate waste of his best claret. Thea bore his incessant complaints and unsolicited evaluations of her methods in silence. She had learned, of necessity, the rhythm of his moods and some of the telltale signs that prefaced a change in them. The more widely ranging his periods of sullenness and frenetic temper and the more unpredictable the shifts in his temperament, the closer the Sheriff was to full health. He did not return to the vulnerability of his fever, nor did he speak of it. It was as if his desperate dependence of that time had vanished or, indeed, in his mind, had never happened. Thea saw no reason to remind him, her own stunned collusion in Nottingham's version of reciprocal bathing still a vivid memory she would rather not recall. She remembered instead something she was sure the Sheriff would have preferred she forget. Thea had determined that the Sheriff of Nottingham was, after all, human and mortal, and privately afraid of being both. A sennight after her arrival at Nottingham Castle, she finally risked a confident sigh of relief. The fever's ruddy mottling had fled from his complexion, and the angry red around the wound turned to paler pink. She stitched the healing laceration closed with silk thread and one of the surgeon's more delicately forged needles, fortifying the Sheriff, unnecessarily she suspected, with strong wine. That task completed, and for the first time since her arrival at the castle, she could see her longed-for departure clearly on the horizon. Her spirits rose, and she experienced a contented sense of fulfilled purpose. She felt strangely charitable toward the Sheriff now that her sentence with him was coming to an end and she had managed to save him from death and herself from the gaol. She tolerated his growing demands with good

nature, supped graciously at his side, listened to his grumbling well into the night, and willingly broke fast with him at dawn, all with an agreeableness that surprised her. Only the appearance of Gisborne could dampen her spirits. Apparently motivated by curiosity and no small amount of misplaced bravery, the Sheriff's cousin dared to slink back into the chamber to assess the situation for himself. His timing notoriously poor on the best occasion, he arrived at dinner to find his cousin still effecting a languid posture in bed, propped up by a half dozen pillows, freshly plumped, one long leg bent at the knee and indecorously bare of linen sheet or fur wrap. Thea sat at the Sheriff's side, a kitchen tray laden with broth, ale, bread, and cheese between them. Aware of the lieutenant's close inspection, Thea sipped from a cup of steaming broth, then stirred and blew into the mixture to cool it before holding the cup to Nottingham's lips. "You've sealed your fate with him, eh, Thea?" Gisborne commented, inclining his head toward the cup of broth. "Tasting his food like that, I mean. You should tell her, Cousin. There are guards paid to do that." Nottingham glowered and took the cup in his own hands, while Thea hastened to her feet, smoothing her skirts with a self-conscious motion. She stepped away from the bed, refusing to acknowledge the Sheriff's henchman with any word or gesture other than avoidance. Gisborne brushed past her, and with a quick, graceless move, grabbed a nearby chair by its spindled back, twirled it around, and set it down backwards, closer to the bed. He swung one leg across to straddle the seat, and pulled his dagger from the sheath at his waist. Leaning across the chair's back, he stabbed a portion of still warm bread. "It remains a mystery to me, Thea," he continued, examining the bread before dunking it in the pot of broth, "why you're so intent on saving this miscreant's life. You're not enamored of the bastard, are you?" Thea squared her shoulders and considered whether she dare take it upon herself to order the uninvited guest from the room. Gisborne, however, did not spare her even a backward glance. He fixed his stare on the Sheriff and raised both brows as if his question were so much mealtime merrymaking. "She's not enamored of you, is she, Cousin?" he asked again. Receiving no reply from either quarter, he closed his mouth over the sopping bread. "Pity," he mumbled through his wet mouthful. "She's a considerable improvement over your usual fare, and more skilled in her methods than your previous leech--although it is being argued from dungeon to battlement, and every corner between, exactly what it is she does." From across the room, Thea saw the muscles along Nottingham's bearded chin tense and the vertical furrow between his brows lengthen as he pressed his lips together. His dark eyes glanced from the broken loaf of bread to the second hunk Gisborne held to his mouth, a wordless announcement that the lieutenant had assumed and said far too much for his own safety.

"You'd do well to turn a deaf ear to castle gossip," the Sheriff said, his steel-edged threat pushed between tensely held lips. Gisborne cleared his throat. "I must be intruding. I beg forgiveness," he said, feigning apology. "But do consider making an appearance among your subjects soon, Cousin, before the rumor gets out of hand." He stood and returned the chair to its proper place, then turned, looped his thumbs through his belt, and made a falsely obeisant bow to Thea. With raised brow, his eyes met Thea's and traveled the length of her in one extended and thorough examination. "I'd keep her if I were you," he called back over his shoulder. "I'm sure you would, Cousin." Thea bore the affront silently, but her hands drew into angry fists at her sides and her cheeks flamed as she watched Gisborne retreat down the steps and through the door. "My initial assessment of him is correct," she said tightly. Your kinsman or no, Gisborne is an idiot." "Come now," Nottingham said, his voice a mellow attempt at appeasement. "Sit beside me. Don't let what Gisborne says mar our time together." Thea stood her ground, silently fuming and not at all sure she wished to be appeased. "Gisborne and half the castle, apparently." "The talk offends you?" "The talk is untrue!" "Then where is the offense? That they talk at all, which is as natural as the sun's rising, or that you have somehow ascertained the nature of their conjecture and it displeases you?" "You know as well as I do what they're saying, and it bothers you not in the least." "Not so. I'm greatly bothered that there is no truth to the tales. Come," he said again, reaching for her with an outstretched hand. "Give castle rumor the attention it deserves-which is none--and your Sheriff . . . ." His voice trailed off, letting her imagine vividly the kind of attention he preferred bestowed upon himself. Thea bristled, her goodwill to abide the Sheriff's banter fading. "You have had so much attention in the past week, you're positively feeble from it. I won't coddle you a moment longer, Lord Nottingham." She crossed her arms in front of her. "I pronounce you well. Fit. More fit than you've a right to be. Gisborne, I am pained to say, is correct. Quit your mewling, and be amongst your people. Show them you are returned to your normal overbearing and ill-contained self. Hang someone from the castle walls to prove it. Gisborne himself comes to mind--" In a flash, the Sheriff threw off the blankets and bounded from the bed. He grabbed her heartily about the waist and laid a finger against her lips. "Delightful suggestion," he

whispered conspiratorially. "And I shall do it now, to whet my appetite for removing your disrespectful tongue." He would have been incorrigible, Thea decided. Totally reprehensible. Someone only barely clinging to the lowest rung of humanity--had he not smiled. It was a quick, selfconscious gesture betraying far too little practice, but Thea relented nonetheless. "So you keep threatening," she said. "You are full of talk without substance, my lord." "And you seem to thrive on lethally provoking my self-restraint." He paused and took her hand between his, his voice dropping to a serious whisper. "You've saved my skin, woman." He brought her hand to his lips and held it there until she raised her eyes to his. It was always dangerous looking at him so directly, but whether the danger came from him or from her own feelings, Thea was not sure. She felt torn between twin desires: that he put his lips to the backs of her fingers and let her feel again the intoxicating heat of his mouth--or that he release her and let her run from the solar, from the castle, from Nottingham, until he and this whole unsettling nightmare were gone. He did neither. Gently he turned her hand around in his, unfolded her fingers, and touched his mouth to the center of her palm. Thea found herself risking a smile. While the Sheriff might have stumbled clumsily over any genuine words of thanks, he was powerfully proficient at this single, enticing endearment. She supposed there were worse ways of taking one's leave. "I am relieved beyond measure you are well," she said, her fingers settling on the coarse, black silk of his beard. "Are you?" She felt the warm pressure of his mouth increase, followed by the lazy caress of the tip of his tongue as it trailed across the well of her palm. Thea caught her breath in her throat. This was no social gesture, no simple gratitude for saving his life, and not even close to a humble apology for having intruded so heedlessly into her life. It certainly did not feel like leave-taking. She wanted to withdraw her hand, was certain it would be the most expedient way to end something that should never have started in the first place, but her heart beat faster as the forgotten heat of desire bled into her resolve. Still capturing her hand against his lips, he circled her waist and drew her close. Thea could not remember a time when she had been so tempted to fold herself into a man's embrace, and there was so much more she did not remember either. The stirring of want and need, the substance of a man's body, hard and leanly muscled against her thighs. The way his fingers spread across the small of her back and smoothed down over her

hips, bringing her nearer. His every touch became an indelible memory imprinted on her. Suddenly, the danger of her situation meant nothing, and that was the most frightening realization of all. She pulled her hand back slightly, feeling his fingers lace firmly between hers, refusing release. Excitement and panic mingled at the insistence of his grip. If he did not stop this, she would never forget him! Frightened, she pulled her wrist away with a determined jerk and broke through his embrace with a desperate, wrenching move. The feel of his hands and lips lingered, and she folded her arms across her chest and clenched her kirtle sleeves with shaking hands, not knowing if the gesture would be a shield against him or only crush the sensation of his caresses deeper. Silence rang heavy in the air, and for once no retort came quickly to her rescue. His expression registered no surprise at her rejection, but settled swiftly into a dark frown, and his hands tore at the bedcovers as he searched for something hidden in the tangle of furs. "My robe, woman! And see if there's not some stronger ale than this swill you've been feeding me!" He changed that quickly. One moment tender, or playing at tenderness, the next seductive, and she was quite sure he had not played at that. Now gruff, barking brusque orders. She did not respond at first, but stood watching him, wishing she could make sense of him, wishing she could wipe the after-image of his lips from her hand. His moods were too inconstant, his thoughts and feelings too unfathomable. Damn him! A week of his angry eruptions and solitary despair, made alarmingly palatable by his intermittent, seductive play! She was having difficulty enough trying to understand herself.

Thea found his robe lying across a cushioned chair and held the garment out to him. He accepted it without looking at her and shouldered into the rich, brown silk, wrapping it around whatever bruised dignity he suffered with an elegant, almost magnanimous air. "There are two of Gisborne's sentiments which are entirely true," he said, as he gathered the embroidered folds of the robe across his lap and seated himself in the chair. "You are more skilled a surgeon and more learned an herbalist than my physician ever pretended to be, and there is not a soul of reason who would argue me. I must confess. I had my reservations. An unlearned herb woman? Had my circumstances been less dire--" The Sheriff looked up at her, and his voice dropped. "I owe you a great debt. In every way, your common peasant wisdom has proved superior to my surgeon's dubious textbook knowledge. I shall consider some means of repayment. Perhaps any taxes you've left unpaid."

"That is not necessary." "Don't be foolish. Of course, it is. Taxes are so impossibly high, and everyone owes them." Quite against her will, Thea felt her heart soften at the manner in which the Sheriff had misunderstood her generosity. The man misunderstood a great many things. She turned toward him and smiled a trifle wearily. "I meant only that no payment is required, my lord." "Ah, an even greater foolishness. Or perhaps you simply wish to keep the Sheriff of Nottingham forever in your debt--in which case you've hidden a clever but rather calculating streak and who knows how many concealed motives." "No hidden motives, my lord. I am glad you survived my ignorance, that there was naught in my 'common peasant wisdom' that did you harm." "And are you relieved, as well, to be taking your leave of this place?" "I have missed my home more than I thought possible," she admitted. "I see." He propelled himself from the chair and strode across the room, umber satin following him in a silken rustle as his robe dragged through the rushes on the floor. He paused before the tall windows and looked out into the distance, his face unreadable. "That brings me, then, to Gisborne's second truth," he said, dark eyes fixed on the green haze of trees along the northern horizon. "A rather coarsely worded truth, as it was stated, but truth nonetheless, and one which, in view of your expectations, I am loathe to delay announcing." "My lord?" He turned around, a tall, shadowed figure backlit by the obliquely angled rays of late afternoon. She felt his stare, heavy with judgment, and the slight shift in his taciturn features, suggesting some decision debated, and reached. "You are leaving me without help, with no surgeon to attend me. Quite a dilemma, with murder lurking in the miserable hearts of half my men." A smirk twisted his lips with bitter irony. "And no one I trust within twenty miles of Nottingham--" he looked at Thea meaningfully, "except you." She stiffened, almost imperceptibly. "Are you so certain you can trust me, my lord?" "No," he replied truthfully. "I am not. There are few enough trustworthy souls left in the shire these days. And it is your longed-for retreat from this castle that forces me into this dangerous predicament to begin with. So much for the loyalty of my obedient subjects. No matter. You are forthright, even in your dislike of me."

Thea was tempted to disprove her reputed forthrightness, to say she felt nothing more for him than neutrality, but he continued without letting her speak. "Don't make a liar out of me, woman. It is clear I cannot buy your affection, any more than I can buy your services. But perhaps that is what I need: honesty that bends not at the ring of sterling, that is the marrow, the essence, of the person. You see, Thea," he said as he approached her, "I live surrounded by two types of people: those who would gladly thrust their blades into my back the moment I am turned; and the sycophants who, though they cannot stand the sight of me, either fear or enjoy my power enough to pretend otherwise. And then you come, defying categories. I feel safer knowing your feelings, as disappointing as they are to me personally, than having to guess at your true allegiance." Thea looked away, unable to bear his continued scrutiny under the brunt of words like honesty and allegiance. She was here, she had done what needed to be done to save his life, and would do it again, all things considered, but if what the Sheriff wanted now was an oath of loyalty-"There is also," he continued, "this single irrefutable fact: you did not kill me when you could, nor have you made an attempt at any time you've been at my side, although surely you've been tempted and you are, after a fashion, armed." He gestured to the surgical instruments that lay on the bedside table. "And I am quite defenseless." "You are never defenseless, my lord." A smile passed across Nottingham's face and was quickly gone. "Let us just say that it does not appear to be in you to take a life, and I find that reassuring." Thea felt his narrowed eyes penetrate her, study her, and dare her to rebut him. "Perhaps it is only because I have not been sufficiently tested, my lord," she answered evenly. She gazed back at him with equal purpose, wondering why she should be so tested now, when her task was nearly complete. "You see there," he said in a low, hypnotic voice. "Honesty. A kind of foolhardy courage. And skill whose measure is my very survival. There is little more I could ask, beyond your personal devotion, which may yet come in time." His fingers moved to touch her cheek, then curled into a fist as if he reconsidered and checked the gesture with an iron will. "As much as it pains me to say it, occasionally Gisborne does stumble over an inspired thought." "My lord?" she asked, the full intent of the Sheriff's plan coming to her in a flash of unwelcome insight. He had plotted, every unstinting word of praise, his uncharacteristically humble thanks, probably even his kiss, all calculated to arrive at this end. "I require your continued attendance as my personal surgeon. You shall stay." "I shall not!" she responded without thinking, then shut her mouth at once over the indignant retort. "The villagers have come to depend on me," she said in a more

placating tone. "I can hardly leave them when there are any number of skilled physicians to whom you could turn. If not in Nottingham, then surely in London--" "I don't need you to provide a list of referrals!" He gritted his teeth over the angry remark and dismissed his outburst with a sharp exhale. "I have great need of your help," he began, more mildly. "There is no one here competent to replace you. If it matters, I will pay you handsomely." "As I've already said--" "And you mustn't let your feelings for me stand in the way. There are my troops and my household staff to consider, not to mention the plague of citizenry who pound at the castle door day and night, dripping with all manner of foul suppurations and endless petitions for help. What are these people to do? Thea . . . Thea . . ." He circled her upper arm with a grip that made no pretense of gentleness and pulled her against him. The sound of her name was a warm breath against her neck and ear, but she tensed beneath his hands. "I need your allegiance!" he demanded in a terse, harsh whisper. She shook her head, unable to speak. Surely Nottingham knew that a deadly partisanship was burning like brushfire out of control through the shire, and that he and a dwindling number of supporters were circled by the flames. She felt something akin to sympathy for his plight, yet she had always stood safely outside the ring of fire--she shuddered to think how safely--and she would never willingly step into Nottingham's self-made hell. She braced herself against the sound of urgency in his voice and met his eyes squarely, unblinking, knowing he read her silence as refusal. She felt the grip around her arm tighten. "A promise of fealty would be so much more civilized than having to bind you to me with threats," he said, his manner subtly changed, hardened. "Then send for me when it becomes necessary, when you or one of your people requires it. I will make available any remedy or skill I have--" "A half day's journey from the castle? I want you here!" he insisted with a dangerous firmness she could not ignore, or tolerate. She twisted futilely, her arm captured in the strong clasp of his hand, his closeness worse than any capture. Like a wild animal, trapped, she felt desperation fray the edges of her patience. "That is quite impossible," she said, lifting her chin and forcing a cool hostility to calm her shaking limbs. "You said you valued my honesty? Perhaps you would hear more of it. I don't care for your methods, Lord Nottingham. What cowardice is it that sends your cousin and your men to accost me in the fields, to search--no, ransack--my home without cause? With what kind of presumptuous, overblown sense of importance did

you force me to leave my home to come here, to be locked within the confines of this room day and night, to tend you and be intimidated, to have my every remedy challenged? Take this, Lord Sheriff, as an honest statement: My obligation to you is finished. I am done with Nottingham Castle. And I have most certainly spent my last evening in your chamber being plied with soft words and gentle caresses only to find you believe you have somehow bought me." "I told you I would pay you a fair price . . . whatever your going rate is--" "My allegiance is not for sale! Nor am I your serf to be ordered about and maltreated." She lowered her eyes to his hand, still painfully constricting her arm, then confronted him again. Her voice lowered, and she framed her words in as much restraint as her defiance would bear. "And I am not your physician." In the next instant, she saw the furious contortion of his dark features, his mercurial anger strained to the limits, boiling over into wrath. "My methods are not yours to question! And your obligation to me--" He glowered at her with malevolent temper. "Damn you, woman, I am Sheriff! My word is law in this shire. I will not have a common peasant, a woman--" A sharp rap sounded against the door, and nailed boots scraped against the timber floor. "I will not have--not have--" The Sheriff fired the words at her in rapid succession until the annoying distraction at the door begged his strained attention. "Yes, what is it?" he yelled, not even bothering to look at the intruder. Gisborne stepped forward from the shadows, milky-gray eyes taking in the scene in a moment of protracted silence. "You've trouble below, as well," he said finally. The Sheriff released Thea quickly and stepped away from her. "Baron Monteforte and his party were ambushed in Sherwood. His son, I fear, is dead. The Baron himself took a quarterstaff to the jaw and belly, and was forced to part with a sizable purse of silver. I'd be hard pressed to say which loss he feels more," Gisborne said, apparently undisturbed by the furor he'd interrupted or the tidings he bore. "The man's in a rage that is fair shaking the timbers of the great hall. He's demanding recompense, which is actually the least of your worries, and a quick, preferably brutal end to Sherwood's resident expert in thievery." The Sheriff frowned and turned on Thea, pointing an accusing finger at her as if, somehow, the entire incident were her fault. "No woodsmen in Sherwood?" he said with a snarl, reminding her of the lie she now realized was terribly naive, if not altogether inept. To Gisborne, he said, "Tell the Baron I am sending my personal physician to look after whatever injury was done to his oversized gut, and regrets she can do naught for his son." "My lord, I beg to remind you--" Thea began.

The Sheriff spun around, his robe hissing about him like a dusky whirlwind, his eyes narrowed to threatening, livid slits. "That was not a request!" he muttered from between tightly clenched teeth. "See to the bastard!" He turned away again, the expanse of his back signaling an end to the debate. Thea noted with quiet horror that beneath his bowed head, his shoulders shook with illcontained rage, and he clenched, loosened, and clenched his fists spasmodically beneath the full, fur-lined sleeves of his robe. "It's a common mistake, peasant," Gisborne murmured to her. "You misunderstand your options." His smile was cruel and leering, and accomplished nothing more than to wash Thea with an icy realization: if she had ever been given a choice by the Sheriff of Nottingham, it was an illusion and nothing more. To think she could refuse him was fantasy. One of the armed house guards approached, his hand hovering over the sheathed dagger at his waist as if she posed a far greater threat than she felt capable of, as if he would indeed have relished such a threat. Thea felt drained of strength and any resistance to fight, and not nearly suicidal enough to argue further with the quietly seething, brownrobed figure whose adamant posture offered no compromise. She glanced from Nottingham's back, bent oddly in defeat despite the victory his cruel power had won for him, to Gisborne, who had barely managed to camouflage his amusement at his cousin's predicament, and hers, with a look of mild disinterest. In that moment, it was impossible to know which of the men she despised more. Finally, her glance rested on the guard who waited to escort her to the great hall and the hapless Monteforte. She swirled around, gathered her threadbare skirts about her with as much dignity as she could summon, and marched from the room. Chapter 7 "Come, sweet thing." Baron Monteforte patted a well-cushioned knee and brushed aside the two hounds that swarmed his ankles. "Sit down and comfort me, wench. This day's been damnably long, and the heat as stifling as ever in the forest--hell-hole that it is." The portly, white-haired noble wiped the stippling of perspiration from his upper lip, then crooked a chubby, bejeweled finger beneath Thea's braided doeskin girdle and dragged her into his lap. "You know of it, do you? Sherwood, I mean. Or are you innocent of the ways of the wild?" Thea brushed his too-familiar hand from her hip. "I know the wood, Sir." She disliked the man immediately, not so much for his coarse fondling, which she fended off expertly and without comment, as for his cold-hearted reaction to his son's death. The lifeless body of young Monteforte had arrived draped over his sorrel mare, a single, gray-feathered arrow protruding from his back. Without sentiment, the Baron

had abandoned his son's corpse to the bailiff and a goodly number of curious onlookers and made his way to the great hall, trumpeting his need for ale and a leech, in that order. "Then you know the ilk of felon who inhabits that place," Monteforte continued, trapping Thea's hand in his own. "That Sheriff, damn him, absolutely useless to preserve law and order--what good is the man? I tell you, the king chose poorly when he put Nottingham in charge of this garrison. In more ways than one." He chuckled as if his words were privately amusing. "Not that it matters now, of course. The Lionheart is as good as dead." "I would hope not, my lord." Thea pulled away, but the baron wrapped his hands in her skirts and tucked two fingers beneath her girdle. "Ah, can it be? One who is unaware of her Sheriff's allegiances? It cannot remain so for long, my dear. Not with Prince John practically at Nottingham's gate, and he and the Sheriff as tight as a dog and his tick. Cut of the same devious cloth, the two." "I would not know, my lord." "Clever, my dear. Play the innocent. It will fare you better, all told." The baron wheezed with impatience then scanned the hall once more. "Damn it all, where is the man? He'd not keep de Stradley waiting like this or that miserable Earl of Huntingdon. God's teeth, but the man is a sore on the backside of the shire!" "I fear the Sheriff is indisposed, my lord, and audience with him quite impossible. Perhaps on the morrow--" "Nay, wench. I'll see him now or set my dogs on the bastard!" He slammed his fist down, and Thea used the opportunity to scurry off his lap. "Christ, if the barons cannot trust him to be hospitable, how can we trust him with a single farthing? He'll probably lose what tax silver he collects--if he doesn't spend it on himself first. Damn my eyes if it will ever see Lackland's purse!" Lackland's purse? Was not the tax money bound for the Exchequer and King Richard's ransom? Thea frowned, then quickly smoothed her expression into the one of innocence the baron seemed to prefer. "The Lord Sheriff is abed, Sir--" "And when is he not?" Monteforte snarled. "Swyving his bevy of whores when--" Suddenly his jaw dropped open, chins folding into the fur trim of his tunic. Thea felt the heat of a presence behind her. Turning slowly, she saw the Sheriff's somber-robed stillness and flint-hard features giving disrepute to her every word. He was ashen of complexion, as if the exertion to put in an appearance in the great hall had required a surfeit of strength, but in the single instant their eyes met, Thea knew she dared make no comment on his pallor or weakness. "Ah, at long last, Nottingham," the baron carped. "I was finding conversation difficult with this peasant. Not one of your castle women, is she? Where's your leech? Your surgeon? What was his name?"

"Rotting on Sherwood's floor, at last report." "Then your scribe, someone literate, someone . . . clean." The baron wrinkled his bulbous nose in disgust, dismissing Thea with a flick of his hand. "My scribe is with the books, Monteforte, where his true talent lies. Making reasonable sense of the dwindling silver in the castle coffers, which, he informs me, are still minus the contribution of Wythestead taxes." The baron bristled, obviously offended, but Nottingham dismissed the delinquent taxes with a shrug and a wan smile, apparently satisfied that the reminder had given him a position of dominance with which to handle Monteforte's complaints. "She's more than adequate," he continued, indicating his opinion of Thea without looking at her. "Then your standards are slipping. Where did you find her, for God's sake? Pick her out from the remains of Gisborne's last village rampage? There's not a soft spot on her. Peasant stock, Nottingham. Not a day out of the fields, I'd wager." "She is my physician. And skilled in her trade." "Your--" "There is the matter of your son," the Sheriff interrupted, his voice as smooth and dangerous as cut glass. "My physician will see to his body, you will stay the night, and I shall have some of my men accompany you on your return to Wythestead on the morrow. My regrets, Baron. That Sherwood is teeming with the lawless is of no small concern to me." His hand strayed unconsciously to his side. "Then I would ask what you intend to do about it," Monteforte huffed indignantly. "I've been robbed--" "Gisborne's patrols are ever vigilant. Perhaps if you could give me the precise location of your attack--" "Hard by Edwinstowe. Near the old gristmill." "And the number of your attackers?" "Impossible to say. Five. Six. A dozen. They were all over the place, and in the mayhem--" "Faces, then? Any inkling as to their identities? A description? Anything?" "Well, it was Locksley, of course. It had to be. Who else--? Besides," the baron continued, "there was that other one. His companion. The big one. That red-bearded oaf." "You saw him?"

"That one, yes. The others . . . who can tell? The wood is positively crawling with the vermin. Damn you, Sheriff, there will be order in this shire, if Lackland must enforce it himself!" Thea was certain she saw the Sheriff start, saw something break behind his wellguarded mask before he carefully pieced his composure together again. He smiled, a glint of ice and silver striking in dark, humorless eyes. "If you must speak treason, Monteforte, perhaps you could squawk in more discreet surroundings." "Why, you officious hypocrite! And you call yourself his man--" "I know this outlaw," Nottingham continued, obliterating the baron's words. "We'll raise the bounty on his head. Post it in Nottingham Square and in Edwinstowe and--" He paused and cast a brief, sidelong glance in Thea's direction. "Hathersage, isn't it? Fifty gold pieces for the capture of John Little, that he be remanded into my custody, preferably alive. Pity. I believed the man to be a mere tax evader, not unlike yourself, dear Baron. Locksley has him treading more dangerous waters to be wanted in the death of your sole heir." The Sheriff turned stiffly to Thea. "You will see to the preparation of the body? His name was Hugh. Hugh Monteforte. Nineteen years of age. Am I correct, Baron? And to be wed at Michaelmas, I believe." His gaze lingered on her, heavy with meaning, and she matched it with strained silence. What could she say in defense of outlaws she did not allow existed? What could she say in defense of murder? Thea fled the answer she found in Nottingham's hardened face, her thoughts torn and scattered. When she was certain she could not bear his scrutiny a moment longer, he spoke again, sternly, as if she had not heard him the first time. "Your aid, Thea. Might I count on it?" A question, perhaps a plea. But one that rang with the authority of an order. She nodded, numbed by confusion and doubt, and found herself bracketed by a pair of armed guards prepared to escort her. "But what of my purse?" The baron's demanding caterwaul continued as she turned to leave. From the corner of her eye, she saw the Sheriff approach the baron, a thin look of forbearance tightening his lips into a grim smile. "What of your taxes, Monteforte?" ***

The door thudded shut behind the Sheriff, and for a moment, the silence of his chamber offered a rare, tantalizing peace. Nottingham rubbed his brow and gazed into the distance, absorbed in sullen introspection. Damn Monteforte! Did Sherwood not offer enough woes without this latest debacle? To have traveled the Great North Road with so few soldiers was a witless thing to do. Why in Satan's name had the baron not brought more men or sent ahead for a properly armed escort? "A spirited bit of trouble." Gisborne moved from the dark obscurity of a nearby corner, candlelight glinting off his sallow skin. "Monteforte?" "Your . . . surgeon." Hoisting himself upon the oaken table, Gisborne reached for the bowl of fruit in the center. He crunched noisily into an apple, the sound shattering what was left of the Sheriff's concentration. "Is she worth the risk?" "She intrigues me." "You have a castle full of wenches. Let one of them intrigue you." The Sheriff's gaze skimmed over Gisborne with cautious suspicion. He remembered the man's bold welcome of Thea in the bailey, the way his hands had taken such shameless license with her. Gisborne was as much a fool as he to think he could tame the witchwoman into submission. "Concerned for my safety, Cousin? She has saved my life." "That may be. But then she was free to go, to return to Sherwood with whatever guilty secrets she acquired in your bedchamber, and now . . ." Gisborne shrugged. "Now she is trapped. You've left her no way out. Best be wary. She'll be more dangerous caged and cornered." The Sheriff's brow arced as he recalled the tenderness of the woman who had held him through the night and the vitriolic she-wolf she'd become in the light of day. He had dealt with reluctant women before, had refined a manner of seduction and coercion that rarely failed him, and this creature seemed impervious to it, to him. Damnable species! He was far safer in the cloistered green of Sherwood than imprisoned in Nottingham Castle with this woman. And yet she was what no other dared to be. A thing not so easily won. A challenge. Someone whose resistance he could unravel one touch at a time. A wry smile twisted his lips. "I like them caged and cornered." "She is hardly a wench to be underestimated. At least it would be wise to know her more thoroughly." The Sheriff nodded. "So it would. And I trust you could accomplish that?"

He strode toward Gisborne and snaked an arm around his lieutenant's shoulders. His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "Travel tonight to Edwinstowe and ask after her. Seek out a garrulous villager or two and buy their knowledge with a tankard of ale to loosen their tongues. And a tuppence afterward to keep them silent. You'd be wise to keep your identity to yourself and your sword sheathed. These people are notorious in their loyalty to Locksley. You'll get nothing for your trouble if they suspect you." The Sheriff paused a moment, strategy forming like a dark cloud in his mind. "Then to her house. Have your men pack her things and bring them here. Plants, roots, bowls-whatever it is she uses--and whatever else seems of import. You do understand, do you not? I want her place searched, thoroughly, not a stone left unturned. I want information. I want to know who the devil she is!" Gisborne lifted himself off the table and tossed the apple core into the fireplace. A sizzle of steam rose and was quickly extinguished. "I can tell you who she is," he said nonchalantly. "She's a liar." "Then prove it." Gisborne raised a skeptical brow. "A careful liar," he amended. "Come now, Cousin. Espionage is your strong suit. Care. Attention. The right people bought with the right coin. If there's anything to find--" "I'll find it," Gisborne finished for him. "Precisely." The Sheriff grimaced slightly, his hand moving instinctively toward the dull ache of his half-mended side. He preferred bed and the oblivion of a bottomless cup of dark ale, but there was the capture of Monteforte's attackers to consider. And Thea, somehow, still to be reckoned with. Suddenly, he knew he could not face her, could not look upon the contempt in her eyes or feel her flinch beneath his touch. He was torn between his attraction to her, which was simple, elemental, and, yes, dangerous, and the more critical need to obliterate all trace and memory of her. "And remove her things," he decided. "I've finished with her for now, and I don't care to be hovered over. No more cups of her vile brew shoved in my face; no more of her over-solicitous attention to how well I'm covered against the chill of my own castle, and her absolute refusal to warm me in any agreeable fashion. Tell me, Cousin, what possible use is she?" "Apparently, in a weaker moment, you've made her your surgeon." "Was I a fool?" Nottingham did not expect an answer and knew Gisborne dared not provide him with an opinion. The thin, ragged kerchief she had worn lay draped across the back of a chair. He picked it up and crushed its worn fabric.

"A final thing," he added, brandishing the scarf with a faint look of disgust. "You needn't bother with her clothes. She's a member of my household, and I'll not have her in peasant rags. See to it she has something more suitable to her new station, and procure whatever other personal items she may require." "And where would my Lord Sheriff wish me to bring these . . . personal items?" Gisborne asked boldly, his voice a raw insinuation. "She is not a concubine," Nottingham vowed sternly. "She is to have her own chamber with a room adjacent to it for her work. It would be convenient if it were close by," he added as an afterthought. "That is understood, is it not?" "Not a concubine," Gisborne repeated, thoroughly unconvinced. He pushed against the door with his booted foot, leaving a mutter behind as he exited. "Just a liar. Caged and cornered." "Well?" Gisborne's stare swept slowly in the direction of the honeyed voice, and his mouth widened into a full-lipped grin as he spotted her. Aelwynn had spread herself, bellydown, across the bearskin rug that lay in front of his hearth. There was something infinitely fitting in the way she had arranged herself there, auburn hair loosed and wild, her golden eyes as feral as those of an animal. He'd slain the bear himself, his best kill with crossbow, and paid dearly to have it artfully preserved, giant maw open in a perpetual, silent roar. Aelwynn cushioned her chin on the beast's mighty head and toyed absently with its long, ivory teeth. Her naked skin made delightful contrast against the black pelt of fur. Gisborne wondered if she realized the wantonness of her posture astride the beast, the way the fire played in a teasing, flickering dance over her bare backside, and the images and possibilities evoked in his mind. Laughing lightly, he stripped his finely embroidered samite tunic over his head and tossed it aside. Of course, Aelwynn had that witchery in her, that utterly confounding ability to beget frustration as easily as desire. A sennight of the woman's undivided attention and varied repertoire, and he was still not completely satisfied. "Well?" Aelwynn's purr sharpened into a catlike mew, demanding his attention. "You have competition." Her eyes narrowed and darkened from yellow-gold to bronze and dark brows winged upward in scornful disbelief. "What?" she said in a tone at once piqued and derisive. "From that fleaspeck?" Gisborne shrugged and pulled off his boots. "The fleaspeck appears to be staying. And at his request." "Impossible. She is nothing."

"She bears watching." Gisborne crouched beside her and smoothed his hand down her back to the indented waist and over the plump rise of her buttocks. His cousin's desire for reconnaissance would have to wait. Aelwynn desperately needed someone to lick her wounded vanity, and he-"I've cast the runes," she continued petulantly, dismissing the situation with a shake of her dark, fiery hair. "She doesn't even appear." He slid his hands beneath her, parting her thighs, as he lowered himself against the welcome satin of her skin. No time for preliminaries. No need. He entered her with a grunt of pleasure, his breath fanning the hair at her neck. "Check again," he growled. *** "Here you are, wench. A place for you, safe and sound for the night." "Or fortnight, more's like." The guard who gripped her upper arms shoved her ahead of him, through the open door. "If you last it." "You can't do this! I'm his surgeon--he said--" "You're done with the Monteforte whelp, are you not?" "Aye, but--" "Well, you're done for the day, then." The guard laughed throatily. "We've got our orders. Fight if you'd like. You're not going anywhere." "I'll not be locked away, damn you!" The door of iron-banded planks shuddered solidly into place, drowning Thea in darkness. The blackness swallowed even sound, muffling the metallic clank of the lock being turned and the boot kick aimed against unyielding oak that punctuated her captivity. She could barely hear the blanketed conversation from outside, but clearly the soldiers were not moving from her door. "A wager then?" "Dice?" "The wench. How long ere she's dangling at the end of the Sheriff's hanging rope? A tuppence in my palm if she's drawing breath past tomorrow's sundown." "Fool! Pay me now, for I've a wiser bet." Choked laughter. "How long ere she's on her back in the Sheriff's bed?" Thea bit back the curse on her lips and swirled around in the suffocating closeness of the night. Lying bastard! Lying, deceitful, traitorous bastard! Why could she not have

slain him when she had the chance? It would have been so simple, so temptingly simple! Now she could not even warn John that the watch for him had doubled, as had the bounty the Sheriff had promised to whoever could bring him in. Of course, John could not have killed Hugh Monteforte, she told herself. Not that he was incapable of murder; John Little was no saint, and his companions no less wayward. But he was neither brutal nor ruthless. What did he want of life save dozing beneath Sherwood's oaks on a summer's day, a freshly roasted haunch of venison and an endless cup of mead upon awakening? He was a loving rogue, a rascal, true, but he had little inclination for sustained malice and none for unprovoked manslaughter. In all the months since indebtedness had forced him to abandon his smithy and flee his village on peril of arrest, John had done nothing more than pilfer a few purses from those least likely to miss them. Perhaps, if the woodsmen were lucky and word arrived in time, and if the guards few enough, the men could waylay the rare tax wagon, but that was done more by trickery and wit than violence, and never for personal gain. Outlawry for John, for them all, was only for survival and the need to secure King Richard's ransom. And that they would do by any means. By any means . . . ? Did that mean cold, calculated attacks on innocent travelers? Did it mean murder? She drove the very idea away with a shake of her head. No, it was the Sheriff and his men who killed senselessly, without compassion for the poor. If any crime existed, it was here, in this castle, where a cruel, self-obsessed lord ruled without thought of the people he was sworn to protect. Thea turned on her heel, crunching stale rushes underneath her foot, and paced the confines of her room. She hated this helpless feeling, the waiting, the futile spinning of thoughts in her head, the utter powerlessness. It there were a way to escape-She walked to the stone embrasure below the single window and pushed aside the oiled hide draped across the opening. The wall of the keep plummeted to a lush canopy of trees below, where the masonry of the castle merged with the steep rock that thrust up from the earth. Beyond the castle rock, moonlight reflected off the mirrored ribbon of the River Trent. It was a glorious sight, but it was clearly a stronghold from which escape was impossible. Her cell--there was no other word for it, in description or in purpose--was spacious enough, far larger than her own one-room cottage. But there the amenities ended. The fireplace contained remnants of charred wood and bones burned white and clean, and an assortment of leftovers from a long ago supper. The floor had not seen a change of rushes in a season, maybe two, and the reeds were sodden and moldy near the window where rain had poured in. Whatever herbs had been scattered about had long since lost their power to sweeten the air. The stale, musty odor of smoke mingled with that of decay, a foul cesspit somewhere nearby, and the sure smell of mice.

Twilight became evening. The Sheriff did not summon her, nor was she visited by any of the castle staff. She was offered no candle, no firewood, no blanket, no meal, and no companion save her own gloomy thoughts. So much for the honor of being named the Sheriff's surgeon. In Nottingham, it seemed, a healer was only chattel--and not particularly valued chattel at that. She closed the window covering, shivered from the night air, and drew her feet underneath her skirts for warmth. The bloodless face of Monteforte's dead son haunted the brief snatches of sleep that claimed her, and in the blurred space between sleeping and waking, the image transformed into the weathered, lifeless features of John Little. She started, awoke, and huddled against the cold, listening to the muted, drunken laughter of her guards. Then she drifted fitfully to sleep again, imagining her blade as it sliced each carefully knotted stitch in the Sheriff's gut. One by one. *** Guy of Gisborne leaned back, one slim hip balanced against the trestle table, and scraped his hand over the stubble of beard that marred the sharp edge of his jaw and chin. He had given too much time to this inane quest. A half day of hard riding. An evening gulping bitter ale with an assortment of loose-tongued idiots at a succession of inns and drinking houses. Now he had lost the best part of another day searching the wench's cottage. And for what purpose? He had gained nothing he needed in the way of true evidence against the woman. The citizenry of Edwinstowe, despite the avaricious gleam in their eyes for the silver coins Gisborne flashed, traded only useless information. They had sung the healer's praises until it sickened him. She was tireless and would come when called upon--day or night. Sweet-tempered with children, gentle with the aged, strong enough to lend a hand come winnowing time, and a veritable salvation at lambing and calving. All this and with a comeliness matched only by her virtue. It was nothing short of a holy mystery that the good folk of Sherwood had not petitioned the Church for Thea Aelredson's sainthood. Gisborne gnashed his teeth against a strained grunt of frustration. Let the peasants think what they would. There was far more to the woman than their tales revealed. Simpleminded creatures that they were, with hearts and heads that could be turned easily enough by the wench's witching ways--what did they know of her covert allegiances? And, Gisborne mused, what were they likely to confess if they did know? No, the woman was more than she seemed. He had known that the moment he had encountered her in the lea. Lying without conscience, stepping around his questions with graceful ease, she betrayed nothing with those darkly brooding blue eyes and defiant chin. And if she were afraid of him, she hid it well, her indignation, the sunburned pink of her cheeks hiding any flush of anger--or guilt.

Gisborne looked around the murky interior of her cottage. The woman's belongings were as thoughtfully ordered as her deceit--every bottle, bowl, and jar arranged with care and precision. He nodded in the direction of the apothecary, and a soldier swept the whole of it into a barrel. Gisborne pushed away from the table and wandered through the cottage, sword tip probing. He slid the length of steel between layers of neatly folded clothes and plucked out several garments. The Sheriff had said it was needless to retrieve the worn, faded kirtles. Doubtless he preferred his surgeon in silk or samite. Or nothing at all. But this-Gisborne dangled a man's linen shirt from the tip of his sword. Perhaps the Sheriff would be more interested in this. A look of distaste drew Gisborne's face into a tight scowl as he recalled the one, surprising disclosure he had uncovered in Edwinstowe. The woman had a husband, dead more than three years. The men gathered in the village's wayside tavern had revealed that much without reluctance. Indeed, one and all seemed to boast on the tale, as if it were a favorite bit of regional lore--one of their own, caught in Sherwood, felled by a crossbow quarrel loosed by Nottingham soldiers. The death of the man they called simply Brand had become a rallying point for peasant distrust and hatred of authority, and Brand's young widow, an innocent soul to be protected and held in outspoken regard. "Aye, and she loved the man," the blacksmith had said, "for all he was simple folk. A good carpenter, but Brand knew more with his hands than with his head." "Aye, or why else would the lad be about Sherwood with his bow?" "Good Christ, Edmund! He was starvin', like all of us. And it bein' winter and nothing to be had for weeks to come. You'd be in Sherwood yourself, and you know it. The forest law be damned when your belly's hollow for a sennight." "Was he an outlaw?" Gisborne had interposed with shrewd curiosity, sinking his full upper lip into the brew's brown froth. "Brand? By the saints, no! Unless you count huntin' for a deer on Richard's land a crime." "It is a crime," Gisborne had said with feigned indifference. "Aye, stranger, for those what have guts full from feastin'. For the rest of us--well, 'tis not safe, but 'tis done." "And if it be criminal, 'tis nothing to takin' a man's life. And someone done that to Brand. One of the Sheriff's hounds with a fool-lucky shot." Deep voices chorused assent and cups lifted, before the blacksmith continued more grimly. "Ripped his life from the poor bastard for no more'n tryin' to feed his young bride."

"And she grievin' for him even now, so hard the loss hit her." "Made worse because she could do naught to save him. Think of it. Her, with all her learnin' and wisdom, doin' all for us and our kin, and nothin' she can do for her own." "And he didn't go easy, some say. Ravin' like a madman at the end. Thrashin' about. Fever eatin' at him from the inside out. Cursin' God and the Sheriff in one breath." "She stood it all, stone-still and brave and never ceasin' her efforts to save him, 'though 'twas all for naught. He breathed his last, was buried, and if the lass has shed a tear since, there be no witnesses. Took all of what she felt and locked it away and just kept on goin'. Was out birthin' Maud's babe only the day after they put poor Brand in the sod." "But you said she grieved," Gisborne asked. "Aye, and that she does, even now, but in a private way. Somethin' of the light went out of her eyes, and somethin' of her hatred for the Sheriff gave a hard edge to ways what were soft before. You could just tell. That, and she will take no other man." "Truth," another villager agreed, "not freeman or serf or stranger like yourself. And plenty of those 'round here have tried." "Yourself, Stephen?" The flame-haired carter ducked his head sheepishly, cheeks burning like the locks of untamed hair that dropped across his forehead. "Nay, and she'll die that way, most is supposin'. Holdin' to what she remembers of her husband and to her hatred for the bleedin' Sheriff." "Aye, she hates the bastard for sure. And her havin' every right." "We all havin' every right." The men nodded by the meager light of the tallow candles, swallowing their grumbles with hearty swigs of dark ale. Gisborne had waited to break their silence. "And is the healer about her cottage now?" "Nay, I don't think so. Edmund, you haven't seen her, have you? Must've been called out. Been gone a few days now." "Is that unusual? For her to leave suddenly, I mean. Stay away several nights." "'Tis not uncommon," the carter said. "She'll go if she's needed. The lass'll think nothin' of headin' for Worksop if there's call, and stayin' on till all's well. Have you need of a simple then? You could wait, or then there's Brother Timothy."

Gisborne had deftly turned the conversation, confident none of the men suspected him for any more than a passing pilgrim. He could gain no help from the praise the men of Edwinstowe had heaped upon the wench for her devotion. And help was one thing he desperately needed. Already the Sheriff was becoming too interested in the witch. That he had sent Gisborne on this fruitless mission was confirmation enough. But there were other signs of the Sheriff's growing involvement that gnawed at an uneasy spot in Gisborne's vitals. The proprietary tone when Nottingham spoke of his surgeon. His fledgling need to protect her with some trumped up honor so she would not appear the whore she was fully intended to be. The peculiar fascination Gisborne could see dawning in the Sheriff's eyes--the same fascination he knew could grow by twists and turns into obsession. Gisborne could not let that happen. Not now. Not when so much was at stake, and they were so close to achieving the political coup Prince John had started. Yet what recourse was left him? Plants and potions and a dead husband's shirt. Hardly the incriminating evidence he sought. And if he told Nottingham the truth, what would the Sheriff do save dredge up some tender, ill-placed sympathy for the widow? Ah, she was a traitorous vixen! Chaste mourning indeed! Who but a fool would believe the woman had lived so purely, turning her every passion to her work? No, the creature was subtle and sly and obviously had the dim-witted denizens of Sherwood fooled. He knew better. The woman he met in the lea was not a woman with "the light gone out of her eyes." Behind her distrust and hatred simmered a passion these simpletons could not begin to understand. It was a passion he ached to taste, nearly as much as he needed to prove her guilt. "Sir! Over here!" Gisborne turned, glowering at the interruption of his thoughts. "Would this be what you're after?" The soldier held a delicately arched bow. "So she hunts." Gisborne jerked the bow away with a snarl, angry that they could uncover such little evidence. "With a weapon like that?" The man cocked his head skeptically and pointed one grubby finger at the symbol inscribed in the wood. "The Locksley cross. I'd know it anywhere." The frown dropped from Gisborne's face as he glanced at the bow. He rubbed the pad of his thumb across the carving as if to convince himself of its reality. "So it is," he said, his voice a barely breathed whisper. "Of course, it could be nothing. For hunting like you said, or--"

Gisborne silenced the soldier with a glare. "Oh, it's something, to be certain." He caressed the bow gently, breath held as he contemplated the bend of the wood. It was hardly the proof the Sheriff would have wanted, yet-Gisborne looked from the bow to the rough peasant shirt with a jaundiced eye, his mind whirring with possibilities. An outlaw's weapon. A dead man's shirt. Or perhaps, if-"Yes!" the word hissed into the gloom of the cottage. The one thing Nottingham would not abide. Something that would taint the healer forever in his sight and rid them all of the woman's sorcery. Another man. A rival. The witch's true consort. Better still-Gisborne's eyes narrowed into a cold, gray gleam of delight. The one man Nottingham hated the most. The man who had become a symbol in the Sheriff's mind of every lawless thing that inhabited the forest. Locksley himself. Gisborne let a guttural laugh roll up from his throat. If neither truth nor evidence could indict her, then lies and cunning would have to suffice. And why not? He could bend the gossip to fit. She had taken no man, people claimed. No, not publicly, he would say, but in secret, fleeing to her lover in the forest depths. The men at the inn had made reference to her quitting her cottage for unexpected sojourns in the wood. Gone for days on end, they said. What better alibi to hide her woodland trysts than to say she was tending to the sick in a secluded village far from Edwinstowe? Perhaps, from time to time, she had even sheltered her Robin here in this cozy, thatchroofed nest. Gisborne felt his blood pour through his veins, a sensation that left him light-headed and near giddy with relief. Truth be damned. He had suspected the woman all along, knew with shadowed certainty that the witch was allied with Hood in some fashion. Gisborne turned the thought over in his mind, facts, hearsay, and deception blurring until the details of his ruse felt like truth to every instinct lodged in his gut. And the Sheriff? The mere mention of Locksley's name in connection with the Sheriff's sainted surgeon would raise the hackles of doubt in Nottingham's suspicious nature. Gisborne grinned and let the piece of homespun linen slide off the end of his sword into the crate of herbs. With a shirt and a bow and a few well-placed lies, the Sheriff could be made to believe. Chapter 8 "You were buzzard meat, by all we heard."

From his bed, the Sheriff opened one baleful eye and tried to focus on the direction of the hearty peasant burr that rang out from the doorway, much too cheerful for his mood. "And I thought you wise enough not to give ear to such gossip, Millie. Or did you start it?" The older woman smiled, red cheeks plumping out, bright blue eyes crinkling in the corners. "Mildthryth," she corrected him. "What's wrong with your tongue, Sheriff? Does it not bend 'round a good English name, or are you too Norman-proud to call me by what's rightful mine?" "Too early in the morn. My tongue's still thick with last night's drink." "Aye." Her round face turned sober and disapproving. "I can see that for myself. Could you not sleep?" The Sheriff growled unintelligibly, a dark snarl twisting his features. "Leave me the hell alone, Millie. It was Monteforte, damn the pompous ass! Kept me up till all hours, reciting a list of grievances. Believe me, it required half a barrel of wine to muffle his chatter." "Well, I brought you something to break your fast, since you did not see fit to grace the hall with your presence." Nottingham winced at the clatter the tray made as Mildthryth set it down next to him. The smell of pickled eels and brown bread sent a wave of nausea rippling through his gut. He scraped his face with his hand, covering his nose and mouth as the urge to retch rose, and passed. "Your surgeon might fetch you a nostrum," Mildthryth suggested, then added meaningfully, "if you can face her after what you've done." "What I've done?" "You should be ashamed, treating the poor lamb like a prisoner." "She is not a 'poor lamb,'" he said gruffly, shoving the platter aside. "Now there I disagree, Sheriff. I know where she is, and 'twas a mean-spirited thing, sending her to that place." Nottingham shook his head in confusion and immediately regretted the motion. A jolt of pain ricocheted from temple to temple. "Small thanks you give to one who saves your worthless hide. Everyone's talking about it. Even your guards are wagering her fate." "Ah, the circuitous babble continues, I hear. Have pity, old woman, I've not been privy to the latest word to come from the servants' quarters."

Mildthryth stopped, hands on hips. "Her chamber," she explained. "Although 'tis more like a swine's sty, if you ask me. I trow the Baron's hounds fared better last eve. Why you put her in--" "Gisborne was charged with finding her suitable accommodations," he said, his patience fraying. He waved his own comment aside as if it aggravated him. "So what is this new nonsense? Her rooms--? Where is she?" "The chamber that the, ahem--" Mildthryth cleared her throat. "--The Lady Aelwynn occupied before. Before she came to be with you." "I see. Gisborne again. One would think the bastard would spare me his sense of the ironic." He reached for the skin of ale left on the tray and took a hearty swallow and glanced askance at Mildthryth. "And where is Aelwynn now, if not in her chamber . . . and not in mine? Or do I not want to know the answer to that?" Mildthryth shrugged. "Nay, do not answer. So Gisborne, at least, believes I have chosen Aelwynn's successor in my bed. Pray tell, what does the rest of the castle think? Nay, do not answer that either. Tell me, Millie, what do you think?" "Take that earnest expression from your face, Sheriff," the older woman said in a huff. "I've no interest in how you fill your nights. You're too thick-minded to see what it's doing to you." "It's keeping my mind off . . . things," he retaliated, "like the brazen impertinence of those who serve me." "Bah!" "It's--it lets me sleep." "Does it then? Like the drink?" "Millie, what would you have of me? That I lead a life of temperance and celibacy? I am Sheriff--" "Aye, so I've heard, countless times when you have no other excuse for going on with the very fool thing that's usually your undoing. You've made quite a name for yourself, quite a legend of your stinking meanness, strutting here and there and pounding your chest and proclaiming, 'I am Sheriff.' And you've done it well, too, scaring the folk into submission with your anger. But is it working, if your nights want for sleep? And if you greet the morn like a bedraggled cock unable to crow for all his past night's mischief?" He looked at her, a mask of feigned innocence covering his face. "You are right. I am a dissolute rogue."

"Gisborne is a dissolute rogue," she said. "You are--" She paused and laid her timeworn hand on his shoulder, her observation soft and not unkind. "You are angry. And the anger still another mask, I think." "Enough, Millie. I am not in the mood for your supposed wisdom." He covered her hand with his and squeezed it slightly. "Let me forget." "But will you?" "In time," he said, his jaw clenched in determination. "When things are set right." "And until then?" He exhaled sharply, pushing the question aside. "I understand my surgeon is unhappy with her quarters and has somehow won your sympathy." "I've not even met the poor--" "Lamb," the Sheriff finished for her. "Yes, I know." "No one's lived in that room for nigh on--let's see, 'twas May, wasn't it? You and that one were at the fair and you bought her--'twas ribbons I think." "Your memory is excellent as always, Millie." "Well, I remember because ribbons--well, it seemed like so small a price to pay for such a devoted companion as she was." Nottingham favored the woman with a withering look. "Yes, damn it, it was May, and it was ribbons, and, yes, I enjoyed months of her so-called devotion, here in this chamber, yes, Millie, four months to be precise, but that is past and my surgeon is sleeping on sour rushes with a litter or two of mice. Do you suppose you could do something about that, besides chastise me with your prattle?" Mildthryth smiled. "I can see to it first thing." "Then do so. And I suggest you have Aelwynn ask after her needs. Time the erstwhile lady earned her keep." "Aye, but you're a sly and vengeful man," Mildthryth said, eyes sparkling with enthusiasm for Nottingham's plan. "And still able to the right thing when you set your twisted mind on it. An odd thing though, Sheriff." "And what is that?" "Your needing to dunk your head in a barrel of wine on account of that Monteforte, that I can understand. But 'tisn't Monteforte who caused your sleepless night. And being

disturbed at Lady Aelwynn, that I can see, too. But 'tisn't Lady Aelwynn that disturbs you." "A riddle, Millie?" "No, just the truth, plain and simple. 'Tis her. Your surgeon. Any fool can see what's happening." "She is not Aelwynn's successor. I've made that clear to Gisborne. You may make it clear to the rest of the castle." "M-m," Mildthryth said. "But why ever not?" The Sheriff took another swallow of ale and grimaced. "Because, my dear Millie, she won't let me near her." *** Prime had come and gone, and Thea's belly felt turned inside out with hunger. She had felt hungry before. Often, in fact. It was a reality she accepted, like being tired after a hard day's work or having her cheeks sunburnt after a day of gathering. A few short days in Nottingham Castle, supping regularly from the Sheriff's tray--that was the problem with having food on a regular basis, she reckoned. It was all too hard to do without when the time came. Since dawn she had dwelt on belly-filling images of pease porridge flavored with succulent bites of bacon. On aged cheese smeared on buttery bread still hot from the oven. Her mouth watered of its own accord, and she pushed the thought aside. Easier to remember why she was hungry and who bore responsibility for her having landed in a locked room sparsely furnished with equal amounts refuse and goshawk droppings. By the Virgin, if she ever laid eyes on the man again, she would force on him a purgative so strong he would spend the better part of a sennight crouched in the garderobe. She stood and paced the room, feeling the heat of anger chase the chill from her bones. How dare he treat her in such a manner! He had made her his surgeon, and that was not a title he bestowed upon her in one breath and took away the next. Thea thought back to the days she had spent with the Sheriff. She had not succeeded with him by being timid, by cowering when he bellowed or agreeing with his every word, and she doubted she would survive now by being the image of meekness. On the contrary, what little acquiescence he seemed inclined to give came when she proved as stubborn and intractable as he. It was time she let him know that she would not be dismissed like some scullery wench who had fallen out of favor. She was his surgeon, by his own pronouncement, and his surgeon had a few demands of her own to make.

She went to the bolted down and pounded, determined to keep it up until her fists were raw. She could hear the mutters of the guards outside. Could hear them laugh. "Tell the Sheriff I wish to see him at once!" To her surprise, she heard the jangling of keys and the rusty squeal of the lock being turned. A broad-shouldered sentry, armed as if for battle--or her escape--stared down at her, a wide-lipped grim doing little to hide rotten teeth. "I wish to see Lord Nottingham." Thea lifted her chin in an imperious gesture and hopped she spoke louder than her tattered appearance. The guard sniffed in amusement as he glanced at her in indolent assessment. Obviously entertained by the threat she posed, he reached out a mail-covered index finger to tilt her chin higher. His gaze strayed to her lips. "The Sheriff's not to be disturbed . . . wench." "Is he not? How unfortunate, for I intend to disturb him to the best of my ability. Now let me through." The soldier choked by a wry laugh. "Those what disturb him generally find themselves in the dungeon." "Then this is not it?" She gestured behind her at the room. "Not if you haven't found the whips and chains." She paused for a moment, hardly daunted. "Then a simpler request," she conceded. "If you would please, at your earliest convenience, or his, convey to him my need for a broom, some cleaning rags, and though doubtless unacquainted with the substance himself, some strong lye soap." "I heard you was something of a spitfire," the guard returned casually. "So you say what? Your new quarters not to your liking?" "The stench is unbearable." "Aye, a mite putrid to be sure, by the Sheriff says a fresh layer of straw over the cesspit will offset the odor." "The Sheriff can drain the cesspit personally, for all I care!" "Not short on opinions, are you? He did warn me." "Did he?" "Said he'd seen she-wolves with better manners and blackbirds what squawked less." "And did he tell you to stand guard over me, armed as if you held a regiment of Saracens at bay?" She touched the dagger at his waist, and before she could draw

breath, the weapon whispered from its sheath and wagged threateningly an inch from her nose. "I believe he used the words 'legion of Celts.'" Chuckling, the guard entered the room and took a ring of keys from his waist. He slipped one into the lock of an inner door, turned it, and pushed the door open, gesturing to the adjoining room. "Said this was yours, as well, when you started up a fuss." Thea stepped across the threshold. The room was nearly a replica of the first, except for the impossibly foul odor. "Twice the filth," she muttered under her breath. She braced her hands on her hips and surveyed the debris, all in various stages of putrefaction. "Tell your lord his kindness is unmatched. And inform him that, should this be a test, I am not afraid of hard work . . . although I'd much prefer it with a meal in my stomach. You don't suppose he intends to starve me into submission?" "I wouldn't be asking after the Sheriff's methods, lady." "No, I didn't think you would." She pushed her sleeves up above her elbows and tucked the hem of her tunic into the girdle at her waist, forming a makeshift apron. "At least this is simple, honest filth. I've dealt with worse." Without waiting for his response, she turned and put her back to the sour-smelling and unquestionably infested straw-stuffed bedding, leaving the guard to ponder whether he had just been dismissed by his charge and whether this same charge had just delivered the insult he thought she had to his commanding officer. Cleaning supplies arrived within the half-hour; a tray of meat and turnips and a cold pitcher of ale followed not long after. Nearer the end of the afternoon, a knock sounded at her door. Thea paused from her work, knee-deep in old rushes and nameless matter that she had swept from the corners of her new sleeping chamber. She rested her hands on her broom, realizing she had not stopped for even the briefest respite since beginning her rampage of cleaning. She looked like it, too, her apron soiled, the hem of her kirtle wet and reeking, her bodice sweat-stained and unlaced over throat and bosom. She patted her hair, more loose tendrils than combed braids, then moved her hand to the small of her back where a persistent ache had lodged in tightened muscles. There was not a visitor in the whole of Nottingham Castle she wished to greet--not the guard, not a kitchen girl with supper tray, not even the Sheriff himself unless the scoundrel could be made useful with a bucket of soapy water. The knock came again, more sharply, and she pulled the door open. Thea recognized her visitor at once. The woman appeared older than her twenty-five years, her face blighted by a bitter expression and a square jaw whose severe lines were unrelieved by a thin-lipped mouth. Narrow, spite-filled eyes gleamed beneath lined lids, and Thea caught herself staring at their peculiar aureate depths. She had never seen a woman who painted her face, but

this one wore not only the black kohl of the infidel women, but also an unmistakable dusting of flour over an already pale face. She supposed the woman was beautiful, in a cold, austere way, possessed of a regal posture that gave her a look of acquired grace, if the not natural fluidity of movement that seemed instinctive to those of more gentle birth. Her pretense to nobility ended there, however. The fine samite gown, even the gold tasseled earrings, could not hide the coarseness that betrayed her humble origins. Thea had known women who advanced themselves in carnal ways, women who haunted the taverns, willing to trade their bodies for silver or parlay their affections into a coach trip to London, women who tired of the fields or spinning or milking and sought to gain ease in the manor lord's bed. This one had that look: plump breasts spilling out of a straining bodice; thickening waist; the stale, unwashed smell of a man's body still clinging to her. The look of a wastrel who had come to her current dubious status on the merits of her once work-roughened flesh. Now, apparently, someone had seen fit to drape her in silks and brocades and sable bedfurs. The woman draped herself in superiority and a disdainful expression. Thea looked at her own dirtied attire and bare, mud-caked feet, feeling the days' accumulation of grime on her neck and in her uncombed hair. That she should have to endure Nottingham's concubine on this day and in this fashion was more than she could bear. Aelwynn stepped over the pile of trash at Thea's feet, holding her yellow skirts gingerly in her hands. She glanced around the room, amber eyes skimming over the disrepair in the chamber until they came to rest on the disrepair of its occupant. She said nothing, but stood in cold hauteur as she studied Thea with a glare that Thea felt missed no detail of her unkempt appearance. Vermilion lips parted in a slash of a smile. "He sent me," she announced, putting such pompous inflection into her brief explanation that Thea had no need to ask who he was. The only unanswered question was to what end the Sheriff had sent his perfumed bedmate to grace her chamber with such inspection. Aelwynn was not quick to elaborate. She ran an ornately jeweled hand along the stone ledge of the window and examined her fingertips, clearly expecting to see them blackened with filth. When her fingers came away clean, two narrow brows winged upward, and her painted lips turned down in one corner. "Well, there is some improvement. He says you're an orderly little thing. Went on at some length about the rows of herbs in your cottage and the precise array of all your flasks and bowls. Said you had a penchant for cleanliness." She paused, looked over Thea's stained attire, and smiled coolly. "I'll have to tell him he was wrong about that." Thea pressed her lips together tightly. It would accomplish nothing to inform this woman that her paramour showed a similar penchant on at least one night she could still vividly recall.

"Is there something I can help you with, Aelwynn? Some simple you require? As you see, I have no herbs or wares, but I could presume upon the guard to--" "I require nothing!" she spat. "I am here to inquire as to your needs!" Thea's eyes widened. Nottingham had sent his leman on an errand she definitely thought beneath her. All the more reason to be wary of the vehemence dripping through Aelwynn's words. "You may tell the Lord Sheriff that I require nothing of him beyond basic necessities-which have, until recently, been somehow overlooked: occasional food and drink, or permission to visit the kitchen; firewood for warmth in the evening and to chase away the dampness in the air; and of course, if he truly intends to keep me here as a healer, something with which to work besides the leavings of rodents, which haven't the slightest medicinal value, to my knowledge." "And sharp of tongue, as well." Aelwynn glanced back over her shoulder at Thea, golden eyes hooded with suspicion. "He favors that, you know . . . if you've a mind to spear him with it." "I haven't." Aelwynn swirled toward her, skirts in a buttery stir at her ankles. "No, of course you haven't. You're much to clever for that." She continued walking about the room, giving cursory examination to the rafters, now swept clean of their cobwebs, and the fireplace, emptied of ashes. When she had come full circle, she faced Thea again. "Food, firewood, and your plants--that is the extent of your needs?" Thea looked at Aelwynn, aware of the hidden nuance of meaning behind her question. "My freedom," she said calmly, "if he can be cosseted into a humor good enough to entertain the subject." Aelwylnn laughed, a low-throated rumble that conveyed no mirth, only dry, pitying scorn. "You lived with him a week. Did you encounter anything resembling good humor?" The smile melted from her face, and her voice dropped to a honeyed croon. "Not that I'd protest your leaving, you understand." She picked up a loose coil of Thea's hair, appraised the fine texture and rich russet color that was impossible to hide, even under a film of dust, then dropped the tress as if it displeased her. "You are, quite frankly, in the way, dear. You've already interfered in things that are none of your concern." Thea felt her cheeks grow crimson with the insinuation, anger mixing with a sense of culpability she had not admitted, even to herself. "I've done nothing to--" "Protest if you'd like. It's quite clear. To me, to the castle gossipmongers, to anyone privy to the sight of you together, to you, if you could strip yourself of that provincial blindness that passes for innocence. He's grown tired of me and is obviously out for fresh game."

"Then I fear the Sheriff will be disappointed. His hunt is but tedious sport to me, and I have no intention of becoming his prey." "Your intentions are irrelevant, my dear. If Nottingham has appointed you my successor, then it is only a matter of time." "He has appointed me his surgeon, nothing more." "And is it a duty you perform gladly for him? Of your own accord?" Aelwynn smiled cunningly. "You see, the arrow of truth always finds its mark. And unfortunately, your choices are rather limited. As are mine. I've learned to tolerate some of his coarser habits. After all, he's an abominable creature, wouldn't you agree? Dark-haired demon, son of a Norman whore, hiding behind a facade of civilized behavior with his preference for fine wines and Spanish leather, reeking of Moorish myrrh--" She stopped suddenly, her eyes glittering with fathomless lights, and smoothed her voice into bored nonchalance. "Occasionally--more than occasionally--his appetite runs to . . . extremes, and he will reach down into the depths of the castle and drag forth some scared young thing to strut before, to intimidate. There's something about their fear, I think, that excites him . . . for a time. In the end, he tires of them. Sometimes after a month, or a fortnight, or the better part of an evening. After all, he's become used to willingness, and a certain level of skill." Aelwynn's eyes peered over her narrow nose at Thea. "Word has it, however, that you are more than just some scared young thing." Thea knew she waited for a response. She watched Aelwynn's brows draw together and her whitened face grow dark with rage when none came. "You haven't even the sense to defend yourself, you little fool! Mark my words, his bed is mine! Yours for a night or two, if he must, but don't be mistaken. You haven't enough charms in your plants or power in your weakling love philters to claim him longer." "I see," Thea said quietly, her gaze dropping to the floor. It was useless to argue her innocence and utter distaste for the Sheriff's passable skills at seduction. Aelwynn had pronounced her guilty and was plainly threatened by the presence and presumed intent of the Sheriff's new surgeon. Thea told herself it should not matter, did not matter, that Aelwynn could ride the Sheriff clear to the court in London if that were their mutual ambition. "Your freedom?" she was saying. "Well, let's see if that can be arranged. Is there anything else?" Thea looked at the concubine, let silence drift about them for a moment, then spoken with utter equanimity. "Your absence from my chamber."

Aelwynn's laughter rang among the rafters. She strode to the door, negligent of the debris that caught in her yellow hem and trailed after her. "Confused about possession again, my dear? Where do you think I first lay with him?" Her eyes scanned the room, heavy-lidded with remembered satiety, then returned to Thea. Lips curved into a tight mask of a smile. "Do you read the runes, sweeting? No? I thought not. Your plants and gatherings by the full moon--that would be your only concession to the pagan, would it not? Never mind. I've cast for you myself." Thea felt the woman's gaze flow over her, from the top of her mussed hair, along the thin, frayed wool kirtle unlaced across her breast, down the length of her legs to her bare feet. "Enjoy him while you can," she hissed. "Your time is surprisingly short." *** Nottingham heard the door to his chamber open and turned from the narrow window in time to see Gisborne escorting the last of his "evidence" from Thea's cottage. Not that it mattered. He had seen enough. Gisborne poured himself a goblet of wine, waiting for the Sheriff to speak. He got only silence in return. "I doubt she's of a mind to confess," he said at last. "Still, there's always torture. Unless you have other reasons to prolong this game." "She's a distraction," Nottingham replied. "Nothing more." "I've seen distractions fall into and out of your bed in quicker time. And with less anguish on your part." "I need her for the moment." Gisborne frowned, stirring his hand through one the boxes. "She's a threat. To your plan, if not to you personally." "I am not convinced of that." "And if you are wrong?" Nottingham turned back to the window and gazed at the dark smear of green that was Sherwood. *** Thea held onto her sanity in the next few days by working hard during the day and falling into an exhausted sleep at night. While she did not abandon hope that the Sheriff might yet have a change of heart--assuming the man possessed such an organ--she was not fool enough to believe he would release he for reason other than his own whim. Determined not to dwell on what she could not change, she pushed every thought of her

cottage, the meadow, and the forest's green glades aside to be considered only at some future point when the Sheriff's capricious moods visited him with a more generous spirit or, given the unlikelihood of that possibility, when she herself felt strong enough to argue, or bargain, for her freedom. Lord Nottingham apparently continued his recovery without incident. At least none of his men or household retinue intruded upon her with dire news of a reversal of health. Although she saw nothing of him and received no messages from his quarters, he nevertheless made his presence known. At long last, her medicinal items and herbal stores arrived, and she suspected the Sheriff had ordered her personal belongings to be moved from her home to Nottingham Castle. While the Sheriff's soldiers had not been particularly careful in their crating of her things, Thea was overjoyed to have familiar and beloved objects around her again. No sooner than her wares had arrived that workmen, apparently commissioned by the Lord Sheriff, came to paint her stone and mortar walls with a fresh coat of lime, guaranteed to rid her chambers of the smaller of the multi-legged creatures that had previously enjoyed free run of the rooms. Fresh rushes were delivered and strewn over timber floors swept and scrubbed clean. To the rushes, Thea added the more aromatic of the broken plants and bruised blossoms of herbs that had not made the transit intact. She scattered pennyroyal and fleabane to ensure the insects and vermin did not return; juniper and meadowsweet added their unique perfume. With the cleaning of the cesspit somewhere in the bowels of the castle, the apartment no longer reeked of foul odors, but smelled pleasantly of fresh hay and the delicate fragrance of herbs and wildflowers. Oak cupboards and a waist-high table furnished her workroom, a chest and chair joined the bed in her sleeping chamber, and an abundance of beeswax tapers provided more light than had ever graced her humble cottage. With a slow fire burning at the hearth, Thea's suite of rooms acquired a soft, welcoming glow. She spent hours patiently sorting her seeds, arranging her bowls, mortar and pestle, and stringing up herbs along the gracefully arched rafters in her stillroom. Thea had provided the labor that had transformed her chambers, but it was clear that the Sheriff was responsible for the windfall of material goods. She knew no one who would have selected goosedown over more plentiful straw with which to plump her new mattress. And who else would bestow upon her such a quantity of bed silks and furs when woolen blankets would have been as serviceable. This latest arrival most obviously reflected Nottingham's hand. Thea ran her fingers over the pile of gowns--soft woolens in mauve and lavender, filmy silks and fine linens in every imaginable shade of blue, rich velvets in plum and royal purple, and a veritable blizzard of delicately edged and embroidered shifts and chemises. It did not take the worldliest of women to see that, having failed to force her appreciation of his power by setting her down in the most miserable of circumstances, Nottingham was now trying to impress her by showering her with creature comforts and indulgences of a far too personal nature. "What am I do with this?" she asked the woman who had brought the latest armful: a kirtle of midnight blue silk, ivory chemise and hose, and soft leather slippers.

"It matches your eyes, lamb," the woman said, a smile lifting the corners of her lips. "I suspect he means you to wear it." "It wouldn't be like the Sheriff--" "Aye, well, 'tis more than ribbons." Thea frowned, puzzlement creasing her brows. "You're the woman from the first night, aren't you? The one who brought linens and food and asked after him." "Aye, 'twas me. The only one brave enough, or simple-minded enough. I am Mildthryth." "You hardly seem simple-minded, Mildthryth," Thea said with a smile. The old woman grinned back. "Ah, lamb, 'tis a miracle to hear my name spoken by a Saxon tongue. Now the Sheriff and his friends, you'll never hear such a stew of Norman as comes from them when they're in their cups. I swear, 'tis the devil's own tongue." Thea nodded, then held up the gown to her own worn, undyed wool tunic. "It's not that his chosen coin of payment is unwelcome," she said, trying to appear grateful, "but that is what it is, isn't it?" "Lamb?" "Payment. Of some sort." "Well--" "Or am I meant to barter with him. My freedom for a surplus of silks and satins." The woman squeezed Thea's hand with warm, welcome familiarity. "Between you and me, for all that he is Sheriff, he has a clumsy understanding of things. He sees a thing and wants it, and is all too accustomed to being able to order it done. For all his strength of will, the man lacks something in . . ." She stopped, searching for the word. "Finesse," Thea offered. "Aye. But he makes up for it in . . ." "Intensity?" "If that means stubbornness, aye. You know him well for so brief a time in his company." Thea fingered the silken kirtle. "I know I am his prisoner, no matter how he gilds the cage." Mildthryth took the gown from her and began folding it. "Give him time. He's not so evil a man he won't see the wrong he's done in that. Now me, I do not hate him as others

do. He took my husband, God rest his soul, into his household when Warrin's lameness made him good for naught else, and gave him easy work. And when poor Warrin died--'twas winter before last--he let him rest in the castle's own churchyard, like a prince or a noble. Had the bishop himself say a fine funeral Mass. And kept me on afterwards, though he could just as easily have turned me out into the streets. I'd be beholden to him for that alone." She gave the gown a deft pat and closed the lid of the chest. "Now my eyesight, 'tis not as sharp as it once was, but I'm not blind to the man's faults. And 'tis the other half of it, lamb, that he has a grievous temper and a spirit so laden with woes, he can do naught but make a tragedy for himself and those around him. His leech used to say 'twas the curse of his sign and a flood of choler that kept him so unbalanced, that there was no medicine known that was strong enough to heal him. Perhaps no magic either. Maybe 'tis true. I'm not a learned woman. But for all that he's made his enemies, his greatest war is with himself." "It does not make his misdeeds right." "Nay, lamb. It does not." "And they are many." "Aye. Legion, some say. Now what he's done to you, 'tis wrong and you've a right to your anger. I'll not defend him with my first breath. But it does seem he's seen his errors and, in his own way, is paying penance." She nodded in the direction of the full chest of gowns and looked around the now-comfortable room. "'Twould be better to give you back your life, but there's stubbornness in the man 'twill only let him bend so far. As I said, bide your time. Why he's beginning to soften already." "How?" "He bade me bring you this message: you'll be dining with him this eve in his chamber."

Chapter 9 "By the saints, I will not!" Thea protested, first to Mildthryth, who didn't hate him, who found something to admire in a man so detestable, who spoke of him with unwarranted affection, then to the servant girls who brought her bath and took turns strewing the water with flower petals and giggling into cupped hands. No one seemed willing to argue the Sheriff's dinner plans. Thea felt rage smoldering like hot coals in the pit of her stomach. The man was wretched! He may have convinced his Saxon servant he'd been doing penance, but he'd not left off ordering her about, not just as to the time of her expected arrival at his door, but that she bathe--

Bathe! Damn him! Nottingham is no flowery mead himself! --And wear a particular gown of sapphire silk. Thea turned her back on the kirtle Mildthryth held in her arms, claiming she was "not the man's poppet," and vowing to prefer her own soiled and ragged attire to "anything his overbearing lordship had purchased with his ill-gotten fortune." The two girls who'd bathed her looked nervously at each other, and one finally confessed that the Sheriff had ordered her old clothes burned. Thea wrapped her arms around her nakedness, having little choice, and hating him all the more for giving her none. Still, she would not give in, politely refusing Mildthryth's proffered sapphire for something--anything--else. She bore the drift of virginal white linen being pulled over her head, laces tugged at waist and wrists, and selected a rebellious kirtle of unasked-for mauve. It wasn't until she smoothed the gown into place that she realized her mistake. Not even the Sheriff's selection could have been more immodest, for this gown was cut dangerously low across her breasts, revealing three full fingers' width of the shift's lace edging. How little reassurance was Mildthryth's promise--"'Tis the fashion, lamb, and you with the form to wear it"--or the overtunic, sheer silvered white like pale moonlight, cut deeper still. Thea tried to rein in her dismay as Mildthryth wound silver cord through thick plaits and covered her head with a translucent wisp of a veil held in place by a silver circlet across her forehead. The woman hummed, of all things, while she--she was being offered up as the beast Nottingham's main course! Of course, she told herself, the Sheriff did not want her, only some image of her, vague and obscure, coifed and perfumed, no doubt speaking conversationally in French while they shared dinner of glazed swan and whispering whatever gutter language he preferred into his ear as she arched beneath him in his bed. What he would get-Thea's heart stopped, and all thought with it, for she did not recognize her own reflection in the shiny metal plate held up for her. The vision, the Sheriff's imagined fantasy, stared back at her. She nearly broke from the armed guards who came to escort her. The serpentine tunnels left her claustrophobic, and the chaos of soldiers coming and going, of unleashed hounds underfoot, of all manner of people going about the business of maintaining Nottingham's fortress made her feel superfluous. What was the title of surgeon, of castle physician, but a ruse? She was not here for her herbal knowledge, but for the Sheriff's gratification. The cluster of household girls with their shared, knowing looks confirmed her every suspicion. Thea stood outside his door, and the guards stepped aside. The lance-bearing soldier standing sentry announced her presence. "My Lord Sheriff, your surgeon has arrived."

Thea wiped her hands along the length of her thighs and drew a deep breath. She would need to prove the castle talebearers, Aelwynn, and the Lord High Sheriff himself wrong. It promised to be a formidable task. A single word response resonated from within the chamber. "Come." The soldier pushed the oaken door in on silent hinges and raised his lance to permit her entry. Alarm pricked her skin with apprehension. The room within was darkness, dancing circles of candlelight and the darker, scarlet blaze from the hearth throwing a dizzying display of fiery color into the blackness. Thea stepped inside, waiting to be swallowed up by the hellish depths. She tried to remember the precise arrangement of the furniture, for she could see nothing but candles and flames and slender spirals of smoke that wafted upward. The darkness had obscured everything that was familiar to her save the faint odor of the strange, smoldering spice he burned. That she remembered. And him. Suddenly him. She remembered the closeness of him, hidden fragility and outward strength coexisting, how his touch made her heart race, her blood run thick and hot, as it did now on memory alone. Why remember that when there was so much else, so much evil with which to purge that transient pleasure from her mind? She took a step backward, every fiber of her being screaming to flee, and reached blindly for the door, when he stepped out of the shadows. "Close the door," he said, his voice a low and melodious drone. She felt the solid oak beneath her fingertips, and curled her hand around the thick plank of wood that was the door's edge. She could run, maybe put enough distance between herself and him before he would reach out to grab her, maybe even make it past the armed guard and into the hall before he called for his troops. She should try, at least, make some show of resistance, let him know that his power ended with what he could force her to do. In the moment she hesitated, he closed the distance between them, his steps the fluid motion of a stalking cat, careful, intentional, the very grace and slowness of his movement cleverly disguising intent. He stood only a hand's breadth away, looking down at her without expression, unhurriedly gathering in the sight and presence of her. Then he raised his hand above her head and sent the door shuddering into its timbered frame. Thea heard the iron latch fall into place. It was a long moment before she could raise her eyes to his, and when she did, she was not prepared for what she saw. Wounded, bloody, and covered with the grime of his brief forest battle; feverish, delirium compelling him to grope for her comfort; standing, ashen-faced and grim-lipped in the great hall--that was how she remembered him, that

was the substance of all the fleeting images that had crossed her mind in the days since he had dismissed her. For a moment, she stood transfixed, unable to move or breathe. Her mind raced to reconcile the differences, and could not. She had but one cogent thought: that the man she had tended in her cottage and even here, in this very room, was an impostor. The man of villagers' tales, the dragon lord of this castle, the powerful tyrant who had earned a reputation for swift, brutal action, the true Sheriff of Nottingham was this dark demon. He stood head and shoulders above her, his bearing erect and elegant, with the careless insolence of one sure of himself and his position. The long, narrow face had been shaved deep along the angled planes of his cheeks so that all that remained of his beard was a carefully sculpted swath of blue-black edging his jaw and chin and the sweep of mustache above the bow of his lip. For days, she had gazed upon this face, mopped the high forehead, and looked only for telltale marks of lucidity or fevered madness. No slackness of feature betrayed him now. His dark eyes regarded her with a fierce and knowing intensity, and the air about him vibrated with unseen energy that lay coiled at his command. He did not speak or move, but held her in a hypnotic trance that chased away all thought and anointed her with a warm weakness that spread through her limbs like slow paralysis. She felt far too aware of him, of herself, of the unseen current weaving between them, and with a start of panic, she knew she must resist the current, or be pulled under by it. She fought the sensation with sheer will, forcing her lungs to take in air, forcing herself to regard him with a fire of her own. To her surprise, she discovered that his eyes were not the devil's black at all, but darkest gray, the color of unpredictable thunderclouds or ice frozen over winter rivers. "Come," he said again, holding out his hand to her. His black cloak rustled away from his arms in a silken hiss. Underneath, he wore a knee-length tunic, carelessly belted, the garment a weave of metallic threads through dark linen that shimmered in the candlelight like streaks of gold in black ink. Thea had never encountered such cruel and brutal beauty. She laid her hand in his, and every memory she'd driven away rushed back to her at his touch. This was the man who had forced her from her home, yet the same man who held her safely in his arms as they rode through the gates of Nottingham Castle, the man who had kissed her hand with such bold tenderness, but had banished her to an inhuman fate in the most miserable of conditions. Prevented from leaving him, she had been left cold and hungry one day, showered with extravagances the next. She could not reconcile these differences any more than she could the change in the Sheriff's appearance. She could only think that the conflict was purposeful, a contradiction designed to torment her with confusion and uncertainty. Thea felt his hand close over hers as he drew her nearer. Suddenly, she was not at all sure that whatever faculties had enabled her to deal with the Sheriff as a weak and

wounded man would be sufficient to carry her through an evening with him returned to full health. "A fortnight," he murmured. The breath of the word was both curse and exaltation, as warm against the backs of her fingers as his lips, which followed, and lingered. "We parted in less than congenial fashion," he said softly, not letting go of her hand. It was no apology, but certainly as close as he would ever come to one. She lifted her eyes to his, wary, wanting to believe in his sincerity, but not believing, wanting for him to draw her closer, until she could feel his silk-clad arms around her, and needing desperately to be gone from him and this place. He had infected her with conflict of her own, a strange, complicated dichotomy of mind that left her unable to move or speak lest she betray herself. She shivered slightly, and quickly fled the piercing slate-gray stare with which he held her. There were a thousand ways she could betray herself. Somehow she was certain the Sheriff of Nottingham knew them all. Too late, she saw her silence had tried Nottingham's demeanor of charm. A puzzled frown wrinkled his brow. Abruptly, he dropped her hand and turned away, walking from the light of the candles toward the darker edge of the room. "I am well, thank you," he said when it became clear she would not inquire after his health. His voice rang out from the shadows, followed by another silent interval. He spun around and looked at her quizzically, black brows slanting low over storm-ridden eyes. "I gave my men explicit instructions not to remove your tongue, woman, no matter how it plagued them. My orders have not been disobeyed, have they?" His mocking words washed over her like cold water, restoring her senses. His moods were as fleeting as quicksilver, but invariably he returned to the dry humor that could so easily have been derision--and maybe was. Thea strengthened her resolve to be unaffected by the Sheriff's tactics. "No, my lord," she replied simply and in a carefully neutral tone. "That is fortunate. I was concerned. I've never known you to be so long without an opinion." He walked across the room, taking long strides, his cloak dragging the rush-strewn floor behind him, and stopped beside the long dining table. Lit candles flickered over an ornately carved goblet, and steam rose from recently sliced venison, piled high upon a single bread trencher. "My plans were for dinner . . . and conversation." With an outstretched arm, he gestured to a chair alongside the table. "Will you join me?" "Have I a choice?"

The words were out before she knew it, and Thea felt a sudden lurch in her stomach. How was it that the few words she did say could have been so ill advised? She saw Nottingham bristle slightly, as if he had not expected her retort or the vehemence with which it was spoken. Quickly, he erased his reaction with a shrug. "Of course, you have a choice," he replied smoothly, assuming an air of indifference to her total lapse of social grace. When Thea did not move toward the chair, the Sheriff lowered his arm to his side. "Have I abused you in some way, Thea? What have I done to warrant such hesitancy, such suspicion from you? Have I not provided for your every need, for the very clothes you wear, which, I might add, are a considerable improvement over your previous attire? That veil will have to go, of course. Fashion or not, it is unbecoming, and as I remember, your hair is quite lovely." Absently, Thea touched the hem of the veil at her shoulder, then quickly withdrew her hand. How adroitly he had asked about her grievances, then in the next breath shifted the conversation to a personal topic she had no wish to pursue. Nottingham possessed the devil's own knack for deception. How dare he ask with such guile the nature of the wrongs she'd suffered at his hands! The man's memory had not been lost to the fever; he certainly remembered her uncovered hair well enough! She lifted her chin and looked him squarely in the eye. "I gave you aid when you needed it, and you repaid my charity by keeping me here. I'm innocent of wrongdoing, yet you prevent me from returning to my home and restrict my movement here in the castle as if I were suspect of the most hideous crime. For all your twisted purposes, Lord Sheriff, whatever they may be, you have detained me in nothing more than a prison cell--" "Spoken like someone who's had no occasion to see the gaol." His soft murmur cut dangerously into her defiant speech. "I am here against my will," she said more forcefully," your prisoner." "That is somewhat dramatic, don't you think? I have removed your from a wretched life in utterly wretched conditions." "I prefer my wretched life!" "I prefer you here." His voice sliced through her, treacherously soft, and with an edge of insistence she could not ignore. "Your . . . incarceration has left you somewhat brittle of temperament, Thea. I remember a kinder, more agreeable woman--someone who was not averse to sitting on my bed with dinner spread between us, someone not opposed to entertaining me with lively banter and favoring me with an occasional smile."

Thea felt her cheeks burn. She, too, recalled those days, and with too warm, too unsteady a response than she could ever permit the Sheriff to know. "I was kinder and more agreeable when I thought I'd be returning home after you were healed," she said, eyes downcast. "Ah, I see. The kindness and gentle feelings you displayed were because you were soon to be rid of me--" "There were no 'gentle feelings,'" she demurred. "--And now I have earned your wrath because I long to have you at my side." She opened her mouth to protest his mockery of her, when he held up his hand to prevent her from speaking. "Don't apologize for an honest sentiment, Thea. It isn't the first time a woman's affections have waxed or waned depending on how quickly she believed she could quit this chamber. It's a response with which I'm altogether too familiar." With a sigh of feigned despair, he dismissed the rare disclosure as if it were of only minimal importance, and continued. "On the other hand, it is only dinner." He touched the back of the chair. "Can I not offer you food and drink and the dubious pleasure of my company for the evening? Perhaps as a small token of . . . apology for having been so taken with you that I have kept you chained to the castle walls these last weeks. Perhaps as a respite from your work." "My work?" she asked incredulously. "Were I less readily deceived, I would say all the inhabitants of Nottingham Castle are of robust health, my lord. Not once have I been summoned, nor has anyone come to my door seeking help." "You are being argumentative." "I am being truthful. One would think you intend to keep me all to yourself." The Sheriff cleared his throat uneasily. "A tempting idea. But, no. I merely intended to have dinner . . . in more private surroundings than the great hall and with a less contentious woman. Now, will . . . you . . . sit?" He meted out each word with precise firmness, then hastened to add, "Your choice, of course." She stole a sideways glance at him, a host of reasons why she should not share his meal coming to her mind, then considered the table and the food laid out on it. The aroma of venison called attention to the hollow feeling in her stomach. If only his sole purpose were dinner. Guardedly, she moved toward the chair he held out for her. "Surely not the king's deer, my lord," she whispered to him over her shoulder as she took her seat. "Lovely gown," he returned, ignoring her softly sarcastic barb. "I thought I remembered the color darker . . . and bluer."

She did not need to meet his eyes to know they were on her, absorbing her show of defiance at once with the slender curves that her peasant garb had hidden. She was suddenly very aware of the way the kirtle fit snug to her, like second skin, skimming over breasts and ribs and reed-thin waist to the girdle of silver links slung low over her hips. Compared with her loose, nubby-textured tunics, this dress seemed too tight, too constricting, and for all that it covered her more fully, too revealing. It was not made with her comfort in mind, she realized, but his. Somehow, in wearing it, she felt she had compromised herself. "It is not very practical," she said, trying to salvage some of her pride. He laid his hand across her shoulder, his touch warm, solid, and disturbing. Long, lean fingers toyed absently with the delicate trim along the exposed edging of her shift. "Must one be practical when enjoying dinner?" Thea reached up, covered his hand with hers, and laced her fingers through his to stay their movement. Deliberately, she glanced back at him, met the slow-burning fire in his dark eyes, and lifted his hand from the slight swell of her breast. "No, my lord. Merely prudent." He permitted her rebuff with seeming nonchalance, as if it were but a small, expected part of the sport. A half-smile lighting his lips, he took a flagon of wine from the sideboard, poured the fruity red liquid into the goblet, and extended it to her. Thea studied the cup for a moment, then glanced uneasily at the table for a second goblet. There was none, nor was there a companion to the single platter of meat. "Is there naught for you, Sheriff?" He grinned, white teeth parting black beard, full lips giving in to a smile of rare delight. "While it would be enough to feast upon the sight of you, it is customary in noble houses, at formal dinners, for man and woman to share cup and trencher. I assured the cook this was plenty for two, unless you possess a voracious appetite--" his voice trailed off as he slid into the chair at the end of the table, to Thea's right, and placed the flask of wine between them, "--or object to drinking after your gaoler." He offered the goblet again. Thea had a great many objections, far too numerous and discourteous to voice aloud. What ill-devised intimacy was this, and which devious, barbaric mind had spawned it? She looked at the Sheriff with due skepticism. Nottingham waited another moment, and when Thea did not answer or avail herself of the cup, he drew a deep breath. "Very well. We will dispense with custom. Doubtless, you would be just as offended to learn that custom dictates that I offer you the best cuts of this venison--quite legally procured, I assure you--that, in fact, I serve you and feed you bites of meat and bread if you wish." "I don't wish," she said pointedly. "I am not helpless."

"I would never be so foolish as to suggest you were. You have an armory of unusual weapons at your disposal, not the least of which is a certain bravado you brandish about when caution would serve you better." He speared a slice of venison with his dagger. "That intrigues me, Thea, I must confess," he continued, eating the slice of meat with obvious relish. "You are never what I expect." He leaned forward, elbows braced on the table, dagger dangling carelessly between his fingers. When he spoke, it was in a lowered tone, as if he were betraying some confidence. "Now there is a certain danger in that." "My lord?" "After all, I have made you one of my personal staff, made you responsible for my wellbeing, and it occurs to me, as it must, that I may have been foolhardy." Thea forced herself to look directly at the Sheriff, but his face revealed nothing more than smooth and practiced dissembling--a man making dinner conversation around suspicions he had not altogether quieted. Her lips curved up slightly, and she forced a lightness she did not feel. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean, my lord. If I have not proved myself, you are free to release me whenever you wish." Nottingham returned the smile, although no mirth reached his smoky eyes. "You amuse yourself with these word games, do you not? What is it, Thea? Have you challenged yourself to see how many times during the course of the evening you can mention how displeased you are to be here?" Thea's smile dissolved. It would not do to play the innocent with this man, and he was already tiring of her attempts to gain her freedom through verbal persuasion. There was something in his forced smile, something in the hardness about his mouth and eyes that told her he would not bear continued harping on a subject he had considered closed the moment he'd given the order that she stay. She felt his iron control close around her, a control that for all his mild chatter, the man had never relinquished. "You are still resisting me, it seems," the Sheriff continued, taking the goblet and swirling the burgundy liquid within it. "I understand that feminine game, have even stooped to participate in it on an occasion or two, when the chase seemed particularly exhilarating. But you, Thea--somehow I believed you above such wiles. You are plain and forthright and direct. Resistance does not become you." He stabbed another piece of meat. "And besides, resistance makes me uncomfortable of late, what with a forest full of irritating resistance. I know you understand. I don't need it brought under my own roof." He paused, looking at the trencher of meat, and frowned. "Surely you're hungry," he said, holding the dagger with its skewered piece of venison close enough that she could smell the seasoned oil with which the meat was basted.

Thea shook her head, certain it would be impossible to force down food in between Nottingham's carefully phrased innuendoes. "Fresh deer is a delightful change," he tempted her. "And for once, this is not overly spiced. The cook will do that, you know. Serve meat that has gone over the day before and hide the spoiled flavor with seasonings and such. I'd have him flayed, but he's been with me a good many years, and I've come to trust he'll keep the henbane out." Thea watched in horror as the Sheriff closed his lips over the dagger's tip and took the proffered meat himself. How could he make such a casual reference to the deadly poison between one bite and the next? "No, it's not the cook I'm concerned about. You are the mystery. The enigma. And yet I've entrusted you with my life. That's a curious thing. People want to know why. I want to know why. Some say you've bewitched me . . . and there is other talk." "Other talk?" Thea asked, not entirely certain she wanted to hear Nottingham elaborate on the tales that had spread about the castle in the past fortnight. He lifted the goblet to his lips, letting any clarification hang silently in the air while he took a long drink of wine. He put down the cup again and rubbed his thumb across his wet lower lip. Thea watched the gesture, entranced, and horrified at her own entrancement. "They say you're a forest viper I have mistakenly allowed entrance into my camp. That your venom is deadly, your bite mortal, your intent unpredictable. That I have forecast my own doom by inviting you here and holding you unwittingly close." "Your rumor-mongers are a very poetic sort, my lord." Did she imagine it or had his face darkened? He bent to the trencher again, any revealing expression, had he been so careless as to allow one, temporarily hidden in the shadows of his bowed head. "I would not listen to castle talk, my lord," she offered. "You said yourself I am plain, forthright, and direct. Better to trust your own instincts." "Only if they are correct, woman."

He took another swallow of wine, then another, draining, then refilling the cup. When he placed the goblet on the table, his hand lingered around its carved stem, knuckles whitened as if forcing control to stay with him. When he looked up at her, his face was unreadable, and he continued speaking with unfathomable amiability. "Would you not say I have reason to be cautious?"

"Cautious, yes. Of course. I can see you must. But--" Silently, she cursed herself for stammering over such broken fragments of sentences. "If not cautious, then surely curious. Allow me that. After all, you are a lovely woman of marriageable age, and yet you have lived alone these many years. Is it solitude you prefer, when you have just finished making complaint of such?" He rushed ahead, not letting her answer, although truly no answer to his taunting wit came to mind. "You have a small holding of land, not easily tilled, I'd imagine, but passable for grazing and having the advantage of all taxes paid in full. Even Monteforte is not so scrupulous with his manor's wealth. It escapes me then why no swarm of landhungry bastards has descended upon you, Thea. Or does the cool disdain you display for me work as well to keep your suitors at a safe distance?" Thea swallowed hard, stunned. The Sheriff had tipped his hand, and it revealed no lack of knowledge about her. "I am given to no man," she replied. "But your affections, Thea. Is there no one for whom you feel the slightest tenderness of heart? A lover, perhaps, whom you meet in secret?" She felt her cheeks ruddy, making her guilty when she was not. John, of course. He spoke of John. "The villagers talk," he explained. Thea folded her hands meticulously in her lap and met his eyes coldly. "If the villagers talk, then you must already know the answer to that." "I did not intend to pry," he began. "Of course you did. You've been listening to--no, more likely, soliciting--talk and gossip, and tossing out pieces of it to bait me. Was it Gisborne? Did you send him into Edwinstowe to inquire about me? Likely he came back with an evening's worth of tales and hearsay. Tell me. Is that what this is all about? Are you wanting to confirm his recently retrieved intelligence with dinner conversation?" Her words bit with sarcasm, and she rose to her feet, fingers splayed on the table. "Am I here because I am suspect?" A frown creased Nottingham's brow. "Suspect of what?" "I have no idea, my lord. Of whatever it is Gisborne thinks me guilty." "Gisborne is merely doing his job." "Then he has made charges." "He has a suspicious nature, which serves me well, I might add, but, no, there are no formal charges, no proof of wrongdoing. Why? Do you wish to confess?"

"I've committed no crime," she replied coolly. "Then why this insecurity, Thea?" "Because you torment me so. Because clearly you suspect me." "I suspect everyone, as I should, as I must," he admitted. "But I did not bring you here to see you so skillfully avoid questions I have not even asked. This is not the interrogation you fear." "Is it not?" "No," a soft breath of denial. "I promise you. It is not." Thea looked down at him, unaccustomed to the sound of gentleness in his voice. His head was bent low, and he rubbed at the vertical furrow between his brows. His hand ceased its telltale motion and moved again to finger the cup. "Please sit," he said without looking up. "You need not satisfy my curiosity, but allow me to have it. Me? My life? The events are known to you, to all, in some distorted manner of the truth, yet you tell me nothing of yourself." "It is none of your concern whom I bed." "Then you are not virgin?" The air rushed out of Thea's lungs at once, not for the boldness of his question, for what was there to the man but boldness and the perverse pleasure he took in shocking her with the stark nature of his curiosity, but because he did not know. He had sent Gisborne and he knew of her land, knew its uselessness to her for all she owed no debt of tax, knew even, or suspected, her secret meetings with John, her presumed lover. But he did not know more. He knew nothing of Brand, of her marriage, of his death, obvious facts any villager could report. Had the people of Edwinstowe suddenly developed discretion on that one account while foolishly intimating she carried on a liaison with a known felon? Or had Gisborne held back something of the truth? "Please. Sit." His words roused her, silencing her own unanswered questions, and she found her knees bending of their own accord as she lowered herself to the chair. It should comfort her that he did not know, that she was not transparent to him after all, that remnants of her private life were still hers to guard and protect and lie about, if that would serve her. How to explain then the eerie foreboding that he would uncover her, layer by layer, until there was not a secret left, and John were found out? And Robin. And Much. And the truth bared that she had given her virginity to a child of a husband when she was but a child herself.

"What is the point of all this?" she asked, a veneer of hostility put quickly between them before he deigned to know more. "As I said, curiosity--" "A prurient curiosity, although why I should be surprised at your lewdness--" "About your family, Mistress Aelredson. About how you've managed to support yourself these years when you make no profit from your land." "I have no family. My parents are dead. Surely you knew that." She cringed at the bitterness that had crept into her voice. He would use that, use any emotion she had to overturn her hidden truths. She swore to say nothing else save what he already knew, and repeat that only as if it were the stuff of blandest disinterest. "I have survived by bartering for my herbal remedies and, upon occasion, for my surgical skills." "Which are considerable." Thea made no reply. "I would not have made you my surgeon were they any less." "Then you have answered your own question, my lord." "Have I?" "From before, when you seemed in doubt about having made me your personal physician, when you called yourself . . . 'foolhardy,' I believe it was. It would seem you believe I have the skills to be your surgeon." "Skills, unquestionably. But do I have your loyalty?" An uneasy silence swallowed the room. Thea looked across the candles and their flickering pools of incandescence to the Sheriff. He regarded her carefully, but without the minute traces of accusation she fully expected to encounter, as if having shaken her with the directness of his question was enough. He waited there for so long a moment, Thea was almost tempted to reply, but with what truth? She was still searching for a response vague enough to satisfy him and spare her further questioning, when his expression changed abruptly. The calculating hardness fell away, and he looked at her as if he did not want to hear her answer, as if, indeed, he preferred the silence, the enigma. "Stay with me tonight."

Where there had been only silence, the chamber now reverberated with his words. For a time, Thea could hear nothing but their soft echoes and, unexpectedly, the yearning behind what, for once, had not been an order. She became conscious suddenly of the way the candlelight played across his features, obscuring any vulnerability that might have revealed itself, lighting his dark eyes with desire as blatant and demanding as she had seen in any man. Slowly, softly, her voice whispered into the quiet tension between them. "Surely not to prove my loyalty, my lord." He merely shook his head, as if her allegiance to him were incidental, irrelevant, maybe even unnecessary. "I want you in my bed." Again, not an order. "My lord, I cannot." "'Cannot'?" Nottingham repeated. "Somehow, Thea, I think you probably can, and very well, too." His words were full of suggestion; his voice caressed her without a touch. "Then I will not, my lord, if I have a choice." The Sheriff nodded, then looked away, as if considering something unseen in the distance. When he spoke, his voice was oddly strained. "This is not a test of your allegiance, Thea," he said quietly. "If anything, it was a test of myself, to see if those instincts you urged me to trust are even reliable. Apparently, they are not." "My lord, I regret--" "Don't rub your apologies like some salve over my wounded pride. That's quite unnecessary. It was a valuable lesson, and I learned far more than that you have no wish to share my bed." He pushed his chair back from the table, stood, and walked across the room to the fireplace. The log within was smoldering, and he kicked it with his booted foot, sending up a spray of sparks and a few threads of flame. "I've been honest with you, Thea, so you know something of me now. You have some private knowledge of my desires--something I was a fool to disclose," he muttered under his breath. "But you--" He turned, reached for the clasp of his cloak, unbuckled the mantle single-handedly, and with undisguised frustration threw it across the room. "You are a temptress who would have only my undoing. And I, by Christ, will not be undone!" Long fingers fumbled with the thin silk laces at the neck of his tunic, as if the garment suffocated him, and when they did not readily give, he tore through them, bared chest laboring to breathe. "Let there be no more of this pretense, this charade where I offer you food and wine, where we dress ourselves in fine clothes and make clever, witty

conversation around questions you are too afraid to answer. There's only one thing I want from you tonight--" Thea's chair scraped back against the floor, but he was over her, one hand on each arm of the chair, before she could stand. "--One thing I would hope to have." His hands circled over her forearms, pinning her to the chair. "Not loyalty, Thea, for I doubt there is enough coin in the realm to buy that. Not even your body. Not now." His eyes trailed over her. "Not yet, although that might be far easier for you to surrender than what I really need." He leaned forward over her, his face disturbingly close. He brought his mouth to hover warmly over hers, and his lips parted. Thea trembled as if her body had no volition of its own, and for the first time that evening, maybe for the first time since he had broken rudely into her life, she abandoned every illusion of sparring with the Sheriff of Nottingham, and coming out of it whole. She cursed herself for a fool, for as much as he had drawn together a veneer of civilized behavior to entice her into this trap, she had unwittingly played into his every ploy. She had accepted his invitation, worn the clothes he had given her, tried to keep pace with his dangerous chatter, even believed she could say no to his sexual overtures, and he would do nothing more than sit politely at his end of the table and resume some veiled inquisition that passed for conversation. What was worse, and far more condemning, was that she had stopped listening to him altogether, and did not even heed the small warnings of caution that flashed within her brain. She drank in his closeness and the terrifying sense of his power, and lifted her lips to his. The Sheriff stepped back. Thea felt his hands loosen around her. He was looking at her strangely, and she felt her face grow hot with shame. "I have need of honesty, Thea," he said. "Not some chaste kiss, but answers without deception. Is that possible?" She looked away, unable to bear the driven intensity she had so mistaken for desire, unable to face her own humiliation for having been so ready to succumb to it. What more honesty did he want from her than that? "Answers!" The demand came like muted thunder. There was no question now that she had forfeited any reprieve from interrogation. Thea could not help but wonder, if she had lain with him as he'd wanted, would the questions that plagued him so have been silenced forever or would they have only been delayed until the following morn. Perhaps he would have forced answers from her lips between kisses. She made no reply.

"Then I'm curious," the Sheriff said. He reached into the pocket beneath his tunic and drew out the arrow's tip that Thea had removed from his side. He picked up her hand and placed the metal point in her palm. "You recognized the mark of the castle forge. That's a strange piece of knowledge for a peasant to have." "Damn your curiosity! I need explain naught to you." "Could you have seen the mark elsewhere, in other surgeries? Tell me, Thea, how many times have you removed such arrowheads?" Thea met his eyes with icy silence. "And from whom? Outlaws, perhaps?" Thea rose to her feet at the challenge, clutching the thin, translucent shimmer of her tunic in tight fists. "That's preposterous!" "Is it? You live near Sherwood, you travel within it freely and unharmed, you live alone, without a husband, yet no man assaults you. In fact, the villagers seem quite in awe of you. I thought, perhaps, you rendered your services in exchange for protection." "To outlaws?" The Sheriff's mouth turned down at one corner. "Possibly." "I would not seek protection from a rabble of thieves," she said defensively. "Possibly from Hood himself," the Sheriff continued, as if he'd not heard her. "He's quite the champion of defenseless women, I hear." "You obviously hear a great many things, and have difficulty sorting truth from hearsay." He leaned over her again, treacherously close, and Thea watched his eyes travel to her mouth. "And you are a master of deceit." Abruptly, he pushed himself away and strode to the fireplace. "Gisborne's men found several items of interest in your cottage." He bent to retrieve an object that rested against the brickwork on the far side of the hearth. "This, for example." The Sheriff held a longbow in his hands. "Do you still feel comfortable with your lie, Thea? You see, you recognize the mark of the castle forge. I recognize the workmanship of a particular hooded archer." The Sheriff turned the bow gracefully in his hands until it was in a vertical position. "The precise bend of the wood--and only the finest yew--buffed to an exquisite smoothness." With deliberation, he bent the bow, not by pulling the string, but by pressing his whole body into the stance, betraying no small acquaintance with the weapon. The muscles of

his back and shoulders rippled beneath the glitter of his tunic as he anchored the draw expertly at his bearded jaw. Thea shuddered. For a moment, she imagined him clothed in doeskin, the bow pulled against nothing more than their evening meal. Then his eyes narrowed to hate-filled slits, and he aimed the bow as if at some unseen enemy. The empty string vibrated with a resonating thrum. The Sheriff took the weapon in his hands and caressed it with begrudging admiration. "I've seen my share of these, confiscated from outlaws braving the gates of Nottingham on some fool's errand. In fact, I have quite a collection; their owners seem to have little use for them in the dungeon. This one, it appears, was not made for a man, but for someone of smaller stature." He held the bow beside her and looked meaningfully at the similarity of Thea's height to that of the bow. "For you, I'll wager. And by someone who knew you well. Someone who marked his workmanship with the Locksley cross." He held the bow out to her. "I'm curious, Thea. Can you use it, or is it merely a memento, some keepsake from your outlaw lover?" She snatched it from his hand. An expression of genuine surprise settled across the Sheriff's features. So, he had not expected such a vehement--and uninformative--response. He cleared his throat and reached for another item, a man's shirt, and brandished the handful of sun-bleached linen at her. "Found among your things, but clearly no woman's garment. Let me answer another of my own questions." His voice dropped to an acidtongued whisper. "You are no virgin. Moreover, I'd wager my office and this sheriffdom that there is some connection between you and the forest, some connection you've taken great pains to conceal." "I've concealed nothing," she claimed, and yet her eyes, tear-limned, spoke another truth. She looked at her husband's shirt, crumpled like a rag in the Sheriff's hand, and cursed him for his ignorance, for his gall, for his utter stupidity. If he would but see-"You keep a man's shirt among your things and tell me it is not the clothing of some woodsman lover, perhaps the very one whose hands crafted your bow with such careful attention to detail? Tell me, Thea, is that why you have never married? Have you given your heart to a thief? Does he visit you, stealing away from the forest by night, when he feels it is safe?" The Sheriff crossed the room and tossed the shirt on the table in disgust. "Or maybe he just sends for you when he has need of you, when one of his men has an arrow in his belly--an arrow from the castle forge." Mutely, she shook her head. If he had stumbled across even the smallest point of truth, it was so inexorably woven up with conjecture and supposition, with fear and petty jealousy as to be inextricable. She was not about to confess to the whole of it, and refused to enlighten him about any small part.

"You needn't tell me, Thea. Sooner or later--next month, next week, maybe even tonight--he'll come to your cottage and find you gone, and when he does--" Nottingham leaned close to her and whispered, "--when he does, he will come here. Somehow, I do not believe your bandit prince will take kindly to my having stolen his woman." The Sheriff put his hand under Thea's chin and lifted her face to his. "You are a very desirable creature," he murmured. "I trust he will want you back." "You are mad with delusions." "Am I?" Nottingham slid his fingers up the soft planes of her cheeks and, with his thumbs, wiped the line of tears gathering in her lower lashes. He removed the silver circlet from her head and pulled the silken veil away, letting it flutter soundlessly to the floor. "Yes," he breathed. "Much better." Reaching behind her, he drew a thick, mahogany braid across her shoulder and separated the strands, his long fingers combing through the silken curls that spilled to her hips. Thea stood motionless, unable to speak, unprepared for the onslaught of sensation she experienced. She was certain the man was insane--or she was; there was no other explanation for the unspeakable desire that coursed through her, lightening-quick, when terror should have reigned. She never knew where she drew the strength or resolve to push him away. "Yes," she said, a harsh, uneven breath punctuating her indictment. "You are mad. Quite mad." The Sheriff seemed taken aback, unaccustomed to the rejection he had been forced to endure this evening. He frowned, then dropped his hands from the tangle of her hair, and stepped away. "As you wish," he said simply. "It is not you that I want anyway. Robin Hood and the men of Sherwood would be a far more satisfying prize. And in that, you are merely a means to an end." The rage that had lain coiled within her for days mixed suddenly with the confused torment she felt at his touch, and a torrent of feelings unleashed themselves. Thea slammed her hand against the goblet, sending the red liquid spraying across the Sheriff's face and tunic. She would have thrown herself at him, clawed the look of superiority from his eyes, but he roared, "Guard!" and she froze in her tracks. A soldier burst into the chamber. Nottingham had assumed an icy and detached calm. He picked up the shirt he had discarded upon the table and, with an unhurried motion, wiped the wine from his face. "My surgeon is leaving," he said tonelessly, his eyes never leaving Thea's. He shoved the shirt into her hand and turned his back. "See to it she is escorted to her quarters."

The guard had already reached the door, Thea a pace in front of him, when the Sheriff called out. "The girl in the buttery--the red-haired, ample one. Bring her with you when you return." Thea turned on her heel and continued through the door, not once looking back. She carried the numbness with her to her chamber, ignoring the servants and soldiers that took note of her tears and disheveled hair and would make that the morning's gossip. How little they knew, and yet the fraction of their knowledge had been unbearably true. I want you in my bed, he had said--and would have had her there, but for providence and his keener desire to have Robin of Locksley in his gaol. She shut the door, welcoming darkness and silence, and untied the layers of tunic and kirtle and shift, leaving them on the floor where they fell. She slipped beneath the furs of her bed, unclothed, letting the feel of cool silk sheets and the man's shirt she held close blot the evening from her skin and mind. Brand's shirt. The tears came again, and she did nothing to stop them but bury her head in the folds of worn linen. The scent of her husband was gone; all that remained was the fruity aroma of spilled wine, leather, incense . . . and him. Chapter 10 Of all the damnable errors of judgment! The Sheriff spied the coppery glint among the rushes and kicked the goblet savagely across the room. Airborne for a moment, it ricocheted off a candle stand and clattered to the floor, spinning with a grating metal sound that echoed off the chamber walls. The noise accentuated the turmoil he felt inside, and he struck the oaken table solidly with his closed fist. Had he ever fared worse than with that awkward, blatant stab at seduction? Stay with me tonight. Was he mad? What answer could he have expected from the woman? He had offered no gesture of affection, no caress that she had not rebuffed, nor had she spared him any playful enticement or inviting glance of her own. Her every action, her every reaction, chilled him with staunch, unyielding refusal. Why had he wasted his time on such paltry attempts to lure her when he could have taken her and be done with it? At least then he might have questioned her with a clearer head, with a mind for wringing the truth from her lips instead of a chaos of thought only for the taste of her flesh. He was appalled that he had set out with but two goals in mind--the feel of her body, bared, beneath him and the satisfaction of a confession--and she had given him only a faceful of bitter wine. He propelled himself across the room as if hurled from a catapult and cleared the surface of a nearby chest with a broad sweep of his arm. Fiercely, he yanked open the top drawer, spilling its contents indiscriminately. Ledgers, pointed quills, stubs of sealing wax, and several ivory sheets of parchment landed amid the rushes. When at last his hands closed around the one object he sought, it was as if the touch alone calmed him. The vented fury of his storm vanished, leaving him shrouded in silence and stillness, oblivious to the wreckage of the ruined evening that lay about him.

The journal was no more than stiffened leather, bound at the sides with braided fibers of hemp. He rested his forehead against its worn cover and inhaled the faint aroma of leather and the pungent melange of herbs, wondering, not for the first time, why he had bothered with such flimsy circumstance as the bow and man's shirt when the real piece of evidence lay between his hands. Gisborne had brought him the journal, muttering about the woman's "suspicious scribbling." "A peasant, Cousin?" he had said with a doubtful smirk. "Writing? Writing treason, do you suppose?" A hopeful guess; as he remembered, Gisborne had always failed at any tutelage toward literacy. He opened the journal and smoothed back a page of brittle yellow parchment. He examined the compact script, poring over the pages for words he could recognize. The entries were dated and bore a kind of geographical notation that described streams, fields, rock formations, or distance from unusual landmarks. What followed was written in a complex cipher he did not fully understand. Perhaps Thea had learned or developed a language peculiar to those knowledgeable about herbal medicine, as these entries appeared to be names of plants she had found at the above-mentioned locations, together with details about their stages of growth or flowering and amounts she had gathered. Occasionally, an herbal sprig had been plucked and left, pressed and drying, between the pages. There were similarly incomprehensible notes on remedies concocted, simples prepared and sold, and visits to villages for a multitude of reasons, all logged in detail as minute as the script. These last accounts, though heavily abbreviated and interspersed with the puzzling language of plants and medicine, were written in a more prosaic style he could follow. Here was an account of the birth of one Sarah Fletcher of Papplewyck and another of Elred Smithson, who had summoned her to his home to cure his toothache. There was an elderly sister at Kirklees Abbey who'd needed a remedy for the pain of old bones and a veritable plague of sore throats and noses in nearby Edwinstowe. The healer had tramped throughout villages of the shire on her errands of mercy, and it was impossible to ignore that she had made her name a household word in the King's domain of Sherwood Forest. That alone, however, was not enough to indict her, no matter how Gisborne twisted the truth. But the rest? The Sheriff thumbed through the inches-thick journal, drawn like iron to the lodestone of the woman's guilt. How often had he come here to this entry, hidden amid the routine happenings of an herb woman's life? How many times would he have to read the damnable words before he was convinced? In a small, furiously written account, she'd recorded her response to a call thick in the heart of Sherwood. There was no further identification of site or date. Care of oversight? Nottingham wondered. No matter. It was there, in her own hand.

Three dead, with terse descriptions of their fatal wounds. A half dozen more surgeries. The very crime she had denied just hours ago. That she had written the passage hurriedly and in a torrent of uncontrolled emotion was clear. Tears had bled the ink into watery smudges, and blood from her hand had smeared the upper right corner of the page, as if she were leaving physical testimony to the horror she had just witnessed. The entry ended with every word the Sheriff needed to charge her. Overcome with grief and anger, she had directed a scathing passage at the outlaw himself: "By the saints, Robin, you promised peace and honor and safety, which we needed most. But for every promise you made, we lost a life today. How can I continue? How can you ask me? You said it was for justice, for the love of our people, and I believed you. But now Thomas is gone. And Oswald. And Maisry is a widow before her time. Would that your love for us might find a way to make this all end." The Sheriff closed the journal and rubbed it absently between the palms of his hands, turning it this way and that, unconsciously weighing the evidence. He had given her every opportunity to ease the burden of her guilt, had made it easy for her by offering her own account of the truth to embrace, and still she had clung to her own lies. And if her deceit were not enough, there were Gisborne's own findings. The outlaw's very shirt, nestled intimately among her shifts. Her outlaw-crafted bow. She was one with Locksley, to be sure. In practice. In sentiment. In strongest sentiment, if Gisborne were to be believed. If he could believe her own words. The fury of the passage did nothing to assuage her guilt, for she had protected Locksley at every turn this evening. They were, in all probability, less words of condemnation than of exhaustion and relief that her lover's soul had not been parted from his skin. More's the pity. Nottingham opened the book again. It was not the last of such entries, or the first. If he wanted, he could place the incidents in a more specific chronology by learning the dates of the entries immediately preceding and following. If he wanted, he could then go to the scribe and his accounts of the soldiers' activities, usually dictated to him by Gisborne, and between the records and Gisborne's indelible memory for particularly bloody skirmishes, he could compile a list of times she had come to Locksley's assistance with which to kindle her memory. Instead, he thumbed to the last entry in the journal where Thea had begun an account of his own surgery. The passage was incomplete, for she had been unable to record anything past the moment she had left her home--and the journal--behind. Still, what little there was showed as detailed and detached a summary as the one of Smithson's tooth pulling. Somehow, reading the facts about what she had done to him in such impersonal prose left the Sheriff with the disconcerting feeling that he was eavesdropping on his own life, and on her private response to him.

The procedure had been routine, without crisis, even ordinary. She had noted the herbs she'd used in the sleeping draught and poultice in the same obscure language as the simple for coughs she supplied to the miller's children. The Sheriff saw that the entry made about him was afforded no special place, nor written in any manner to distinguish him from those patients with runny noses. It certainly was not written with the passion of the secretive Sherwood surgeries. It should not matter, he thought. Christ! I should not care! But he did. He told himself she was just a woman whose luck had run out, who did not have the sense to see salvation when it was extended to her, but his heart contracted bitterly around that thought. He wanted her, not in chains in the dungeon or dangling at the end of a hangman's noose, but here, by his side, curled against him, the light of the fire reflecting off her sun-tawnied skin. He asked himself with what enchantment she'd plied him to want a thing so clearly dangerous. He even questioned whether it was a passing fancy, some lust that had sprung up from the forced intimacy of her hands upon him that had grown because he'd been preventing from sating it. After all, he had known lust, and well enough to remember how quickly it fled the moment he parted a woman's thighs. He found no answer save that he ached for her--with the same misguided passion that Locksley yearned for honor. It was a longing no reason could touch or explain. Nottingham paced to the fire and held the journal above its flames. To have her here, to keep her, he would give her this. No one need know. The forbidden knowledge in the journal, as well as the danger, were his alone, and if there were risk in keeping her secret, it was a risk he could face privately. The scarlet streaks leapt up, scorching the leather. He felt the heat throbbing in his fingertips, and watched dispassionately as a thin plume of smoke sprouted from the pages, and still he could not release the book to the devouring fire. A sharp rap rattled his door, and with a sudden reflexive jerk, he snatched the volume from the flames. "Yes?" he snapped irritably. The door opened, and a gray shadow of a woman sidled in. Nottingham took in the uncombed carrot hair in its lopsided crown of a braid, large breasts straining against a tunic splotched with grease, and bare feet shuffling along the floor. The buttery girl flattened her back against the wall in a futile attempt to make herself smaller, less noticeable. Her eyes were downcast, her fingers fidgeted with her skirt, and she shifted her weight uneasily from one grimy foot to the other. "Your pleasure, my lord," she managed, her voice small and shrill with fear. Darkcircled eyes glanced at him, then quickly fled his stare. So many of them would not look at him.

"My pleasure?" he mused, catching an abrupt laugh in his throat. He tried to imagine pleasure with this woman who still carried the smell of her work about her clothes and skin, whose hair fell in lank tendrils about her face. He imagined her roughened hands on him, around him, and the lips she licked nervously laid against his. He shuddered with an inward revulsion and waved her back. "Get the hell out of here while I'm feeling charitable," he snarled, and dismissed her by turning his back on her bobbing curtsey. He waited until the door shut behind her, then drew a heavy sigh of relief. Blessed privacy! He drew the book from behind his back. Torn by ambivalence, he could not destroy it any more than he could confront her with it. He considered the journal and the weighty evidence within, and slid it back into the drawer, then carried the flask of dinner wine to the hearth and pulled a chair close. Stretching long legs in front of him, he inspected the reddened skin of his hand, curling his fingers under, feeling the skin burn with each movement. Thea would know which cooling salve would comfort him, and yet he swore to think no more of her. He tipped the flagon of wine to his lips and drank deeply, but the burgundy liquid was no amnesiac. The thoughts he'd tried to drive away swirled around him. Thea and Sherwood--one as wild and untamed as the other. As careless of his commands and dictates. As devilishly enchanting. The splendid, razor-sharp need he was so certain he'd banished returned, burning like a fiery, liquid pool in his belly, far hotter than singed skin, far more urgent. Unlike his burned hand, he doubted it would heal itself in time. He had failed at luring her with dinner and soft words and meaningless flirtation; that was masquerade to be employed with barons' daughters or bored ladies at court. Thea was too wary for his practiced ploys. She suspected every false word, every move with an impure motive. The sound of her name in his mind tipped the cauldron of heat in his belly and spilled it through his loins and down the length of his thighs. He clawed at the chair arms until his knuckles whitened, willing his body not to respond to the thought of her, wishing she suffered but a fraction of the passion he felt. In a burst of insight, he knew she did. She covered it well, as she did most things, but the clues were there, if only in the vehemence of her protests. The racing heart he had felt against him did not belong to a woman who feared him, but to a woman who feared her own desire. And when she had lifted her lips, offering him a naïve kiss, had it been in concession to him or surrender to what she wanted? She had been so adept at deceiving him; could she possibly have deceived herself as well? He would never know. She would never allow honesty between them. It was far too dangerous. Nottingham bolted from the chair to unsteady feet. He knew he was drunk, for only drunkenness would have permitted him the rationalization for such fantasy. One kiss, he

told himself. He would have that. And if she used the occasion only to disembowel him with his own dagger--well, at least it would put an end to this miserable wanting. He threw open the door to his chamber and brushed past his sentry, waving aside an offer to summon a guard to accompany him, and did not slow his pace until he arrived at her door. This was the way he should have dealt with her from the beginning, by breaking her biggest lie of all--that she did not want him as much as he wanted her. The guard straightened to a ramrod posture and stifled a yawn. "Step aside." Nottingham grabbed the ring of keys at the soldier's waist and opened the door himself. "I'll not be disturbed," he said, shoving the keys back into the soldier's hand. He snatched the flambeau lighting the doorway from its wall bracket and held it in front of him as he entered the room. Undulating streaks of orange and yellow wove through the blackness, illuminating herbs hanging overhead, the straight rows of flasks and bowls and vials in her cupboard. His fist tightened around the torch and he held it aloft, searching for, finding the door to her sleeping chamber. He pushed it inward and froze, breath clotting in his lungs. She had not wakened at his intrusion, though she moaned softly and stirred restlessly in the bed, and he stood motionless lest a movement, a single breath, rouse her further. Sienna hair, fiery in the torchlight spread across the pillows and spilled over the side of the bed like a stream of molten copper. Shadows of black and bronze danced across her face, smudging crescents of dark lashes along her cheeks, gleaming off full, slightly parted lips. Her arms and legs were bare, dusky gold, tangled in knotted bedclothes that left her breasts uncovered save for the wavering cloak of darkness that fell, then was dispelled by the flame. In that instant, he did not regret coming, did not care if she knew him for who he was and called him fool for desiring her. He carved the sight of her into his mind, and vowed to know she desired him as well.

Falta Chapter 11 There. He had proved it. He waited for the small contractions he felt to fade, then slipped his hand from her and untangled himself from her thighs. The conquest should have delighted him, for what thrill was equal to bringing about desire in a woman who at first refused him? Desire and fulfillment. For once, she was speechless. None of her vocal repudiations or claims to loathe him or threats to take his life while he slept. Nothing but the faint quivering of spent passion.

He lay beside her, curling his body around hers, but as she turned her head away from him, he spied the silver tracery of tears gleaming on her cheeks. He had not hurt her-Christ, he swore he had not--unless they were tears of defeat. Had it pained her to surrender to so brief a moment of ecstasy? Was it anything compared to the ache he felt now? His body screamed out for some reciprocal touch, to find desperately needed release, and now he doubted he would ever have her, or if he did, that he would have her enough. Perhaps she cried from some imagined betrayal on her part. If he had bedded Locksley's woman-Realization sank heavily into him. Of course. He should have known, should have remembered to whom she belonged. He should have been pleased to have her, when Locksley could not, but to bed another's woman was cowardly revenge. Guy's game. Not his. He could not explain the emptiness he felt. Her body still radiated the heat of lovemaking, and although she'd turned away, the curves of her back and buttocks nestled close against him, making arousal painful. Damn! Finally he had bested the woman! Where was his gain, the spoils of victory? The hollow feeling in his belly sickened him. He had wanted her desire, and taken it, stolen it, ripped it from her. No better than a thief. "Will you not look at me, Thea?" He lifted her hair, damp against her neck, and pressed a kiss against heated flesh. Her shoulders shook with silent sobbing, and he circled her with his arms. For the first time, he wished that his body did not announce his need of her so blatantly, that when he cradled her close, there would be gentleness in him with which to soothe her, not the brazen display of arousal that refused to retreat. He shifted positions, hoping to disguise the fact that he was left unsatisfied. He wanted no more of threats or intimidation, not even enticement. Yet while he commanded her body, he could not command his own. Even the slight movement he intended to spare her sent a shudder through her. Nottingham tried to imagine how she felt, not the fevered delirium of moments ago--she had fought even that--but the uncertainty, not knowing when he would take her, certain he would, that he must. He guessed her shudder to be fear, or worse, revulsion, and could not force himself upon her now. So he lay still and said nothing, and held her. Her skin was warm and moist against his, where they were not separated by the tangle of clothes and linen; the air was fragrant with the scent of her. He waited as her breath evened out and slowed, every muscle he possessed rigid with control. Restraint had cost him, and his body trembled as it struggled to find the completion he denied himself. Surely she felt the tension he could not hide. She pushed herself away from him, raising herself on arms that still shook with the aftermath of exertion.

"You will not take me again," she warned. "I did not take you at all." "Belabor the language, Sheriff. It is what you did, and against my will." Not the response he expected, but the cold truth of accusation. It angered him as none of her other protests had. "You did not know your own will--" "That is codswallop!" "And I took nothing. I gave you--" "Forced upon me," she corrected him. She wrenched away and scrambled to the far end of the bed, gathering twisted bedclothes about her. "And it was nothing I wanted. Nothing! Do you hear?" His head sagged against his chest; one hand gripped the pelt of sleeping fur. He let her hatred reverberate off the chamber walls, off the hollow space within him, fitting punishment. The bed shifted slightly as she stood, and he winced, the rejection salt to the wound of his need. From habit alone, his mind scrambled with a ready barrage of other options. He could take her still--should. He was stronger, more powerful, and he had not begun this venture to sate her while leaving his own needs unmet. Damn her! If she thought the feelings he'd awakened in her were some sort of atrocity, then let her know what it truly meant to be 'taken.' He would throw the word in her face while his body rammed its harsh meaning into her-Lids closed. The thoughts receded into the dark, shadowy recesses from which they emerged. At any other time he would have. With another woman. With any other woman. He waited, half expecting more diatribe vented in his direction. When it did not come, he opened his eyes. She had pulled the sheets away; they lay in a white drift about her ankles. Her fingers fumbled with the laces at the side of her shift. He thought he saw them tremble, thought he saw the outline of hardened nipples beneath the gauzy fabric as she pulled it tight around her, and forced himself not to care. So she desired him, if she desired him, what of it? He had touched her with intimacy she had not expected, maybe had never known, but he had not made the slightest caress on her heart. He had wanted only a kiss, a small sign of her affection. Instead he had pushed her over the edge of some abyss and now she was fully lost to him. He should leave her. There were others. For a moment, he considered Aelwynn, the hot salve of her willing mouth around the tortured, unrelieved part of him--and the emptiness stabbed at him again. Not what he wanted, that emptiness. Far more agony than the throb of thwarted lovemaking. Did she know that emptiness? Or was that damned Locksley so full within her that there was no room for loneliness? Could she not welcome the love of a man?

Love. No, of course not. Nottingham checked himself and pushed the blunder of thought aside. She was Locksley's woman. And maybe not his alone. Maybe she also gave herself to that Little creature. That behemoth with the inappropriate name. Or Scathelock. Or the whole bleeding camp. His desire curdled within him, becoming something black and foul. Bastard outlaws! Did she really prefer that life to the protection he could give her? Had her dalliance with Locksley taken her reason so thoroughly? Had their woodland trysts claimed her affections until she had none to spare? And if so, what was Locksley's charm? Maybe she was captivated only by the secrecy of it, the danger of being with him. She would know danger, that he promised. He would raise the bounty on Locksley's head and not be satisfied until his entrails were spilled and torched and his head staked above the castle gate. He bounded from the bed, mindless of his disheveled clothes. She crouched backward into the corner, and his lips parted in a cold sardonic smile. "Do not fear. I will not ravish you, although you tempt me, woman. You do tempt me. My miserable, battered spirit longs for something willing, possibly even eager. Damned if I will lay myself open only to have you batter me with your lies and your schemes and your inept designs. Damned if I will forfeit all I have worked for to have a reluctant body in my bed. The castle swells with women who will gladly obey my every whim, who even find it pleasant. What an inflated price you put on your affections, that I might buy them only with my honor--" "Your honor?!" "What will it take to win you, Thea? Surely you have some purpose behind this belated refusal. You gave yourself to me because you wanted me. You satisfied yourself with me--no, do not deny it. I have felt a woman's release. Do not think me a stranger to that. No, there is some other game at play here. What is it? Want me, desire me, but deny me--for what purpose? What are you here for?" "I am your surgeon." Sarcasm dripped off her words like thick honey. "And what else?" "Nothing else." "Tomorrow the castle will say you are my bedmate." "They say it already." "Now it will be true." His tone was hostile, superior, everything he knew she had come to hate in him. "And what do you hope to buy with that privilege? His pardon? Locksley's? John Little's? Their pardons, the whole thieving, murdering lot of them? Would you trade yourself for that?" The air cracked and his head whipped to one side, the fiery imprint of her hand burning across his cheek and mouth. He felt the inside of his lip tear against his teeth and tasted the saltiness of blood.

"I am not Robin's whore. Or John's. Or yours. Or any man's that I can be bartered for like horseflesh or political favor. You got what you wanted, Sheriff. A turn in my bed. My submission to your renowned skills in seduction. Do you not think I've been pleasured by a man before like--like--in that way? What I gave you--what you took from me--it came with no price, for I want nothing from you, have wanted nothing from you since the beginning, ever, except freedom to go." "Which you cannot have." He sucked at the split in his lip and swallowed bitterly. "If I plague you so, release me! If I am such a burden you can do naught now but speak to me in anger--" "When have I not spoken to you in anger, woman, save those mewling endearments? And those I regret more than you know. At least anger is the truth." Her face drained of color, as if he had laid a hand to her, and he hated himself for causing that. Hated the choler that poured from him. Her words were but a whisper, as if she spoke them to herself. "Then, truly, I cannot leave." She lifted her chin to him and squared her shoulders, and the gesture pierced him more surely than any spiteful outburst. When she spoke, it was with a quiet calm, her voice clear and unwavering. "If I have no hope of freedom or reprieve, I will bear that. But I beg you for theirs. They've done you no wrong this night. Your anger, whether justified or not, is at me. Leave them out of this." "So you admit it, finally." "I admit nothing." "You admit your sympathies are with them. Is that not enough? Surely you have come a long way from denying they even exist." He watched the color rise in her cheeks, saw the defiant set of her jaw and eyes, blazing like twilight sky streaked with lightning, and wanted her more than ever. "Spare them," she asked in a tone more resembling command than plea. His chest contacted around an aborted spasm of laughter, and his brow arched up in disbelief at her daring. "What little taste I had of you was not worth that. They are outlaws. Then. Now. Still. Nothing changes that. And your affiliation with them, your aid and succor to the first one of them from now henceforth, I shall consider criminal as well. Criminal and punishable." He paused and feigned a smile he did not feel. His voice dropped to a meaningful whisper. "Let the threat of gaol help you reconsider the wisdom of bartering your favor. Maybe in time I will be more amenable to the notion. Only know this, Thea: should that time arrive, I will expect more than I received tonight."

She swirled away from him and opened the door of her chamber to such a violent draft of air that the rushes eddied at her bare feet and tendrils of hair stirred like dark wisps of clouds about her face. He ached for some stinging rejoinder full of sweet venom, the transparent mask for her true feelings--ached for it now, more than he ached to be inside her. Of all he expected, silence was the least of it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. She had cost him. More than forfeiture of her body, which he had not wanted to give, more than the outlaws' pardon, which he would not give, more than she knew. For once, anger was no opiate to him. The wrath he used to cover himself, like styptic to wounds, filling every crevice where fragile feeling might have existed--none of it was enough. He left her room without looking back, and burst through the doorway into the corridor. He backhanded the guard who stood there and strode down the hall toward his chamber. Mildthryth waited at his door, her round face drawn with concern. "I have waited, my lord. There is word adrift--" He snatched the front of the old woman's tunic in his closed fist and bent low to her, hissing words in a spew of rage. "Go to her. Stay with her. Make her your lady and sleep at the foot of her bed." "My lord?" "For, by Christ, I will have the bitch. Or kill her. And I cannot tell you now which would please me more."

"I agree. He's far too interested in her," Aelwynn said in a bored tone. Gisborne favored the Sheriff's leman with a withering look. With liquid snake-like movements, he uncoiled his limbs from hers and slid from their shared furs. He rose to his feet, arched his back to dispel the tightness along his spine, and swallowed a hearty gulp of ale from the tankard on the bedside table. "You sound unconcerned," he grumbled, swiping his forearm across his dripping chin and passing the cup to the woman. Alewynn's sulfur-gold eyes flickered toward the Sheriff's cousin as she accepted the drink. He was not unappealing, she noted as she let the lukewarm beverage wash the taste of him from her mouth. His muscles were tight, corded with tension and a sinewy strength. In that, he was not unlike Nottingham, although Guy was younger and smaller by inches. Her red lips curved up as her pointed tongue licked at the brew's foam. In height, as well, she thought. Unfortunately, the lieutenant's testiness had increased tenfold of late, his physical prowess had decreased similarly, and tonight he had been too preoccupied to give more than a cursory performance. Nothing had passed between them in the last hour that had

pleasured her, and it was a rare sennight when she could not find her lust quenched by one of them. "So she's in his chamber," she replied, stroking the inside of her thigh with distracted abandon. "She's a scrawny, unwilling thing. He'll be calling for me before the night is past." "Willingness has never been one of his requirements," Gisborne fumed, irritated that at the very moment he should be reaping the satisfaction of having again bedded the Sheriff's whore, Nottingham was likely beyond caring. "You're unduly vexed tonight, Lieutenant," she purred. "One would think you envied him the little wretch." Gisborne flashed her a dangerous glare, and again Aelwynn was struck by the cousins' similar expressions: perpetual frowns, lightened only infrequently by mirthless smiles. Yet there existed such a stark contrast in coloring. Gisborne's wan complexion and watery-pale eyes were but a pallid foil for Nottingham's ebony hair and golden skin. Gisborne shared little of his cousin's magnetic intensity and none of his ambition. Even his anger was but a frail imitation of the Sheriff's tantrums. "He woos her like a love-sick pup," he complained. "And, like a pup, soon he'll exhaust himself with the game." Aelwynn squirmed among the furs, beckoning him back to her side. "He's in danger of being led astray," Gisborne pressed. "You said yourself, the runes have foretold it." "Not by that whelp. She's nothing. If you want her so badly, you have only to wait for her." "You presume to have such a hold on him?" Aelwynn's lips curled back from her teeth, a feral, self-sure grin as she trailed her nails down the length of his thighs. "Yes," she whispered. "I do." *** Sweat trickled from his forehead to his eyes despite the cold, stinging him into alertness. With effort, he lifted his head to the bleary vision of his wrists bound in leather thongs, the smear of blood like red bracelets circling raw skin. Memory and pain churned up from the black, bottomless pit where they had left him. Stifling a hopeless cry, he let his head sag back. Mistakes . . . one after another . . . all leading here to this dismal fate . . . arms stretched overhead, body swinging in slow, monotonous rhythm, feet dragging shallow

troughs in the snow. Mistake to come here . . . or was it? A sheriffdom was all he wanted. Nottinghamshire. So dearly bought. And the cost, now, far more than coin. Grief clogged in his throat. He swallowed it, mouth and tongue swollen, parched and weakened by thirst. Smoke and mist hung in the air, layered one upon the other, freezing the acrid stench of blood and burned flesh in his nostrils. Tears coursed hot and unheeded in the fine network of lines that had begun to gather about his eyes. Through chattering teeth, he forced sound into the desolate silence. A cry. A single, endless, keening wail. The rooks perched in the tree limb above him set up a refrain of caws, beating the air with their black wings as they fled toward the canopy of the forest. Bare, ice-shrouded limbs. Sherwood. January. They had left him here to die. In sleep, the Sheriff moaned, tossed his head upon the pillow, and covered the vision with an arm slung over his eyes. Dream is all, he told himself from the twilight place between sleep and waking. Only a dream. Something over and done with years ago. Never to be repeated. And yet the fragments of images dragged him under again. The darkness of oblivion battled with the stark, hoary white of the nightmare. His body, at once, remembered. The fire of the whip on his back-No! A nightmare. No more than that. Not happening now! "Not now," he mumbled, thrashing against the loops and ropes of sheets that bound him. "Yes . . . now . . ." The woman's whisper broke near his ear, warm, throaty, chasing chill away. He felt her hands pull at the twisted linens, smooth across his chest in a heated caress. The ice of his dream world melted. Pain vanished--all but the unrelieved ache she had left with him. His passionate, reluctant surgeon. That he remembered. "Thea?" he murmured drowsily. His eyes struggled to open, fighting the leaded lethargy of sleep and the temptation to give himself--sore body, weary mind--over to the deliberate strokes of strong, sure hands. A woman's fragrant heat stretched out beside him, and he moaned softly, lids sinking shut. Did he really want to wake when he could have this dream? Fingers spread wide, drawing hot stripes down his chest and belly. An ungentle touch met his straining sex, circled it with the tight promise of ecstasy, then abandoned him. He groped for her, found tautly muscled thighs spreading above him and the moist cauldron of relief hovering close. He arched up, wanting her, groaning as his shaft pressed into the heat. His hands slid up her thighs and cupped her buttocks, drawing her down. "Now, Sheriff . . ."

His lids fluttered open, then froze wide in horror. A silver blade glinted in the darkness, beginning a downward arc. Before he could move, cold steel met the base of his throat with a quick bite of pain. "Almighty Christ!" Instinctively, he jerked away. Arms flailing, he knocked the woman's hand aside, sending the dagger skidding across the rush-strewn floor. Through the glare and distortion of guttering candlelight, he grabbed what he could--coarse, brittle hair; scratchy wool tunic; a woman's wrist, tendons straining against his grip. "Guard!" He struggled to hold her, rewarded only with an ear-splitting yowl. Outside the clatter of armor rose and the yowl became a curse, punctuated by the rending of cloth. The woman wrenched away from him, hurtling headlong into the shocked sentry, still rubbing his eyes from sleep. In an instant, she bolted through the open door. "After her, fool!" The Sheriff hauled himself to his feet, drew on braies, and staggered after the departing guard. Mildthryth caught him at the doorway, her solid bulk forbidding his progress. "Out of my way, Millie! Let me have at the murdering whore!" Two hands banded his upper arms, and the maidservant pushed him back into the solar. "Keep your wits, man! She's nigh whittled your neck from your head!" He saw his own wild reflection in the woman's steady eyes. Maddened intent drew his features into a grimace of rage, and lungs labored like bellows to draw breath. The truth of her words struck late, as if time were not measured properly in the haunted hours past midnight. He felt the hot collar of blood puddling in the crook of his neck, smelled its metallic odor, touched its wet stickiness with the tips of his fingers, and only then did sensation return fully--a lancing sting; a humiliating reminder. "Did you see her? Know her? Was she one of mine? A castle woman?" "Sh-sh. Though I came as quickly as I could, I saw nothing." Nottingham raked his hand through his hair, scraped the last remnants of sleep from his face, and tried to reel in the runaway thoughts battering behind his throbbing brow. "Not--not--" "Not my lamb!" Mildthryth was adamant. "Now put those thoughts behind you." She mopped at the cut with her tunic hem and shook her gray head to dispel the accusation. "There's not so much hatred in her 'twould let her do such a thing. My lady is fast asleep." The Sheriff would have argued Mildthryth's certainty, but none of the brief flashes of memory fit his suspicion. Now he wondered how he could have been so easily fooled.

The tense, over-muscled thighs had not matched Thea's slender strength. The coarse hair shared nothing of the fine, burgundy-laced silk that tumbled to Thea's hips. The scent this other woman had left clinging to him, the ripe odor of hatred and musk and unwashed skin, bore no resemblance to Thea's delicate lavender fragrance. And more telling even that that--the sheer impossibility that Thea would ever come willingly to his bed. The ring of Gisborne's nailed boots shattered his introspection. "Cousin, the watch has been alerted, but I fear--" Nottingham guessed the truth before Gisborne finished. "She's fled." "Or hidden herself well." Gisborne strode across the chamber and retrieved the dagger. He turned the bone-handled blade over in his palm. "Crude . . . a peasant's weapon." "It would have done the job well enough." Gisborne nodded and scuffed through the rushes, following the dotted path of blood to the bed where he held up a wadded handful of scarlet-stained sheets. "Sliced you like a pig at market, did she?" The Sheriff waved Mildthryth and her solicitous attentions aside. "A scratch, Cousin. A pinprick, nothing more." Disbelief shadowed Gisborne's face, and ice-colored eyes peered down the aquiline nose with a hint of disdain. "Do you reckon her motive? Could be you left the little butcher unsatisfied?" Nottingham bounded up the steps to the sleeping alcove. "Give me that!" he said with a snarl and snatched the bloody linen from his lieutenant. "This miserable place could be crawling with assassins for the care you and your men take. Imbeciles clothed in mail, snoring to wake the dead--that's who I have guarding my door? Damn you, Guy! If your soldiers are so ungainly they can't capture a woman without tripping over their own boots, can you at least find and arrest that sonorous idiot who preferred to sleep the night away at my expense? Find him, if you can find no one else! Let the bastard see if he'll sleep as soundly hanging from irons in the dungeon." Two-handed, he shoved Gisborne on his way. The iron-banded door thudded shut. "Damn them," he swore between strident breaths. "Damn them all." Weak as jelly, he knees buckled, and he collapsed on the top step leading from the alcove. Mildthryth flew to his side, hands daubing, comforting, fluttering about like plump pigeons until he caught them between his own. "'Tis more than a scratch," she protested. "Let me call her." He wanted that. Deep in his vitals, every humor that sang in his veins cried out for that-the deft, practiced hands that would expertly stanch the flow then bandage him with soft, lingering caresses. He wanted that, and every dream he had of her taking root in his mind, in his loins.

He shook his head fiercely. How much of that dream had he ruined tonight, driven to rash action by a surfeit of wine and thwarted longing? Would she even come to him if he bade it--she, with her strong, stubborn will? Maybe all that was left to him was the nightmares. Maybe it was all he deserved. "No, Millie. You'll not say a word to her of this mishap. A scratch is all. See? The bleeding has stopped already. Praise your saints my mysterious fleet-footed lover had such poor aim." Inside, his gut swam, doubts and suspicions tossing in waves of watery fear. He quelled the sea of shredded nerves and buried deep the rising swell of unanswered questions. Looking into Mildthryth's eyes, Nottingham forced a smile of reassurance. "Go back to your mistress. Let her sleep. It's a trifling thing."

Chapter 12 Thea had not slept so soundly since coming to Nottingham. Dreams of Sherwood wrapped around her and carried her far away to a secret place, where water spilled from a high ledge over moss-carpeted rock to form a clear pool below. She stopped there after a day of gathering to bathe and rest herself before returning home. It was a summer day's ritual, reward for hard work, a simple self-indulgence to glide beneath the water's cool surface and imagine herself a woodland nymph ruling over her private sylvan paradise. Overhead, the sun filtered through a canopy of birch and oak, dappling the shaded pond with light. Leaves rustled in the halcyon breeze; birdsong and the babble of water were the only sounds. She lay back on her bed of grass and let the sun dry her skin and hair as the peaceful sounds lulled her into a drowsy state of contentment. In her sleep, she sighed and snuggled into his warmth. Her leg crossed his muscular thigh, and her hand rested squarely in the center of his chest, measuring the strong and steady thump of his heart. He would not die on his own. Thea bolted upright in bed, head swimming with the after-images of broken sleep. God, be merciful, she pleaded. The man was even in her dreams! Her heart beat erratically, and for a moment, she felt the phantom presence of his naked thigh brushing the inside of hers. At least it was only a dream. Around her, the memories of the past night were all too real. She slid back down beneath the covers, flinching as the furs grazed her sensitized flesh, reminding her of his touch. The sheets and pillows smelled of his spiced scent; even her skin and hair had soaked his fragrance from him and mingled it with her own. And if that were not enough, her shift had slipped to reveal the faint purple streak that mottled her breast. She ran her thumb along the bruise, remembering his mouth there and the strange, unfamiliar heat of his tongue seeking places Brand had never dared, or imagined.

Small salvation that she had denied him more. For a time she had wanted him, madly, without reason, and her lies that she had not seemed pitifully small and transparent. In truth, she wanted him even now. A fiery ache surged through her, ripe with the longing for fulfillment she had known last night. Her face grew warm and the heat of her blush bled furiously down her neck and through her breasts. God in heaven, who was he that his well practiced touches had been so shamefully adequate for her? And what had she become, giving herself to such unquenchable need and in the light of morning lingering over every detail? "Naught but a fool," she answered aloud. A fool who had forgotten the honest love a husband had once pledged her, who was all too willing to bask in the Sheriff's accomplished artifice. A fool given to wanton lust that erased Brand to a pale, watery image, that drew her inexorably toward Nottingham's magnetic darkness. That was the Sheriff's most significant victory. Somehow he had become less a danger to her than her own traitorous feelings. In believing him to be anything remotely human, she had forgotten everything that was important to her. Nottingham had eclipsed not only her memories of Brand, but also her vow to him to keep the people of Sherwood from harm. And if she had not lost her love for the wood and the simple folk it sheltered, she had certainly abandoned her heartfelt commitment to them by lying with their oppressor. How easily she had let herself be ruled by unreliable passion and a heart too easily softened by the Sheriff's gentler moments! It would not happen again, she determined. She cast aside the memories that had insinuated themselves in her mind and made her body tremble with forbidden longing. She had let down her guard with this man, and it simply would not happen again. It was time she made herself useful. If she were condemned to this place, she would create every opportunity to undermine him, and if he had any genuine feeling for her, which he claimed, she would use that against him. She would keep her ears open, ask the right questions, and plumb the secrets of the Sheriff's stronghold until the tyrant was exposed as the traitor she knew him to be. And if God were merciful, her renewed purpose would drive out every demon with which Nottingham sought to curse her. Robin of Locksley could not have hatched a better scheme himself if he had thought on it a sennight, and yet serendipity had given him exactly what he needed: an insider in Nottingham Castle, an intimate of the Sheriff of Nottingham, who had supposedly proven her loyalty by saving the Sheriff's life. True, Nottingham was cunning and intelligent and far too distrustful a man ever to take such a thing as loyalty for granted. She was as suspect as if she wore Lincoln green and had a quiver of arrows slung across her back. But she was careful and clever enough herself. And there was something in the Sheriff that needed to trust her, as much as she needed to seek the truth behind his charade of political servant. Thea closed her eyes, imagining with a smile the potential injury the Sheriff had invited upon himself by insisting she attend him as his personal physician. She could easily slip

an evil philter into Nottingham's favorite claret to unman him for a night, or season his soldier's evening stew with roots potent enough to ensure a dire case of flux in the fields the next morn. It would serve him right, the smug, supercilious bastard. Even more gratifying would be to hear the ever-guarded Nottingham indict himself with a slip of the tongue. If only he could learn to trust her, to take her into his confidence, as a man would with a woman he loved-No. Not loved. He was incapable of that. Opening her eyes, Thea looked around the chamber, and her will faltered. Could she possibly succeed at such a plan when she had heard nothing from the Sheriff in two weeks' time but foul-humored complaints and disconcertingly effective amorous invitations? Could she even escape this room with an armed guard at her door and an unknown number of nearby companions who would gladly assist him should she prove strong enough to bash down her door and slippery enough to give them chase down the hall? She could muster no resource save her will, but she had that in abundance at one time, and she could have it again. Nottingham was not so omnipotent that he could crush her spirit. After all, he had made two mistakes already without realizing it. The first was bringing her here to begin with; the second was insisting that she stay. A knock sounded at her door, and Thea clutched the shift to her breast. Her heart burst in loud rhythm beneath her ribs. Panic and anticipation mixed, leaving her weak and uncertain. Would he visit her again so soon? He was a determined man, but he did not seem to be a glutton for rejection. "Go away!" she called out, knowing she was not prepared for their eventual encounter. The door opened a crack and Mildthryth's kindly face peered in at her from the other side. "'Tis only me, lamb, wondering if you'd be having a bit to eat. I've brought a tray-fresh bread, still steaming--if you've an appetite for it." Thea's lids fluttered closed, and she mumbled a quick prayer of thanksgiving. Smoothing the bodice of her shift to cover the telltale mark on her breast, she gestured for the woman to come in. "You are an angel, Mildthryth, a godsend." Mildthryth thrust a well-cushioned hip against the door and backed into the room with her tempting tray. "Ah, well, surprising the sense of things that comes to me. Dear Warrin, God rest his soul, used to say I had the Sight, but 'twas only what came from living with the man for nigh a lifetime. 'Twas nothing to know he'd stayed overlong at the Trip whenever a keg was tapped fresh." She set the tray down and dusted her hands off on her tunic skirt. "Now you, lamb, I wouldn't be needing the Sight to know you didn't partake of the Sheriff's venison and drink last night, for you're nigh as headstrong as he. When you left here yesterday

evening for his chambers, I feared for the man's skin, I did, such a cold rage you were in. So you threw his dinner in his face, did you?" "Just the wine," Thea muttered. She reached for a chunk of bread, tore it in half, and offered a piece to Mildthryth. "No more than he deserved, I trow." Thea shrugged. "It was a disastrous evening, by his own admission." "Then that would explain the demon from hell I saw last night. He came crashing through the corridors, his sails full of spite, lashing out at whoever dared cross him. Such a fit of hissing and spitting I never saw, and I've seen my share. And since he came from your chamber, lamb--" Mildthryth broke off suddenly. "Did he hurt you, child?" Thea looked up, startled by the bluntness of the woman's question. Mildthryth's cherubic face had turned serious; silvery brows drew together and her eyes sobered with concern. "N-no," she stammered, even as she wondered at the different version of the same events she had related to Nottingham himself. Mildthryth nodded, but the look on her face said she was unconvinced. Her voice dropped to a whisper, and she laid a knowing hand over Thea's forearm. "What I saw last night was a man whose prudence had flown, along with his self-restraint. You needn't make small of it, if what he did was unwelcome to you." There was something in the way she looked at her that made Thea blush in a fury of honesty. She could not admit to the woman how bewildered she felt by the night's events, how she let the Sheriff's caresses and whispered phrases wipe away nearly every reservation she had. Maybe it was unnecessary. She suspected Mildthryth knew already. There didn't seem to be a sneeze in the castle she did not hear, and where the Sheriff was concerned, she seemed to know far more than most. Mildthryth picked up Thea's kirtle and tunic, shook them free of rushes, and tucked them under her arm. "Naught would please me more if he could find the solace and comfort of a woman's love," she continued, casting a thoughtful glance over her shoulder in Thea's direction, "but what has he learned of that? He has the power to command and the coin to buy. He's never needed more. Until now." She paused for a moment, and Thea felt the woman's eyes boring into her, missing nothing. "What he needs, coin would never buy," she said, "unless he could find a way barter for more civilized behavior." "Aye." It was unreserved agreement. An awkward silence fell around them, until Mildthryth reached out and took the bread away. "Come now, lamb. You're shredding crumbs all over the sheets. Maybe 'tis not food you need, but an ear to listen."

Thea studied the gentle, line-worn face. She felt an unusual kinship growing with the woman, part admiration for her thoughts and boldness in speaking them, part discomfiture that she knew so intimately the Sheriff's vices and had not carved him into tiny pieces to feed to the hounds. How was it possible to see the beast for who he was and not detest him utterly? What did Mildthryth see in him that she did not? "There's really nothing to say, Mildthryth. He did nothing more than . . . disturb me." "Well, he excels at that. Of course, if it matters, I believe he would make it up to you." "No, please, I want nothing more of him. If you've come to plead his case with me--" "Now why would I do that, lamb?" "Because you like the man, as confounding a thought as that is. And because you are his devoted servant." Mildthryth beamed a rosy smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes with secret delight. As if she could contain herself no longer, she proudly announced, "And now I am to be your servant, lady." "Mine? What need have I of a servant?" Mildthryth dashed Thea's reservations aside with a good-natured smile. "Every lady needs a maidservant." "But, Mildthryth, I am no lady." "He says you are. So you'll be needing help with your hair and gowns and such." She held up Thea's crumpled mauve kirtle with its intricately laced ribbons, and Thea released a small sigh of exasperation. Dressing was hardly a thing she needed help with before the Sheriff had seen fit to bestow upon her such complicated finery as kirtles that laced up the back, and too tightly at that. It was ironic, she thought, that having Nottingham advance her station in life only made her more dependent. And now he had conveniently sent his servant, the heartwood of the castle grapevine, to be at her side. If this was the Sheriff's atonement for last night, he was even more devious than she'd given him credit for. "Besides," Mildthryth continued, "the Sheriff did say." "Well, the Sheriff says a great many things, half of which no one should heed." "'Twouldn't do for me to be deaf to this one, lamb. He was quite stubborn about it. Said he wanted me to sleep at your feet." "Did he? Does he not trust me then?" "Doesn't trust himself is more like it."

Thea swallowed hard and felt the color rise in her cheeks. "Mildthryth-" "Don't you see? 'Tis his way of protecting you. And more than that, for you're his surgeon now, and 'tisn't fitting you be treated common. Now fuss if you want, for I know you chafe at his orders, but let him have this." She pressed her hand over Thea's shoulder, and it was that touch, solid with reassurance, more than the Sheriff's order, that ended Thea's objections. Thea covered the woman's hand with her own. "I don't think I will know what to do with a servant, but I would like a companion. This place breeds loneliness, Mildthryth. The very walls are steeped in it. I'm not use to . . . captivity, to the isolation." "There, there. 'Twill not always be so. Even the Sheriff can bend a ways. You'll see. Now I'll be fetching you a bath, lamb, and after that, 'tis time you had a turn about this place. The leech's garden is nigh as dead as the old buzzard himself, but if you lent it your hand, 'twould come back soon enough." "A herbarium?" Was it possible there was something in Nottingham Castle she was eager to see? "Do you think the Sheriff's ready to bend that much? After last night, I hardly believe him to be in the mood to extend me the privilege of wandering about the castle grounds." "The Sheriff needn't know. At least not right away. He's gone, you see." "Gone?" Thea had wondered how she would face him again, and now she was spared that, at least for a time. A curious emptiness settled in her stomach where relief should have been, making the loneliness of Nottingham Castle keener. "Aye. Twice yearly he makes a tourn of the shire, visiting 'round to hear the folks' disputes and pleas to the Crown in the hundred court. He'll be gone well a fortnight, him and the bailiff and his scribe and a dozen or so men-at-arms. He hates the times, for there are plenty who see him as corrupt. He's as likely to meet with hooting and vegetables gone foul than with the respect due his office. Still, he bears it nobly and has a shrewd eye for justice when 'tis meted out." Thea could imagine little unpleasantness the Sheriff would bear "nobly," let alone agree with his particular brand of justice. "They say he sides with the landed, or more precisely, with those that would have John Lackland on the throne in his brother's stead." "I wouldn't know, lamb." The tone seemed one more of deflection than of ignorance, and Thea pondered the extent of Mildthryth's knowledge. Surely a woman who was a veritable storehouse of information about castle goings-on and the Sheriff's personal habits would also have a grasp of other things thought to be beyond her ken. Thea reached for a piece of bread and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "Does he ever come here?" she braved at last.

"Who would that be, lamb?" "Prince John." Thea watched the woman's face go blank, then two spots of color emerged high on her puffed cheeks. "Why would you think that?" she asked. "The same way I know of anything that goes on in Nottingham Castle. Servants and soldiers talk." It was an outright lie, and Thea was surprised at the ease with which it rolled from her lips. She watched Mildthryth fidget with her tunic and felt a pang of regret that she had set upon her self-appointed task to gain information for Robin and his men with the first person to show her any kindness. Mildthryth brushed a few meager strands of gray hair off her forehead and tucked them beneath her headrail. "Well, to be sure, the prince does favor Nottingham. Likes the forest, he does, for hunting. And few but the Sheriff can match him cup for cup of ale and still be upright enough to stagger off for a night of wenching. The Sheriff seems more tolerant of Prince John's vices than most--" "Perhaps because he shares them," Thea interrupted with a wry downturn of her lips. "So they hunt and drink and deflower maidens--all alliance of nefarious spirits more than political brethren, would you say?" "The Sheriff's loyalty is to the Crown." "Aye, but which man wears the crown? Richard in prison? Or John, making sport in his brother's forest and in the chambers of his brother's castle in Nottingham?" Mildthryth's face clouded over and her lips thinned into a tight line. "He's wary of you already, lamb. If you persist in asking these questions, you'll do naught by stir his suspicions." "And you, Mildthryth? Will I stir them in you as well?" Blue eyes fixed on hers, and for a moment, Thea was certain she had gone too far, that in her question was some implicit confession she had never intended to make. She stared back, pretending at equanimity. "You're a strange one, lamb," Mildthryth said, breaking the tense string of silence between them, "thinking of kingdoms and crowns. 'Tis your own welfare you should be considering." Thea's gaze dropped to the floor. She had been warned, or admonished--she wasn't certain which. All she knew surely was that if she were going to spy for the outlaws, she had best become more skilled in her methods. After all, if she could get nothing from an aged servant, what hope did she have of learning more from Nottingham himself? "I'll go fetch your bath." Mildthryth ended the conversation with a generous touch. "Don't be taxing yourself with thoughts of thrones. Save your strength for that poor excuse of a garden. Now there are some weeds you can do something about."

The sun had risen higher and her room had begun to warm with the day's heat when she heard the lock turn on her door again. Not that a bath would be unwelcome, she thought. At least she could scrub away the scent of him, and the memories. "That will be all, kind sir." She turned toward the voice, a deep, graveled baritone, with a coarse pronunciation that was suspiciously familiar. The door closed behind a wide-girthed friar, clothed in a worn, nut-brown cassock whose cowl had been drawn fully over his head. Her eyes locked on worn sandals and the indecorous expanse of two bared, hairy legs beneath the garment's raveled edges. "If it's Mass ye're wanting, or absolution-" The outer door shut, leaving her alone with the priest. "Father?" she asked perplexed. "Nay, thank God! Just a sinner like yerself!" The friar lowered his cowl, revealing a beaming, weathered face and green eyes alight with mischief. "Holy Virgin! John? John!" Thea scrambled to her feet, her arms flung wide as she hurled herself into his solid embrace. "Sh-sh," he murmured, rough fingers tapping against her lips. "Stop yer blabbering, lass. Ye'll have the whole of Nottingham Castle down on me and my poor disguise. God's oath, Thea, I'm nigh overcome with relief at the sight of ye." She spread herself against him, hands clutching the scratchy cassock, her cheek burrowed into his chest. "If ever there were a more unlikely priest," she laughed softly, joy spilling out of her. "'Relief at the sight of you' . . . John, you just don't know!" She led him to the stone ledge and gestured for him to sit, then curled herself up beside the warm, welcome mountain of him. "Well, it isn't the dungeon, but he's got ye under lock and key. What did you do, lass? Piss him off with yer nagging ways?" "The Sheriff needs no help from me to stay in a stew," Thea said, contempt underscoring her words. "But, John, why are you here? How--? Don't you know there's a price on your head?" "And when is there not?" "I don't mean for some silly thieving you pulled off in your spare time." "Ah, you mean this pack of lies." He drew a parchment bill from beneath his friar's robe. Thea got a glimpse of laboriously penned letters and the bold flourish of script that was Nottingham's signature beneath a crude likeness of the giant's face.

John crumpled the page in his massive hand. "This be codswallop, lass. And a poor rendering, as well. Did ye ever see such a likeness? I could take flight with them ears." "You stand accused of murder, John, be it lies or truth, and Nottingham Castle is not the place to be flaunting your face for all to see. By the saints, where is your caution?" "Once I learnt where they'd taken ye, there was no keeping me in Sherwood. I though to myself: the lass has been in that God-fersaken place nigh on a fortnight and, from what I heard, in that bloody monster's bedchamber half of that. Most souls would think ye'd be in sore need to make confession of some sort or the other." "Well, I haven't murdered him. Yet." "Wasn't murder I was thinking of, lass." "John--" "So I borrowed Tuck's robes. A pitiful fit, wouldn't ye say? His gut-size were helpful a'right, but he's such a runt of a fellow. Aye, it's an ungodly sight, but what with a cart and a couple of kegs of ale, I passed right enough. Yer guards were a bit overtaken with a sampling of the monks' good brew." He turned to Thea, long index finger wagging beneath her nose. "Ye speak of caution, lass, but it's me what is walking free into this place, while ye--well, ye have fixed yerself good this time." "But how did you know I was here?" "Well, on account of the venison mostly. Will and me had gotten ourselves a deer, and there was a lovely, fat haunch of it I wanted ye to have." "A deer." "I was careful, lass. I swear. I came to yer place by night, late, past Vespers, when no one was about. Well, nearly no one. There was a few what weren't saying their prayers. Anyway, when I came to yer place, I see ye'd been overrun again." "'Overrun'? Thea frowned, confused and impatient with John's rambling tale. "Aye. Gisborne and his men, back fer more. Only this time I seen them there, going through yer house and taking things what belonged to ye, packing them up, loading yer bowls and medicines in their saddlebags, the bloody thieves. So I just lay low and watched and listened, and by their talk--well, lass, Gisborne is a muttering fool. I learnt what I needed to--that he'd taken ye, the bastard Sheriff, I mean." Thea looked away from him, her lip caught between her teeth. "He didn't . . . take me, John," she confessed. "I came, and mostly willingly." John did not answer at first. She wondered if she had stunned him with the truth, wondered if it wouldn't have been kinder to forego the truth altogether.

"Maybe ye'd best be explaining that," he said after a moment. "He was hurt," she began carefully, "the Sheriff, I mean. Wounded. By an arrow, and alone. I don't know where everyone else was--his men. Dead, he said." The words came out in an uneven mix, rushing toward some end, halting at another. She knew she wasn't making sense. Worse, she knew John had stopped listening to her fractured account and was making more sense of the feelings behind her words than she had ever wanted him to know. She gripped her shift, nails digging into the fabric. "He was alone at my door in the middle of the night and I helped him," she blurted out. "Nottingham wounded?" "Aye." "His men killed?" "That was his story." John's brows drew together beneath his furrowed forehead, and he dragged his hand through his shaggy beard. He did not speak for a long, uncomfortable pause, as if absorbing this part of the tale before asking her to continue. Thea waited, glancing uncomfortably at the door should Mildthryth appear with the promised bath. "It weren't us what did it, lass," he said finally. "God's oath, I don't think any of us even knew, and Gisborne, fer the talker he is, was silent on this part." "He's not the fool you think." When it did not appear that John would question her further, she offered the rest, quickly, giving herself no time to reconsider. "It was serious surgery, John, and Nottingham insisted on riding back the next day. I--I protested. He insisted I come with him." "The bastard does his bleeding share of insisting, don't he?" "It seemed wisest. If he died--" "Aye, lass." John nodded, his face carved in stone, a single muscle twitching beneath his whiskered jaw the only evidence of anger. "If he died . . . Damn, Thea, but ye're too bleeding soft!" He stood in a fury, brushing her aside and pacing in a series of circles until the rushes all but swirled at his feet. "So ye saved his hide and he rewarded ye with locking ye away. The man is a true and witless bastard." "He made me his surgeon." There. The last of it. John stared at her, disbelief making his honest face impossible to bear. "He did, did he now? Well, that takes it, then, don't it, lass?" "I refused, of course, for all the good it did."

"Makes no difference," he muttered, his voice growing gruff. "I'm taking ye out of here." "John--" "What did ye think, lass? That I came so charmingly dressed to pass the day with ye discussing the seven deadly sins? Not a one of which that blasted Sheriff hasn't committed in his too-long life--" "John, wait--" "Enough talking, lass. Now here is my plan. After I seen Gisborne at yer home, I fetched myself to Sherwood, told Robin what had passed with ye. I had it in mind to take those men what would come, break down the castle gates if need be to find ye, and if I could skewer that miserable beast what calls hisself Sheriff in passing--well, I would've done that, too. I do swear, they would've come--to a man, they would have. But then good sense overtook me--" "As it so rarely does," Thea added. "--And I knew our chances would be better alone. You and me, sneaking out past yer drink-sodden guards. I kept an empty barrel, and ye'll fit a'right, if ye scrunch yer arms and legs tight--" "John, listen--" "Stop blabbering, lass. Are ye that dead set against being rescued?" "John!" Her voice rose so insistently that Thea hazarded a quick glance at the door, sure to have roused the guards. "Pray will you listen a moment?" She grabbed the outlaw's cassock and tugged his attention toward her with a mighty jerk. "There's something going on here." "Right ye are, Thea, and best we be leaving while we can." "No, I mean treachery of some sort." John quirked a wiry, overgrown brow. "And what did ye expect in Nottingham's own hell? A chorus of angels?" "You don't understand. I heard it myself from the lips of some titled nitwit. Monteforte. Baron Monteforte. He as much as confessed the Sheriff has allied himself with Prince John. Not just he--but a host of other shire barons, as well--and although the Sheriff said naught to confirm it--" "Slow down, lass. What are ye saying?"

"We've long believed that Prince John wants his brother's throne. That he is gathering men about him, powerful men, landholders, with finances and fortifications and weapons to rival the king's own army. That the Sheriff himself--" Thea stopped, not realizing until she did so how tremulous her voice had become, how rapidly her heart beat. She took a breath and let it stagger out of her, slowing dispelling the image of the Sheriff's face, as graven in her mind as the Saracen scent in his chamber. "That the Sheriff is involved, too," she repeated firmly. "As we always knew." "All the more reason you need to be gone from this place," John said with the patronizing patience one reserved for small children. "But I heard it, don't you see? That and more! The Michaelmas rents he collected--and God knows what else--there's a fortune of tax money here, waiting, not for delivery to the Exchequer, but for Lackland's own purse." "Here?" "Below your very feet, John. Somewhere in the castle vaults. I know not where, exactly. This place is honeycombed with passages, and the extent of my knowledge--" She looked around at her. "Well, as you see, my travels have been somewhat restricted." "What are you saying then?" "If just stands to reason, John. If I learned so much in one brief encounter with a garrulous baron, how much more might I learn from others? The Sheriff himself, to begin with. Somehow I've gained his ear and what confidence the man has to give. And Gisborne, discretionless bastard that he is. Soldiers. Servants. Lords and ladies the Sheriff entertains. People talk, John, even in Nottingham when their lives are at stake. If I could hear more--their plans for the silver, for example--how and when and to whom it will be transported--" "Thea--" "It isn't so impossible. Think of it. One of our own here in Nottingham Castle. In a position of trust--" "Behind locked doors?" "That will change. The Sheriff's of a mind to--" She stopped. John did not need to know anything of the Sheriff's mind or his temporary lust for his surgeon. He would whisk her from Nottingham Castle this instant if he even suspected. "Sooner or later he will need me, or one of his soldiers will, or his steward will sicken, or one of his girls from the kitchen--someone--and he will call on me. All I need do is listen--" "All you need do is spy!" John corrected her with a hiss and a glower of rage. Thea clapped her hand over his mouth. He quickly tore it away. "God's bones, have they starved ye senseless? When did ye dream up such a fool idea?"

She pushed herself away and turned her back on him, arms wrapped around herself to still her own trembling. In truth, it was a devil of a plan, seeded somewhere between the Sheriff's bold use of her and the light of morning. A dark shadow of insight that became clearer with each sentence she uttered. A way she could help, finally. A way she could make a difference. A way she could make the killing stop. "It would be what Brand would do," she said softly. Behind her, she heard John swear under his breath. "Look, Thea, ye're a lass with uncommon good sense, fer all my finding fault with ye, but the Sheriff has poisoned yer mind, has got ye craving a piece of his danger. Brand wasn't the brightest lout, mind ye, but still he'd not pull such a stunt. Nor would he want his widow going off on some hare-brained scheme full of risks." Thea turned slowly and met John's eyes. "He asked me to help. At the end. He asked me--" "He was raving with fever lass, muttering nonsense--" "His last words were clear, John. His eyes sought mine, and there was no crazed madness there. With his last breath he made me promise--" "He did not make ye promise to sacrifice yer life. See here, Thea. Brand did right by us. There's no arguing that. He saw injustice and--ballocks, lass--we were his friends--most of us he'd known since he'd worn breechclouts--but he did only what he could. Fed us when he had food to give. Slipped us a pence or two. Brought us fleece her blankets. Mayhap he'd have fought alongside us if it'd come to that, if he'd lived. But I know as right as reason he'd have yer hide fer even suggesting such a notion as this spying, and mine fer not stopping ye." "No, John, listen--" "Ye listen, lass. Ye've done more than Brand ever expected. More than he would have wanted. God's oath, how was it possible the lad wed ye and bed ye and still gained no measure of yer spirit? Be that as it may, I can tell ye straight, he didn't intend his dying words to be all that ye lived by. Ye've done enough. It's time I fetched ye home." "And if I will not go?" John stared at her as if she'd lost her senses. Perhaps she had. She still shook with some strange leftover need for action that had accumulated in her bones throughout the life. The same kind of pent-up rage and need to expel it that had driven her from her cottage on more than one occasion when she needed to help. The same thrill of being alive, of having all her senses focused that she knew when she had saved someone's life-When she had cut into the Sheriff's flesh and pried the arrowhead out-She shook her head, chasing the thought away. "It's not my promise to Brand. Not completely. God knows, you are my people, too. You and Much. Cynric and Stefan and Lucan. I birthed Garrett's first-born and buried Merton's last. I stood by and watched as

Duncan's wife fed her sons instead of herself, when sickness took half of Edgar's brood, his mother, his father. I would have done anything to spare them, had I not been so helpless. Had I not been so damnably powerless to make a difference! This, John, is something I can do. A plum dropped in my lap by some fortuitous wind I dare not question." "Then I'd best question it fer ye, and I tell ye no. Ye'll not be staying. Think on it, those very people ye mentioned, left without yer care and mercy--" "Mercy? You mean my standing by why those I love waste away? While their lives are snuffed out because I can offer no weapon against hunger or poverty or injustice? Don't you see? You'd be the first to admit it, John. We cannot toil through another harvest only to let Gisborne torch our crops and trample our fields. And I'll not stand by watching another home burned and innocent people scattered to the four winds, forced to hide or swing from the gallows. If my staying here will uncover the Sheriff's secrets, or Lackland's, if we can cut short their tyranny by one week, I will have accomplished more than in four years of so-called mercy." "Thea, I cannot let you. For the love of Jesus--" "John, you could go home, to Hathersage. Much could be returned to his parents. Husbands and wives could share the same hearth again. Families could be reunited." "The Sheriff, lass, have ye fergotten him? Fer all ye think ye know him, he rules with the whip, the torch, and the hangman's noose, and he will not hesitate to rule ye the same. If he so much as suspects--" Thea smiled. "He already suspects. It is his nature. And he's done nothing." "Don't be fooled, lass. Sure the man is turned by a comely wench. He might even fancy yer healer's hands rubbing the ache from his overwrought temples, but ye'll find the gaol right enough should ye ever become more than just amusement fer the man." "I am not afraid." "Aye, well, ye should be." John plowed his fingers through his unruly frazzle of hair, and squirmed at the tight fit of the scratchy wool of the cassock at his throat. "Ye should be turned over my knee, lass, and walloped good fer even suggesting such a thing." She caught the waver of indecision in his voice. "Then it's agreed. I'm staying." John wore an expression of downtrodden loss, of grief that was nearly palpable. "I've failed ye, lass." "No, John, I've failed. Until now. And now there is a way to undo that." "And I cannot stop ye?" Thea shook her head.

"Ye took an errant arrow from the bastard," John said. "If he so much as lays a hand on ye, he'll find my aim more mortal." "Come to me, when you can, when it's safe--or send someone else--and I will pass on what I've heard." "And if ye're in danger--" "I'll send word. I promise." "And you'll stay only fer a short time, lass. A very short time." "Only as long as necessary. Until we know what is needed to put Lackland down." "And the Sheriff with him." "Aye," Thea said softly. John shook his head, capitulating, and already wearing his surrender with obvious regret. "God in His wisdom can't explain ye to me, lass. So help me, if harm comes to ye, Much'll be roasting my ballocks fer supper." He reached out to her, drew her gently against him, and swiped at her temple with a hasty kiss. "I'll be close," he whispered into her hair. "Send fer me." "I'll be fine. Somehow, John, I think the Sheriff wants me safe." He straightened, and without meeting her eyes, stepped away from her. "Then ye're in danger already, lass."

Chapter 13 In the few weeks since Thea had been confined to the castle, August had slipped away and the air outside carried the fragrant chill of autumn. She lifted her face to the breeze and let it wash over her, crisp and laden with the wild smells of the season. Slaughtering time had begun, and with it, the continual wafts of spitted pig and boar dripping succulent fat over hot coals and coiling their aromatic ribbons of smoke skyward. No matter how she craned her neck or how far she crept up on tiptoe against the wall enclosing her garden, Thea could see nothing of the goings-on. Mildthryth had maneuvered a way for her to leave her chamber--a way Thea was still not certain the Sheriff would sanction, but which the castle dwellers did not question. By tacit agreement, Thea did not test the boundaries of her newly acquired independence. For the old woman's sake, if not her own curiosity, she did not press to be a part of the activities in the bailey. She was grateful enough to be out-of-doors where the sun warmed her face and chased the castle pallor from her cheeks.

The air carried a taste of freedom as much as it did sage and savory and roasting meat, and the demands of the garden were boundless. Weeding and pruning and replanting left her bone-weary at day's end, ready for the bliss of dreamless sleep. At one time, the leech's herbarium had been an ambitious project. Wormwood, horehound, and lovage grew in profusion, along with betony, tansy, and waybroad. There was mugwort for protection, fennel, whose leaves and seeds boiled in barley water increased a mother's milk, and agrimony for drawing forth splinters. Lemon balm was flowering, clary was coming to seed, and chamomile was stealing over the gravel paths that separated the beds. Against the high stone walls, hemlock embraced blackberried deadly nightshade on one side and the twisting vines of bryony on the other. It was paradise, if an ill-kempt one, and Thea lost no time sinking to her knees beside the first raised bed to wield her trowel against the weeds. As the days passed, she measured her progress by the number of neat, rectangular beds, each containing a single species of herb, which emerged out of the chaos of the leech's neglect. At first, Mildthryth had accompanied her, chattering away at her side about the various ills of the castle folk and how the leech had cured them with a pinch of this plant or a decoction of that and a smattering of prayer and the priest's holy water for good measure. In this way, Thea learned something of the people she had been asked to tend. There was Hildreth, whose courses were forever late, and Old Darwin, whose eyesight begged for clary, and Donald, the stablehand, who had developed a craving either for warmed wine or the fennel laced through it, which he claimed soothed his rasping cough. Yet as much as the Sheriff claimed to need her skills for his people, her enforced confinement prevented her from seeking them out, and none came to her. Perhaps, she reckoned, they were not wont to place their trust in the Sheriff's new surgeon, who was no more than a village herb woman at best. Perhaps she had made enemies of them by saving him. Perhaps, as she often suspected, she was no surgeon at all, but merely the latest whore to grace the Sheriff's bed. It was the one area of castle gossip about which Mildthryth did not enlighten her. In time, her maidservant found excuses to be about other work in the castle, and Thea realized she had earned the woman's trust and gained a modicum of freedom. It was a two-edged blessing, for while she reveled in her newfound pursuit, without Mildthryth's banter to distract her, Thea's thoughts kept returning to things and to people she would have gladly left behind. There was something about the simple routine of digging the earth, of caring for her herbs, that busied her hands, but left her mind to roam. And all too often, she thought of Nottingham. It was good he had departed. Good he was not here to see what one night in his arms had done to her. And if he'd left so soon afterward, she told herself, it was nothing more than his pattern, to bear down upon her with his threats and intimidation and unsubtle physical needs, then retreat and leave her to dwell on what she could have had, but refused. Likely he was off somewhere, contemplating his next move. She had no doubt there would be one, that he would return from meting out justice to pull another trick

from his sleeve, and she would be compelled either to see through the trick or make some jaded remark about its lack of cleverness. And so the game would continue. Familiarity with his strategy should have made her immune to him. At the very least, the now-higher stakes should have made her more careful. Yet foreknowledge had been no help to her, and determination no match for Nottingham's potent seductive skill. In the end, she had been unable to dodge his amorous sleight of hand. She had found herself on her back beneath him--Mother of Christ, wanting him, begging him, letting him do things to her no one but a pagan, or a Norman, would dare dream up. If he were not sorcerer with his transparent schemes, what he had done to her body was no less than magic. She told herself it was a spell he had also cast over nearly every woman in Nottingham Castle and not a few barons' daughters, that before coming to her, he had enchanted Agatha, whose name he remembered as well as her ample attributes--and that afterwards--well, there would have been someone to give him what she had not, a nameless wench whose skirts he'd flung up in the shadow of a serpentine staircase. That was the man she needed to recall, if recall him she must. He was foul and everything she detested. Yet her mind had turned traitor in his absence, even as her body had betrayed her then. She remembered how, in her bed, he had sworn to some kind of astonishing, if minimal, celibacy, how he had lied in a rare, chivalric moment that he wanted only her. She remembered the taste of his mouth and his slender, lean-muscled weight nestled into her body, and in her most private thoughts, she remembered his hard, intrusive presence between her thighs. Worse--yes, even worse than that memory--was the abandon with which pleasure and soft moans had spilled from her at his touch. She cursed herself for a provincial fool, for being such an easy mark, for wanting him again. Was the man an alchemist that he could make her blood boil with passions she had long forgotten, or never knew? Had he drugged her with his kisses? Plowed her with his hands and mouth and sown her with such longing that she could not resist him until she filled herself with him? And when he returned, as he must-"Thea." She spun around at the sound of a male voice, hands swiping at loose hair in her face. Dirt streaked across her cheek and chin. Gisborne lounged against the garden wall, arms crossed over his chest, sagged into a posture that was as indolent as a cat grown lazy in the sun. Her heart thudded deep in her chest. With a start of alarm, she knew he'd been standing there, secretly watching her. His eyes narrowed, and an appreciative gleam darkened their flat, colorless irises as he absorbed the sight of her squatting on the ground, skirts tucked between her legs. Thea struggled to her feet, all too aware of the thin linen chainse she wore instead of her shapeless peasant kirtle and tunic, of the way perspiration dampened the vee of her bodice, revealing an immodest outline of her breasts.

"So he's let you out of your cage." Gisborne smirked and licked the corner of his full lips with his tongue. "Or are you at play only until the cat comes home?" "You're the cat's cousin," she retorted. "Why are you not with him?" "Someone must stay behind to keep watch." He shrugged with indifference. "Besides, there is something about shire justice that leaves me cold. I've told him before. It's so much simpler just to plunder the villages. They come across with their tax moneys so readily when their hovels are aflame." He shoved himself away from the wall, breaking off a stem of teasel as he went and twirling it between his fingers. "He's not taking very good care of you, is he, Thea? Leaving you unattended to plot how you might escape this shabby Eden, free to meander through the castle halls, hoping to hear something you might carry back with you?" "Carry back with me?" Disdain dripped through her words. "To Sherwood." He smiled smoothly and brushed the tufted end of the stem across his lips. "You believe he has not informed every guard between here and the castle gate that their lives are forfeit should I escape?" "I believe guards can be coaxed to look in the other direction." "And who would do this coaxing?" "I might. Perhaps." "For what price?" she asked, not because she believed him, but because it was expected of her. Another of Gisborne's games: intimidation dressed as an offer of mercy. His glance drifted from her eyes to her lips to her sweat-wrung bodice, and he sighed as if he could not be troubled explaining what was obviously clear. "For the price you paid him a sennight ago." An icy vice closed around her heart, and her overwarm memories of the Sheriff turned bitter and tainted by Gisborne's knowledge of what they had shared. She forced herself to look at the man, cold rage keeping her from flinching. "You must think me the village idiot, lieutenant, to pay the price twice for something neither you nor the Sheriff would ever allow me to have." Gisborne chuckled, the sound wry and bitter, as if he choked on his own laughter. "No, Thea. I don't underestimate your cunning. You make lying an art, weaving falsehoods with the same ease as other women weave tapestries. Truly, I admire your skill, to have snared such a man in the threads of your deceit." "Then you underestimate your cousin, Sir."

Gisborne's smile dissolved. "My cousin I know all too well. You, on the other hand, are a mystery to me. I thought that by now you would have won your freedom at any cost. I expected some dashing, heroic rescue, your outlaw consorts descending upon the castle, swooping down upon us, deflecting crossbow and sword as if by magic, risking all to return you to their woodland fold." Thea suffered the bite of his sarcasm without blinking. "An unlikely event. I am a littleknown herb woman--" "You are a liar." The accusation was cold and toneless. His frigid stare did not waver. "You were sent here by them to--" "Your cousin brought me here, my lord, and I came unwillingly." "Did you, Thea? Do you stay . . . unwillingly?" He caressed the word with import. "I stay because your offer is not enough to tempt me." "Is that it? Or could your reluctance to leave mean something more? Perhaps your errand for Locksley is not ended or--" his lips hooked into an amused smile, "--you are staying in hope the Sheriff will visit your bed again. As I said, you are a mystery, a riddle. I can only think it must be part of your scheme. After all, most wenches have had more than their fill of him in a single night, but you--" he stroked the wiry brush of teasel against her throat, "--you seem to have that peasant stamina for fighting back, for ploys like struggling and biting and scratching and writhing amidst the sheets that women intend as resistance and men take merely as enticement." He dipped the teasel into the valley of her breasts, and Thea snatched the offending herb from his hand. "I've neither time nor cause to listen to your prattle," she said and turned abruptly on her heel. His arms snaked around her, circling her ribs and crushing her backward. Her slippered feet left the ground as he lifted her against him. The hot moisture of his breath stirred the sweat-dampened tendrils of hair against her neck. "You had best listen to me, witch. I am all that stands between you and a traitor's death." Thea jerked away from him, but he grabbed her again, arms tightening around her waist. "Struggle, dearling," he murmured against her. "I favor a rowdy wench as much as he." She kicked at him helplessly, clawed at the iron-sinewed forearm that pinned her against his hard belly. "If you were to cry out, Thea, who would you cry out for? Your companions of the wood? Go ahead. Call them. You may be useful as bait if nothing else." He laughed and shifted her in his arms until she faced him. He reached up, fingers digging into her jaw as he pulled her toward him and covered her mouth with his. Thea twisted her head aside, bruising her skin as she tore herself from his grasp. His hand shot out and he recaptured her within his rough embrace.

"Or perhaps you would call for him? Are you that taken with my cousin that you cannot share yourself? Does the bastard have such a claim on you as that?" Fingers raked through her hair, pulling her head back, back, until she thought her neck would snap. He groped at the bodice of her chainse, baring her breasts, and buried his head against her. She felt the abrasion of days' old beard and his laughter, hot and rumbling, against her skin. "You noxious toad of a man! You stinking Norman cur! You whoreson bastard!" His face hovered above hers, brow arced above his milky eyes, grin pulling like a deathgrimace at his lips, revealing a sharp line of yellowed teeth. "Such a modest, virtuous creature. A noble lady with the voice of a lark. Tell me, sweeting, do you raise him with your tongue as well as your words?" "Bastard!" "Yes, the name does fit him, but does it excite him? Is it what you call out in your moment of ecstasy?" He cupped her breast in his hand, kneading it with strong, ungentle fingers. He lowered his head to her. "No!" She pushed against his face with her hands, leaving smears of dirt, dragging her nails in troughs through his flesh. With a yelp of surprise, he released her, hands flying to the red rivulets her nails had opened in his cheeks. "Damn you for the witch you are," he growled, shoving her away. Thea stumbled in the dirt, but in an instant he was over her again, eyes dark with unforgiving rage. She scrabbled backward, gravel filling her soft slippers, scraping her palms. He hauled her up by her bodice. "Must I have my men here to hold you?" He swallowed her shriek of protest with his mouth, one hand spread across the back of her skull, the other like an iron manacle trapping her wrists behind her back. He pried her lips apart with his tongue and filled her mouth again and again, forcing sobs to clog in her throat until she gagged at the depth of his plundering. Day gave way to night around her as he suffocated her with his kisses, sucking the air from her with his mouth, giving her only his foul breath in return. She sagged into a swirling vortex of gray and yellow. Only then did he release her. "Don't think to make him yours, Thea. Try as you might, your considerable charms are worth nothing compared to the prince's favor. He would as soon barter you as bed you, I'm sure." His voice came from far away, through the roar of blood pounding in her ears and the rasp of her breathing. His fingers bit into her chin as he tilted her head back. The swimming sea of vertigo parted. He leaned over her again, his hand still fisted in her bodice, and dropped his voice to a menacing whisper. "Think of it. A new plaything he can dangle before his liege lord--a spirited pagan nymph plucked out of the wild wood

for the royal bed, as fitting a Yuletide gift for the prince's appetite as the tax silver in the castle vault." "You lie--" "Do I? Can you know him as well as that?" He released her suddenly, sending her sprawling against the vine-covered wall. "How hard do you think it would be for him to part with you? A common piece of peasant trash with a coarse mouth and traitorous intentions--imagine what he stands to gain for such a small price." "Imagine your head staked above the city gate." Gisborne wheeled around, mouth agape. "Ah, Mildthryth." His features went limp with relief, and he was, at once, cool composure, inclining his head in the direction of the old servant who stood like a forbidding mountain of stone at the garden gate. His grin curved into a lopsided slice in his face. "Keeper of the cage. Beware. Your charge is loose, and sharpening her claws on the innocent citizenry of Nottingham." "Has he hurt you?" Mildthryth spoke past the lieutenant. Thea shook her head, fighting nausea, resisting the urge to humiliate herself further by turning and retching into the vines. Mildthryth turned to Gisborne. "Then leave while you still have your manhood to boast about, for I'll not be reluctant to geld you myself if you come within ten paces of her again." Gisborne's shoulders shook with silent laughter as he walked past the maidservant. "You'd deprive her of the joys of the flesh, Mildthryth, simply because no one's dared tup you lately? God spare me, but if it's a requirement, I could probably work up the appetite." Mildthryth did not bother herself with a backward glance as Gisborne sauntered from the garden. She was beside Thea in the space of a heartbeat, warm, fleshy hands prodding her for possible injury. Thea winced as Mildthryth touched her ribs and again as she laid her hand alongside her jaw where tender skin had already given way to distinct fingerprinted bruises. She shook her head at Mildthryth's look of concern and gritted her teeth as the woman helped her to stand. "He's a dreadful canker of a man," Mildthryth said, "an oozing sore, a boil, a vile mixture of phlegm and wrath, a--" "Nothing a dose of hemlock will not cure," Thea said under her breath. "'Tis not a matter to make light of. He is the Sheriff's cousin, his second in command, and while it makes not a whit of sense to me, Nottingham abides the man when any other soul would have flung him from the ramparts. Gisborne is not a man to cross, no more than the Sheriff himself."

"Gisborne is a fool." "Nay, lamb. You may think so, he may even want you to think so, but 'tis no more than a guise. That man has the cunning of a fox, sly, watchful. There's not a thing in this castle or the whole of Nottingham that escapes those eyes. And watch he does. And learn, he does that too, until there are no secrets save those he carries inside his black heart." "This is the Sheriff's trusted henchman, his devoted minion?" "Aye." Mildthryth nodded. "If there's one thing you should know, lamb, 'tis that the two of them are loyal, each to the other, tied beyond blood and inseparable in a dark way I cannot fathom. You cannot spear one but what the other bleeds." Thea shook the dirt from her chainse and removed her gravel-filled slippers. Her hands shook fiercely, and outrage prevented her from saying more. She did not care about Gisborne, did not, in fact, care about his cousin. They were cut from the same vile cloth; one filled her with revulsion as easily as the other. She clenched her jaw tightly and lifted her chin. At least Gisborne's tongue was useful for more than making her lose her wits. He had spilled one of his secrets without even realizing it, given her the first piece in the puzzle of information she could relay to Robin. Prince John was coming to Nottingham at Christmastide.

Only a few days passed before she was able to pass on what she had learned. "It's a poor disguise, John. If the guards of Nottingham Castle were half-awake or less bleary-eyed from last night's drink, you'd be on your way to the dungeon this very moment. For pity's sake, keep your cowl lifted, unless you want me to fetch a razor and give you a proper tonsure." Thea grabbed his hand and tugged him toward a more private corner of the garden, cloistered by ivy and hawthorn. She could hardly imagine the ruse he pulled to make it this far. Either the guards were taking her presence in the garden more for granted or they assumed she was sorely in need of spiritual consolation. "Ye dash my hopes, lass," John said. "Poor Friar Tuck was instructing me hours on end, hoping to lend me the proper attitude of humility." "Well then, that is why the disguise fails. Tuck has no humility to lend." She tried to smile, but the corners of her mouth quivered, and she bit into her lower lip to forestall tears. "There, lass. I told ye I'd not abandon ye." He held her at arms' length, eyes the color of seafoam gathering her in. He raised a furry, speculative brow and scratched his gingered

beard in consternation. "Is that what they're wearing in Nottingham these days? Gowns too close to the bone to be moving in and lacing what lets a man peek at yer bare skin?" Thea glanced down at the pale blue chainse and its silver-blue ribbons that laced sleeves to bodice and crisscrossed beneath her arms, down her sides, to the swell of her hips. Could it be that in the last few weeks she had stopped questioning such fashion. Suddenly she saw herself as the Sheriff saw her, as John saw her now. The outlaw's eyes glinted with a strange mixture of disapproval and unpriestly delight; Thea would've swapped every length of silk and fine linen the Sheriff had given her for the modesty of an honest, home-woven tunic. "God's blood, lass, ye're a feast fer the eyes . . . was there any eyes in the whole of Nottingham I'd trust to be feasting on ye. I've a mind to take ye right this very minute and--" "Bless me, Father?" Her splayed hand met the coarse, scratchy wool of his cassock and she warned him with a meaningful look at his own frock. "Aye," John grumbled. "Well, it's not hard to see I'm unfit fer the priesthood. No bleeding call to celibacy." "I did miss you, John," Thea admitted quietly, and knew it for truth. She took his weathered hand and brought scraped knuckles to her lips. "Then ye've reconsidered yer mission? Are ye ready to come back with me?" Thea shook her head. The giant's face mixed longing with disappointment. She watched him battle both with a frown and a gruff demeanor. "Could ye not keep yer hair covered at least?" She sank onto a stone bench and studied the fat, uncovered braid that hung over her shoulder and spilled into her blue-silk lap. For a moment she fingered the braid and the shiny ribbons woven through it, wrestling with the information she carried, knowing that, if she told him, it would be the beginning of something she could not stop. "I've heard something," she said, before she could let her doubts stop her. John folded his bulk onto the bench beside her, hovering close. "Go on." "Gisborne is a loose-tongued fool. He confirmed that the tax silver is secreted away, awaiting the arrival of Prince John." "So it's just as ye thought. Yer bleeding Sheriff has robbed what the people gave toward King Richard's ransom to put Lackland on the throne. And him beside it." "There's more. Prince John is expected to visit Nottingham at Christmas. I suppose the transfer will take place then." John's posture straightened, full of urgency at her message. "That gives us time, then."

"Time for what?" "To thwart the bastard's plan, lass." He leaned toward her, drawing her hands into his lap. "We'll start by finding the vault." Thea drew a deep breath. "The castle is riddled with passages, cellars, caves. I don't want any of you inside, especially not you, John. Priest's robe or not, if they catch you below . . . I'll do it." "Nay, lass, I can't be having that. Besides, yer guarded, such as the half-wits are." "It won't be for long. And we have time. I'll find the vault and graven the path to it in my mind. There'll be some tunnel to the outside, as well. Something like the connection that leads from the Trip, where they bring up the ale." "You cannot do this--" "Aye, John, I can. I've been slipping in and out of Sherwood under the Sheriff's nose for years. Learning the castle's underground will be no more difficult than marking a new trail through the wood or finding a shortcut from Papplewyck to Blidworth." "'Twould be too dangerous." He stopped, his expression grave. "Ye're better off not knowing. I don't want ye more involved." "I'm already involved!" "Aye, against my wishes." "Your wishes?" "Do ye not know what they do to traitors, Thea? Ye'll be drawn and quartered! This is Lackland's scheme, and he'll not go easy on ye, woman or no." "But I can do this!" "I said no! Ye don't know what ye're doing. Ye're playing at this as if it were just so much mischief, underestimating the Sheriff's menace and Lackland's determination--" "And you, John, are underestimating me." Her voice was laced with an unaccustomed sternness. "I am one of you, and you have no right to prevent me--" "I have every right! 'Twas me who promised Brand to protect ye, and I'll not see ye taking risks ye say are fer him. Thea, yer husband is dead! Ye cannot save him with yer fool spying or yer stubbornness to bring the Sheriff down single-handedly. Think, lass, what he would say to ye were he here." He reached for her, gentle eyes filled with anguish. She slapped his hands away and shoved against his chest. "Don't!" she warned him. "Don't try to change my mind. I am entitled to my own revenge!"

"Not if it kills ye! Ye are my responsibility!" Anger boiled up at the proprietary tone of his voice. "Damn you, John. Damn you to hell! Don't try to tell me what I cannot do!" She turned and ran blindly, nearly stumbling into the path of a young boy who had entered the garden and waited just inside the gate. "Would you be Mistress Aelredson?" "What?" She tried to calm her ragged breathing, tried to recover from the shock of having been seen in a loud, unruly argument with a man of the cloth. "Mistress Aelredson, the healing woman?" "Yes, child. I am." He reached up and grabbed her sleeve with small, dirty fingers. "Then you must come directly! Please, hurry. In the stable!" Frantic gray eyes pleaded with her; he jerked impatiently on her sleeve. "Come!" Thea looked back over her shoulder at John, wishing there were some way to mend the breach between them with the silence of a single look, too furious to speak whatever healing words were necessary. He had not moved from his position on the bench, and his expression was fraught with distress no priest should feel. "Thea, ye'll heed my words?" Her lips tightened along with her resolve. How could he know? Her determination to do this thing was as necessary as breath to her. If the Sheriff could not be stopped, there was no protection for her. Her betrayal of Brand would be complete. She swallowed hard in an effort to keep burning tears from falling on her cheeks. "Go with God, Father." Folding her fingers around the young boy's hand, she turned and walked with him toward the gate. "Show me, child. What has happened in the stable?" *** "You brought me here to tend a horse," she said, and not for the first time. Belief sank in slowly. "Not just any horse, Mistress. Chimera, the Sheriff's horse, who was gone and feared lost in the battle." Thea slid her leather-soled slipper a step closer and looked the monster in the eye. Black as pitch, without a marking on him, the stallion reared up on his hind legs, then thundered down, striking the earth with his hooves. Dust and straw puffed into the air around him.

She dared not glance away from the animal to the child who'd come to fetch her, babbling in breathless, imperative half-sentences, who spoke the horse's name with reverence and had elevated the ambush in Sherwood to battle status. The boy grabbed one of the twin tethers stablehands had looped about the stallion's neck and pitted his own stringy muscles against the beast's fury. "He's fair wild, Mistress, as you can see." Pride swelled the stableboy's chest where any other child would have been quaking with trepidation, where she was quaking with trepidation and no small amount of reluctance to make acquaintance with her patient. "Been this way since he showed up at the postern gate just past Nones. Won't be calmed for nothing. Donald called the priest 'cause he thought it was elves." "Elves." Thea's voice trembled. "You know, Mistress. On account of Chimera was lost in the forest." The horse shook his mighty head furiously, setting the long drape of mane to ripple like a wave of ebony silk, and without warning he reared and cut sharply to the right. The lad grimaced as the rope burned through his hand and whirled to the floor as if it had a life of its own. Before Thea's gasp had died, he dodged beneath the flashing hooves to retrieve it. A fearless, foolish lad, she thought. She would kill him herself if this crazed beast did not do it for her. The boy gripped the tether in two determined hands. "I had to come for you. They applied the usual remedy, and nothing worked." "I'm afraid to ask." "The priest sang masses over sorrel seed and put holy water to it. Then Donald took the eye of a broken needle and pricked Chimera's arse." "I see." She ventured a peek at the lad, and saw by the doubt sketched on his face that she could be no healer worth her salt if she did not know the common prescription for an elf-infected warhorse. "Please, Mistress, you must do something. With the Sheriff gone, there's no one." The stallion's raven ears angled back flat against his head; his nostrils flared, open and shut and open again like a smithy's bellows. She wondered if he could smell her fear, felt certain he could. Sleek, midnight coat overlaid powerful muscles that shimmered like a black, bottomless pool in sunlight. Beast or not, he was magnificent. He towered over her, tossing his head, hooves pawing the air, lunging this way and that seeking freedom, his neigh the piercing cry of a savage being cruelly forced into captivity. For a moment, she could do nothing more than stare at him in awe, wondering at his terrible beauty and raw force of will.

With a start, Chimera tore the tether loose from the other stablehand who held him. The man rubbed blistered palms against his thighs and swore violently. "Cursed beast! Warhorse or no, I saw we put him down before he tramples the lot of us." "No!" Thea cried without thinking. "Out of the way, wench!" he snarled. "This devil's made kindling of two of my stalls and mincemeat of my hands." "And Nottingham will do far worse than that if you harm his animal." The stablehand grunted. "He thinks the beast is dead. I think it came back, straight from hell and Satan himself!" The animal rested, gathering steam for the next assault. "He is no demon," she said quietly, her eyes still locked with the horse's. "And if he were, still he does not belong to you to dispense with at your convenience. God help you, sir, if you have overseen the Sheriff's stables and still do not know that." She stooped down, watching the horse with wary caution, and groped for the loose tether amidst the straw. Shaking fingers closed round the leather rein. "So you are Chimera, the Sheriff's warhorse. She stood and approached the animal, keenly aware of the rumble of comment from the ring of stunned onlookers. No doubt they were exchanging bets on the time of the horse's imminent retaliation and her own certain demise. Standing on her toes, she reached for the stallion's quivering muzzle and let her hand hover in the air above his nostrils, praying the horse did not decide to rear at the foreign scent. "No, he's not here," she crooned softly and dared to lay her hand on the warm velvet. The horse blew hot air into her palm. "Would that he were, Chimera, for I know naught about warhorses. You can smell it on me, I know. Perhaps we can both be a little afraid of one another." "Fool woman." "Sh-sh!" Thea ignored the voices behind her. Had they asked, she would have been in complete agreement. "Chimera, proud, Chimera," she continued, her voice low and smoky-smooth. "Be gentle for me, Chimera. I know you want him here." She did not say the rest aloud, but she thought it--thought the words and was horrified at the truth of them. She wanted him here, too. Now would not be a moment too soon. She braved a look in the boy's direction. His dirt-streaked face grinned approval from ear to ear. "Boy," she addressed the smiling lad, "what is your name?"

"Simeon, Mistress." "Well, Simeon, I have a task for you."

Chapter 14 The Sheriff held up his hand for his party to halt and squinted into the sunlit distance. Behind him, his men waited on restless mounts. He could hear the jangle of reins and mail and the flapping of pennons in the afternoon air. "Why have you stopped?" Baron Monteforte, his bloated face red with the exertion of the ride, pulled his horse up alongside the Sheriff. With the back of an ermine-trimmed sleeve, he swiped at the trickle of sweat that caught in his silver brows. "For God's sake, Sheriff, enough of your caution. At this pace, it will be nightfall before we reach Nottingham." "Caution saw you through Sherwood, dear Baron," the Sheriff replied, eyes trained on the ridge in the distance. "And there, if you'll but glance toward the last rise of hills, is the castle keep." "Where, by God? Where?" The baron leaned forward over his gray gelding, thick neck craning. The Sheriff stifled a groan. He had not been pleased to have the man accompany him back to Nottingham. For all he cared, Monteforte's business in town could be accomplished just as easily from the inn as from the castle. He chafed to think that his responsibilities in hostelry could not be so easily dismissed, even for the likes of Monteforte. God curse the day that had brought him under Monteforte's thumb, and every other land-holding idiot in Nottinghamshire. Fools, all of them, ruling the realm with coin and title instead of common sense. God, he was weary! He had been gone too long, seen too much, heard too many excuses for the lessened revenues in the Michaelmas audit. One after another, the manor lords bleated that the lambing had gone poorly in the spring or the harvest had suffered in autumn. He heard caterwauling about untimely storms and the bother of famineweakened peasants, of grain left standing in flooded fields with no hands to gather it. He listened to endless reports that the meager harvest, winnowed and milled, was of too poor quality to bring more than a pittance at the market. He had returned two runaway serfs to their masters, certain the fleet-footed villeins would bolt again if their lords weren't less free with the lash. He had settled a string of disputes between merchants who honked and bellowed and cursed each other over sums so paltry that he was less inclined to arbitrate than to grab each by the scruff of the neck and crack their dense skulls together like walnuts. And he had sentenced four to hang, the last a poxy whoremonger who had tasted his own wares with his meat dagger. He was saddle-weary and saddle-sore and had not slept in a comfortable bed in manor house or inn or abbey. The ale he drank was weak-bodied, the wine bitter, the meat

overdone and tasteless, and the wench Lord deGavnay had warming his bed upon his arrival was not a day over fourteen, nor less than four months' breeding. He sent her away without sampling her, forced to part with a piece of silver to ensure her discretion should she be tempted to tell how the Lord Sheriff of Nottingham refused to be satisfied. He would sell his soul this very day for his own feather mattress and furs, for the poorly cooked victuals from his own kitchen, for silence and no mockery of justice to dispense. For Thea to greet him at the gate, in the bailey, in his chamber--the place was unimportant save that she be there, waiting on him with but a fraction of the anticipation he felt at the thought of her. If she would welcome him home, into her arms, and raise her soft, fragrant lips to his-A fool's dream. He drew his hand into a fist and struck his thigh, driving the notion away. Then he turned in his saddle and forced a smile at Monteforte, his voice tight with pretended hospitality. "A wench to warm you before Vesper's prayers, Baron. That I promise. But for the moment, another matter." He pointed in the direction of the figure running down the hill, a black fleaspeck, unhorsed, gaining momentum and shouting unintelligibly as if the wind and the Furies themselves were at his back. "There. In the distance. If I'm not in error, that is Simeon, my stableboy." A seven-year-old posted as lookout? What had the castle become in his absence? He waited as the lad neared, heels kicking up behind him, arms flailing. "Mother of God, someone ought to take a hand to that boy," came the decided opinion of the bailiff as he struggled to control his mare, unsettled by the child's wild approach. The horses pranced nervously, skittering sideways, circling, pulling against reins at the sudden commotion. "Whatever possessed you to put him in the stable?" Monteforte grumbled. Simeon exploded into their midst, thin chest heaving. He bent double, trying to fill his lungs with air. Nottingham's lip turned down at the corner as he reined the bay back from the puffing child. "What is it, boy? Are we under seige?" A chorus of laughter erupted from the circle of soldiers and travelers. "No-n-no, my lord," the boy panted. "Then speak. Surely you have some reason for ambushing my party like a barbarian Celt."

Another round of laughter. Simeon turned his face up to the Sheriff, and Nottingham's throat tightened. Lightly tanned skin, sunburnt across the bridge of his nose, clear gray eyes wide with excitement, a shock of raven hair too willful to do more than fall across the child's forehead, overlong, and tangle in his black lashes. He had never given the lad more than a cursory glance, but suddenly he was struck by the resemblance. Damn it all! It was like looking at himself at that age--undisciplined, ruled by the unrestrained exuberance of childhood, grimy face, and the muck of the stables between bare toes. The boy reached up and laid an adoring hand on the stallion's neck. Long, sensitive fingers, broken nails encrusted with dirt. Soiled, tattered tunic. Baggy leggings, knees worn out. Like looking at himself--or a son of his. "Sir," the youthful voice piped, reed-thin like the boy himself, "'tis Chimera. He's home." The Sheriff's thoughts scattered. Numbly, his lips repeated the name. "Chimera? How could this be?" The boy shook his dark mop of hair. "I swear I don't know, my lord. But he's back. Came straight to the postern gate like he knew 'twas where he was supposed to be. And looking no worse for his absence. Lean, for sure--'twas the way with him even before-but not rib thin, and still with all his wild ways. 'Tis a proud, beautiful beast, and not a thing your surgeon can do to hold him. Broke loose from the tethers twice, he did, while I was there, and Mistress Aelredson--my lord, was there ever a surgeon more afraid of horses?--well, she calmed him for a time. Then Chimera, he made up his mind to have none of her. When I left, he and the Mistress were nigh ready to come to blows over how he nipped her skirts and played at tug-o-war till she landed on her arse in the dirt. Said he would be stew ere the evening be done, she did." "God protect Chimera from the likes of Mistress Aelredson. She has a most unforgiving bedside manner." "She sent me to watch for you, my lord, with instructions to fetch you to her as soon as you arrived. Likely she needs rescuing far worse than the horse." "Then we should go, of course." The Sheriff smiled, amusement tinting his voice. "And promptly. I can't be forever replacing surgeons." "Trouble, Sheriff?" Monteforte asked. "Not at all," Nottingham replied. It surprised him that it was not a lie. The troubles of the past fortnight melted into insignificance, and he felt filled to bursting with some vague, undefined good will, something so uncharacteristic it made his heart race. God, what a glorious day! He lifted his head and let the breeze thread through his hair. Was

there a better homecoming than a cloudless September sky, Chimera, his prodigal stallion returned to greet him-And Mistress Aelredson on her lovely arse on the stable floor? *** "By the saints, Chimera. Is it any wonder you've such a foul temper? What was your master thinking, giving you a female's name?" Thea had made progress, Nottingham noted. The horse was haltered and lapping up the last bit of apple from her flattened palm. Most of the other stablehands were back at their respective chores, with but an occasional glance in the direction of the surgeon and the animal she gentled. Donald thrust his pitchfork into a rick of hay and straightened, opening his mouth to address his newly arrived lord, but the Sheriff laid a finger aside his bearded lips, begging silence. He had not left his traveling party in the bailey and come to the stable ahead of them and on foot to have his stealth so undermined. Likely as not, he would hear of the impropriety of his unorthodox behavior over a monotonous dinner with Monteforte in the great hall tonight. For the moment, he wanted nothing more than to watch her, unobserved, to gather up a secret memory of her with which he could entertain himself during the lonely evenings ahead when she would undoubtedly revert to rejecting him. His mouth arced down, and he frowned at the vision of her. Where was the anger he had felt when he left Nottingham Castle a fortnight ago? The rage that had filled him with strength and purpose? The certainty that he would bend her to his will when he returned, no matter what determined, headstrong devices she conjured to resist him? In a flash, he recalled their last evening together, and he was stabbed with the abysmal failure of his seduction. He waited for humiliation to crawl up from his gut, but it was as absent as the rage he thought he should feel. What he felt now was not anger or strength or certainty at all, but hunger, keen and persistent, and a begrudging admiration that he woman he wanted possessed a will equal to his own. Perhaps, in some manner, surpassing it. She had never looked lovelier or more enticing. The pale blue chainse she wore made the blue of her eyes as dark as lapis lazuli by contrast. Its crinkled linen clung to her narrow waist and to the length of her arms from the lacing at her wrists to the ribbons that affixed the sleeves to the bodice. He imagined what it would be like to unthread those laces, one by one, and let the garment sag off the curves of her shoulders and upper arms, imagined loosening the ribbons at her sides and slipping his hands through to caress the small of her back where it flared into the lush swell of her buttocks. There was nothing of the noblewomen he knew in Thea, no cold hauteur or pretense of demure innocence, certainly not the soft, flaccid form of most pampered titled ladies. She was strong from work, a peasant tigress disguised in a noble's delicate gown, as much a pretender to nobility as he.

He noted the streaks of dirt ground into the back of her blue skirt and dusted over her cheeks, almost obscuring the heightened blush of her exhaustive struggle with his stallion. Bits of hay clung to her gown and to the untidy lengths of braid that were unraveling down her back. He could not prevent the grin that spread across his lips or the feeling of exhilaration that washed through him. "A woman's name," she was cooing to the animal, smoothing her hand over the destrier's satin mane, "and that of a she-monster, too. Had he gone simple, do you think?" "Not simple, my lady. The Sheriff was but a poor student of Greek." He stepped behind her, his hands gentle on her waist. He heard her sharp intake of breath, felt her ribs expand and fall beneath his hands. She turned in his arms, then, he could see by her expression, was reluctant she had. "Well met, Thea," he murmured. Her eyes darted to his, deep twilight blue, open wide with surprise at his return, and in an instant he saw she was replaying the same passion-filled evening he had called to mind just moments earlier. Her cheeks darkened and she looked away, a thick fringe of inky lashes hiding the truth of her feelings. The memory stood between them, its presence solid, disturbing. She placed her slim hand against his chest, and although he longed to cover it with his own and press it to him, he knew she meant no welcome by the gesture. Her affections had not turned to him in his absence. She was as cool and as careful and as icily distant as she had ever pretended to be before. His hands dropped from her waist and he stepped away from her. He cursed himself for the fool he had been, calling her a healer, forgetting too easily the wounds she could make. "You've done well by my horse," he said, clearing the unbidden gruffness from his voice. "Yes--yes, of course," she stammered, and turned back to the animal. God in heaven, what had he done that she would not even look at him? "And you are quite right. The name was an oversight. I thought it rather appropriate at first, Chimera being the product of breeding between Flemish stock and an Arabian brought back from Crusade." He shrugged, arms stretched out, palms up. "My Latin is not as polished either, if you must know. And by the time I realized my mistake, Chimera's training was far too advanced to change his name at whim. I decided it was a fortuitous error, that perhaps being forced to bear a woman's name might provoke him in some way, make him more battle-hungry." He watched her battle with herself, first peeking over her shoulder at him, then turning around, hesitant and full of disbelief, if not at his story then at the benign neutrality he had adopted when both she and he knew he wanted nothing more than to take her to the hay-strewn stable floor and finish what he had started a fortnight ago.

That he did not surprised him. He was not generally given to so much self-restraint. It seemed to surprise Thea as well. His body grew warm under her wavering look as boldness waged war with distrust, and won out at last. He held the posture, arms outstretched, a plea for truce if nothing more. "Well, provoke him you did--you have--someone did." She stumbled over herself to speak, and he smiled, feeling that if she hadn't forgiven him the trespasses of their last meeting, she had at least put his sins aside to consider later. "He was nigh impossible to calm. Donald and Ned had a time of it." "Donald and Ned?" "Your stablehands," she reminded him. "Are you always this bad with names?" Only effort contained his broad smile from breaking into laughter. "No, of course not. Donald, Ned--" And because she expected it, because he knew she was remembering it, he bent close to her and whispered, "Agatha. You see, I do remember." She glared at him, her eyes fiery blue with some silent vindictive oath she longed to fling at him. Ah, the drought of indifference was over. And maybe she had forgiven him, at that. "Chimera went wild the moment the tethers went round his neck. Had a mind to trample us all," one of the stablehands interjected. "Till the Mistress crooned at him." The Sheriff's brow winged into the black comma of hair falling across his forehead. His eyes never left Thea's. "Crooned to him?" "Oh, aye, my lord. Whispered sweet words to him like he was a babe. Or a lover." "Indeed?" His voice lowered; his next words were for her ears only. "I would not have guessed you capable of it. Was this before or after he put you on your arse?" Her cheeks were bloodstained, and the bridge of her nose. A slight victory, for she blushed easily. Beautifully. And now he wanted her more than ever. "Your stablehand is too free with his comments," she said, turning her back on him again. "And Simeon, as well. I would expect a mount of yours to be wild and headstrong." "Yes, Thea," he whispered against the crook of her neck. "So would I." He ducked beneath the halter, missing the jab of her elbow directed at his ribs, and came up to the horse, dropping his gloves in the hay as he went. He stroked the stallion's muzzle and met him forehead to forehead. "Chimera, you old ghost. I thought you were lost to me."

The black returned the affection. Nottingham felt the warm moisture of the horse's breath against his bearded cheek. "Where on God's earth have you been? Were you taken, you miserable beast? Or did you run off because the arrows were flying a little too thick for your blood?" He stopped, and his brow wrinkled as he looked over to Thea. "I was certain he was cut from beneath me during the ambush." "He was injured, my lord. Here." Her hand slid from the stallion's withers to his flank where a furrow through the horse's pelt had healed. "Do you remember this?" The Sheriff's hand smoothed over the thick scarring. "Before I was struck, I thought I saw him take an arrow, but in all the mayhem . . . ." There was so much he hadn't seen, so much he still did not know about that day. Far easier to blame the outlaws--with castle weaponry--than to live without answers as he had these past weeks. His fingertips brushed against Thea's; the warmth and texture of her touch suffused him in a fireflash of remembered sensation. The disaster in Sherwood seemed very far away. "It appears the arrow but grazed him, my lord," Thea said. Nottingham noted with satisfaction that she did not move her hand. She glanced at him, dark lashes veiling her eyes, her expression deep and unreadable. "Fortune smiled on Chimera." The two started at the young boy's voice. Thea snatched her hand away, fist balled in the protective folds of her skirt. "Simeon." Nottingham straightened and cleared his throat, forcing away his private reverie with a slap to Chimera's rump. A cloud of dust powdered his hand. "He wants a thorough grooming, wouldn't you say? See to it, lad, and the bay is yours." He passed the halter to the boy. "The warhorse you rode in on, my lord?" "The same." The Sheriff grinned at the stableboy's stark disbelief. He could almost see the happiness that sprang up within the child, bubbling from the same well of excitement that lit his eyes. On impulse, Nottingham ruffled the child's raven hair and closed his hand over the boy's small shoulder. "And you must tell me all you know about Chimera's return. About your decision to fetch Mistress Aelredson. And what exactly she did to soothe the beast." Simeon needed no further prompting. He drew a deep breath and began. "Well, we thought it was elves at first, because Sherwood if full of them and on account of Chimera being gone so long. And there was an evil moon whilst he was out there. But Mistress Aelredson--I'm not sure, my lord, but it doesn't seem she's much belief in elves, or much knowledge of them, or maybe she's afraid of them as much as she is of horses . . . ."

Nottingham let the boy's babble drone in the background as his concentration drifted across the lad's dark, scraggly locks to Thea. She watched the child, a gentle smile tugging at her lips. Half hidden in the silvery blue of her skirts, her fingertips rubbed against each other where they had touched his.

Guy of Gisborne stifled a groan, rolled his eyes heavenward, and prayed silently for deliverance. He had spent an interminable evening cosseting that visiting clod of a baron, pouring ale down his bottomless gullet to placate him only to have Monteforte pontificate more loudly on the Sheriff's inexcusable tardiness with each hardy belch. Throughout dinner, Gisborne had granted the baron far more deference than he was generally wont to bestow, nodding and shrugging with diplomacy he had dredged up from some unknown source. Impatience roiled first at his cousin's delay, then, as the night wore on and the Sheriff did not appear, at the audacity of his cousin's absence. Where was the bastard? he wondered. Or did the High Sheriff, as Gisborne was beginning to suspect, intend to foist Monteforte and his tedious complaints off on his lieutenant? Damn, Monteforte was a whining boor, but his pockets were deep and thickly lined with silver, and Wythestead was an estate of no small reckoning. Only Huntingdon eclipsed it in wealth and the strength of its fortification, but Huntingdon's earl was solidly given to the imprisoned Richard. Nottingham could ill afford to lose Monteforte's support through negligence and a preference for solitude. Gisborne waited until Monteforte's demands were thick with the slurred speech of drink and his own skin itched with the need to be gone. Voice camouflaged by the discordant strains of a lute, he managed a terse aside to Aelwynn to see to Monteforte and his endless string of requests. Turning a blandly smiling face to the baron with an unctuous apology, he begged leave to see what matter of urgency detained the Sheriff. Monteforte opened his mouth to protest, but Gisborne placed Aelwynn's narrow hand in the baron's bejeweled paw and closed his sausage-like fingers around hers with a meaningful smile, laden with silent permission. For the first time that evening, Monteforte allowed a grin to cross his beefy face. Ignoring Aelwynn's glare, Gisborne bowed low to the baron and retreated toward the hallway, rage returning, steaming through his controlled demeanor, until his angry stride ate up the length of the passage to his cousin's solar. "Let me pass!" he demanded of the guard posted at the entrance to the Sheriff's quarters, stiff, outthrust arm shoving the sentry aside before he had the chance to obey. The heavy iron-banded door to his cousin's chamber banged inward with a furious racket. Inside the room, the Sheriff glanced up from the manservant who was displaying a choice of several tunics for Nottingham's consideration.

"Guy," he acknowledged, one slightly lifted brow conveying more displeasure than surprise at the intrusion. "Could your report not wait?" Nottingham slid his hand across the luxurious silk of an ebony tunic whose sleeves and deeply slashed throat were edged in purple embroidery. "This one." He flicked his fingers against the chosen garment and held out his arms while the servant draped it over him. "It has waited," Guy snarled, although already the strength of his anger was evaporating, his confidence mysteriously draining toward depletion. "I've come to--to make complaint," he faltered to a finish. How did Nottingham do it? Gisborne wondered. What was the power of the man that the Sheriff could strip him of all potency with only the dismissive ennui in his voice? Accord him no more importance than the selection of evening wear? Maybe less. "Ah, Monteforte is it?" the Sheriff said, small grin of sympathy playing about his bearded lips. "The least of it, although, true, the jackass has brayed his offense at your tardiness with more regularity than the chapel chimes the hour for prayer." "A thoroughly dependable creature, is he not?" Nottingham lifted his arms away from his body as the servant circled his waist with a belt and knotted the finely tooled black leather with a slight cant low on the Sheriff's left hip. "I left him in Aelwynn's charge." "Interesting." Nottingham waved the servant away and threaded his dagger through his belt. "At least she can fend for herself," he said, inclining his head in Gisborne's direction. Gisborne saw the line of the Sheriff's stare, then his hand flew to his cheek and the forgotten parallel streaks that matched the angle of his sharp jawline. A sick feeling swam in his gut, a cross between nausea and the cold need to strike out. All the nights spent with Aelwynn between his furs, savoring the private knowledge of their illicit sharing, and it was never a secret at all. The Sheriff knew. Maybe had known all along. Gisborne searched his cousin's face for traces of anger he thought should be there, not knowing fully what to expect. Surely not the indifference smoothed over his features like a cool death mask. "This?" he asked nervously, picking at the half-healed scratches. "Not from Aelwynn, Cousin. That I swear." "Hmmph," Nottingham grunted, stomping into black, polished boots. "The other. That ill-spirited little witch you insist on keeping about. Locksley's whore. Who, by the way, was testing the latch of her cage while you were away. I caught her

wandering about the castle as if she were entitled. Taking possession of the leech's garden--" Gisborne's speech ground to a halt. Every hint of rage missing from his cousin's face before was gathered there now: brows pushed into a single, stern ledge over eyes that bored past his words and into his uneasy gut, leaving him churning with guilt and dread. He had said the wrong thing, or far too much, and defense sprang to his lips before he could think. "Damn it, Cousin. She was--" "What did you do to earn those stripes?" Nottingham demanded. "Nothing. God's blood, she was out, and your orders--your express orders were to--" "Did you harm her?" "Satan take her!" Gisborne swore. "She's a foul-tempered vixen with treachery on her mind!" "Did you harm her?" "She's a woman--a serf!" Nottingham drew a long, even breath, and Gisborne shuddered as the icy control he knew so well slipped across the Sheriff's face. Tension strained in the corded sinews of his neck, his eyes narrowed to swordpoint slits, and Nottingham's voice dropped to a whisper like sharp-edged steel. "No serf, Cousin," he said. "Though her holding is small, it is more than you or I can claim." "She is your serf," Gisborne spat out. "She is mine." Gisborne heard the blatant possessiveness in the Sheriff's statement and the cold surety of his voice. His rebuttal stammered to silence on his lips. This was different. Nottingham was different. No longer the comrade of his youth with whom he'd shared a long line of serving wenches on the deGisborne estate and, later, tales of comparison and boasts of prowess, stretched tall as their youthful pride. Not even the man he thought the youth had become, who sought women for what they could give him and nothing more, who indulged his carnal appetite fully and frequently and without the entanglement of feeling, who would never allow a mere woman to undermine the precision with which he'd plotted his ascension to power. Gisborne looked at his cousin as if the man before him were suddenly a stranger, a changeling whom gentle sentiment had put in place of the true Sheriff. Then he swore, succinctly, violently. "You are more than taken with her," Gisborne charged, anger distorting his full-lipped mouth into a predatory leer. Even so, it seemed a surfeit of words.

Nottingham said nothing, but returned his stare with eyes like burning pitch, incriminating in their silent intensity. "Do you not see the trouble here?" Gisborne persisted. "I see, Cousin, what I think you prefer I did not--that you harbor your own ill-seeded fascination with her. It will cease." The Sheriff's words were meted out with the same slow gravity with which Gisborne had heard him pass sentence in his courts. "Cousin, it is not as you think." "It is exactly as I think." Gisborne hissed in a breath and held it, groping for some conciliatory response that eluded him. Nothing came, not apology or resignation or plea for pardon. He expelled the breath sharply. "Very well," he said in a tone that was neither admission nor denial. "You will leave this one . . . to me." "As you wish." Gisborne drew a taut smile over lips that rage had whitened just moments before and turned to pour a goblet of much-needed drink. "Too vicious for my blood anyway." He shrugged, turned, and extended a second cup to the Sheriff with a broken cough of laughter. "Mind your back, Cousin, for by my word, her intentions are traitorous." "And yours, Guy?" Gisborne swallowed hard, the wine hitting the back of his throat with an acrid jolt. "Mine are as base and self-serving as ever," he replied. "To do your bidding. To report what I see and know to be truth. To help you replace that piddling Crusader king who cannot take Jerusalem or make it back to England safely without landing in a foreign dungeon. To be at your side when Prince John is crowned king and summons you to court for your just reward." Gisborne's mouth wavered, then turned up in an oily imitation of a smile. "That is the way of it, Cousin, is it not? Nothing has changed?" The Sheriff swirled the wine in his cup before drinking deeply. "No, Guy," he answered as he put down his cup. "Nothing has changed." Gisborne nodded, feeling uncertainty creep up from his vitals despite his cousin's reassurance. Something he'd felt in the silence of the Sheriff's pause spoke louder than words. Something had changed. Perhaps everything. And if it had, there was only one reason. She had done it. Damn the wench and her witching ways! He had suspected her wrongly, certain she was sent to spy, to ferret out details of the Sheriff's covert alliance with the king's brother. And well she may have done that, in between her liaisons with the Sheriff.

But that was just the half of it. As a spy, she posed little danger. A spy he could catch, accuse--and hang. What could he do with a woman who stole into the Sheriff's heart and sapped his will and purpose? What could he do when Nottingham himself did not suspect how thoroughly she led him astray? "She is a sly one," Gisborne ventured, not altogether sure it was wise to criticize his cousin's latest distraction. "Comely enough, it is true, but heed where her lies have led you. She may stiffen your manhood, but she softens your resolve." He braved Nottingham's glance of censure, forced himself not to flinch beneath the condemning scrutiny in the Sheriff's granite eyes. "Monteforte awaits," he added mildly, head tilted toward the door. Nottingham's fingers toyed with the hilt of his dagger, and Gisborne felt his stare grow weighty, dangerous. "Do not presume to reproach me, Cousin," the Sheriff said. "I am not fooled for a moment into thinking you are loyal to me out of principle. You care nothing for England's rule, for this shire, I daresay, nothing for me, but that your loyalty earns you something. Position or title or riches . . . or merely my cast-off woman to whore for you. I have kept you only because you are useful--" "You have kept me because I know. Because I alone know what Sherwood is to you. Because I know your need for vengeance, and your reason. Because, Cousin, I know you." "You know me not at all." The words shot out without warning, striking Gisborne with the impact of a well-aimed lance. "Does she?" he retaliated. He thought he saw the Sheriff wince, thought he saw a slight shadow of defeat darken his face and cloud his eyes with remembered pain. And then it was gone. Quickly. As if there had never been more to his expression than coal black eyes burning out of an icecarved face. It was how he had looked then, that wintry January day when Sherwood had bested him, when the forest had robbed him of all save hatred. Gisborne swallowed hard, suddenly afraid, for he knew how easily the hatred transformed itself into vengeful purpose. He had no wish to find Nottingham's merciless wrath turned on him, surely not on account of a forest peasant with nothing but artless lies to commend her. The Sheriff would tire of her. He always did. Or the little fool would make a false step and trap herself in her own web of deceit. It would happen. It must. *** "It's difficult to believe he let you go so easily." Monteforte gave the hem of his disheveled tunic a jerk and realigned the buckle of his belt with a deft pat. "But then Nottingham is a man of rather indiscriminate loyalties, wouldn't you say?"

He paused long enough for the barely veiled suspicion to settle upon Aelwynn with the same sickening discomfort as his clammy hand upon her shoulder. Then he hastened to add, "I meant, of course, where his women are concerned." Aelwynn fixed him with a sour stare. True though his statement was, it was not what Monteforte meant, and she bristled. Bad enough that Nottingham had not come to her bed since bringing that peasant herb girl to the castle, now she felt forced to defend the man. After all, she had not proposed this hurried, indiscreet coupling with Monteforte for any reason but appeasement: to assure him that the Sheriff still maintained his alliance with the shire barons in rebellion against the king and that he meant no disrespect by his prolonged absence. She pulled her woolen hosen snug against her leg and let her skirts drift to the floor in a silken hiss. "The Sheriff's loyalty is given to his office," she said with regal hauteur, "to this shire, to creating order where none exists--" "And not to himself?" Aelwynn's gaze slid over the baron's stout body and came to rest on his perspirationspeckled face, still red from the efforts of their mating. "The Sheriff would only prove his diligence and hope his earnest attempts to oversee the shire would be recognized, perhaps rewarded with greater responsibility." "By whom, dear? Our captured king?" Aelwynn's voice turned to a liquid purr. "I think we both know otherwise, Baron." "Do we now?" Monteforte caught her chin between two stubby fingers and peered at her with cold scrutiny. "I may be but a whore to you, my lord, but I have seen you and de Stradley and the earl of Gamston gathered here late of an eve, speaking in hushed whispers. I am no witless thing, blind and deaf to the schemes being planned. The lot of you would see John Lackland king, would aid him in his attempt to usurp his brother's throne." "Why, my dear, that is treason!" "Aye," Aelwynn replied with cool indifference. "So it is." "You must think us fools." The baron leaned closer, and she felt the rancid heat of his breath issuing from the pair of pulpy lips. "Men often take calculated risks. Loyalty given to Richard in a German prison is--" she shrugged eloquently, "--wasted. Whereas loyalty given to John . . ." Her voice trailed off suggestively. "If power is to be gained, alliance to the prince seems a wiser wager." "The Sheriff would have more power?" "Wouldn't you? Is that not your purpose as well?"

The baron released her chin and shifted his stance uncomfortably. "And where does your loyalty lie, Aelwynn, if you have it to give?" "I care naught for who sits upon the throne--" "Or who wears the chain of office for this shire?" Aelwynn's brows drew together. "I fear I don't understand, my lord." "Oh, no, of course not," Monteforte replied. "Perhaps that was unfair. After all, the man has done so much for you. Rescued you from common servitude and laid you among the furs of his bed. Made of you--what? His concubine?" He smiled, flicking a mote of dust from his velvety sleeve. "To be sure," the baron continued, "his interest appears lagging. Why else would you be with Gisborne, or me for that matter, if he truly cared?" He sighed loudly, insincerely, Aelwynn felt. She stiffened as if slapped, defending herself with cold, proud silence. "But then he's bought you so completely--" "The Sheriff does not own me, Sir. No man does!" "Does he not, my dear?" The baron lifted a hoary brow, and Aelwynn felt the unaccustomed heat of shame on her cheeks. "You are a shrewd woman," Monteforte conceded. "If you have remained loyal to Nottingham for all that he's cast you aside, I am certain it is not without reason. Perhaps you believe your loyalty will buy you something in return. His bed, perhaps. But, nay, you want more than that. His protection then. His favor. His strength--nay! His power!" Aelwynn's eyes narrowed, and she felt the baron's insinuations strip her more thoroughly than he had in their clumsy, half-dressed grappling of moments ago. "You've shared it, tasted it, found it a heady brew, and in your own way, dear, you thirst for more. Aye, Aelwynn. As we all do." She saw quickly how useless any protest would be. For all his flaccid bulk and charmless manners, Monteforte knew the convoluted workings of her mind and the twisted hunger of her heart as if they were his own. Aelwynn covered her surprise that this man, with his beady, porcine eyes, saw her with a clarity few others possessed. "Then we are not so very unalike, Baron," she said, smiling with pretended indifference. Monteforte's bulbous lips split into an oily grin. "What would you say if I told you there is far more to be gained without him?" Aelwynn said nothing. "If it's power you want, or riches . . ." He took her hand in his, the glint of gold and rubies and lapis gleaming on his fat fingers. "There is another, Aelwynn. Someone who would pay you handsomely, who would reward you for your loyalty, when the Sheriff

has not." The ermine-trimmed sleeve slid against his knuckles; soft fur brushed her hand as she let him pull her closer. "And what would be required of me, my lord?" she asked, her voice a husky whisper. "To succeed where others have failed." "To succeed at what, dear Baron? What would you have me do?" Monteforte lifted her hand to his lips. "A small thing, really. A small, inconsequential thing . . ." Chapter 15 "Nay, my lord, nay! You'll not go in there! You charged me yourself to stay with her and keep her safe and--nay! You'll not be going in!" "Quit your shrieking, old woman. I've not come to harm her. If you knew the night I've just spent wooing Monteforte's tax money away from his purse--" "I will not let you pass, my lord. She's bathing and--" "She's awake then? Perfect!" "She's bathing, I said, ridding herself of the dust and grime she earned seeing to your wretched animal. For the sake of decency, you'll be giving her some respect and privacy." "What in God's name is amiss in this castle? I left for a tourn of the shire. I returned. Am I not still Sheriff here, or have you suddenly become pretender to my title?" Nottingham's voice rang through the rafters. "Stop flapping your jaws and puffing yourself up with that stubborn, Saxon pride, and let . . . me . . . see . . . her!" "Saints be merciful!" The door to her workroom crashed open, and with a small gasp, Thea sank to chin level in the warm water of the cask tub. At the doorway, Mildthryth had ensconced herself with features firmly set and meaty arms crossed over her ample bosom. Her maidservant's heavy jaw quivered; her lower lip thrust out in a mixture of determination and resistance. Beyond the doorway-"Ah, Thea!" The Sheriff pushed past Mildthryth's considerable barrier and bounded toward her, brimming with far too much vigor for a man who had spent more than fortnight riding across the shire dispensing justice. Behind him, Thea saw the servant he had appointed as her guard and protectress swell her chest with a breath of indignation. The round face took on the visage of an imminent storm and silvery brows thundered down over her eyes. Thea met the intrusion upon her privacy with a small sigh of irritation. "What can the two of you possibly find to squawk about before daybreak?" she asked, holding out a dripping arm for her robe. "Is someone ill?"

"I would have a word with you," the Sheriff said. "And I would have you leave," Mildthryth warned him as she snatched up Thea's shift and hurried to her side. "In private," the Sheriff added, as if he'd dismissed both Mildthryth and her adamant refusal. "Over my dead body will you remain here a moment longer, my lord, and that is the sum of it." The Sheriff's mouth tipped into a beleaguered grin. "You don't think you could call her off, do you?" Thea thought she rather liked seeing him plead. Behind the screen of Mildthryth's wide back, she rose from the water and let the maidservant pull the shift over her still-wet body. "You heard the woman," she said, peering over Mildthryth's shoulder. "In your infinite wisdom, Sheriff, you bade her stay with me and keep you out. And as one does not gainsay the orders of the Lord High Sheriff of Notting--" "Damn you. Damn you both! A fortnight away and the two of you have formed some kind of unholy alliance against me. You--" he jabbed an index finger toward Thea, "-have wheedled your way into this good woman's stout heart and asked all manner of exemptions from my orders, while you--" he turned on Mildthryth, "--you have accommodated her every misbegotten whim." "Quit your bellowing. She did no harm." "She was to stay here, Millie. Here. In this room. Until I said. Until I said." "Aye, and who would know when that might be?" "That would be now," he said with a smugness that indicated victory, even in concession. The Sheriff extended his hand toward Thea, turning it palm up in invitation. "If she would come with me." Stunned, Thea glanced from his outstretched hand to his eyes. In that instant, his fury, if it had ever been fury at all, disappeared, leaving behind an earnestness that was far more difficult to face. She clutched the shift to her too-wet breasts and thought about the puddle of water dripping from her bare feet. Without knowing why, she placed her hand in his, and the sturdy warmth of his fingers closed around her. A disarming grin flashed on his face as he lifted her hand to his lips. "Oh, nay," Mildthryth cried out. "Nay! I know what you're about, you devil, and you'll not be in here seducing my lamb with all manner of your tricks." Thea heard Mildthryth's outcry as if through a fog. Nottingham's lips grazed her knuckles, soft in contrast to the bristle of mustache that swept afterward. If it were

victory he wanted, she was certain she had given it, along with her hand, and with as little thought. "Cease your worries, Millie," the Sheriff said, staring fixedly at Thea's eyes. "I only want her to see . . . something." His voice faltered on the last word, and it seemed with effort, he dragged himself around to face the servant. "She'll be safe," he promised. Mildthryth's frown deepened momentarily, and her lips clamped down over clear misgivings. She looked from Thea to Nottingham, sizing up the situation with age-old eyes. "Well. 'twould not bring the end of the world, I suppose." Permission enough, the Sheriff drew Thea with him toward the door. "Wait! You can't be taking her without her gown! Sheriff--Sheriff! Damn the man!" The door closed over Mildthryth's ineffective lament. "She's right to be concerned, of course," the Sheriff said, bending low to let his words shiver through Thea's damp shoulder. "I am not myself this eve." "What are you then?" Thea asked, lifting her gaze to him as a challenge." "Tempted," he admitted. She laughed lightly. "Then you are more yourself than you know," she replied. "Mildthryth need not fear. I think I can offer suitable defense." "Is that necessary?" She did not answer him immediately. For the first time since he had come to her bed, they were very alone, swamped by the darkness of the corridor and the feeble light of a single torch. A fortnight had given her too long to think, to wonder about their reunion. Now, for every time she imagined how it would be, an answer existed. In the brief interval of silence between them, she knew they dwelt on common memories. Nothing remained of their angry words, the accusations flung so heatedly at one another, or the Sheriff's abrupt departure from Nottingham Castle. In an instant, she relived the touches that had awakened her and stirred her to life with a tonic more powerful than any simple she knew. Every feeling seemed etched on her face for him to see, clearly visible beneath the guttering torchlight and spew of smoke. Thea looked away. Hard enough to battle the intense darkness of his eyes, eyes that remembered how she looked without the shift now clinging to her, that remembered how she'd let him bring her to a moment of dark ecstasy. Concession and forgiveness were much more than he deserved. "You wished to show me something?"

Clearly not the answer he wanted. "Come." His expression shifted from hope to hardness, and he turned in a maelstrom of black cloak and headed down the dimly lit passageway. He started out before her and did not stop or slow his pace to ensure she stayed with him. Somehow, crazily, it never occurred to her not to follow. She gathered the trailing skirts of her gauzy shift in her arms and hurried after him through the twisting turns and steep spiraled steps that led endlessly upward. When they paused, they were crouched low underneath a mortar and timber ceiling. The Sheriff reached overhead and pushed open a trap door. "Leave us!" he ordered the sentry who was posted above. Thea could barely glimpse the soldier's booted feet and their quick retreat before the Sheriff climbed through the square passage, knelt at its edge, and offered his arm to her below. She said nothing, although her mind was a stew of unanswered questions, but locked her hand over his forearm. In one fluid movement, the Sheriff clasped her arm in the same manner and pulled her through the small, hidden portal. Her bare feet dangled over thin air, then settled on the substantial underpinning of the castle wall-walk. A few seconds passed before she could calm the onslaught of vertigo from being pulled to the top of the keep tower, the castle's highest point, easily the highest point in all the shire. The coolness of the night air helped soothe her jangled nerves, and she risked looking heavenward to the star-spangled dome of night. To the east, ebony gave way to gray, then to violet and a thin streak of rose along the horizon. The breeze stirred the soft tendrils at her forehead and cheeks, and she smoothed them back into the equally disarrayed braid that fell to her hips. When she finally looked at the Sheriff, she froze in mid-motion. For a time, there was no sound but the wind and the flapping of her loose shift, which billowed in the fading darkness like a wind-filled sail. He seemed oblivious to the sound, even to her presence. Positioned before an embrasure in the castle wall, he stood rigid and still, his knuckles planted against the stone ledge of the crenel, his head thrown back, eyes closed, sucking in deep breaths of air as if, for all the world, his soul depended on it. Presently, his shoulders lost their tension. His head slumped to his chest, then slowly lifted as he turned to her. "When last we met--no, not in the stable, but before--when I came to you--Thea--" She watched him grasp at pieces of memories, not knowing where to start. An apology? She looked at him, disbelieving, and waited. "I've asked myself over and over what I regret most. Coming to your room that eve? No, I do not regret that, nor the wanting and need that led me there. They were honest feelings; I am not ashamed of them. Pressing you, urging you when with your words

you asked me to go and with your body you begged me to stay? Even then I did not know which truth spoke louder. Damn it all, I've had the most wanton woman between my sheets only to find a blade strapped to her thigh and her heart filled more with murder than desire. And I've fought a woman's nails and teeth only to have her become like soft pudding after a kiss or two. And you--you, Thea," he accused, "could be either on any night. Damn women for the inconstant creatures they are. How was I to know?" "Because I told you." Her answer startled him, for clearly he had expected none. And then she answered his earlier questions for him as well. "You regret not taking me." He did not reply at first, but turned back toward the embrasure and stared off into the distance. "I wanted you, true. I thought if I--" He stopped and frowned. She had never seen him struggle so with words, unable to turn a phrase without wit or keen intelligence or seduction. He shook his head once, fiercely, as if driving back thoughts he could not afford to have. "No. It ended as it should have ended. As it must have ended. For I am who I am, and you are who you are . . . and his." "What?" His eyes narrowed, and Thea followed the path of his gaze beyond the walls of Nottingham and the rolling hills of the shire to the misty verdant blur of Sherwood. "Locksley's." She started to tell him he was mistaken, that he had woven this terrible suspicion into assumption and it ate away at his reason, his trust. Then the truth came to her, and she could say nothing. Not Robin's woman, but his spy--a fact more certain to hang her than any misplaced affection. "That will not change, I gather, despite my overzealous attempts to prove otherwise." Her gaze darted to his face. The arrogant tone had crept back into his voice, into his very posture, but the mask of indifference hung crookedly about his eyes. A small grimace of disappointment creased the noble forehead and played about his mustacheswathed lip. He had not stopped wanting her any more than he'd abandoned his rivalry with Robin, yet his desire had exposed in him a soft underbelly of vulnerability. He had given her the power to hurt him. She could pledge fervent devotion to Robin and the very forest floor he trod on, make much of sweet caresses that did not exist, and shove the Sheriff aside with as much revulsion as she could muster. After all, it was what he expected, was it not? But it was hardly the truth. Not now. With an uneasy breath, Thea tried to banish the feelings, and the memories, eroding her resolve. She had stayed behind to learn the man's secrets, not to succumb to his questionable charm.

"My lord," she said with care, "I cannot forget who you are, if that is what you want." "Christ, Thea! You don't know who I am!" His fist struck the stone ledge, and frustration furrowed his brow. "That night . . . a thousand mistakes. And one, among the thousand, was this: I said you knew me, that everyone knew me, by my deeds, by my misdeeds, by whatever tales their tongues were wont to wag. A careless remark, as if it meant nothing to be known by others' lies. That I regret." He exhaled heavily, a harsh sigh of resignation. "Come," he said, and beckoned her to his side with an open arm and a slight tilt of his head. "I would have you know something of me you will not hear in Edwinstowe, or even in the halls of this castle." Thea did not move at first, not trusting the man not to have foul tricks going hand-inhand with his offer of self-revelation. "Come," he asked again, his voice gentle, imploring. She stepped into the circle of his arm as he positioned her beside the opening in the wall and nodded toward the panorama of dawn cresting over the countryside. "There." They watched in silence as the edges of the sky turned from mauve to a faint shell pink, as the sun began to bleach away the night and gild the countryside with a blinding, yellow-white light. Forest and fields and far-off hamlets appeared behind the rising curtain of morning mist. Dew-covered vistas sparkled like prisms with the sun's first light. Somewhere in the distance, a rooster's crow welcomed the morn, and the low of milk cows signaled the advent of the day's work. The Sheriff did not utter another word in the moments that passed, the full scope of his attention riveted on the shire spread out below him. Fresh, moist air, fragrant with the morning's unspoiled breeze, buffeted the hair around his face and stirred the curls at his neck. Looking out over the hills, Thea felt nostalgia flood her with such profound longing that tears gathered in her eyes. How many times had she stopped after a night's gathering to watch dawn emerge from the crest of a hill, drinking in the rare interval of peace? From the castle battlements, Sherwood seemed so far away, as unreachable as a vapor-draped fairy world. Why had he brought her here, if not to see what she had lost, what doubtless she could never have again? She tried to pull away, but he laid his hand on her shoulder. The warm weight of it was solid and strangely reassuring. "Wait," he whispered, bringing the edges of his cloak around her to shelter her from the slight chill. When the sun had risen free of the earth's edge, Nottingham drew a deep breath. "I come here from time to time. When I need reminding." He said nothing further, but continued to peer into the mist-shrouded distance. "Reminding . . . of what?"

Her words jarred him from whatever secretive thoughts he harbored. The muscles along his jawline and those in the arm around her contracted as if he'd just been discovered doing or thinking something uncharacteristically benign: a brutal tyrant finding solace in the tranquil moments before dawn. He dropped the arm that circled her and the embrace melted into but a small memory, so fleeting, so tender, Thea wondered if it had truly happened. "Of responsibility you do not understand." He pushed each word, tight with control, through gritted teeth, then turned, stalked a length of the wall-walk and swirled back again. "I've been up most of the night," he confessed, "wondering what compels me to explain this to you, and still I have no answer. It was our leave-taking, I suppose, and my anger, because I have lain with you, made love to you, and even let you stitch my spilled guts back inside me, yet you know nothing of who I am. You see me only through their eyes." He jerked his dark head in the direction of the forest. "What more is there to see?" "This, Thea. This!" He flung his arm wide, encompassing the whole of the shire's topography in one mighty sweep. "The same land that brings tears of longing to your eyes and is but a burden to me." "Your land is a burden to you, my lord?" His lips turned up in a rueful half-smile, and mocking animation lit his gray eyes. "I have no land, woman," he said. "In that, you are far richer than I." The words could have sounded bitter, but did not. He leaned close and whispered into her ear. "The rumors you've heard . . . all true. I am a bastard. Oh, come now. Wipe that righteous shock off your face. Surely you've thought so yourself on one or two occasions." "It had nothing to do with your birthright, or lack of one, I assure you." "I didn't think it did." His laughter was humorless, strangled short by a look of madness and intent. "Still, I am far from what you believe me to be." He straightened to full height, flinty gaze boring into her. "I grew up in the stables. Scrawny, lice-infested, sleeping in the stalls with the horses and, if I was not religious about my chores, their leavings. Underfoot and in the way, if I were to believe what I was so often told by the stablemaster, by the lord of the manor, by his sons. Not unlike Simeon, I dare say." He did not spare her time for a reaction. Perhaps he wanted none. His voice was tense, forbidding questions. "I could have remained there forever. Spent my years foaling mares and breeding babes off some plump milkmaid of a wife. Had it not been for Guy."

"Gisborne?" Thea asked, confused. Nottingham nodded. "Puling, whey-faced runt of Lord Gisborne's litter. The last left at home. Thoroughly spoilt, with an uncanny knack for demanding this or that." "But how--?" "Surprisingly, at the age of seven, I was plucked from an obscure life amid the ordure of the stable by Lord Gisborne's own meticulous fingers and brought to the manor house. There I was looked over and questioned and, after what seemed an interminable time, told I would be staying . . . as companion to his youngest son. "Yes, I'm quite sure the whole scheme was Guy's idea--fetch the stableboy up to the manor for the little master's amusement. After all, I knew well Lord Gisborne did not countenance the fosterage of orphaned barn brats, nor did he evidence the patience for the raising up of a ward. "No matter. Even at so young an age, I had the sense to recognize a command when I heard one." Thea searched the intently drawn planes of Nottingham's face, trying with difficulty to imagine a time when the man recognized any authority save his own. "I was scoured and scrubbed clean," he continued, "dressed in clothes that were whole and untattered, and instructed to stumble through my paternosters and make confession of my innumerable sins. In time, I came to know the family as my own, at least in all but name. I even harbored the delusion that Lord Gisborne was my father, that he had sired me off one of his serving wenches, and while not willing to claim me as his son, did not want to see his progeny become nothing more than a runny-nosed boy mucking out stables." "Were you his son?" Thea asked. "I imagined it--the wealth, the prestige, the noble title affixed to my common name." The Sheriff laughed harshly. "In truth, Lord Gisborne, as I was always given occasion to learn, was not the sort to be soft-hearted about a by-blow from a night's indiscretion." For a moment, his gray eyes clouded with a vacant stare. Then he snapped back to the present, continuing his recitation as if he were indifferent to the story of his own life. "No, I was not Guy's brother, not even his cousin. I was--" He paused. "I was his friend, bought with no more than the snap of the lordling's fingers. Yet it was Guy's insistence that saved me from an otherwise bleak destiny. "We were reared together, you see. Along with Guy, I received as much of an education as was due a noble's lesser son, which is to say we were trained to fight. To wield a sword, to wear armor, to sit a horse, and to make a favorable display of ourselves in the tourneys. Occasionally, when time permitted, there was even a modicum of hopeless training in courtly behavior, writing our characters with a semi-legible hand, and ciphering enough to make certain we were not thieved at the fair.

"Lord Gisborne had in mind to seek a position for Guy, something at court that would have been properly advantageous to a landless noble." "And you?" He shrugged. "I was dispensable. I'm sure he thought Guy would find his way more easily among peers of the realm. As it was, I scraped up a living in the lists, traveling from one tournament to the next." "While Guy made his fortune pandering to nobility," Thea concluded. Nottingham hesitated. "Guy followed me, unexpectedly and against his father's wishes. I don't think Lord Gisborne ever forgave me for that." His voice trailed off, and once again his expression grew bland, as if his mind had been taken by memories he preferred not to share. "I cannot believe--" "That Guy would turn down such a fortune for the uncertain life of a knight errant?" he finished for her. "I could not believe it myself, for all that we were friends. He assumed it would be some grand adventure, of course, perhaps some method by which he could rebel against his father's carefully laid plans. Even then, he was a fool." Nottingham pressed his lips together, then braced his hands along the ledge of the parapet. "In time, we managed to get sold into the king's service. I was a fair soldier and won the king's recognition and later, for a price, this sheriffdom and permission to bring Guy along to oversee the garrison. It was the least I could do to repay him." "It was a mistake," Thea voiced softly, as if to herself. "One of my few mistakes, actually. I believed I deserved this station, that I'd earned it with years of grueling service. When I heard that I could make the office profitable if I kept my wits and discretion about me, I was still innocent and foolhardy enough to believe it. "It was, of course, a bald-faced lie. What this post did not cost me, the shire has robbed from me." He turned to her, and his hands closed over her upper arms as if he could impress his meaning into her with sheer will. "Yet Nottinghamshire is mine, still mine, mine in a sense no lord, come to land or a title by birth, can understand. I bought it with my blood and the last coin I had, and kept it by labor far harder than any string of skirmishes I might have suffered through on the Welsh border. I am fated to it, if only through some ironic twist of fortune and chance." His face was a mixture of pride and harsh determination she had not seen before--not a man who loved the land, but ravaged it because he had given himself to it, and thought it owed him something in return.

"I hardly see how it could be a burden to you then," she challenged. "One would think you would treasure it, like something precious, won by your sacrifice." He glared at her, but his fingers uncurled from around her flesh. "I know what you are thinking, what they all are thinking--that I am but another invader. You were weaned on the tales, no doubt, of a dark Norman riding about the shire on a black warhorse, imposing order with whip and torch, despoiling the land, robbing from peasant and manor lord and Church alike, extorting, bribing, taxing, and amassing a fortune equal to the Crown's own, perhaps torturing and hanging the hapless poor when boredom set it." "Is that not what you do, my lord?" He laughed heartily, the rich, unexpected sound ringing from the battlements. "My duties are somewhat wide-ranging," he conceded with a cynical smile. "King Richard's crusade required coin, his ransom even more. Somehow I must obtain the shire's quota." "By taxing the poor?" "By whatever means I must." "By force? By cruelty?" "By whatever means I must," he repeated, each word embroidered with firmness. "It is not to fill my own pockets, I assure you. Were I found failing in my obligations to the Crown, I would be cast out penniless, with no hidden cache of funds siphoned off from the Michaelmas rents, without even a custodianship from which I might eke out a marginal existence. It's not that I am more honorable than the next man, Thea, for I swear to you I am not, nor do I make pretense of it. It's simply that the Crown requires revenue from as many sources as I can possibly invent, and more from ways I have yet to dream up. There is not a farthing to spare for feathering my personal nest. "I could, perhaps, abandon this laggard shire to some other fool, make a living as a hired soldier. But I prefer to sleep out of the mud and rain. I prefer evenings spent with ale and a warm woman. I prefer the threat of a single unknown assailant to that of an army of ill-intentioned Welshmen. "Nor," he added, a lethal calmness in his eyes, "am I so easily defeated. I did not gain this post to be broken by dissident taxpayers and a few criminals on the loose. I do not command a garrison of soldiers to sit idly by, succumbing to this shire's bucolic charm. Nor do I have the authority to accuse and judge because I hesitate to pass sentence and see it carried out. Whatever rank I have, Thea, I've held because I'm bold enough to exercise the power given me. Misuse of the privilege of my office? Opportunism? Ambition? Greed? Call it what you will. Others do. The degree of my corruption has been so debated, my supposed abuses of power so exaggerated, I have lost clear accounting of my own offenses. "Perhaps this sheriffing requires more diplomatic finesse than I possess, or am wont to employ. Perhaps I would fare better with the populace were I blessed with the golden charisma of their king. No matter. In the end, Thea, it isn't necessary that my subjects love me, only that they obey me. I do--I shall do--whatever I must to that end. I will

have the tax moneys. I will have order," he swore. "A bastard's inheritance, this shire, but one I will not relinquish. It is all that I have." Thea lowered her eyes, absorbing what the Sheriff had said, wondering how much of it were true, how much was said merely for her benefit, and which portion, if not the whole of it, Nottingham had come to believe himself. The soliloquy hovered between confession and apologia, interspersed with fragments of rare insight, and yet the Sheriff had overlooked--or couldn't see--the simplest failure of his logic. "It is your very methods that lead your subjects to unrest, possibly to revolt," Thea said. "Already to revolt," he corrected her. "You are forgetting your companions of the wood." "Then hear the truth in what I say," she pleaded. "These are not unprincipled men who thieve and murder without a second thought. They're poor farmers, men who would rather be with their families, for pity's sake, than forced to an outlaw's life." The Sheriff peered at her, the storm-gray of his eyes lit from behind with a glint of success. "You've come far, Thea," he murmured dangerously. "From claiming the forest is filled with no more than ghosts, to stating the obvious--that it is teeming with fugitives. Whom you know. And now you claim to know the conscience of these rogues, as well? How refreshing to have an honest admission from you. Tell me, what methods might I employ to wrest other truths from you?" "I tell you nothing which you do not already believe to be true," she returned hotly. "I make no such claim as to the innocence of these brigands, nor do I attempt to justify their actions." "They have not the means for food, much less for taxes, yet you deny them even the right to feed their young." "I deny them--the king denies them--the right to poach deer in his forest and lay waste to the royal lands," he said with misleading mildness. "And for this--for the taking of a single deer--you would chop off a hand, a farmer's hand? How then is he meant to plow?" "It is kinder than death." "Their only crime is poverty!" "They are tax evaders," he said, temper unraveling, "inspired to larger ambitions and more serious violations of the law by your Locksley. Thieving, murdering--" "Surely imagined offenses, my lord," she dared, "'dreamed up' by an incompetent sheriff to explain to London why the tax moneys are not forthcoming." She deliberately chose his own words with which to accuse him, but in the next instant, she regretted her meager attempt at cleverness.

His face darkened, eyes iced over to reveal a cold rancor, barely contained, and when he spoke, his words were clipped, as if he could not permit himself to voice his rage. "I do not 'dream up' the figures in my scribe's ledgers," he promised her. "Ten thousand marks taken in Sherwood in the last half year alone, and that, Thea, coin intended for Richard's ransom. Several thousand more stolen from individual citizens, innocent victims of these presumed--" he stopped and cleared his throat for effect, "--farmers. And as for the taking of life, it amazes me how quickly the bloodless visage of young Hugh Monteforte has fled your memory." "I have not forgotten," she said quietly. "But Sherwood is not the source of your ills." "Damn it, Thea! Attack in Sherwood is so common my own men used it as a guise for that misbegotten attempt on my life! Who are you to deny what scores of witnesses have reported to exist? These men are cutthroats, fast becoming seasoned in the methods of the most brutal of highwaymen. Why can't they see? Their thievery only forces me to bleed their villages drier still. You make what they do sound noble. In your mind, you've vindicated their actions with half-truths and romantic notions of greenwood justice. You would make them out to be heroes and their crimes heroic deeds. You've developed some means, which escapes me, of shifting the meaning of honor, or carving nuances of degree into guilt, as if an empty belly excuses theft, as if murder should be pardonable if the murderer poor and the victim titled or wealthy." "And you see nothing of their plight," she retaliated, "or won't see, because to do so would challenge your perverted sense of right and wrong or call into question the twisted code of morality you've invented for yourself. It's easier, is it not, to cloak yourself in the assurance that you are the king's appointed authority in this shire, easier not to question your personal definition of justice too deeply, lest it prevent your enjoyment of hanging innocents from your gallows and flinging them from your castle walls, their entrails aflame." "They are felons," he said evenly, "duly convicted." "And those in your gaol?" "Awaiting the arrival of ransom, most. A common practice," he added matter-of-factly. "And are they tortured?" "What possible use would that serve?" "It would amuse you, I suppose. Relieve you, for a time, of the weighty responsibility of this sheriffdom." "Inspect the place if you like," the Sheriff said. "In fact, I insist upon it. The prisoners could well use the care of the castle physician. After all, dead bodies hardly fetch their agreed upon price." Suddenly, Thea could think of nothing. Her head pounded with the effort of arguing and having her every charge against him dismissed as if it were meaningless.

What was this fate that they could stand side-by-side enjoying the peaceful birth of a new day, but could not speak to each other without dredging up every angry difference of mind that separated them? How could she even entertain the memories of his lips on hers when those lips spewed such blind, unfeeling words? Wearily, she wiped her sleep-robbed eyes and determined she would listen no further. "This is ludicrous," she said, as much to herself as to him. "There's not a soul in Nottingham who does not believe--who does not know--that your loyalties go no further than what is good for your own hide. Do you think you fool them? Or me? You said it yourself. You have no land. This position is your only means. You would not lose it to dereliction of duty lest you find yourself without your bedfurs or your ale or your warm wench from the buttery." "So it is Agatha again." "It is not Agatha! It is a truth you will not hear!" "And you are the one to tell me?" "Someone needs to. Your precious advisers won't. Nor will your sycophant Guy or your guard or your scribe or your--" "I get the point, woman. I am lord of a court of fools, is that it?" "You are the fool, and lord of a great many fearful people." "You do not fear me, Thea. Why is that?" The question stopped her, for she had no answer. All that remained was the fiery energy between them, an energy they tossed back and forth in a dangerous game. Now the game had ended, and Thea was left holding that odd energy in the pit of her stomach where it churned up longing and denial, courage and regret. She turned away, unable to face him. "Because I am the biggest fool of all," she said. She did not elaborate, nor was there a need to. The air filled with an awful silence, and when his fingers touched the curls at the nape of her neck, she started. "You are a great many things, Thea," he said, his breath warm against her, "but you are no fool." "And you--" The accusation broke in her throat. "Yes, Thea? Who do you think I am?" He lifted her hair, planted his lips on her bared shoulder. It was a gentle kiss, small and warm and tender and not at all warranting the jolt of sensation that charged through her. The feeling frightened her, for she knew what would come of it if she did not resist him. Unwilling to stop the verbal battle that was her only

defense, she tightened her trembling jaw and threw words back at him like so many deadly aimed daggers. "I know full well who you are," she said. "You are a self-serving tyrant who cannot think past your purse, your stomach, or your next bedmate." "I see." He stroked his bearded chin as if considering her observation. "And mad as well, I'd wager, since there is no woman I've wanted more, despite the venom you're wont to spout at me. And yet--" He turned her in his arms. With the backs of his fingers, he caressed her cheek from jawline to temple, his glance slowly rising from her lips to her eyes as if he sought some betrayal of expression there. "And yet you are Locksley's woman, and I would not have you wanting him, preferring him as you do now, consoling yourself with lies about his nobility, and cooling whatever small flame of desire you feel for me with more lies about what wretched villainy I am." She shook herself free of the hypnotic languor of his words. "Don't start with me, Sheriff. I know your ways and--" "And?" "And I would sooner throw myself from these ramparts than to endure another insufferable lesson in your sexual prowess." "Are you quite certain?" he asked, the familiar teasing quality flavoring his voice. He looked over the edge of the crenel at the long drop to the ground and back to Thea. "Before breakfast?" "Now, if I must," she said meaningfully. For the first time since he had entered her chamber and dragged her from bath to battlement, she realized what she must look like to him, with sleep-tumbled hair and the untied ribbons of her shift streaming from waist and wrists. The bodice had slipped off her shoulder where he'd kissed her, and she gathered the surfeit of fabric about her, feeling his unrelenting inspection as the breeze caught the shapeless garment, alternately puffing her voluminous skirts and flattening the sheer linen against her body. His hands slipped easily between the loosened, crisscrossed laces at her back, and she gasped at the unexpected contact of his skin against hers. The man was thoroughly, utterly, unredeemably wicked! Why, it was daylight, and the church bells were ringing Matins, and his soldiers were close at hand--they were close at hand, were they not? God in heaven, had they left, abandoning her to him? And if so, what kind of protection was that if sentries scurried every time their Sheriff planned a romantic interlude on the battlements? Her mind raced in a wild effort to counter the racing of her heart. "What? No attempt to hurl yourself to an untimely death?" The deep timbre of his voice shivered through her. Damn the insufferable bastard! The smug, arrogant--

His hand splayed across the swell of her buttocks and he pulled her against him. She damned him again, damned the shift she wore for the gossamer barrier it was. He was lean and taut in every place their bodies touched, from the muscles of his chest, sleek beneath the sun-warmed silk of his tunic, to the tense pressure of his thighs. Lean and taut and swollen with the challenge to conquer something she denied him. Resolve crumbled around her. His hands were like firebrands on her back, his fingers like tendrils of heat tracing the indentation of her spine. They curled through the ribbons of her shift, parting the laces until the filmy garment sagged off her shoulders, caught in the crooks of her elbows and the tight, desperate fistful she clutched to her breast. His lips, soft as smoke, touched the hollow of her throat, and she cried out, unable to keep from responding. God in heaven, it was happening again! The same torrent of feeling she had succumbed to before, a fiery liquid sensation melting her resistance, stinging through her veins, leaving desire to pool like thick, warm honey in her belly and drip its aching heat between her legs. He had but to touch her there to know, and he would think their argument ended when it was not. Damn him, he could not erase it all as simply as that! There was too much between them, too much to be wiped away with a kiss or a touch, too much-With a cry, she tore herself from his arms and stumbled away from him, pressing back into the stone of the merlon as if she could escape him. The argument ended then, ripped from her more quickly than it was supplied, for as she pulled away from him, she saw the pained disappointment and unguarded longing on his face. She could stand anything, she thought--his determined, narrow view of things, his brutal need for authority and obedience, his overpowering touches, anything--except that fleeting look of vulnerability, that look of failure and loss. "He is still between us, is he not?" he said, words barely audible. She shook her head fiercely, refusing to listen, recoiling from his touch. "Damn it, Thea, don't turn from me. If I intended to take you at every whim, I would have done so on that night. I told you. I am not a noble man. What I did--what I chose not to do--there was always a purpose. If I did not force myself to finish with you, it was because I hoped--what I wanted most--was that one day--one day you would come to me, Thea, and you would feel something of the desire I feel for you." "Spare me your version of charity, Sheriff." "I do not keep myself from you to be charitable. I fully intend to have you. But share you with him? That is something I will not do." From the hoarse sound of his voice, he had slipped on his mask of control again, wore it like armor around his heart. She closed her eyes, squeezing back tears of confusion.

"Look at me!" he commanded, his hands circling her arms. When she made no move to obey, he cupped her chin in his hand and tilted her face up to his. "Damn it, woman, look at me! I will have you know who holds you!" Her eyes flickered open, and reluctantly Thea dragged her gaze from the open throat of his tunic, to the soft sweep of beard along his chin and across the curve of his upper lip, finally to his eyes. She thought she saw the last of some unnamed emotion drowning in the swirling gray depths that, even as she watched, turned black and fathomless. She dreaded what he saw in hers: weakness, wavering conviction, tears, the lingering stain of desire that no amount of denial could erase in time. His hand loosened around her arm. Unexpectedly, he released her and stepped back, the battle with himself waging eloquently on his face. Thea could tell the decision he made was not easily won, but he did not reach for her again. Resolution firmed his jaw. "You are spared, Thea. For now. Take your loyalties to Locksley, or love, if that is what holds you to him, and cling to them if you must. I will not force you, or even tempt you, if that is what you fear more. I am content to wait. For as long as it takes." She did not wholly trust him, wondered if she could ever trust him. He had toyed with her from the beginning. Likely, this was just another ruse. She looked at his face and watched the mask slide back into place, the candid torment of moments before erasing right before her eyes. He was right, of course. She did not know who he was. The despot of legend she despised? The caustic-witted rake whose practiced seduction stole her breath? Any one of the versions of himself the Sheriff had revealed to her in his carefully constructed disclosure? All of these? None? "It will take forever," she said. "Be that as it may," he allowed, "when next I come for you, it will be when you are free from him, and only then--when you can come to me without your mind full of his words, his touches--when this desire for me you say does not exist burns again, as I promise it will--" Confusion made her angry. How useless to protest her innocence yet again! The man was stubborn and would think what he wanted, despite the misery it caused him. Simpler to play to his role as he expected, as she had learned to do, and with an ease that disturbed her. "Spare me your seductive drivel, Sheriff," she said, gripping the edges of her shift together until her knuckles whitened and the trembling fled her hands. "It is not privileged knowledge that you're skilled in more than swordplay, but I'll not wait dutifully for my turn in your arms, or be awakened and summoned whenever the mood strikes you, which apparently it does with alarming frequency. I'll not follow Aelwynn or Agatha or any unknown number of wenches to your bed." "Nor to the castle battlements, I presume," he said, unruffled, glancing over his shoulder with a meaningful look at their surroundings. Nottingham arched a brow, and his

bearded lip turned down at one corner in a private smile of amusement. The mask was fully in place. The rake had returned. "Damn you for the braying jackass you are! You are a vile, despicable, cruel, loathsome creature!" "I follow the general trend of your affections--" "And there is no desire, small or large, secret or known, but that I be away from here, from you and your puffed up pride and your crudely forced intimacies." She searched for the trap door they had climbed through to reach the wall-walk, temper spilling a dark flush across her cheeks. "Isn't there a way down from this God-forsaken place?" The Sheriff heaved a sigh that was part frustration, part resignation, all feigned for her benefit. Although he was clearly in no hurry to leave, he walked to the trap door and pulled the iron ring to open the portal. "Even I am not so foolish to believe there's no passion hidden behind such a hot spew of words," he said with infuriating calmness as he climbed through the opening and held out his arms for Thea. "I imagine you'll be quite unstoppable when those passions are finally loosed." "Imagine what you please, because that's all you'll have." With a huff of disdain and embarrassing clumsiness, she lowered herself into his arms. Silently, she cursed their necessary closeness and the tangle of her skirts as they caught on the ornate silver-studded leather of his swordbelt. Nottingham plucked the linen loose with pretended graciousness. "That and memories," he reminded her. Thea yanked her skirt from the Sheriff's hand. She did not want to be reminded. Chapter 16 The Sheriff asked Thea to join him for dinner in the great hall that evening. And the evening after. And the next as well. And so through a fortnight of evenings until she was as customary a guest at the high table as the Sheriff himself. Mildthryth made much of the entire affair, spending, what seemed to Thea, an inordinate amount of time selecting just the right gown from the treasure trove of silk and samite the Sheriff had provided and weaving Thea's unruly spirals of hair into thick braids, heavy with the adornment of ribbons. "I'm no more than a bauble to him," Thea fumed, "and you're cooperating." "Hush, lamb," Mildthryth said. "'Tis an honor to sit at his side."

Thea looked down at the woman's grizzled head as Mildthryth knelt and brushed the chaff of the rushes away from Thea's hem. Honor, was it? It felt more like being on display, like a prize peregrine falcon--fancy hood and jesses and bells dangling from her taloned feet, but owned nonetheless, the very trappings to ensure she never strayed far from her owner. As for Mildthryth's clucking about, Thea was not the least bit fooled into thinking her maidservant had anything in mind but making a match of her and the awful Nottingham. That, Thea could have told her, was a useless pursuit. She would sit at the Sheriff's side, share his cup and trencher with forced civility, and endure his conversation, but it would take more than mere exposure to the man to wear down her resistance. It would take more than the strongest love philter any wicca woman could concoct, more than the most earnest charm she could utter, before she would tolerate his kisses or caresses. Of course, there were no kisses or caresses, and this fact alone unsettled Thea in a way she did not particularly care to acknowledge. Surely this paragon of silver-tongued liars did not mean to keep his word! She found herself glancing askance at him during dinner when she thought him unaware of her observation, wondering at his seeming nonchalance, studying him in this new light. She had seen people who were sullen and saturnine, those who were illogically cheerful even amidst despair, and those whose natures changed with the waxing and waning of the moon. Nottingham was none of these. Nottingham was unpredictable. One evening he caroused with his men, hoisting endless cups of ale, mingling among them with his arm slung over an occasional shoulder. His throaty laughter filled the hall as he ate heartily and drank with gusto, bragging of his exploits in the tourneys and cursing the "wild Welsh." Another evening would find him cloistered at one end of the high table with Gisborne at his side, his dark head bent close to Guy's, brows drawn low over stern eyes, his rich baritone voice reduced to a stream of murmured French she could barely hear, much less understand. She knew little of their heated words save what she could see, and guess: the look of reined in anger on Nottingham's taut features; the slap of his palm on the oaken table and the resultant paling of Gisborne's face; the harsh, frustrated gestures of plans gone awry, of other schemes devised. Mixed among the times the Sheriff ignored her were times when his attention bore down upon her with such intensity that Thea could barely swallow the bites of fatted goose on their trencher. The impromptu chorus of lusty alehouse songs that rang through the rafters night after night gave way to a minstrel singing of courtly love. Where once the hall rocked with laughter and wild shrieks of drunken revelry, an unusual decorum reigned. Men no longer pulled unsuspecting serving wenches onto their laps, and couples who thought nothing of groping through various stages of amorous conquest now sought the privacy of shadowy corners or dark stairways.

That they did so at Nottingham's instruction seemed obvious, for he had apparently set about imbuing his hall with all the atmosphere of a priory in order to contain his own too easily aroused appetites. In truth, the changes had the opposite effect on her. Thea missed the joy of boisterous voices raised in song, even missed the bawdy lyrics she knew from the village taverns. They reminded her of home and were far more comfortable to her ears than the minstrel and his failing soprano. And, quite frankly, had Nottingham asked--which he did not--she would have much preferred the open displays of affection that went on before the Sheriff's self-inflicted chastity, when men and women traded kisses between sips of wine and no one gave thought to the fondling that passed between courses. That, too, was like home, the easy give-and-take between men and women to which she was accustomed. It was an odd reaction, she knew, but the Sheriff having banned such pleasures from the hall only made her think of nothing else. She could not sit next to him without feeling his muscular thigh against hers. And how often had she seen him lift his cup, drink, and watched the remnant of wine glistening on his lips, only to remember his kisses? She imagined the intimate press of his mouth on hers, the taste of the wine, and the slow heated friction of his tongue as they shared that taste. And then he would dab away the tempting wetness with a linen napkin and make some insipid remark about the weather or the honeyed sauce dripped over the goose, and her fantasy would crash like a house of cards. Something in the way he looked at her said her own thoughts were neither secret nor unique, but merely a mirror of his own, that he needed only a private moment away from the dais and the spectacle of the great hall to abandon his sanctimonious charade. When the Sheriff escorted her back to her chamber and bid her good eve, she waited for the indiscretion she knew would come. The stray touch. The kiss he could not prevent laying on her lips. The black-booted foot thrust inside her door to prevent her closing him out. What he offered was nothing more than a stiff bow of leave-taking. The devil take the man, and his faultless courtesy, too! He had not spared her virtue at all, but set flames licking at its very foundation. Did he think to erase the memory of that night with a few newly acquired manners? She remembered, damn him, and what she remembered was that he had held her and caressed her, touched her and tasted her, broken every restraint she tried so desperately to scrape together, and what had she had of him? In the end, she had lain naked beneath him, shivering, weak from the release he had given her, and the bastard had not even bothered to take off his boots! Thea watched the dark-cloaked figure stride down the hall, wishing she knew some spell strong enough to cast upon him, some curse powerful enough to bring upon his deserving head. Her sole revenge lay in the hope that his monastic behavior would turn

on him as thoroughly as it had on her, that he would chafe under his vow of self-denial and grow mad with wanting her. In the days that passed, the stable became her refuge. It was an unlikely haven, for she had yet to conquer her fear of the beasts there, but Simeon's hand, torn by the tethers, needed tending. The lad was decidedly opposed to the unguent she daubed on him daily and even more averse to the bath Thea insisted precede the physic. They struck a bargain. Simeon agreed to an occasional acquaintance with water and lye soap--hands and lightly freckled face only; he was quite adamant about that--and Thea agreed to an occasional acquaintance with his equine friends. It was an uneasy agreement at best. While she did not mind a pass over Chimera's sleek coat with a currycomb, she drew the line at venturing anywhere near the horse's restless legs with a hoof pick. Her balk only triggered an equally stubborn response in Simeon. "We had an agreement, Mistress," he reminded her, arms crossed over his chest and dirty fists balled into his armpits. "I'd be about this bathing if you'd see to Chimera's grooming. Cleaning his hooves, 'tis part of the grooming." "Washing your hair is part of the bathing," she countered. His fists dug in deeper, lower lip thrust out more in dare than defiance. "Very well, then," Thea said, vowing the boy would see his head dunked and scrubbed before the day was out. She snatched up the pick and bent to her task, hands nervously approaching the stallion and darting back at his slightest movement. "You must grab him . . . so." Simeon demonstrated his usual lack of caution as his small hands reached for the horse's deadly hoof, picked it up as if it had been mere tuppence on the ground, and showed her the dirt-packed underside. Thea tried again, convinced God had given her too few limbs with which to steady herself against Chimera's shoulder, grab his ankle, and wield the pick at the same time. It did not help that bending over left her woefully off balance or that, in her upended position, her thick braid insisted on flopping over her shoulder and dangling in her field of vision. It did not help that Chimera seemed about as set against having his hooves cleaned as Simeon was about climbing bodily into a cask tub. Nor did it help that Simeon's innocent snicker of laughter drew an audience of not-so-innocent stablehands, all to eager to offer a round of unwelcome advice. "Little beast," she muttered to Simeon. "Nothing short of full immersion for you. And I will see to your ears personally." It certainly did not help that Nottingham chose that particular time to visit his prize animal. She saw an upside down view of him striding toward the stall and the cluster of onlookers scurrying like rats back to their work. With a start, she corrected her less than dignified posture and swiped the back of her hand across reddened cheeks.

"Simeon!" the Sheriff called out, tossing his mantle into the boy's outstretched arms. The child's face broke into a grin of unabashed pleasure as he caught the cloak and crushed the heavy woolen fabric to his chest. "G'day, my lord," he said, excitement adding breathlessness to his high-pitched child's voice, as if Nottingham's presence were the greatest boon the seven-year-old could desire. "I must say, I've never seen the bay look better." The Sheriff said. "Your grooming has paid off, or is there some special ingredient you've added to his oats to make his coat so shiny? He's a fine warhorse and you've done well by him. No knight's squire could have done better." He ruffled the boy's hair, earning a worshipful look from clear gray eyes. "Mistress Aelredson helped, Sir, especially with Chimera." Simeon obviously felt charitable. "Mistress Aelredson . . . ah, yes." Nottingham turned on his heel and entered Chimera's stall, brushing past her. "Good morrow, Thea. On the loose again?" Somehow the Sheriff's query possessed none of the innocuous flavor of its separate words. Simeon called her "mistress" and it meant one thing. Nottingham's slight emphasis and smoky sibilance meant another. Thea felt its meaning course through her like warm mead, a slow, lazy heat that devoured her senses. "Mistress Aelredson came to put salve on my hand. See?" Simeon thrust out a grimy paw for proof. "She's been down here every day, rubbing it with some foul stuff, but 'tis fair healed now, is it not, my lady? Ned's too, 'though he grumbled far worse for having the Mistress fuss over him." "Yes, well, Ned was always a fool." The Sheriff rolled his tunic sleeves above his elbow, baring lightly tanned forearms dusted with a scattering of fine, dark hair. He crouched down, made a soft clicking sound with his tongue, and captured Chimera's obediently raised hoof in one large hand. "Here," he said, motioning with long, blunted fingers for the hoof pick she still clutched. Thea dropped it into his open palm, content to stand back as Nottingham dispatched the task with easy expertise. He is different yet again, she thought as she watched the tender display of affection the Sheriff so unselfconsciously lavished upon his animal. Gone was his customary black silk with its intricate embroidery and metalwork. In its place, he wore a russet wool jerkin atop a creamy tunic of sun-bleached linen, both open to the waist where they were belted with a full hand's width of finely tooled leather. His breeches were simple hunter's leggings, and his dark hair was gathered at the nape with a leather thong. The change was as startling as Nottingham's earlier transformation from sinner to purported saint--and no more genuine, Thea wagered. Yet she could hardly remain unaffected by a man who looked as if he had stepped from Sherwood's green depths as easily as the outlaws he pursued.

When he stood, towering well above her, she could only think how it suited him-daylight; the faint scent of hay and saddle leather obscuring Saracen oils; the glint of sun rainbowing off ebony hair; the natural, relaxed air he'd assumed instead of Norman arrogance. She swallowed hard, steeling herself as warm languor poured through her veins and resistance bled out. "Where are you bound today, my lord?" she asked with as much disinterest as her deeply thudding heart would allow. "A secret. I'm escaping." "My lord?" "Chimera needs to be ridden and I need to avoid my scribe and another of his ponderous lectures on the inadequacies of my treasury." "Is that wise?" "No, in truth it is not. The little, beetle-browed twit dares overmuch of late, but he seems to be the only one with the capacity for figures to tell me how truly impoverished my ledgers say we are." "I meant your riding out for no cause." "But there is cause, as I just explained. The cause is pleasure. Pleasure, Thea. Or have you become such a dutiful surgeon that you've laid aside such nonsense?" "But certainly you're not going out alone!" "I am." "Without an escort? Without a guard?" "That, my dear, is the only way to escape properly." "But are you not afraid?" "The Sheriff of Nottingham is not afraid of going about in his own shire, woman." Simeon, the child conspirator, piped up, adding his own indignation. "The Sheriff of Nottingham is not afraid of anything. There's not an arrow can harm him, Mistress, or Chimera either." "I beg to differ," Thea said under her breath. "Really, my lord, you mustn't fill the child's head with such tripe." "Are you afraid, Thea? Afraid I might get picked off by one of your bandit friends, perhaps?" His voice was threaded with silk, lending a smooth oil of suspicion to his statement.

She answered with simple fact. "Sherwood is not the safest place in which to ride, my lord." "The true testimony of one who knows." He fit bit and bridle to his mount, then turned to her. "Or is that a touch of envy I hear in your voice, disguised as care? Have you not abandoned that single-minded longing to return to the wood which you demonstrated with such regular tedium when you first arrived?" Anger drew her hands into fists at her side. "Sherwood is my home. I will never stop wanting to go back." "Alas, a mortal wound to my hopes. And after all I have done to make Nottingham Castle a pleasant retreat for you." "If you mean the recent efforts toward civilization, you needn't have bothered. They, like you, Sir, are a sham, as ill fitting the castle as your own pretense of civility is to you. By the way, you must get rid of that minstrel. Another eve of his off-key warbling--" She stopped herself in mid-sentence. "I didn't mean that literally, of course." Laughter rang through the stable. "Ah, Thea, you delight me! At least absence from Sherwood has not withered your wit." Her eyes fluttered away from his. "Do you miss it that much?" Paired fingers touched under her chin, lifted her face to his. His kindness cut through when nothing else did. She paused, considering the change in his tone and the trickery it surely hid. "There was a place in the wood," she said, "a hidden pool where I would go after a day's gathering. I have dreamed of it often. It was restful, quiet. No sound save the music of the forest--" She stopped, wondering what weakness made her spill such a secret part of herself. Already she regretted her words, for they conjured up a memory clear and strong. Suddenly she longed for the wood more than she could say, more than he deserved to hear. Tears sprang to her eyes, blurring his face and the confusing compassion there. She jerked away and turned her back to him, refusing to let the tears come. "You know nothing of me, Sheriff," she began again, more harshly. "You came and took me away from my cottage and brought me here, and ever since, you've been intent on making me into some castle creature more to your liking that a simple peasant. Sherwood was all that I knew. It was my life." The words spewed out of her until she bit her lip, forcing silence. He did not need to hear this, did not need to hear how victorious he had been, tearing her from the sod that was her life's blood. "I see," he said, and she realized from his voice and the warmth of his breath against her neck that he had drawn close. His arms slipped around her. "It is home you miss-something I cannot say I know. I had not thought it would matter so much."

She shook her head, refusing the tenderness he offered, certain it was just another trap to make her long for something he would not let her have. The subtle cruelty of the man was unequaled. She sagged against him, feeling the hardness of his chest; the strong circle of his arms felt nothing like the prison they were. They comforted, the sensation luring and bewitching because she knew the Sheriff possessed no such ability as a natural gift. She wondered why she did not strangle the sly, sympathetic words from his gullet. "Thea . . . Thea . . ." He turned her in his arms and her eyes closed. She did not want to hear more. Seeing any trace of warm-hearted feeling would be more than she could bear. And if he kissed her--oh, God, if he kissed her-The thought hung unfinished in the air. The Sheriff's arms trapped her low, at the knees, causing her to buckle and collapse like a sack of grain onto his shoulder. Her breath deserted her in a single cry of surprise. Thea felt herself being lifted, thrust overhead and onto the destrier's back. Her fingers clawed the stallion's mane as she struggled to sit upright. Kirtle and shift and cloak bound her legs. Before she could free herself, he'd caught the mantle Simeon pitched in his direction and swung up into the saddle behind her, reins in one sure hand, arm tightening around her midriff as he pulled her back into the wool and leather cradle of his body. "Have you gone mad?" Her heart hammered against his arm. "What are you thinking? Damn you, Sheriff! Where are you taking me?" He shifted slightly behind her. The muscles in his thighs jumped against the backs of her legs as he set heels to the warhorse. As best she could, Thea tried to accommodate herself to Chimera's gait and the Sheriff's iron grip. They raced out the postern gate and headed across the open waves of hills and valleys before he answered. And by then there was no need for him to say. She knew full well where Nottingham was taking her. He was taking her home. Thea's heart leapt with unexpected joy as she looked overhead at the sky, pale, watery blue, laced with wispy clouds. She drew a deep breath, filling her lungs completely. At long last! To breathe air whose only scent was of green meadows and turned earth! To feel the breeze caress her face and whip her skirts! She smiled and snuggled back into Nottingham's arms, not caring if he saw the gesture as concession. He was a wretched man, there was no denying that, and there was not a whit of selfless generosity in him. Yet she could not contain the smile that broadened until laughter rose from her throat like a wellspring bubbling over.

They had ridden most of the morning and the better part of the afternoon, Thea pointing out landmarks and favorite places and relating story after story about the land and its people as if the Sheriff knew nothing of the shire he ruled. Although she knew he shared none of her elated feelings of homecoming, he listened patiently and indulged her every whim, letting her next impulse decide their direction. When at last they stopped, Thea was as breathless from the ride as Nottingham was tireless. He shrugged out of his heavy mantle and slung it across Chimera's back, then lifted Thea down and let the well-lathered horse graze behind them as they walked through a patch of open meadow. Beneath the unseasonable warmth of the sun, tall grasses swayed in the wind. Thea stretched out her arms, letting the stalks tickle her palms with their silky green tassels. How many times she had done this--stood and watched as the grasses rippled like the sea, marveling at Sherwood's untouched glory--and yet this day seemed sweeter for its rare freedom. With a start, she realized she had walked--no, run---ahead of her captor, and she turned, woolen skirts adding their swish to that of windblown grasses. The Sheriff had stopped some distance behind her, and she knew by the odd feeling that crept down her spine that he'd been watching her. His woodsmoke glaze flicked over her, as if she were something not quite decipherable, as if perhaps she were right and he knew her far less well than he thought. She flushed, something more than the sun's heat on her cheeks, and fingered the remains of a wind-tossed braid slung over her shoulder. It was right that he should see her so happy and carefree in the place she loved, yet she had run and kicked up her heels more like a young deer than a young woman. Briars snagged the fine wool of her forest green kirtle and beggar lice dotted the ivory hem and sleeves of her shift. Whatever the Sheriff saw, she was sure it did not match the image of silk and embroidery he had tried to create. "There's something of the hoyden in you, Thea . . . or child. I've yet to figure which." Strangely, he did not sound displeased. "And something of the scoundrel in you," she called back. He grinned and walked to her side, leisurely cutting a swath through the grasses with deliberate grace. "I can do nothing right, can I, woman?" "My lord?" "I bring you to your damnable Sherwood--at indeterminate risk to my own skin, I might add--and I am but a 'scoundrel.' I endeavor to bring a modicum of decorum to Nottingham Castle, and I am a--how did you say it?--a 'sham,' I believe it was." "I merely mentioned that the minstrel is--" "What am I hearing, Thea? That my ever-chaste surgeon would rather hear the lewd songs of taverns played in my hall?"

"Don't feign shock with me, Sheriff. They were played regularly before." "Before what?" "Before you became . . . civilized." Nottingham cringed in an imitation of horror. "Well, it's true," Thea said. "Lyrics of knightly love, pure honor, noble sacrifice--I can't believe you know anything about such lofty virtues." "I am mortally offended." "You are insincere." "Absolutely not!" "Yes," she argued. "You are. There is not much I know about you, Sheriff, being forced to seek hopelessly for some bit of honesty in the stories you've told me and piece together what truth can be found in the castle gossip, but tales of knights and their ladies fair seem an unlikely source of entertainment for you. I picture you more at home in a tavern, a joint of mutton in one fist, a cup of ale in the other, a wench on each knee, and the innkeeper's adulterous wife draped 'round your neck--" she nodded toward him, indicating the open vee of his tunic, "--where you usually wear that ill-gained chain of office." "This is the picture the castle staff have given of me? My loyal, devoted staff who would not dare breathe a word of untruth at the cost of the tongues in their heads?" "Quite the contrary. This is the image you give me . . . when you are not busy polishing it away with all your efforts toward gentility." "I see." The Sheriff mulled over her words. "So you prefer me less civilized." "I do not prefer you at all." "Now we both know that is not true." His fingers caught her under the chin, and he raised her face, dark eyes stirring a host of memories within her. Quickly, she averted her eyes. "See?" he said. "You are insincere as well. Of course, it is inevitable you should have some mistaken impressions of me." Thea stopped, pushed the memories aside. "I shall be straightforward then. My impression of you, Sheriff, is that you are no more than a series of guises, strategically donned to serve your purpose of the moment, whatever that might be, that underneath, you are without substance, rather like a puffed pastry." "Indeed."

"Somewhat crisp and brittle on the outside, with an occasional misplaced sweetness, while on the inside--" she thumped her knuckles against his breastbone, "--nothing but hot air." His hand closed over hers before she could move, and she regretted her gesture immediately, not just because he had pounced on her with such swift surprise, but because beneath her hand, he was anything but hot air. Their walk had brought the slight moisture of perspiration to strong, warm flesh, and she could feel the thrum of blood surging through his veins. She snatched her hand away. "Yes, a pastry," she said, as much to convince herself as him, "that leaves one empty and unsatisfied, with only a predictable cloying aftertaste." His laughter jarred her senses nearly as much as his touch. "Christ, Thea! 'Empty and unsatisfied'? You have a wit of vinegar, woman, and a tongue to shrink the noblest manhood." She shot him a reproachful glare, gathered her skirts in her hands, and pushed ahead of him. He was beside her in two loping strides. "I can see there's been damage down to my renown. You have gone from fearing and despising me to considering me merely unappetizing. I daresay I am not making the progress I had hoped." "And what progress is that?" They had walked to the edge of the meadow where a footbridge crossed a stream. On the other side, just beyond the grasses, a thick stand of trees thrust skyward. Sherwood was like that--dense, primeval forest juxtaposed to open meadow, sun and shadow unexpectedly meeting by the side of a deeply cut brook. The Sheriff was like that, too, she thought, as she watched the playful repartee die on Nottingham's lips, dark and light commingling in unpredictable patterns. He paused and with a narrowed gaze followed the stream from its stair-step fall over a series of rocks to the calmer, deeper waters spanned by the makeshift bridge. His forehead pleated into a field of disturbing furrows. "I had hoped you'd fall out of love with him." Thea opened her mouth to speak, but words failed her. Something in the gravity of his tone stopped her, leaving her hanging on the sigh he had only half managed to check. It shocked her, jolted her still where she stood, because she had thought never to recognize honesty in the man. And then it was gone, quickly traded for a glib smile he thought to be disarming. "We shall have to do something about your skewed image of me," he announced, then turned sharply to face her, barring her passage across the footbridge.

"What do you propose?" she asked softly, wishing she could have held on longer to the candor she had heard. "You view me as a Norman, correct? An invader? A usurper?" He held up his hand, index finger beginning a tally of her misperceptions. "Well, there's no argument there, although I can hardly be held accountable for the misdeeds of my forefathers or an accidental location of birth. More to the point, you believe me a despot. A cruel man with ignoble ambitions. Perhaps a matter of interpretation. We can argue that later, as I'm sure we will. What cannot be argued is that you see me as a rogue, a man who loves his ale, perhaps too much, and his women, as often as he can, who is more suited to a night spent at the Trip than one devising fiscal strategy. And now, with my pride in tatters, I find you think of me as no more than a paltry, after-dinner treat." Thea smiled as if indulging a small child. "Please cross," she said, tapping her slipper against the log. "Ah, of course." The Sheriff stepped backward, walking with all the agile balance of a cat across the moss-covered tree trunk. "Well, that's nonsense," he said, continuing his lessons in the errors of her insight. "Utter nonsense. Your view of me had been tainted, I fear. Millie undoubtedly has filled your ears with falsehoods about how human I am, and Aelwyn--God knows what poison she's filled your head with--and as for the rest of my people--who can tell? I am a product of gossip and conjecture, nothing more. Of servants' talk and the twisted opinion of the uneducated. I can only imagine the lies you've been forced to listen to." She moved after him onto the bridge, matching his steps pace for pace. "They say you hanged a child for picking your pocket." "Patently untrue!" "That you have half the silver of the realm, stolen and secured in your vaults--" "Would that it were so." "That you sliced out the tongue of your last minstrel because he substituted your name in one of his tales--" "Now you see, that is a perfect example. That rapscallion's off-key tremolo is still offending your ears." "That you have a running rivalry with Price John over the age of your youngest bedmate--" "Why, that is lunacy! All the world knows I prefer a seasoned woman." "A rivalry which is to be renewed when Lackland comes a'wassailing come Christmastide--" "Thea, half of what you hear--all of it perhaps--it's no more than lies."

"That you are hung like your stallion." The Sheriff stopped midway across the bridge, tilting his head as if considering. "Well," he conceded, "that much is true." A burst of laughter escaped her lips, and Thea set her hand squarely on Nottingham's chest. She saw his eyes turn from gray to black as he recognized her intent, saw his lips start to form some useless admonition-And then, with utter delight, she pushed. He did not fall gracefully. Arms and legs sawed futilely in mid-air, and a surprised squawk of indignation flew up just before he broke the water with his backside. Thea ran the length of the fallen log and put herself on solid ground before he surfaced. Sputtering water and curses and scraping wet hair from his eyes, he gained his feet in the chest-high pool. "Thank God it's not too deep," Thea said. "I can't remember if I heard you could swim." "Damn you, woman! No wench would dare!" He hauled himself out of the stream, dripping clothes and water-filled boots sloshing with each step. He grabbed for her, but she danced out of his reach up the grassy embankment. "Damn you, Sheriff, I am no wench!" She stood atop the embankment, hands planted on hips. "And I would dare!" She never knew how he reached her so quickly. He bolted after her, flinging out a sopping arms as she turned to run, ending the chase before it began. She felt herself being yanked back by the laces of her kirtle, his drenched linen sleeve crossing her breast, the cold wetness of his leather-wrapped thighs seeping through her woolen skirts. She asked herself if this were the victory she bargained for--to be snuggled against a dripping leviathan--and knew the chase was not finished. "Christ, woman, what have you done?" She laughed again, tilting her head back to rest on his shoulder for one glorious moment as she basked in delight at their game. She felt his fingers slide from her back to her waist and knew freedom came with the release of her laces. "Bested you. At last." She smiled, a languid taunt of triumph, then broke away with a start and bounded through the grasses, leaving a trail of laughter for him to follow. "Bested me . . . again," he muttered, then called out, voice rising after her. "What are you, woman? Woodland nymph? Fairy? Some ensorcelled creature of the forest trapped in a woman's body? Whatever you are, I will not chase after you. I am the Lord High Sheriff--" "--Of Nottingham. Yes, I know. But a trifle slow for a sheriff . . . and a trifle wet, if truth be told."

"And who have I to blame for that? Tell me, wood witch. Would you have me return to Nottingham like a drowned rat?" She stopped amid the last fringe of grasses, breathless from sprinting and laughter, and turned to watch the Sheriff's lumbering progress. He approached her glowering, although if it were a true glower or merely pretended menace she could not tell. His tunic and jerkin were plastered against the contours of his chest, and water streamed down lean, sinewy arms and long fingers held slightly away from his sides. "A drowned rat with a boar's temper, I fear." A faint smile of fondness curved her lips. "There's an abandoned swineherd's hut nearby. You could build a fire, I suppose. Dry out. Restore your dignity." He swore softly between pants, chest heaving beneath the weight of water-laden clothes. "I've tracked boar with less trouble, wench." Thea crossed her arms over her chest. Tightened lips begged correction. Something flickered in his eyes, a change like quicksilver that told her she had engaged him in the chase, that what he held back out of civilized good humor, he did not hold back now. "Wench," he repeated, stormy eyes pinning her, daring her to flee or rebut him. "Scoundrel." He chuckled, conceding her the point. Without taking his eyes from her, he fumbled with his swordbelt. Thea dragged her gaze from the mysterious smile lighting his lips to the finely etched hilt of his sword, and swallowed her laughter. "You do not think to murder me, my lord? Not for a jest?" He said nothing, but let the weapon clang to the ground, answering for him, then undid the leather belt that cinched his waist and held it to the side at arm's length where it twisted and coiled like a black adder. And then she knew his purpose, the certainty of it illumined in his eyes. "You can't--if you must--there's the hut, but a short distance from here. If you insist upon disrobing--" He dropped the belt. My lord, think what you do--" Jerkin and tunic hung from broad shoulders. He shrugged out of the russet wool, let it drop behind him. "My lord--Sheriff--"

The tunic he pulled overhead. "Wench." She knew she should have run, then, in the instant he peeled the white linen over his dark hair and she gained the last advantage he was sure to give her, but while her heart pounded with the need for flight, she stood fixed and immobile. She doubted she could run if Satan himself stalked her, not if Satan and this man were one and the same as she, as everyone, believed. He closed the distance between them, striding through the grass, stealth disguised as grace. In the moment she stood there, unable to move, she knew she had traded her soul for the sight of him. "Woman," he murmured. A slight concession. Water glistened on his shoulders; jewel-like drops beaded across the expanse of his chest. He walked toward her, each deliberate stride sending the beads rushing together, converging, overflowing, scouring his chest and abdomen with a web of tiny rivers. "Thea--" It was her name she most wanted to hear, something that made her human in his sight and not another nameless thing to be ordered to meet his whim. She thought she had won until he grabbed the laces of his leather breeches in his fist and jerked, freeing the ties. The breeches sagged on his hips, open to an arrow's trail of dark hair that darted from his navel to disappear in loosened laces. She tried to avert her eyes, and could not. He was full, heavy with arousal that strained against the sodden leather, beautiful, disturbing in the desire he felt and did nothing to hide. She held out her arm, whether to ward him off or to draw him closer she did not know. She knew it did not matter. His hand closed over hers and drew it to his lips. His beard brushed her palm, then his breath, ragged bursts of heat that belied the calculated steps of his seduction. The tenderness tore at her. He spoke her name again into the well of her hand, then drew his lips from her palm to the inside of her wrist. Her fingertips hovered above his cheek as if she could not bring herself to touch him, to surrender sanity that easily. She reached out, stroked the blue-black sweep of beard, then drew her fingers back as if scorched. Trembling, she touched him again. His cheek felt cold. She laid her fingers, then the whole of her hand, against it, warming him. There seemed a thousand things she should say to him. Every protest, every shred of reason and resistance still lay within her grasp. She should recant each bold, careless gesture of the day, each wish and accidental temptation she had laid at his feet in the past weeks, beg his forgiveness for taunting him so. But none of that would finish what had started between them the night he had come to her chamber. And finishing seemed so necessary. So right. If they hurried, they could not do it quickly enough.

She did not ask what madness overcame her, nor did he. With a soft cry, she wrapped herself around him, the soft wool of her kirtle soaking the wetness from him. He reached for her, tentatively at first, as if he dared not believe her, or allow himself to want her again. She could sense his hesitation in the instant his arms went too slowly around her, when his hands settled too gently on her hips. Then he was grabbing the wool of her skirts in frantic fistfuls, crushing her body to his, burying a low moan of need against the curve of her neck. Droplets from the ends of his tangled hair plopped to her shoulder, trickled between her breasts, tormenting her with their gradual, icy descent. Her fingers tore the thong from his hair, wound wet, silk ropes of it in her hands. At her touch, he lifted his head from her shoulder, lips gathering in the wetness he had left there. Softly, his warm tongue caught a drop at the hollow of her throat, then swept down to drink from the swell of her breast. The feeling called back a host of memories, sensations her body remembered when her mind would not. She shivered in his arms, her breasts and nipples taut, aching everywhere he did not touch. He drew his lips up the crook of her neck, thirsting for the taste of her skin. Jagged rasps of breath became a murmur in her ear, her name over and over again, as if he could find release in the desperate sound of it, a prayer repeated faster and faster until she caught his face between her hands, directed his lips to hers, and let him drink deeply. He tasted not of wine, as she remembered, but of spring water, of the air and the earth, and she craved the flavor of him as she craved the essence of the meadow, of Sherwood. His lips grew from chill to warmth beneath hers. Their tongues met as if by instinct, caressing, twining in sensuous communion, answering one need, creating a myriad more. Desire flared, spilling through her body like wildfire. Weeks of craving him made her weak; denying it made her mad. She could feel the madness crumbling away, stripping denial with it. What was left was pure, a white-hot flame that seared her skin from the inside out, turning to ash every reservation, every constraint, every doubt that lingered. He was cool to her heat, strong and hard and unyielding to everything soft and melting within her, the promised whisper of relief. Her hands slid from his hair to his shoulders, planting heat there, sowing with splayed fingers the planes of his chest. He hissed in a hoarse breath as her fingertips grazed his nipples, grown cold-hard in the autumn air, and let his head fall back with a sigh of surrender as she bent low and covered him with the heated swirl of her tongue. With a groan, he pulled her close, strong fingers kneading the flesh of her buttocks, and lifted her blatantly against him. Her body swayed into his, mirroring the slow, suggestion thrusts of his hips, wanting already the end of what he'd started.

Shamelessly, she reached for her skirts and pulled the barrier of fabric away, moaning as the wet skin of his breeches fit against her bare flesh and rivulets from his waterlogged leathers dripped down the inside of her thighs. She trembled against him, so close to peaking, wanting him closer, closer, every soft cry defining her need. Impatiently, she reached for him, fingers brushing against his erection, swollen and rigid beneath sodden leather. At her touch, he sagged to his knees, pulling her with him. Their lips touched, not so much a kiss as a shared, quickened breath. She could feel the same tension along his thighs as dwelt in hers, felt beneath her hands the same rhythmic pulse in his shaft that throbbed between her legs. He was completion, the answer to every riddle of her body's need. Thea combed through the tangle of untied laces at his waist, but met his hand, searching for her. Ignoring her cry of protest, he clamped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her arm behind her back. She wanted to curse him--how dare he make her helpless, take away the chance to touch him, to sate herself with the knowledge that he was hard with hunger for her? All she managed was a whimper, a thwarted plea. He murmured to her, damnable Norman words she did not know, could not comprehend, save their intent was unmistakably lustful, a list of all the lascivious pagan things he meant to do to her when all she wanted was to be filled with the solid length of him. With a small, smothered cry, she put her free hand on his shoulder, fingers digging into the muscled flesh, and French bled into something she understood: a soft shush quieting her and a single, deep command. "Thea, sweet, open your legs." She yielded without thinking, her thighs fever-weakened, quivering apart. His hand slid beneath her skirts his palm stroking from knee to thigh until his fingers touched her damp curls. She moved against him, pressing herself into the sensation he created, urging him to enter her. He kissed her--and did, so suddenly that she gasped at the invasion. A sharp shudder overtook her as his finger withdrew and entered, hard, again. Light and shadow eddied about her until her senses blurred and feeling coalesced around a mounting sting of sublime please. Her hand clutched at the slipperiness of his shoulders, his arms, finally gaining purchase on the leather waist of his breeches. She hooked her fingers into the kidskin, squeezing the leather into her palm as she felt herself tightening around him, being filled, emptied, filled again, until she was sobbing against him, wracked with the powerful tremors of release. Sherwood became a whirlpool of blackness. Chapter 17 He held her close, letting her desire well up, spill over, and ebb into the liquid aftermath of sensual satiety, and then he lay with her on the ground. The euphoria that weighted

her body spread through their entwined limbs, and for a moment he felt as bliss-drugged as she. Above them, tall grasses swished in a lazy whirl, opening to a twilight sky. Somehow, quite beyond his recollection, the day had slipped away, and every care he had ever thought to have faded with it. They should leave, he knew, or risk capture in the gloom that stole so quickly through the forest in the shortened days of autumn. His eyes drifted shut. Leave. Or stay. Forever. Safely cocooned in this green hideaway, listening to the gentle murmur of wind, feeling the earth solid beneath his back-Listening to her shallow breathing, feeling the solid trust of her body, pressed into his side. Trust. The very word stabbed him with regret. Mother of God. What had he done? He was not to touch her. Not until she was free. Not until she wanted him. Him! He had sworn to it, not knowing even then whether he had made the promise to protect her, or himself. No matter now. The vow splintered like a faulty lance against his desire for her. Fragments of it lay everywhere, from the trail of his clothes left by the streambed to this place where he had dropped to his knees in surrender. How quickly he had laid aside the sturdy threads of reason for some air-spun fantasy. And for what? He laid his arm gently across her back, gathering her closer. For this, he thought. For her head nestled into the hollow between his chest and shoulder, fitted there as neatly as if they had always been meant to lie like this, as if they could lie this way for eternity. For the pink flush on her cheek. For every soft cry she gave him. Sweet Christ! It was different this time. Harder. Not because of meaningless oaths he could not keep anyway, but because the first time he had all but forced response from her, wanting to exact some confession of her feelings, and this time-This time she had met him, giving him what he dared not even hope for--willing passion, desire as blatant as his own, desire he could rouse again with but a touch. She would yield to him, open to him, ready and eager, if he wanted. And, oh, God, how he wanted! If he could forget his oath and the reason for it. Forget she belonged to his enemy, who undoubtedly swore oaths of his own. Forget that she had given him only her body, but nothing of her heart. A plague on the woman! He did not want her flesh without her soul, did not want the incompletion he felt now to be magnified tenfold when he took her, made love to her, and knew she had no love to return.

He felt her lips press against his collarbone, the delicious warmth of her tongue tracing circles against his skin, and he clamped his teeth together, strangling a cry in his throat. She dragged heavy-lidded eyes open, and her full, kiss-swollen lips bowed into a smile worthy of a practiced courtesan. "Now you are mine, Sheriff." She silenced him with a kiss, long and lingering, then playful and brazen, and he clung to her, wondering what twisted irony made his wildest dreams come true now when he could not have her. Then he did not wonder at all, but took in the heat of her lips, savoring the dream, unable to let go. Erratic breaths hammered at his lungs, battering his restraint. "Insatiable witch . . ." Her lips curved around his, breaking the kiss into quick, breathless touches to his beard, his cheeks and temple and brow, and against his lips again. Their tongues touched, danced apart, slid together, and he felt her move over him, her small hands seizing his wrists, wresting his arms overhead. "This time, I will take you, Nottingham." And well she could have, straddling him, tossing her hair in the wind, her fingers lightly furrowing his chest. "You make sport of me, woman," he said, trying for some semblance of his previous command, for the control she determined to strip from him. Her laughter coursed through him like lightning. He wanted to laugh with her, give himself over to this play of hers. His fingers clawed in the grass at his head, digging into the earth as if he could anchor his sanity there. He was losing himself in her, giving her his strength, his power, his advantage. "Thea--" She bent low, touched her mouth to his belly, and his breath fled. No! He could not permit this! Another woman he could resist. Some castle whore who thought she knew such devices. Aelwynn, yes, even Aelwynn, God, but not this one. Not Thea, whom he could not have. Not Locksley's woman. Gently she placed her hands over the straining leather of his breeches, then her touch closed around him, sculpting the shape of his swollen shaft. Breath hung painfully in his lungs as he felt her fingers pluck at the loosened laces, heard the sound of cord whispering through eyelets. She opened her mouth slightly against his flattened abdomen and sucked at the taut flesh with a soft whimper, savoring him. An ache of pleasure shot up from his belly. He lifted his hips, directing her mouth lower.

Damn! "Thea--" Damn her! The Sheriff of Nottingham was stronger than this. He mastered women. He mastered himself! He did not succumb--would not-Nottingham prayed for resolve he never had, never wanted, never needed before. Scraping together every failing wit he possessed, he gripped the bunched woolen skirts at her hips, tore her from her wanton posture astride him, and wrestled her to the ground beneath him. "You don't like this, do you, Sheriff?" she asked, veiling her indigo eyes with dark lashes. "A woman in control?" "On the contrary, Thea. I like it far too much. But in Nottingham. In my castle. Near a fire." He rocked against her, unable to stop despite his words, bending her body to his and his to hers with the rhythm of the grasses swaying in the wind. "Not in Sherwood, temptress." He arched his hips against her, watched her bite back a sob of pleasure. A flicker of confusion marred the delight in her eyes. "This is where it happens, is it not?" he continued. "You give some subtle sign and they come springing from bushes, swooping down from trees. Six of them. Maybe more. Longbows nocked. Trained on my back." Hard. Cruel. Words grasped like straws in the wind to defend himself against her. He hated himself for saying them, hated the blithe sound of them slicing through her, weaving in and out of the flames of rekindled passion, their meaning robbing her of pleasure. Tears sprang to her eyes. "No! No! Damn you for the vile, stubborn man you are!" "Thea--" "If you think--if you still think--" "Thea--we cannot--I cannot--" "Bastard!" "God help me--I will not--" The throb of interruption sliced deep and low into his body, nothing in comparison to the hurt and bitterness he saw on her face. With an effort, he pushed himself away, forsaking the feel of her, and sat back on his heels. White-knuckled fists lay on his knees, denying the anguish he felt. "My vow," he muttered, knowing it was a feeble excuse. "Your vow?" she challenged. "And not some driven need to accuse me with every breath?"

"I swore to you, to myself, that as long as you were his--" "Yes, damn you," she said, voice ragged. "As long as I am 'his.' Accusation, indictment, sentence--passed in one swift, merciless decree. How like you, Nottingham, trying so blindly, so in vain, to be judge and executioner both." "I would have you free of--" "Yes, so you swore. Free of them, of Robin. Yet you are more his prisoner than I." He dared a moment's glance at her, then shut his eyes tightly, willing blindness and numbness, an end to the agony of not having her. The image of her burned through the blackness, an apparition that would not fade any more than the memory of her touch. "Is it so selfish a thing to want to keep you from him? Christ, Thea, this is his place, his forest, his damnable brook. The very grass we lie upon is his. And you--you will not let me forget." "You will not let yourself forget." He stared at her, rage and self-loathing building a wall between them. "I was not thinking of Robin of Locksley, Sheriff. Not the whole of the day. Certainly not while I lay with you. I'm surprised that you were." Enough of an accusation to silence him. He looked away. "You will not let it be," she said. "This obsession drives you like some merciless taskmaster that will not let you go. And it comes between us at every turn. When I think of you, it is there--what you truly believe of me behind your courtier's words and kisses. Even now. Even when--when--" "I am no different from other men," he struck back. "I want a woman to myself. Her body, yes, but more than that--" "And I am no different from other women. I want the man I am with to be so full of me he wants nothing else, thinks of nothing else, of no one else--" She stopped suddenly, and he could see she'd confessed more than she'd intended. With the awkwardness of broken intimacy, she drew her legs beneath her and tucked herself into a tight huddled knot. She tore grasses from the ground and looked away, eyes fixed on the hazy horizon. "You don't trust me," she said. "You don't even trust what I give you. Perhaps it is because you are insincere that you can conceive of nothing else but insincerity in those around you. Because you yourself are untrustworthy." "Or maybe I've not known such trust given to me."

"Yes, Sheriff," she said bitterly, "you have. For a time, there--" She glanced at the grasses, bent and flattened by the weight of their bodies. "I did trust you. With my body, with my heart. You say Sherwood is his place, but you forget. It is mine, too, and I wanted you, here, would have lain with you, here. What more trust can you demand of me?" He said nothing, swallowing the impact of her words without expression. She struggled to her feet. The green folds of her kirtle were inky-black, heavy with water, clinging to her legs like the memory of her body clung to his mind. "You could leave me here," she suggested with a brittle laugh. "And easy end to your woes. Go back to Nottingham where you can bed your wenches without care for their trust or affection." Transfixed, he watched her, remembering the softness of wool and linen and bare skin, imagining the longed-for feel of her slender legs parting, wrapping around his hips-She shook out her skirts, brushing his memory, his dream, away. "Failing that," she said, "the next time you think to bed me, leave Robin of Locksley behind." His gaze broke sharply, as something knotted painfully deep in his chest, something akin to an arrow piercing armor and flesh. She had laid him open with aim as sure as any outlaw archer, stripped him of the one excuse he's always had for the failure between them. He went from knees to feet stiffly, doing everything in his power to keep from looking at her, to check the craving that threatened to engulf him at the sight of her. He whistled sharply for Chimera and waited for the stallion to cross the stream. The sun had already dipped down below the tree line, taking warmth with it. As daylight left them, Thea spoke, her voice hushed. "We've come too far into the wood. We'll not reach Nottingham before nightfall." Truth, and yet the truth pained him, forcing acknowledgment out into the open between them. His earlier good humor had let her take them farther into the forest than he ever intended. At best, he had misjudged the hours left in the day. At worst, his desire had eaten away what foresight and caution he had. Either way, darkness was creeping through the aging sentinels of oak and birch. The alehouse at Blidworth lay far behind then; the inn at Worksop too far ahead. He had neither torch nor bedroll, and what little was left of his pride was patched together with nothing more than grim-lipped stubbornness. "We press on," he said, mounting the warhorse and reaching his arm down to her. She settled in back of him, both legs dangling, her sigh rustling like the soughing of the breeze as the night-winds rose.

"There is the abandoned swineherd's hut," she reminded him. "Through there." Thea gestured ahead of them to a fork in the main-traveled road where a thin dribble of a trail branched off into deeper wood. He hesitated, suspicion rising, overtaking the possibility of protection the dwelling could offer. A trap? Another ambush? It was a small miracle he had come this far without being picked off by one of her hooded allies. In a day where everything had gone amiss, what more could he expect? He knew she sensed his delay and the reason for it. With each minute he stalled, distrust seeped from him, filling the air between them with thick, palpable uneasiness. He half turned in the saddle to face the irritation emblazoned on her features. "Don't be a fool," she lashed out. "No one can venture through Sherwood at night." "But you know the paths so well." It was an accusation wrapped in silk, as easily a curse as a compliment. Nottingham saw her lips tighten against the verbal blow and regretted the remark. Glibness seemed to have deserted him, along with the ease with which he usually controlled women. Her dark brows drew low over eyes that matched the blue of the hastening dusk. "I also know enough to seek shelter in the dark. Loosed arrows are the least of what you need fear after the sun is down." Fatigue showed through the venom of her reply. He felt it himself, tiredness from the day's activity overlaid with weariness at the dismal prospect of the eve ahead. How difficult it would be if they stopped now, if he let himself spend the night in the close confines of a hut with a woman he could not have, could not even take. Damn, but this was an ill-starred day. Had the planets all risen up in protest against his merest hint of good fortune? "How far?" he relented. "Just ahead." She sat stone still and proud, as if she had ripped another victory from him. And maybe she had. This was Sherwood, her domain. A God-forsaken nightmare of a place to be, and she not the safest of consorts. He steeled himself against a shiver of premonition and veered Chimera into the tangle of vines and thorny hedges that guarded the obscure path. The hut turned out to be no more than a shelter of woven branches enclosing a natural recess formed by a low overhang of rock. Long ago, some enterprising swineherd had daubed a mixture of mud and leaves in the cracks between the branches, but time had eroded the best of his efforts. The hut leaned precariously in on itself on one side, and most of the front wall was missing. Only a pile of rubble and twigs hinted that the structure had ever been more than a hastily constructed lean-to.

Their arrival and Chimera's pawing as they dismounted sent squirrels and dormice scurrying from their nests within the remains of the hut. The Sheriff's arched brow spoke volumes for his assessment of their night's accommodations. "It has fallen into some disrepair since last I saw it," Thea admitted, "but at least it's shelter." "After a fashion." She pointed to a circle whose boundary was nearly intact save a few scattered stones. "There are the remnants of the firepit." "Or some Druid's sacrificial altar," Nottingham grumbled, kicking at the charred remains of a log. "Stop complaining. There's deadfall, as much as you need, twigs and dry moss for kindling. And the flintstone--" Thea lifted a rock, drew out the firestarter, and held it out to him. "You know the place well," he said. "I knew it. For a time." "And the swineherd who used it? Gone on to more devilish deeds?" He spied the tremor in her outstretched hand and the dilation of pupils darkening her eyes. Suddenly, he did not want the truth from her, would have traded his sheriffdom for a lie. "I don't know," she said tersely. "Gone. The place has been abandoned for several seasons. Perhaps the mast was better elsewhere." "Perhaps." "Well, it's deserted now. What more do you want?" She thrust the flintstone into his hand and turned her back on him in a huff. Bending low, she entered the hut, shaking her skirts and poking her slippered toe into cobwebbed corners to ensure the dwelling was emptied of its crawling denizens. Nottingham watched her from behind, curious and more than a little amused at her needless domesticity. What did he care about the cursed hut's cleanliness when his mind was on how he would survive the night with her? He tugged Chimera's reins and led the stallion down to a nearby brook. Still halfexpecting a midnight ambush, the Sheriff was reluctant to unsaddle the horse, but he let him drink his fill.

"Sorry to be in Sherwood, old friend?" he said, gazing back at the hut. Through the gleam of dusk, he could see Thea squat and scoop an armful of leaves into the deep pocket she had made of her skirts, then rise and enter the hut again. "I, too," he continued, as if the stallion had spoken in turn, "and especially with that one. Damn if the woman has not begun some dreaded alchemy on me. By morn, I will be at war with myself more than with her. God, but she makes a mockery of my every attempt at indifference. And to think, I could have lain with her on goosedown and silk and furs. Tonight it will be forest debris instead--if she lets me near her at all." Chimera lifted his head and snorted an equine opinion of the Sheriff's dilemma. Nottingham laughed ruefully. "You don't have to agree with me, old ghost." He patted the stallion's neck, led him back to the clearing, and looped the reins through a lowlying limb. He met Thea as she crouched to leave the hut, and ducked his head inside long enough to determine her progress. Several piles of brown and yellowing leaves lay heaped in the beginnings of a makeshift mattress. A narrow makeshift mattress. "You don't expect me to sleep outside this veritable palace of luxury?" Nottingham stooped low and stepped back out of the hut just as Thea passed past him with another skirtful of leaves. "The hut was made for one," she replied, not sparing him a backward glance. The leaves tumbled from her lap as she knelt and smoothed them into a passable bed. "But we are two." "There isn't room." "Make room." He meant the words as an order, had delivered them with his best tyrannical sternness, yet she rose and looked squarely at him, chin raised in defiance. A host of unwanted responses slammed through his body. How was it possible for her to undermine him with no more than a gesture? He noticed the pulse beating in the hollow of her throat, saw her swallow hard before she spoke. "There is only room for one," she repeated tightly, then gathered up an armful of the forest stuffing and threw it in his direction. He fended off the barrage of leaves with one arm raised to shield his face, then dived for her and wrestled her back into the cushion of the leaves. He ignored her gasp of protest and deftly avoided the futile kicks she aimed at him through the snarl of her skirts. Clasping her to him, he rolled them over, once, and again, sending dried leaves swirling until there was nothing left of her carefully heaped bed but wild disarray. Somehow, of all the mistakes he had made that day, this was the gravest.

She lay beneath him, breasts heaving against his chest, the dark blue of her eyes firing him with angry sparks. And behind the anger, disguised so well from habit alone, the glint of every tender feeling she would not give him. He pushed himself to his knees, aroused and aching and not caring that she knew. He gestured around them at the leaves strewn over the hut's floor. "Now there is room for two." *** Thea did not know why his words affected her so. They were no more than his usual, meaningless excuse for wit, half banter, half flirtation, imbued as always with a coarser meaning she could not help but see. She should have become accustomed to his quips and taunts by now. Maybe it was not his words at all, but the aftermath of the whirlwind they'd created among the leaves, of the fleeting moment when he'd held her close, buried her against the lean hardness of his body. The last of the leaves drifted down, wheeling in slow spirals to land with the others. Tenderly he reached up and plucked one from her tangled braid, brushed it against her lips. She inhaled deeply. The breath came out in ragged bursts. Dear God, what did he want of her now, playing at lovers' games when he forbade it just moments ago? What purpose? For he had a purpose--he always had a purpose--this man who would sooner me caught without honor than without motive. She tried to shake herself free of the web of feeling he'd woven around her. This was the danger of him, the sly, manipulative way of the man. Even now he knelt between her open legs, gazing at her with such unabashed longing that her breath caught hot in her throat and stayed there, smoldering, making words impossible. Something in his dark eyes told her that words, that protest, was useless. He knew, as did she, that they had both abandoned every guise of indifference back by the creek's edge. Her passion, so diligently masked as loathing; her desire, as intense as his, shoved deep inside where it burned like a dark secret--he had exposed it all, reveled in it like a man thirsty for the truth of her feeling-And then denied himself. The Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham, who denied himself nothing. Thea could see the war of lust and conscience played out in the planes of his face, once elegant lines of cheekbone and jaw now rugged and intense with restraint. The world seemed to have stopped around them, making her mindful of every quickened breath, of the way her breasts ached for his touch, of the way her skirts lay in a woolen puddle at mid-thigh. She knew, if she wanted, she could undo him with a word, with a gesture, with a single, brazen caress, this Sheriff she had been so sure she hated, who gazed at her, heavy with

wanting, bruised with the weight of unspent seed. She could have him, command him against his own indomitable will, vanquish him. Yet she had not the heart to do so. If anything, she must spare him, and end his struggle--and hers. For, God in heaven, she could not live, wanting the bastard so. She groped for the edge of her hem, trying to push it down over the unseemly expanse of bare skin. He captured her hand, fingers lacing hers immobile, settling on her flesh like a firebrand. "Your vow--your all-important vow not to take me," she stammered. "Not until--until--" He raised a brow, the cool, polished gesture at odds with his appearance, hastily donned tunic and jerkin askew, hanging heavy and water-laden from broad shoulders, bits of twigs and leaves clinging to his clothes and in his matted hair. "I did not vow not to look." His gaze pored over her, missing nothing, sparing her nothing of its intensity. She wrested her fingers away from the snare of his hand and clutched at his sleeve, hoping to prevent him from moving the short distance to the juncture of her thighs where her body was sure to proclaim how little his vow meant to her. He made no further move save to gather in the sight of her lying amidst the leaves, memorizing her with a peculiar wistfulness that tore through her more surely than his most blatant seduction. There was never a time when she had longed more to give him what he wanted, to part her lips beneath his and bring his hand to her breast, for this was no war between them. It was not even a game-Then his wistfulness disappeared, so rapidly replaced by hard cynicism that she thought she'd dreamed the yearning there only because she wanted it so badly. "Although, Thea," he asked, lips curling with sarcasm, "how comfortable can you be, protected by a vow made by a man you believe to be a liar? If my word is worth so little, if I am so lacking in honor, there is no reason why I cannot be about bedding you. Here. At long last." She caught the change in his voice, of control restored, words bandied about carelessly. A game after all. She played her part, in turn. "No reason save decency, a regard for my virtue." "The virtue of a woman who has shared her bed once with me already? Of the wanton who was so ready to be taken by the brook, who even now spouts denial while her legs are splayed in welcome?" His laugh infuriated her, deep-throated chuckles that pierced her with the truth. She slapped his hand away from the intimate progress it made against her thigh and kicked out at him. Her foot connected solidly with his knee.

With a rush of satisfaction, she saw him wince, saw his hand move instinctively toward the injured part. A pity her aim could not have been truer. Thea struggled to her knees, legs drawn up beneath her, skirts tucked safely around her ankles, and huddled as far back into the corner of the hut as the cramped space would allow. "Your promise still holds, Sheriff," she dared remind him, "for you said you would wait until I desired you, and, by faith, I desire you no more now than I did then." "And no less, I'd wager." "Damn you! You have planned this whole disastrous day just to lure me and seduce me and make me think I wanted you so you could play me for a witless fool. If you agreed to stop for the night simply because you thought you could have me, here, on your terms, we can be on our way!" "Through the dark, impenetrable mists of Sherwood on a moonless night?" "A far safer prospect for me than sharing this hut with a man who can think of naught but into which unwilling victim he should next sink his sword." The Sheriff's brows shot up, whether in surprise at her crude words or in appreciation of them she did not know. He seemed to be struggling to contain another paroxysm of laughter, seemed to be failing. "Ah, woman," he said, "but that your spirit were as weak as your flesh, for you need bedding, desperately and repeatedly, and by someone with more than rudimentary skill." "And you, my lord, are that someone?" He tried to stand, favoring his hurt knee, and brushed the debris of the leaf pile from his hair and clothes and the lengths of his leather-clad thighs. "If your memory does not serve, then an end to your recent chastity is long overdue. Damn, but it's cold. Where did I put the swineherd's flintstone?" No accounting for the workings of his mind. He abandoned his persistence without explanation, without even a backward glance as he hobbled out of the hut. "I thought your mantle a good cover for the leaves. Mine we could use as a blanket, but I daresay we'll find frost on our backsides tomorrow morn without more heat." He shrugged out of his wet tunic and jerkin and tossed them over a bush to dry. For all his nonchalance, she was left sitting in the leaves, weak knees mocking her attempts to stand, and a single thought in her mind: that if he followed his tunic with the rest of his clothes and they slept skin-to-skin, he would have no need of a fire, and even less of that inconvenient oath he had made. No accounting for the workings of her own mind! That vow was all that protected her-not just from him, but from herself as well. And that was where the real danger lay.

Her body had surrendered to a rush of feeling, and nothing of the Sheriff's restraint seemed designed to spare her. Her blood flowed hotter in her veins. It settled into places he'd touched or kissed, burning into her flesh until she all but begged for the remembered wetness of him, cold clothes and damp skin hissing into her heat, putting out the fire. He gathered wood while she busied herself plumping the leaves into a wider berth. She took off her cloak and spread it over the piles. Then, because there was nothing left to do, she saw and waited for him, staying then trembling of her hands in the fur pelt of his mantle she had drawn over her lap. He struck sparks from flint and coaxed the sparks into flame, then checked Chimera a final time. Neither of them spoke. He was preoccupied, she guessed. He wore that same expression that told her his thoughts were elsewhere--brows knit low over an intently focused stare, vertical crease marring the smoothness of his high forehead. She remained silent, not trusting her voice to pretend well at indifference. The bed faced the fire, and when he made no move to join her, Thea stretched out along her side, watching the shadows of the flames crawl up among the trees. She watched him patrol the little square of light the small fire provided, watched him stare into the darkness of the woods, start at the animals' night sounds until his ear was accustomed to what was natural around them. Either he was very, very careful or, despite his bluster, he was avoiding the time when they would lie side by side beneath the shelter of the hut. Useless to puzzle over the contradictions in the Sheriff's nature; there were as many in her own. She should hate him. She should know for a certainty he was evil and underhanded and had her country's ruin at heart. She should feel only revulsion at the sight of him, and the sound of his voice should set her every fear on edge. But none of that was true. Not now. Even here in Sherwood, where belief had taken root and conviction flowered--even here, what she knew to be truth was shaken. Somehow, in this crude bower, safety and the security of knowing her own mind had vanished. John, Robin, Will Scathlocke, Brand, even Much, in his own way, all faulted the Sheriff--this one man who stood, arms clasped behind his back, staring into the dance of the campfire, brooding over his powerlessness. Thea watched the golden light flicker over the muscles of Nottingham's back, highlighting the mysterious streaks of scarred skin. Something fragile lay behind his facade of control. Something vulnerable he would not let the world see spoke in the lines of torn, badly healed flesh. She wished she knew him well enough to know what riddle kept him dark and unknowable. But she was no seeress, no oracle, and of late, all too human.

She closed her eyes, and much later he eased himself into the place behind her, giving her the best warmth of the fire. She felt him draw the heavy fur of his mantle over them both and snuggle into the curve of her back. He thought her asleep, probably had waited until he was certain of it before coming to bed. She did nothing to tell him otherwise, even when he slid his arm beneath her head to pillow it. She should sleep, she knew. Let dreamless oblivion blot away the confusion of her thoughts and the surety of sensation that plagued her still. But that blessed nothingness escaped her. In the close darkness of their hut, the male scent of him mingled with the pungency of the forest and burning oak. Nottingham draped his arm across her hip, and his fingertips brushed distractedly across the flat plane of her stomach. No, she could not sleep; she could hardly breathe. Thea felt his breath fan the loose hairs of her braid, warm and rhythmic, felt his lips press against her shoulder. "Thea, sweet?" he murmured, his words a drowsy slur against the nape of her neck. She did not answer, could not destroy the illusion that she slept. "I am naught but a besotted foot," he whispered. "Even Millie said so." Silence. "I think all I wanted was to see you in sunlight, hear you laugh, find a moment of peace where I could be with you . . . without him." Tears sprang to her eyes, hot like the knot in her throat. She longed to tell him how needless it was, that he was never Robin's rival save in his own mind, but somehow the pretense had grown bigger than either of them. Every truth she did not tell him, every secret she kept-"I deceived you, of course. It was all I knew--all I know--to get you here. Planned every detail--how you would be in the stable with Simeon, and how I would whisk you away--" Her own deceit would best his any day. "Planned it all, except for wanting you so madly." His honesty humbled her, adding to the burden of passion already assaulting her senses. "So blame me, if you must, Thea. By Christ, I am guilty."

He curled around her protectively, as if wanting to comfort himself in the warmth their bodies made. Tears scalded her cheeks, and she bit the inside of her lip to keep her shoulders from shaking. Oh, God, how she longed to turn in his arms, stretch out against the length of him until she touched him everywhere, imprint the texture of his skin upon hers. If she could capture the taste and heat of his mouth, trap forever the smoky resonance of his voice. If she could tell him she was not his enemy, but a woman, wanting that strong-fragile part of him that was man, not Sheriff, where Sherwood and enmity staked not claim. If-Oh, God, too late--too late for all of that. For they were enemies. John had said so. Robin proclaimed it. The villagers believed it. Even Much knew it with simple, childlike faith. Who was she to doubt them all? And yet she did. For how could John's Sheriff, who plotted and schemed so unerringly for ill gain, be the same man who nestled beside her? How could Robin's Sheriff, whose relentless evil scourged the shire like a deadly plague, be the same man who, close to the edges of sleep, murmured such unlikely confession of his feelings for her? Did they know him at all? Did she? Thea shivered in his arms. Such dangerous questions--dangerous to Robin and his noble plan, to John with his earnest conviction of right and wrong, to Brand's memory, most of all. And answers? In her months with Nottingham, had she found anything sure and certain save her desire for him? The Sheriff's breathing deepened, and the wary tension melted from the shoulder where she rested her head. His fingers uncurled, lay limp against her belly. He slept, giving up no answers of his own. So much of the man was an unsolved mystery she longed to untangle. Beneath every fault John and Robin saw, beneath the armor that guarded his heart, the Sheriff hid an army of truths. Tenderness lay beneath the anger, honesty beneath the self-serving deceit. And deeper still was an emptiness he'd filled with evil only because there had never been anyone to fill it with love. That was the Sheriff of Nottingham she wanted to believe in--the strange, sweet, besotted fool. Yet this man, if she let him, would be her undoing. She felt it as surely as she felt the warmth of his body anchored around her. The cruel Lord Nottingham she could despise, but she had no defense against the man lying next to her. This man was making her forget every loyalty she had ever had, every purpose around which she'd built her life since Brand died. Given time, he would make her forget herself. Thea stirred restlessly in the Sheriff's embrace. She could not let that happen! God, with half a chance he would turn her heart and she would betray everything she believed in.

All Robin and John had worked for. Their last hope for England. She must stop this before she became a threat to everything she loved. Brand . . . John . . . Robin . . . Sherwood . . . She must remember! The answers she sought were not to be found in the Sheriff of Nottingham, not in a man any unlearned peasant knew was Satan incarnate. The answers were here, in the greenwood. Chapter 18 She did not know how long she lay awake before the decision came to her. The fire had died down to a bed of vermilion coals glowing in the darkness, and a pale sliver of moon had risen above the branches of the trees. For hours it seemed, Thea had lain awake, sleep just out of reach, heart drumming out a slow lament on the inside of her chest. The idea crept in slowly, wedging between the beats of her heart, making it pound with terror at the very thought, pushing sleeper farther and farther away until it eluded her altogether. She must leave. It was the only way. Not once since the Sheriff took her from her cottage months ago had she been this close to freedom. If she waited until morning, he would only take her back to Nottingham and life would resume, and it was an impossible life. More impossible now that her feelings for him had broken every conviction she'd ever held. She stared wide-eyed into the darkness, tears dried, eyes aching all the same. She did not love the man. She knew that. She knew that with absolute certainty. She did not want to love him. But somewhere between Edwinstowe and Nottingham Castle, she had lost the will to resist him, and that frightened her more than any of the tales of reputed horror she had heard about the evil Sheriff. What use was she to John or any of the scores of people who had suffered under Nottingham's injustice if she were so perilously close to succumbing to the beast? And if, by the grace of God, her resolve were stronger--what then? She could not sit back and watch him destroy himself with his misguided fealty to Prince John, or wait as his obsession with the Sherwood bandits grew more and more unreasonable. Nor could she live with him, casting all her hopes on the fragile glimmer of the gentler man she had seen today. And surely, above all, she could not love him, knowing in the end he would be undone, knowing she would be an instrument of that undoing. He called her witch, but in truth she had no power equal to his. He had lured her with the dark piercing stare of his sorcerer's eyes and charmed her with the devil's own wit. The soft seductive drone of his voice was like an incantation murmured in her ear. Even now, the haunting memory of his love play invaded her mind, forcing her to relive the afternoon by the streambed over and over until she was mad with wanting him. He

had held her and touched her, and for a while she was part of his power, the womantwin to everything male and potent about him. The feeling intoxicated her. It filled her mind with thoughts of him, called to her in dreams where she beguiled him with equal fervor. Who was this woman in her dreams if not the woman he had made her, passionate, rebellious of spirit, awakened to her own strength, who dared believe she was a match for him? Madness, true. But the Sheriff of Nottingham wove madness around everyone he touched. There was only one escape. She would go to John, confess to him that she had failed and could not continue with her fruitless scheme, pray he did not see the changes the Sheriff had wrought in her. And then she would return home, back to her cottage where life was ordered and safe. She would spare Nottingham more of the tortured indecision that plagued him, make for both of them the decision he seemed unable to make. And if it was lonelier-Thea steeled her wavering sense of purpose. She had been lonely before and countered it with her work, and she would do so again. Real work, not the mockery of it the Sheriff allowed her. The honest endeavor of tending to the ill and infirm, of delivering babes and comforting the dying. One day, sometime in a future she could not foretell, she would find that she did not think of him, or if she did, he would be a pale, half-remembered image that time had blurred in her mind. The tearing pain she felt in her heart at leaving him would fade into a dull, hollow ache. She waited, measuring minutes and hours in her mind until his breathing slowed with the rhythm of deep sleep. Lip caught between her teeth, she drew a noiseless breath, held it, and edged away from him. He did not stir at her movement or the rustle of leaves beneath him, even as she lifted his arm away and slipped from his embrace. Without the fur of his mantle and the radiant warmth of his body, Thea felt the full, frigid assault of the night air. Wind gusted through the trees, rattling bare branches and whipping up swirls of fallen leaves. She shivered and hugged her arms around the thin, woolen sleeves of her kirtle. She would have to sacrifice her cloak. It would be foolish to try to retrieve it, more foolish to risk easing the Sheriff's sword away from his curled fingers, loosened by sleep. She told herself she would get used to the cold, and as for the sword--Nottingham had far more need of it in Sherwood than she. She took a hesitant backward step, then another, wincing as leaves and fallen twigs cracked beneath her feet. He moaned slightly, and a stifled gasp froze in her throat as he rolled onto his back. Watery moonlight illumined his face, and she watched in horror as discontent and discomfort threatened to wake him. He thrashed about, wrestling the mantle into a rope of wool and fur around his legs before he stilled and settled deeper into the pallet of leaves.

The breath she held grew hot, threatening to explode in her lungs. Minutes passed and her muscles cramped as she forced them to remain motionless. Thea had no sense of the time she waited there, not breathing, expecting discovery with each passing second. It seemed hours--a lifetime--before she dared believe the steady rise and fall of his chest signaled sleep. Stretching one leg out behind her, she felt for the ground with a foot grown numb with cold and tension. Amazed that her shaking knees did not buckle, she stepped away from the hut. She waited until she reached Chimera's side before the breath rasped from her throat. "Steady, Chimera," she whispered, letting the stallion snuffle at her palm. "You remember me, don't you? How many times in the past weeks did Simeon and your master force our reluctant acquaintance? And now it has come to this." Her fingers groped in the darkness for the knotted reins, untied them, held them close to the bit as she had seen Simeon do. "I need your help. Just for the night. Come, Chimera. Easy. Easy." At least the animal did not startle at her scent or protest as she tugged on the reins and led him toward the narrow swine track that cut away from the encampment. Vines and limbs closed over the trail, and she pushed them back, warding off branches with an outthrust arm. Carefully, she skirted between low boughs and waded through dense, shoulder-high fern, praying the fallen leaves and howling wind would deaden her footsteps and the clop of Chimera's hooves. Occasionally, Thea stopped to judge her progress by the shrinking glow of the campfire she'd left behind. When she could see it no longer, she knew she was safe. Bending her head low, she pushed ahead with renewed effort, unmindful of the briars that tore at her hair and reached out like greedy fingers to dig into her skirts. Vines, hidden in the darkness, lashed her face, and her hands stung with the whipcord bite of thorns; yet she felt nothing as sharp as the desperation that hurried her on. She had to leave him. She must. There was no other choice. "Don't turn back. Just a bit farther." The words became a refrain, filling her mind. She hardly realized she'd spoken them aloud. When she came to the main road, Thea stopped. Blackness engulfed her, laughing at the attempts of a reed-thin moon to light her way. The very memory of him beckoned her. It had happened then--the full transformation he had begun in her at harvest time. She did not know her own mind. What she knew he had put there: doubt and confusion, chaos and torment, desires of the flesh she had never known before. The sure madness that came when a demon possessed one's soul. Chimera pranced nervously at their delay, skittering sideways at the eerie wail of the wind. Thea caught the reins and a clump of mane in her hand and, standing on tiptoe, stretched to fit her foot into the stirrup. Fighting her skirts, she heaved herself up, over

the beast's back and astride the saddle. Once mounted, her feet dangled high above the stirrups and the horse circled wildly, pivoting about as she fumbled with the twisted reins. He was afraid, she realized. As afraid as she. Of the night and the wind and the death rattle of leaf-bare branches. Maybe of Sherwood itself. *** Guy of Gisborne had doled out instructions to light only half the rushlights in the great hall that evening. The gloom suited his mood, and the sputtering ocher light that leaked through the darkness enhanced the effect the warm spiced wine lent to his senses. Narrowing his eyes, he scanned the hall, marking the atmosphere of the room. He had managed to squelch most of the talk that erupted after the Sheriff's unexpected and indecorous departure, but not before word spread from the stable through the castle like an ill-contained brushfire. Making an example of Ned Godwinson had helped. The stablehand would flap his ruddy jaws less without a tongue in his head. As Gisborne surveyed the people who drifted through the wan light of the great hall, he reassured himself that few engaged in conversation, and those who did quickly swallowed their words when he aimed a sneering threat of permanent silence in their direction. Damn the woman! The blame for this entire debacle could be laid at her feet. He picked up a cup of wine and frowned into the steaming liquid before taking a hearty gulp. With restless irritation, he hoisted one booted foot atop the trestle table and kicked the trencher of meat away. Aelwynn's long-nailed fingers retracted as the venison flew out of her reach to the end of the table. Her sulfur eyes flicked in Gisborne's direction; painted lips pursed in a moue of disapproval. "Patience, my lord," she crooned, thin hand falling provocatively on Gisborne's raised knee. "The day's events are not worthy of such jaundiced wrath." Gisborne swiveled toward her in a gale of motion, features contorted with rage. "To you, perhaps. You can afford to let this--this--witch distract him and amuse yourself while he dallies with her." "And you cannot?" She smoothed her hand up the length of Gisborne's thigh and fixed him with a sultry stare. "He will tire of her." "You said that weeks ago." He brushed her hand away like the aggravation it was. "Tell me he remembers your charms, Aelwynn, when he can scarce remember what day it is for the thoughts of her that fill his head. And now this scene in the stable, riding out of here like a lust-crazed youth, clutching her in front of him." "It was the way she came in," Aelwynn reminded him coolly. "Perhaps he only means to return her to Sherwood."

"Would that were true. No, doubtless, he was overcome with the desire for more than a romp in the hay and thoughtless enough to flaunt his weakness for all to see. Worse, he rode out of here without so much as a guard, without a thought to his safety." "Is it his safety that concerns you, my lord?" Aelwynn's voice was honeyed with pretended amazement. "One would think you'd be celebrating his jeopardy." "Are you a fool? You need him alive as much as I do, or do you think you could profit as well without him--you, naught but a discarded concubine?" He took another swallow of wine, staring at Aelwynn from above the rim of his cup. She had interested him at first, giving him a sense of accomplishment and mastery when he shared her bed. And she did possess a modicum of skill; there was no denying that. But the novelty of her talents had worn thin. There was no thrill in taking a woman Nottingham had cast off, and with good reason. Her whining petulance grated on his ears. Once titillating, her demands for all manner of gratification both day and night were tedious now. Worse, she seemed not a whit concerned about her own welfare, or his. Did she not see? To let the Sheriff continue his enraptured liaison with this treacherous thing from the forest was to spoil forever the one chance they all had of getting out of this God-forsaken tomb and into the royal court. Once he had entertained the hope that Aelwynn could win back the Sheriff's affections. God knew, he had toyed with her longer than any other wench in the castle. But Aelwynn had lost her charm and clearly the better part of her ambition. What did she want of late but to pacify herself with her runes, beg him for favors, and mewl for this comfort or that? God, but the woman stuck faster to his side than any leech! Perhaps Aelwynn had outlasted her usefulness in more ways than one. Certainly he had relied too heavily upon her to keep the Sheriff from continuing his dogged pursuit of Thea Aelredson. "You were supposed to keep his interest from her, or, failing that, entice him away," Gisborne reminded Aelwynn of their agreement. Aelwynn shrugged her narrow shoulders. "You were supposed to make certain she did not soften him with her endless pleas for that flock of outlaws she's protecting." "I was supposed to procure her for you." Aelwynn sniffed and raised a supercilious brow. "Well, in that you have failed, too." Aelwynn's eyes struck hot golden sparks. "Is that it, then? Truth, Gisborne. Which irks you most? That he has bedded her, or that you have not?"

Gisborne's chair scraped back, and he bolted to his feet, hands clenched at his sides. "She stands in our way, I tell you!" "Then the answer is simple. Remove her." Unruffled, Aelwynn confronted the lieutenant. "Or can't you do that?" Gisborne swallowed hard, feeling trapped in her eyes, like an insect caught in the amber of a witch's amulet. The truth of her implication struck like a knife in his gullet. "If not," Aelwynn continued, "I suggest you are as lust-blind as he." Gisborne felt her gaze flit across his face and down the length of his body, a look of assessment and contempt. She rose from her chair with affected, regal grace, sharp chin raised in a silent dare. "And nearly as careless. For what do you think he would do to you were he to know of your obsession with his woman? How well do you think you would profit, lying in some dark corner of this castle with his dagger in your gut?" His fists tightened around sweating palms. Perspiration spiked his brow; he felt a rivulet course down his temple, threatening to undo his grip on his temper. Aelwynn's lips curved into a thin, blood red crescent, and her suggestive threat of an instant ago slipped away. She lifted her jeweled hand to his cheek and wiped away the trickle of sweat with a long, tapered finger. "You fear too much," she murmured to him, voice as thick as curdled cream. "Your cousin is well. He merely gratifies himself with this moment of whimsy. Leave him to me, and don't fret so. Your place at his side is secure." "And this woman, this herb witch--" Aelwynn's hand drifted down, splaying possessively across his chest. "I believe, left alone, the witch will hang herself." Gisborne felt his body stir in response to her unspoken invitation, and hated himself for it. He did not want Aelwynn. He wanted Thea. Once. Just once. To right the imbalance of power she'd caused by being unafraid of him and leading his cousin astray of his ambition. Just once. Inside of her. His shaft hardened at the thought; the glorious promise of conquest throbbed low in his spine. Once. And then the witch be damned. He captured Aelwynn's hand as it wandered lower and crushed her fingers in the vice of his palm until she grimaced with pain and turned her eyes toward his. "And I believe, left alone, she will hang us all."

Ages had passed since Thea had turned onto the main road from the unmarked footpath near the swineherd's hut. As the thin moon rose higher in the night sky, she rode

Chimera deeper and deeper into the wood, trusting in her own unaccomplished commands to keep him going northward. Several times, the stallion's instinct and training rose up to challenge her. She possessed nothing of the Sheriff' mastery over the animal, and Chimera was ever tempted to balk or turn and retreat the way he had come. Thea matched wit and will against the horse until her thighs ached and her palms were scraped raw by the reins. Somehow, miraculously, Chimera carried her miles long the Great North Road instead of back to the Sheriff's camp. Despite a gait that jerked from walk to canter and back again, he did not stumble in the dark. Nor, with her fingers clutching the reins and mane, did she fall. When they reached the first of several trails that led away from the main road and deeper into Sherwood's western flank, Thea stopped and risked a tentative sigh of relief. Nothing followed her. Certainly not the angry, stalking figure she imagined to be at her heels every step of the way. All she heard was the rustle of fallen leaves fluttering about the stallion's restless hooves and the low whistle of the wind rising intermittently to drown out the pounding of her heart. She had traveled far enough that Nottingham would never catch up with her now. Even if he were such a fool to try. Which he isn't, Thea reminded herself grimly. She closed her eyes, trying to blot out the image in her mind: the Sheriff left alone in a place that spelled death to him, asleep, unaware, as innocent as the man was likely to get, defenseless-No, hardly that. God and His angels had yet to dream up a predicament he could not snake his way out of. And he did have his sword, although that was little salve to her conscience and none to that part of her mind that wished she were back there beside him, wrapped in the fur of his mantle and his leather-clad legs. Cold wind whipped against skin grown hot with the effort of her ride, and she remembered why she had left him, why she could not turn back. She urged the warhorse on, wondering if it were possible to outrun the memories the Sheriff of Nottingham had left in her mind. *** "C-cold," he managed, lip swollen, dripping blood into the rag the girl held wadded to his mouth. He tried to see her face through a haze of drink and pain. He could smell her. Sweet, like the hay where he lay, knees curled up beneath his chin in a pitiable posture of defeat. She reached down, stroked aside the strands of hair sweat had plastered to his brow, then gestured helplessly to his back. He knew without looking. Felt the red heat pulsing, the sticky ooze of raw skin seeping blood. Gisborne paced nearby. "He is an ass," he heard his cousin say.

"He is . . . your f-father." The words sounded far away, an atonal drone that boomed and receded with the throb in his back and temple. "I will kill him myself!" "No." "Don't think I can't do it. Don't think I won't!" "Cousin--" Each word hurt; his jaw sang with the pain. "You'll leave here. It's the only way. And I with you." "Cousin--" "Soon, I swear it. Across to England, do you think?" A boy's dream. He held tight to it, gritting his teeth against the fire that licked across his back. "C-cold," he said, despite the flame. He huddled closer into himself, burrowing his head into the girl's tattered skirts. "Thea . . ." He filled his hand with the wool of her mantle, the sweet lavender scent of her clinging to the fibers, mingling with the fragrance of the forest. Cold. The Sheriff bolted upright, the single motion scattering the dream into a thousand fragments. Nothing remained but the stiffness and ache of scarred skin--and the cold. The place beside him was empty. He reached out, hand settling into the slight hollow her hips had made among the leaves. *** "Thea! Lass! Good Christ!" She heard the words as if in a stupor. Fatigue and cold dragged at her senses, dulling everything around her. Had she reached them finally? Several small fires illumined the night, and the light chased shadow up and down the trunks of the ancient oaks. The reflection of flames, scarlet and gold, cut through the darkness as she saw the lot of grimy bandits surge toward her. Some had already drawn bows; most were still wrestling sleep and the effect of late-night drink. The horde of dirt-streaked faces parted. One man, taller than the rest, pushed through. "Thea?" "I fired the warnin' arrow, John. Thought it was Robin comin' back--" "But before we could stop her--"

Voices blurred together. Thea shook her head, trying to rouse herself. Torn and bleeding, she still gripped the reins and the stallion's mane. A large, work-roughened hand closed over hers and pried her fingers loose. She felt herself half-falling, half lowered into oak-strong arms, cradled like a babe against a massive chest. "John?" she murmured. The familiar boom of his voice resonated in her ears. "Sh-sh, lass. Duncan, can ye spare a blanket, man? Much, fetch the mead fer me. Stop sniveling, lad, she's all right. Now, run! Be quick, can ye?" Already she was warming, clutched to the giant's body like a small, limp poppet. Safe. Listening to John bark out orders in one breath, croon and fret over her the next. "More wood to my fire. Her blood's chilled through." "And what am I do to with the horse, John? Answer me that. I've seen that stallion before. That's the Sheriff's beast." "She stole the Sheriff's horse?" "Then his army of hounds are on her trail fer sure. Sweet Virgin, she's probably led them straight to us!" Thea struggled to reply, to tell them they were wrong, that they need fear neither soldiers following in her wake nor surprise attack, but John spoke for her. "Codswallop, Donald! It's Thea ye speak of!" His few words and the authority in his voice ended further questions. The men dispersed, straggling back to their bedrolls or to the campfire for a last swig of ale. John lowered her to the ground, hands daubing helplessly at the rips in her kirtle and the scratches on her face. Tenderly, he drew a tattered blanket around her shoulders, then held a wooden cup to her lips. "Drink." She swallowed full and hard, the mead splashing fire through her belly, then curling a languorous heat throughout her body. Her arms and legs felt weak and leaden with exhaustion. "I failed, John," she managed. "God forgive me, I couldn't stay." "Shush, lass. Not now. Quiet yerself. There's time fer all this later." "But John-" "Drink." The mead tasted sweet on the second sip, its fire faded to a golden, honeyed glow. She drained the cup, feeling the liquid warmth push the ache from her back and neck and the sting from her briar-lashed hands.

Everything she had planned to say to him became a drowsy tangle in her mind-confession, apology, all the reasons she could not stay. She felt the callused tips of his fingers push back the spill of curls at her temple, then trace the welt that angled upward across her cheekbone. Her lids grew heavy, fluttered closed. "I had to leave him," she whispered into the darkness. "Did he harm ye, lass? Tell me that, and I'll be fer killing the bastard myself." Through the fog of drink and sleep, she reached out and stayed his hand. "No, John, don't. Let the man be." *** The Sherwood camp stirred with activity as the day broke. Men pulled themselves to their feet with seeming reluctance, yawning, stretching, rubbing sleep-gritted eyes. There was little that passed for conversation; a single, bedraggled rooster filled the absence of chatter with a strident crow. John Little winced and shot the fowl with an imaginary arrow. "Cease yer morning caws or I'll have ye in a stew pot yet, ye old cock. God's bones, it's murder on a man's head to hear such noise straight from sleep." Thea smiled. "It could be the mead, John." "Could be," he agreed, and shrugged away the knotted muscles in his neck. "Could be I lain awake all night wondering why ye'd come back, and how ye managed to make yer escape on the Sheriff's prize animal. Saints, Thea, did no one tell ye beginning banditry oughtn't to be so conspicuous?" The subtle pride in John's voice should have put her at ease. Instead, Thea only felt more nervous. She had spent so many hours of her ride rehearsing what she would say when she arrived--something that would explain why she had to leave the castle without revealing the Sheriff's disastrous effect on her senses. Now every careful construct of her explanation fled. She glanced up at the affable grin on John's face and tried to smile back. This man deserved something kinder than the truth. "I suppose I should have planned it better, but when the idea came to me, John, when I decided to leave, I had mind for little else but going." "What is this, lass? Has the careful woman I knew so well grown impulsive on fine, castle food?" "I couldn't stay. I know I thought I could, but . . . ." She lowered her eyes, reluctant to confront him. "I couldn't stay. Call me coward if you wish, or disloyal. There just came a time when I seemed more a hindrance than a help to Robin's plan."

John said nothing for a moment, as if measuring her words against some other meaning she'd left unspoken. Then he gently touched her arm. "Walk with me, lass," he said, shouldering his quarterstaff. "We've water skins to fill." Thea nodded, as needful of privacy as he, and took two skins in each hand. They moved beyond sight and sound of the encampment to a small brook before John spoke again. "So Nottingham done ye in, lass?" Thea glanced at him sharply. It was not like John to be obtuse, even less like him to be humorless, yet his words seemed couched in ambiguity and sternness. "The castle," she said with careful emphasis, "is cold, dank, and foul when the wind is right. You were there. Imagine such a place for days--weeks--without reprieve. Guards at every turn. Doors locked or barred. Faces that look at you with suspicion instead of smiles. It was oppression, John, and I dealt poorly with it." "Then ye did not find the vault of silver." Thea bowed her head. A discomfiting shame crept over her, not the shame of having failed, but the failure of not having tried. How could she justify that? How could she explain that she, who had always known her own mind, had been reduced to wavering indecision by a man she called enemy? That even now she struggled with loyalties that she would never have questioned a season ago? Right and wrong seemed so simple then. She cursed the day she'd met the man who'd taught her otherwise, who had put an end to certainty. "Please, John, go ahead and bellow at me. I'd feel better if you'd just rant and roar a while and make a tally of my incompetence. I'll even start the list for you, if you'd like. It was a foolish idea, and I'm a poor spy. Much, for all his clumsiness and dull wit, would have found answers with more cunning, would have found the silver, would have come back unscathed with a handful of coin stuffed in each stocking and grinning from ear to ear. I am useless. Worse. A risk to you all." Words and frustration poured from her. Confession would be next. She shut her mouth hard and turned away. Taking the skins, she knelt by the creek and let the rushing water swell them full. John took his time to reply, as if waiting to string the right words together. She could see him out of the corner of her eye, hip hoisted onto a fallen tree trunk, pretending to study the buffed wood of his quarterstaff. With a deep breath, he looked off into the woods where early morning's light slanted through the stand of trees. "If ye must know, I'm glad ye're back," he said at last. "Robin's plan--aye. 'Tis a fine plan. Full of courage and daring. Heroic stuff what will bring King Richard back to us. Just the sort of plan Robin would dream up and make work. But lass--lass, if anything in Robin's fine scheme mean that harm would come to ye--"

His eyes darted to hers, trapped her with a searing glance before she could look away. His words had gone swiftly from soft-spoken deliberation to stubborn, strong-willed passion; his face was full of it. "Robin can't know--none of them can--the price I paid when I agreed to yer plan. Oh, I boasted on ye, sure, on yer fine ideas and bravery, but there was no resting easy in my skin, thinking what would happen to ye, were ye found out. Ye cannot know how it tore at me to leave ye with that devil--how it--how I--God's oath, Thea!" He flung the quarterstaff aside and dropped to his knees beside her, pulling her into a bruising embrace. Thea felt the water skins slip from her fingers, heard the brook capture and churn them in the current as it carried them downstream. John pressed her close, one hand fisted in the hair at the nape of her neck as he covered her mouth with his. She had no time to think, or breathe, and now she could do neither. Patience and protection and comfort and all the things John meant to her vanished. In their place, a bold hunger drove his kiss deeper. Nothing lazy or indolent, like the sleepy forest giant she had known. Nothing of sweetness and play she remembered. Thorough, insistent, his lips swept over hers, thick bristle of beard abrading her cheek. "There," he said, mouth still touching her, voice raw, husky. "That is the way of it, lass." "John--" "There be naught in Robin's plan worth this, lass. The feel of ye in my arms. Safe. By the saints, ye are sweet, sweeter than mead . . . warmer . . . hotter . . . ." "John, stop--" "Shush, lass." He laid a large stub of a finger across her lips. "It's not a matter we need speak of." She circled his wrist and drew his hand away. "But it is, John. It is." "Then what would ye have me say? That I love ye? There. That my heart is full of ye? That I ache fer wanting ye day and night? That I've feared fer ye? That I despise myself fer letting ye stay there, with him?" His brows thundered down and his head jerked in the direction of Nottingham's keep. "Don't ye think I started to come fer ye a hundred times? To say, blast Robin and Richard and the whole bleeding mess and carry ye away from there to somewhere deep in Sherwood, away from the Sheriff, away from Robin, where even God Hisself couldn't find us? Do ye not think I struggle with that, even know, looking at ye like-like--" He reached for her-"John, don't--" --And let his hand drop.

"Aye. Ye see? It's not a thing to speak of. I can see ye flinching at my very words." Thea shook her head. "There is something between us, John. There has always been. You've looked after me, cared for me, been there for me when there was no one else. I would've called it friendship." "And ye would've been content?" "I was content!" "And I was not." Thea did not know what to say to him. His forthrightness forbade any kindness or gentleness that might give him false hope. "I'm sorry," she said. "It just cannot be, John. Not the way you want it." She pushed away from him and rose, struggling with her skirts and the quivering in her knees. How could she begin to explain? "I've lost the water skins. If I follow the creek downstream, back to the camp . . ." Her voice trailed off as she turned and walked away. She had retraced most of her steps when she heard the muffled thud of John's footsteps behind her, a lengthening stride breaking into a run. He reached out, grabbed her upper arm, and pulled her to a stop at the perimeter of the camp. "Ye're in love with him." Her head snapped up, shock washing her face free of expression. "No!" "Aye, Thea. Ye are. It's in yer eyes, in yer words, what ye say and what ye don't." "John, that's mad! How could I--" "How, indeed, when he's a soulless, black-hearted bastard without thought or feeling in the whole of him?" "That's not true!" "Ye defend him quick enough." She wrenched her arm away and pushed through the last of the trees and bracken that camouflaged the outlaw's meeting place. "Ye're defending him, Thea! Tell me the reason in that." She stopped abruptly and turned, skirts swishing in the carpet of dried leaves underfoot. "You don't know him, John. No, it's not that--I can't say I know him myself. But I do have an advantage. I've seen him--"

"Been with him?" Thea bristled at the accusation. She had never lied to John, until today. Now she found herself stumbling over half-truths. "I've not been with him--not--not in the way you think. I told you. I do not love the man. I only know him in a different way because I've seen him when he was weak and tormented and confused, and I swear to you, there was no evil in him then." "God's oath, Thea! The beast was steeped in evil in his mother's womb, suckled on it, grown strong on it, till there's naught he knows but foul deed, naught he wants but treachery and murder. Ye'd make yerself more useful to us all if ye'd fetch yerself back to Nottingham and slay the bastard outright." "John--" "Take yer bleeding herbs, some poison ye know to twist his gut, quick and lethal--" "John!" "Damn it, Thea, do it!" The roar of his voice thundered up through the oaks. It seemed that the leaves quaked at the sound. The commotion of the camp settled to an uneasy hush. Men who had discreetly turned a deaf ear to their earlier conversation stopped their work and glanced awkwardly from John to Thea, then to one another. Thea felt their trust crumbling into judgment, then censure, but nothing could penetrate the numbness that shrouded her. She lifted her face to John, bewildered at the change in him. Sorrow closed around her heart. He was the same giant hulk of a man he'd always been. Same red-grizzled hair and beard. Same weather-beaten hands and cheeks. And yet she did not know this stranger, did not know the words to say to this gentlest of creatures grown mad with the need for retaliation. He said he loved her. Was this what love did to a man? Stunned, she took a step away from him, then another. "Thea, don't--" John's hand shot out, seized her skirt and nerveless fingers in one bone-crushing grip. She had not thought to flee, had not thought at all, but she pulled away reflexively. Penitence slipped over his worn features, obscuring anger, then he bent his head to his chest, unable to meet her eyes. "I didn't mean it--I wouldn't ask it of ye," he stammered, fingers twisting nervously between hers. "I swear, lass. I don't know what came over me. Good Christ, I wouldn't want ye back there if it meant death to Lackland hisself and

the whole bleeding lot of his baron-vultures. Ye're home. Ye're safe. Ye're not going back to the Sheriff or his kind--" "I cannot kill him," Thea said, forcing the words belatedly through lips grown cold. The strength in her voice surprised her, for she did not know where she had found such conviction or sentiment. John stopped his rambling apology and peered down at her. "You think me weak, I know," Thea said. "Or a failure. Or merely that the Sheriff's affected me somehow and I am as mad as he. But I have given you my help. Before. From the first, after Brand died and you sent for me to come for Will--a man I did not know except he was an outlaw of the wood, and hurt, and still I came, without question." "That you did, lass." "And I would again, John, without question. Not because you braved Nottingham soldiers to bring Brand back to me when he was hurt and dying; that debt I've repaid many times over. Not even because it was Brand's dying wish. But because Will was a human being, and it would have violated everything I knew to let him suffer. Or to let your men go untended when you called me again." "But the Sheriff--" "Don't you see? He is no different, John." "He is our enemy--yours--!" "He is still a man, and I've no right to take his life." "But ye seen what he did in our village, to take my smithy, to fire Duncan's crops--" "I saw what his soldiers did, at Gisborne's command." "Our homes gone, our fields torched, our livestock butchered--" "Homes can be built again, and the time for sowing comes each year, but taking a life-John, that is a loss no one can replace. Hasn't there been enough already? Have we not lost too many babes to famine and children to pestilence and aged to hardship? Do we truly wish to invite a bloodbath of vengeance upon ourselves?" "The man must be stopped." "Then stop him another way." John scraped at the scruff of beard furring his jaw. "There is no other way, lass." "The man can reason as well as you or I."

"Aye, a twisted reason, perverted to meet his own ends." "If you appeal to what he wants--order in his shire--" "The man wants order? Him with his soldiers running like rats through our villages, making no place safe fer us save Sherwood?" Frustration gnarled his features into a frown. "Aye, and he'd hang us fer being here, too, if there was silver enough to bribe his cowardly troops to come get us." Thea looked from John to the men who had begun to gather in a loose semi-circle around him. Hardened men, all of them. Many--most--had lost far more than she. Families. Freedom. Hope. She had gained their trust, and a few short months ago, she could have recited a list of the Sheriff's offenses to best any of theirs, would have felt her skin crawl and stomach curdle at the mere mention of his name. And now-The irony slammed through her. She had left Nottingham for fear of betraying these men, yet here she stood, betraying them in sentiment, if not in deed. Worse, she could see no solution. Their plot was intolerable, but Nottingham was far too entrenched in his own obsession. As long as highwaymen lived and flourished along the Great North Road and attacks on his soldiers continued, the Sheriff would never seek a peaceful solution. "There is so much you don't understand about him," she said finally. "So much you won't let yourself understand." "Thea--" "You're at a stalemate, John--you on one side, as stubborn and thick-headed as ever a man was, and he on the other, determined to best you. You've pinned all your hatred on him--one man alone--not on the wars that have bled the country dry, or famine, or disease, but on one fallible man. And he is no better. He knows soldiering and little more, and would sooner cling to some simple idea that if he takes his sword and rids Sherwood of its bandits, he will have won. He can't bear to face the rest: the plagues of poverty and the disillusionment of his people. They are not things he can fight. They are not things he can control. So you make war with each other, skirmish after skirmish, each more deadly and hate-filled than the last, because you are both too small-minded to admit that there is precious little you can do about the real injustices in this land. The only solution you can see is to do more harm." She stared them down, to a man, waiting, hoping to see some flicker of understanding in their faces. One by one, the outlaws turned away, some shame-faced, some with resignation, some with only a shrug and a curse. Only John remained, grim face focused on the toe of his boot as he scuffed patterns through the fallen leaves. He waited until all the others had dispersed and resumed their morning tasks about the camp. "Ye never was shy about speaking yer mind," he said, then glanced at her. "I loved that about ye from the first."

Thea looked away, purposely avoiding the appraisal in his eyes. Easier to deal with John in a blustering rage, ranting like a fool, than this. "We've come full circle, it seems." "Aye." He sounded no happier than she. "I don't want you hurt, any of you. You must believe that." "And him?" She waited a long time before answering. "No. No, John. I don't want him hurt either. Not if there is any way to prevent it." He nodded, then stared back down at the small pile of leaves he'd scraped together at his feet. "He's not deserving of ye, lass." "John--" "He's not," he stated with utter certainty. "Of course, few of us are. The thing I fear though--and, lass, it'll happen, despite yer words and yer wishes--the thing I fear is what will happen to ye when he's gone. Because they hate him--" He nodded toward the men. "And one day someone will get to him. His life is not worth tuppence. Not here in Sherwood. Not even in his own bed. He's written the execution order hisself with his own bleeding meanness, and there is nothing ye can to do save him. God's blood, Thea, I'm not wanting to see ye hurt twice." He looked up at her then, eyes full of dark meaning. Something in her heart tore, some tender place that had hurt all along from the minute she and John first clashed. She bled inside, grief and loss welling up, with defeat larger than either because she felt so powerless to change anything. "I do not love him, John," was all she could say. "Aye," he answered. "And I'd be selling my soul to feel from ye what ye're not calling love." Chapter 19

Thea tugged on the reins and sat back in the saddle. To her surprise and relief, the black warhorse heeded her untrained instructions. She leaned forward over his neck and planted a grateful kiss on his long, silky mane. A decided improvement in the beast's attitude, she thought, straightening again and gazing out over the valley below. Or perhaps she was gaining some mastery over him after all.

As if to prove her wrong, the stallion pawed the ground with his giant hooves and shook his head mightily, snorting hot vapor into the cooling afternoon air. She all but ignored his protest. There in the distance, her tiny wattle-and-daub cottage nestled in the hollow of the meadow's rocky hills. It was just as she remembered it, Gisborne's damage notwithstanding. Rosemary still climbed over the stone fence. The thatch roof still rose steeply, opening to the central smoke-hole. The last seasonal blooms of herbs and flowers spread a palette of muted color at her doorstep. The wooden door still hung straight on its hinges, shut snugly into its frame. She smiled as she thought of that door--Brand's silly boasting on how it was a door to withstand anything. "They'll not get in here, love," he had said. "Not wind nor weather nor none of the fletcher's rowdy sons what hang 'round here, hoping to gain a glimpse of you." Thea's eyes filled with wistful tears. Quickly, she dashed them aside with the back of her hand. Brand was gone. Even John had looked at her differently when they parted. She doubted she would ever lose his bittersweet affection; John was not one to give his feelings lightly or to snatch them back simply because they were unrequited. But this time he had looked at her, touched her hair and cheek, and hefted her up into Chimera's saddle with begrudging finality. So much had happened, little of it reflected by her hut's serene, unchanging stillness. She wondered if she could ever put things to right again, wondered if she even knew what right was, if she could ever dispel the soreness lodged in her heart. She missed him. Terribly. And it wasn't Brand she thought of. Or John. Before she could stop herself, she conjured up the image she'd carried with her all the way home, of the Sheriff sprawled on their leaf-bed, moonlight silvering his ebony hair, the crumpled indentation in the leaves at his side where she had lain, curled in his warmth. How had this happened? In him, she had found something-someone--who opened her world in ways she had never dreamed, who evoked feelings within her she had never felt, who gave her a glimpse of life and laughter and passion. And yet she had turned her back on it all. On him. She ached more than she ever remembered aching for Brand, with a yearning so keep and sharp-edged that it hurt to breathe and think of him at once. She half-turned in the saddle, looking over her shoulder at the dark green fringe of Sherwood's trees, tempted to go back and lie down with him among the leaves and moss and forget the loyalties that tore them apart. Even now he beckoned her, as if he were the palliative to her pain, and not the cause. Damn Nottingham! What had he given her but longing and a history of too many things left unfinished and unsaid?

She twisted back around, letting the wind whip through her hair and across her face, washing her with resolve. She had left him and come back here to still those very feelings that clamored to be heard. She could not afford to listen to them now. Home lay just ahead. Peace, finally. If not in the wood, then at least in her heart. Thea loosened the reins and urged Chimera forward. When they reached the croft, she dismounted and led the horse to the shelter at the back of her house--not nearly so adequate a stable as he was accustomed to in the castle, but shelter nonetheless, with a trough for water and enough grass for grazing. She had never thought much past this point. What would she do with the horse now that she was home and had no further need of him? Could she pay one of the villagers to take the animal back to Nottingham? Surely the Sheriff would give a handsome reward for the return of his stallion. Legs weak from her ride, she untacked Chimera and gave the horse a final pat. "You're a smart animal," she conceded, "but don't be thinking you can find your way back to him from this distance. Stay put. It will make both our lives so much simpler!" The horse made no move to wander, apparently content to tear and munch at a nearby clump of clover. Thea nodded, satisfied she could wait until the morrow before going to the village. At the moment, she wanted nothing more than to be inside her cottage alone, where perhaps she could hear herself think. Or make herself stop thinking. She pushed the door open, feeling a rush of cool air bathe her face. Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply, filling her lungs with the scent of home. After all this time, she could still smell the redolence of drying herbs and the telltale fragrance of lavender. She let her weight sag against the door and heard it shut behind her. "Sweet saints, safe at last." Slowly she opened her eyes, lids heavy with fatigue and the relieved exhaustion of her flight. The darkness stared back at her. "Give you good eve, Thea." A voice cut through the stillness, soft and melodic. And mocking. Thea heard the scrape of steel striking flint, and a small flame leapt to life in the blackness, sputtered in mid-air, then settled onto the wick of a single candle. She gasped, one hand at her throat, the other fumbling behind her for the latch of the door. "You make remarkably poor time . . . considering you stole my best horse." Nottingham sat facing her, his back rigid against the wooden chair. His words hung on the air like the lingering scent of her herbs. The pale golden halo of candle wavered, half obscuring an expressionless face. One hand rested on the table's surface. He drummed his fingers once against the wooden planks, then clenched his hand into a fist. "Where were you? There? With him?"

No need to ask him who he meant or what he intended. His meaning and purpose were clear in his tense, regal posture and the calculated smoothness of his questions. He had come for a confession. She said nothing, merely unknotted the scrap of wool John had given her as a makeshift cape and draped it loosely on her shoulders. His eyes narrowed, following the movements of her fingers, marking the tattered remnant of coarse cloth with suspicion. She was weary, both from her journey and his single-minded pursuit of her guilt. For once, she felt no urge to lie, to evade him with half-truths and vague denials. Confession? She wanted it nearly as much as he. Thea stepped aside and removed John's length of wool, fingering its frayed edges before looping it over a peg on the wall. Her hand lingered there, lightly caressing the fabric, and then she turned to face him. "Yes," she said, the single word strong, clear, without regret. "I was there." For all his weeks of questioning, plying her with endless innuendo, taunting her with subtle insinuations, he clearly did not expect that admission would come so easily. Shock transformed his face. The rigid jaw grew slack; lips that had pressed, bloodless, against each other parted in astonishment. She saw in an instant what she had failed to recognize in months: that behind his every challenge, behind every accusation, was the hope that he was wrong. Now, in a brief moment of despair, she had crushed that hope, and with it, John's safety, the fate of all the outlaws. God in His mercy, what had she done? Her heart hammered in her chest, and her mind, for all its pitiable racing to devise explanation, refused to form any coherent thought. "Then what Gisborne says is true." Not even a question. Her mouth had gone dry. She could only shake her head mutely, denying him in the same charade they had played out since they first met, here, in this very room. "Answer me, woman! Tell me the truth--that you wooed me with lies and left me in the wood to be butchered!" "No--" "Christ, if you knew the times I protested your innocence to Gisborne, swore to myself in the dark of night that you were harmless to me, dismissed in my mind every evidence of guilt against you because I--" He stopped and swallowed hard, preventing any confession of his own. Thea watched him battle the rage that threatened to overtake him. He shot to his feet and stormed to the far side of the room.

"Good saints, she has taken me," he muttered, as if to himself. "A mere woman. I have been played for a weakling idiot in some passion's game." Suddenly he whirled to face her, cloak hissing around him like a black tornado. "Pray, Thea. Tell me now. What has this been between us but a web of deception and false feeling? You love him, do you not? Your Locksley? Did you let me continue in my misguided affections because it was worth it to him somehow? Did you spy? Did you learn of some secret treachery in my castle, something to carry to him in the night? Tell me! Spare me a word of truth, woman!" Thea pressed her lips together, trying to hear reason amid the tumult of feelings battering away inside her. She had made so many mistakes with this man. For months, she had danced around his allegations, vehemently denying the worst of them, letting him believe others, supplying falsehood with an ease that confounded her. Now it was over. Her poor attempts to spy, to play his game and Robin's at the same time. All that was left was the chaos she had made of her feelings. And his. The longer she hesitated, the darker, the more wrath-filled, his features became. "Truth, yes," she replied carefully. "I remember. You said once, before, that you would not have me know you through the tales people told about you. The hearsay. The exaggerations. The lies." He said nothing, but stared at her with blackening eyes, waiting. In that moment, she knew there was no going back, that despite the risk, she had to tell him everything. "I would ask the same of you, Lord Nottingham," she continued, meeting his eyes as if she felt none of the fear coursing through her chilled veins. "That you know me by truth. I am not his woman. I do not belong to Robin of Locksley. I know him, yes. Have seen him before, several times, have treated him once. Stitched his chin when John bloodied it with his quarterstaff. A game. No matter." She shook her head as if to clear it. She had set herself an impossible task; already she was babbling like a silly goose of a girl. He did nothing to help, offering only silence and a grim expression. "So, yes, I know him," she began again. "A rather arrogant sort once, and still cocksure, but changed somehow. A youth grown old too quickly on Crusade, and angry in that odd way that makes people closed off from the world, as you are yourself much of the time. Industrious. Inventive. Ambitious. Again, my lord, not unlike yourself." He grimaced, obviously displeased with the comparison. "But I am not his woman, as you accuse me, nor his whore. I have not lain with him or touched him in a familiar way, nor he I. And he would not. Such is the honor of the man." "'The honor of the man'? Of an outlaw?"

"He knows me, what has passed in my life. He would not press me for affection, even were he so inclined, which I promise you he is not. Out of respect, you see," she answered simply, her eyes downcast, her voice hushed and strained, "for my husband--" Lifting her head, she met the myriad questions forming on Nottingham's lips, in his eyes. And finished. "--Who is dead."

The Sheriff felt the blood drain from him, as if her words had severed some artery, leaving him stunned, unable to speak or move. "Yes," she said. "I see you remember. All your foolish charges. Your blustering about the man's shirt Gisborne found among my belongings. Not Robin's. Brand's. My husband's. About the bow, which Robin crafted, true, but which he gave to Brand. He was a carpenter, you see, but better with other things. The table there. My cupboard. The rafters above." She looked up, nodding toward the beams from which clusters of herbs hung upsidedown to dry. "Ash," she explained. "He said it would last forever." Her voice broke. He could see the slight tremor in her chin, the way she bit into her lower lip to stop the tears that gathered in her eyes. "Not Robin of Locksley, Sheriff. Never him, except in your own fevered delusions. But Brand. My husband for a twelvemonth. Before he was taken from me." "God--God in heaven," he stammered. "How could I not have known?" "How indeed, since Gisborne saw fit to dredge up every other piece of my life for you--" "Thea, don't. If I had but known--" "You would have . . . what? Given him back to me?" "Did I take him from you?" She did not respond at first, but that in itself was answer enough. He watched her struggle to stop the tears, indignation failing her. A slender trickle of wetness coursed down one cheek, and she turned away, wrapping her arms around herself as if, by force, she could stop her shoulders from shaking. It struck him then. He had seen her mad, frightened, striking out at him with the bravado of a peregrine on hunt. He had never seen her cry. Slowly he walked back to where she stood, reached out, and touched the tangled mass of curls that spiraled down her back.

"He was killed in the forest," she went on, rushing through the words as if, any moment, she might regret saying them. "An arrow felled him. No. Two. He was pierced twice. Some say he was poaching." "And was he?" Thea turned toward him, her face somber, streaked with the path of silent tears. "I don't know. It was winter. We were hungry. We had been hungry for a long time. But it wasn't like Brand to break the law. Besides, John swore to me they'd done no wrong. John . . . John Little," she explained, as if she knew already that he would ask. She let out a ragged sigh and looked away. "It was John, you see, who brought Brand home to me, and stayed by my side until the time had come to close Brand's eyes and pull the linen over his face." "Mortal wounds?" "Or an unseasoned surgeon," she admitted quietly. "I was but sixteen, and very much in love. I tried, but--John said it was fated, said he'd never seen a man live with wounds like that. He meant it as comfort, holding me through the night, comforting me again as I cried. Only later did my grief allow me to know at what expense he'd come to me or the risks he'd taken to stay. He was outlawed, even then. "So I hurried him home, or to the place in Sherwood where he hid with others like himself. And when I saw him two days later, a quiet bear of a man, face hidden beneath his tattered hood, watching Brand's funeral procession pass, I knew I was beholden to him for something money could never repay. "I tried. I put a penny to his taxes for every remedy I sold, hoping to relieve him of his crime the only way I knew how. Check with your ledgers. God willing, the accounts are right, thought it was never enough to satisfy the whole of his debt. And still, in my mind, I had not done enough." "And so you did . . . more." She nodded. "But nothing more than you already guessed. When one of their men was hurt, John sent word to me, and I came. Not once. Several times. Many times over. I came and gave what help I could, though it meant sedition at the very least. Aye, I helped them. And I would again." It was the connection he had always sought to discover, the one he had long suspected, yet none of the circumstances of her treason were as he imagined. A husband. Gisborne had failed him on that, and while he demanded to know why, would know why before the morrow passed, his cousin's omission of this truth was hardly what concerned him most. The death of a husband, whom she loved--merciful Christ! Had he done that to her?

She looked away, and all he could see was the profile of her face, limned with glistening tears. He longed to take her in his arms, to tell her he knew something of loss, but in truth he knew nothing of comforting or consoling. Awkward, inept, useless--that was how he felt. And far worse than that. Dread had settled thick in the pit of his stomach. Had he somehow been responsible? He had only to look at her grief-stricken face to know she believed so. "How long ago did this happen?" he whispered, staring into the blackness. "Four years ago, come January, it was. Four years ago, come Twelfthtide, we buried him." The darkness closed in on him, choking the breath from his lungs, leaving her words resounding in his ears. Four years ago . . . in Sherwood . . . He remembered. The cold . . . the crystal-clear silence . . . the puffs of his breath hanging like clouds in the air . . .the crunch of snow underfoot . . . Four years ago she had lost him, her dear Brand, who crafted tables and beams of ash and was fool enough, or desperate enough to take a bow to the king's deer . . . and he, four years ago, come January, in Sherwood, as well-An ache crept across his back, the pulling of old scars badly healed; he told himself it was the cold of her cottage. Her pain was far worse, not remembered in blurry snatches, but real, alive, and with her still. He reached out, fingertips wiping her wet cheek, then drew her into his arms. Her body felt small and stiff with pent-up sorrow. He held her lightly, as if she were a fragile piece of glass that would shatter at his touch. Beneath his arms, he felt her muscles grow rigid and taut as she struggled to hold back the sadness. Her shoulders shook. "Thea," he murmured, pressing his lips to the top of her head as she muffled the sound of her weeping against his chest. "I am not here to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you. If I could go back, undo something--anything--I did--" She sobbed then, once, a ragged sound of anguish escaping. Another came. And another. Until the sadness battered through her wall of resistance and the sounds of long-buried hurt came pouring out. Her hands groped blindly, clutching his jerkin and tunic in tight, urgent fistfuls, and her body sank against his, limp with exhaustion, with desolation, with surrender to all the feelings she had tried to forget for so long. Nottingham gathered her up in his arms and carried her to the simple, straw-stuffed bed and sat there, cradling her, rocking her in his lap to the rhythm of her cries. He shared some part of her mourning, felt it, fresh and sharp, when he laid his cheek against hers and tasted the salty wash of her tears. Gently he brushed his lips across the corner of her eye, her forehead, and caught her hands, her palms, her fingers against the warm solace of his mouth, and all the while he whispered her name, breathed it out like a comforting chant against her skin.

In time, when the sun's descent had long since left them in darkness, Thea's weeping turned to uneven breaths and finally to silence. The Sheriff pressed his lips against hers, grazing lightly, lingering, until her trembling stopped. He thought her asleep and moved to lay her on the bed beside him, but she started, fingers twisting in the fabric of his tunic. Tears had stained her eyes the blackest blue of a midnight sky. "Will you arrest me now?" she asked, looking up at him. No fear in her question. Certainly no panic. Not even a plea for clemency formed on her swollen lips. He separated himself from her, settling her on the bed. Gazing over her, his heart and body filled with a thousand responses that could have answered her. Instead he merely shook his head. "I've heard of nothing criminal this night. Nothing." He touched her lips again, and when he drew away from her, her eyes had closed. She slept. He did not move at first, overwhelmed by all she had told him, and the tempest of feelings and doubts she had stirred with her words. He wanted her. Still. Despite her confession. Or maybe because of it. He wanted to lie with her, inside her, drive away her pain, make her forget, bring her to life again. The irony of it all! He had thought her tied to Locksley, had imagined them together over and over a thousand times until the images tore at his mind. But while the outlaw was a formidable enemy, he was nothing compared to the memory of a lost husband. All this time, without even knowing, he had been battling a ghost, trying to win Thea's love from a man dead and buried years ago. A man who no sword-thrust could touch, no lance or crossbow kill. A far more invincible rival than Robin of the Hood ever thought to be. In time, the Sheriff eased himself away from Thea, the cold demanding he build a fire for warmth. He left the cottage briefly to gather wood and check on Chimera, then hurried back inside. The wind had whipped to a howling fury; he could barely wait as the bits of dried moss and twigs he put in the firepit caught flame. He fed the tinder several scraps of wood, then a split log. When the heat spread throughout the room, he stripped off his boots and tunic. Taking care not to waken her, he removed Thea's slippers and slid the snagged woolen hose from her knees down the lengths of her calves.

Blisters covered her feet, briars had clawed her arms, and a raised welt ran along the upward cant of her cheekbone--all evidence of her hasty, frightened flight. Had she been that desperate to leave him? Tenderly, he brushed his finger along each bruise, each scrape, his body growing restive each time he touched her skin and felt its warmth beneath his flesh. By nature, he was not a gentle man. Or a patient one. And no woman had dared demand it of him. Before. He wondered that he could give Thea anything of softness or benevolent touches, when passion smoldered so hotly in the depths of his vitals. He untied the laces of her kirtle with fingers grown thick and clumsy with his efforts, and pulled her gown off her shoulders and arms and down her legs, leaving her clad only in a soft, linen shift. She would give him the bitter side of her venomous tongue on the morrow for undressing her--if tonight had not altered everything that passed between them. Nottingham lay down beside her, beneath the cover of a worn blanket. For a moment, he stared, unblinking, at the ceiling, at the drying branches of herbs, at the rafters that her dead husband had built. He knew he had been wrong to take her from this place, to use his power with such nonchalance that he ordered people's lives to start and stop at the snap of his finger. She belonged here. In Sherwood. He would see that she stayed. He rolled to his side and curved his body around hers, one arm flung over her to draw her close, his leg between hers, hidden in the fullness of her shift. In her sleep, Thea moaned, a small, soft sound at the back of her throat that turned his blood to fire. She shifted, turning instinctively toward him, and stretched cat-like against the length of his body. He wondered if she would ever cease to be a danger for him--this woman who had given him her secrets and her sorrow and in sleep held herself innocently against him-this woman who drove all thought from his head with the tantalizing feel of her breasts crushed against his chest, whose every breath at his ear aroused him beyond bearing. It would kill him to leave her; he would die of loneliness, of emptiness, of not having her. Maybe that was her plan all along. He buried himself in the sweet fragrance of her, and twined his limbs with hers, and with lips that seldom called on God except to curse, prayed the night would never end. ***

The dull darkness of sleep parted, dragging Thea up from dreamlessness to a state of half-alertness. Even before she opened her eyes, she sensed a strange, tingling freshness to the morn, as if night had washed away everything old and familiar. And then she remembered. She had told him everything, had spent hours crying in his arms, finding consolation at last in something as simple as his soothing touches and the hushed reassurances he murmured. The sadness, while not gone, had faded, and in its place, the faint sough of the Sheriff's breathing sent a shiver of awareness through her limbs. Suddenly she felt awake--far too awake--and sensitized to every aspect of his presence. Without moving, she numbered the ways their bodies touched: his hand splayed on her midriff, fingertips trailing in the hollow between her breasts; the hard, leanly defined planes of his chest where she rested her cheek; the black silk of his tousled hair that her hand had found in the night, wrapped like satin ribbons through her fingers; the weight of his leather-clad leg between her thighs, pressing against her, causing a longing of which he was completely unaware. She wanted to lie like this forever, soaking in the warmth of his body--and that was the strangest, most unfamiliar feeling of all. She tested the yearning Nottingham incited in her, thinking Brand's name hard in her mind, imagining his earth-brown eyes and his callused hands smoothing over a plank of wood with an artisan's knowing grace. No rending sorrow took root in her heart when she thought of him, only bittersweet warmth, watered weak by time--and the presence of another man. The heated pulse of the Sheriff's heart thrummed beneath her cheek, stronger than any memory of her husband. She turned her head and put her lips to the lightly tanned center of his chest, feeling his steady heartbeat, as if it would help absorb the reality of his company in her bed. Easing away from him, she pushed herself up on her arms, one hand flattened on the straw on either side of him. Sunlight filtered through the cracks in the wattle-and-daub walls, striping the dimly lit room with brightness. Her shadow cast the Sheriff's face in a dusky half-light, and she gazed down at him, wondering at the metamorphosis her confession had accomplished. He was still the High Sheriff of Nottingham, a man who wielded the power of life and death over the shire, but he was far from the man she first thought him to be. She did not fear him. She felt no awe at his title, no threat from his goal or gallows. Unreasonable. Foolish, perhaps. He had not changed so much that he would not throw her over his shoulder the moment she crossed him and carry her back to Nottingham like the captured fugitive she was.

But she was different, and what she felt for him now was far from hatred one felt for an enemy. Desire welled up inside her--blatant, profound, undeniable. Now, because of him, she was no longer a village herb woman who had been a simple carpenter's wife. He had pulled her from her small, narrow world into a life more complex, at times more frightening, than anything she'd known in Edwinstowe. Nothing was predictable with Nottingham, and yet somehow she had risen to his challenge, equaled him, "bested" him, he had said by the brook's edge. She wondered if he realized what he had wrought in her, if he knew that in giving up her secrets the night before, she had won freedom from him, from John, from Brand's memory, from every expectation she had of herself. Taking care not to disturb him, Thea rose to her feet. Among her old clothes, she found a worn tunic and pulled it over her linen shift, draping and knotting an apron-pouch from the skirts. "You're staying then." Thea stopped, fingers caught unthreading the disheveled remains of her braid. Nottingham lay on his side, propped up on one elbow amid the crushed straw of their bed. Her breath caught in her throat, not with surprise, but at the sight of him, bare of anything but the hunter's leggings slung low on his lips, crisscrossed strips of kidskin fitting the leather close to his calves. She wondered if there would ever be a time when she could look at him and be unaffected by the lazy grace of the man or the indolent, careless power that radiated from him. "No," she said. "I am returning with you." His brows arched up, tangled high in the tendrils of hair on his forehead. Although she had answered him impulsively, she had no sooner spoken the words than she realized. She had known all along she would not leave him. True, being at Nottingham Castle would mean having the Sheriff forever interrupting any peace in her life. He would continue to badger her with ever-annoying verbal warfare, incite her to murderous rage with his demands for this or that, incite her to something else altogether with his nearness and the sensual vitality that he could not forestall even when he had vowed to do so. And for all of that, Thea could imagine no disadvantage greater staying cloistered in her cottage. Here, there would be only loneliness. Here, without his challenges, his prodding, and his outright dares, she would slip back into the overcautious woman she had once been, too careful, too afraid to rise to any boldness of action or heart. And now that he lay in her bed and she had the memory of him there, too tall for the length of the pallet, too possessive of the blanket of his mantle, and too male to be dismissed, to live here without him would be a sentence to purgatory. Somehow, despite his overbearing methods, he had breathed life into her. Emboldened by him, she could not imagine giving that up.

"I . . . don't want you to come." His statement shook her, but she wiped away the traces of shock she knew had settled on her face. "This from a man who spent the whole of the night impressing upon me the need for honesty?" "Thea--" "I've made my decision. Unless you forbid me--" "You belong here. I made a grave mistake ever thinking otherwise." He stood, shrugging off the last dregs of sleep, and walked toward her. In his face, she could see traces of wavering conviction, lips forming an argument he did not believe. "Two days ago," she replied, "I belonged to you." He scowled at her sly play on words, one hand raking through his dark hair. "I relinquish ownership, woman," he grumbled. "I am done with keeping she-wolves in my castle." Sobering, he added, "Sherwood is a fitting place. I've seen you in the wood. It's as if you were born to the forest. This meadow. These people." "The Sheriff's surgeon belongs at the castle, at his side. You said so yourself, with vehemence, as I remember." "Damn it, Thea, do not pretend to match wits with me on this. I am trying to be noble." He did not want to return to Nottingham without her; she knew that as surely as she knew the meaning of his gestures and expressions. Frustration knit his brows low on his forehead, and his hands opened and closed in impotent fists. When he looked at her, his dark eyes stormed with a plea he could not allow himself to voice. Thea's heart softened, and no amount of self-assured control could prevent a smile from reaching her lips. "So you are," she conceded, "and of such little practice with the virtue that you stage this act like an ill-played mummery." She paused, waiting for him to give her the same honesty she had handed to him the night before. His frown deepened, evidence enough of the struggle within him. "The things you love are here," he said. "The things I love are gone." "Your home--" "Emptied by Gisborne long ago. What I have--what is important to me--is at Nottingham Castle. My herbs, the simples I've concocted, the roots I've dried, a garden I've broken my back to repair--" "Your people--"

"What of the people in the castle I have grown to feel affection for? Mildthryth, whom I love like a mother, or Simeon?" "And what of John Little?" Thea stopped, and her gaze dropped to the floor. "He is an accused felon, Thea--safe enough in Sherwood, I suppose, if he hides himself well. But should he leave, he would forfeit whatever protection the wood affords him, and if he enters the city gates, I would have no choice but to arrest and prosecute him." She stared at him, horribly reminded of John's unsolved predicament. "He is no murderer." "He is charged in the death of Hugh Monteforte and in countless crimes of thievery against the Crown." "And guiltless in all but the most trivial!" "That may be, Thea, but as Sheriff, I would have no choice." "As Sheriff, you have every choice! Just last night you were willing to overlook my trespasses." "That is quite different." "How?" He did not immediately answer, and she could see him searching through and discarding replies with increasing futility. She knew his reason, even if he did not. He would not turn her in because he wanted her--not behind bars, but in his bed. Yet his chances of admitting that were none. "Your crimes--if that is even the word for such small scandal--are minimal. You know the outlaws. Unavoidable, as many are from villages close by, villages and homes you frequent. You have treated their injuries. How could you not? You are gifted with knowledge and skills they have needed, and have not the heart to turn away from their pain. Even if you, in sentiment, side with their cause, I cannot arrest you for having misguided loyalties." "But--" "I cannot change the law, Thea, I can only enforce it. John Little cannot enter the city save under peril of death, nor can any of his companions. If you return to Nottingham, you must know that you will not see him. Nor can I permit you to endanger yourself by returning to Sherwood without the accompaniment of my guard. Could you possibly be willing to relinquish that, in return for the affection of an old maidservant and a stableboy?"

He tested her. Even as she shook with rage at the way he had manipulated the argument to his own advantage, she knew what he truly wanted from her were answers and promises. Some pledge that she cared for him, that despite her work in the castle garden and her friendship with Mildthryth and Simeon, the real reason she wanted to return to Nottingham was that he would be there. A tiny spark of doubt insinuated itself into her determination to return with him, and suddenly she found she had no answer for him. "Thea," he continued when she did not respond, "it is a devil of a choice, one you should not have to make. I am Sheriff--" She twisted away from him--how many times had she heard those very words prefacing a poor excuse or alibi?--but he took her chin in his hand and brought her to face him until she had no alternative but to meet his eyes. "I am Sheriff here," he repeated firmly. "I cannot dismiss my obligations out of hand on nothing more than a woman's whim." She tried to jerk her chin free, but he held tight to her. "Even a woman for whom I have nearly forsaken the last shred of sanity I possess." He released her abruptly, then delicately stroked the angle of her jaw as if he could brush away the memory of his harsher touch. With his thumb, he outlined the curve of her lower lip, then closed his errant fingers tight in the palm of his hand. "Those are my conditions, if you choose to return." Impossible conditions, and he knew it! What could she do from Nottingham but worry for John day and night, wonder how he fared, and pray the burly giant stayed hidden and out of crossbow range? What could she do for any of Robin's men except offer up an endless stream of prayers and petitions for their safety--something she had spent a lifetime doing already, and to little effect? "I suggest you take advantage of my rare generosity," he continued. "Stay here, Thea. It is so much simpler. Safer. For both of us." Simpler. Most certainly. Safer. Perhaps. But she had died to herself seeking simplicity and safety. She would have a hollow life, stripped of joy and sorrow, of light and dark-a gray life, empty of feeling. She knew because it was exactly the kind of life she had before he came. Every reason that provoked her to leave him two nights before clamored within her now, but now she was unafraid of what she felt. Her yearning for him lent her an intoxicating strength that she had never felt with Brand or John, that she had never felt in all her nineteen years. She was both vulnerable and invincible with Nottingham, a heady mixture of emotion that drew her to him like the pull of a strong charm. She no longer wanted a "simple" life, and what was "safer" than the way she had felt when she woke this morn, wrapped in his arms?

She wanted to know the deliriously wild abandon she felt when his lips touched the hollow of her throat, when his fingertips skimmed away the laces at the back of her kirtle. Just once, she wanted to touch him and make him feel a fraction of the fiery agony he roused in her, hold him captive until he cast off his mask of cool, practiced indifference and cried out for her, until he knew the same thick-as-honey fulfillment she had known by the banks of the creek. She remembered enough of her life before to be astounded at the wanton changes that had taken hold of her body and senses. She remembered enough of her life to know she could never return to the drab, passionless existence that had once contented her. And she remembered enough of him to know that if she came back to Nottingham Castle, the Sheriff would have to make concessions of his own. "I have conditions as well, my lord," she announced, her mind made up. "If I am to be your surgeon, you must truly allow me to act as one. I cannot be kept in my rooms, pretending at work, waiting for your next mishap or sour stomach. You said the people of Nottingham needed a physician. Then let them come to me. Encourage those who are reluctant and permit me to go freely in the castle to attend those who need me." "Stubborn woman! You cannot wish to go back, not after all I've said!" Thea smiled. "If you are having a hearing problem, Sheriff, you may be first in line at my workroom door." "Your conditions--" "I must come and go as I am needed. You can assign guards to follow me, or lurk in the shadows yourself, watching my moves to ensure I'm up to no mischief. I care not, but that I have meaningful work and the freedom to accomplish it." "You wish free rein of my entire household?" "I will not be pent up in my room as a falcon to her mews, waiting to be taken out, displayed and strutted about, then lured back to captivity when you have tired of your game." "You are a most unrealistic woman--" "And there is more." "I am not surprised." "You must know that I will not remain silent on the matter of the outlaws. I will continue to intercede on John's behalf at every opportunity, speaking the truth of his character, and the plight of the other outlaws, until I have made some impression in that stiff-necked will of yours, or until you have tired of me completely and thrown me to the dungeon."

"With conditions like those, why on God's earth would I want you back?" "Why indeed?" she asked smoothly, knowing he would not answer her with truth. She waited, trying to remember when she had seen him more helpless, less able to find a witty rejoinder to fling at her. "Then we are agreed?" "Thea--" He caught her hand in his and twisted his fingers through hers. Groping for words, he turned her hand over and stared at the palm as if he were some teller of fortunes and the portents were written there clearly for him to read. "There is something in Sherwood that calls to you, that you can never leave, some abiding constancy the greenwood offers . . . that I cannot." For once when he looked at her, candor shone like a brief candle in his eyes. She lifted their joined hands so she could touch his cheek and rubbed the back of her fingers over the roughened stubble of overgrown beard. "It is not constancy I want," she whispered, "for that I've had, and for so long that the months turned to years without my knowing." "You say that now, thinking God knows what has crept into your head in the middle of the night. But the forest is there, and as long as it is, it will be between us." "If you let it." She let go of his hand, but her gaze stayed firmly fixed on him. "Allow, Sheriff, that in this I might know my own mind." "Thea--" "Sheriff," she replied, determined as he to have her way. She squared her shoulders, tilted her chin up at him as if to dare that he question even the least of her doubts. Time, and feelings for him she could not name, had divided her life in twain--all that came before she knew him; the mystery of what lay ahead. The mystery called to her, wrested her away from the surety and safety she had once thought to need. He shook her head and looked away, surrender written in the gesture. "You are a stubborn, foolish creature. Whatever can you hope to gain by this?"

Chapter 20 They rode through Nottingham's gate at nightfall and found the bailey humming with activity. Apparently the lookouts had heralded the Sheriff's arrival to everyone in Nottingham Castle from his priest to the lowliest serving wench. "Enough torches for a conflagration," he muttered. "You'd think they came to roast me alive, not welcome me home. Sorry to see me return, I'd wager, every last one of them." "Not so, my lord. There. Look."

Thea had been riding pillion behind him, her arms wreathed around his waist. Now she slipped one arm away and pointed to a parting in the sea of curiosity-seekers. Simeon darted through the crowd, babbling excitedly with each bare-footed step. Grabbing Chimera's reins, he turned up a stable-stained face clearly etched with relief at the sight of his master. "There you be, my lord, at last, and thanks be to Mary, for I prayed to her, I did, many times, on my knees, both day and night, wondering what came of you when you rode--" "Out of my way, whelp!" Mildthryth barreled through the large, noisy throng, silver brows laced together low over her eyes. "And the rest of you gaggle of geese and ganders, be gone with you! Standing around clucking and squawking, your eyes bulging out and your jaws on the ground like you never saw your Sheriff returning to Nottingham Castle--be gone, I say!" She flapped her arms at everyone within reach, apron and long sleeves scattering the hapless bystanders. "Now you," she said when only Simeon remained, holding Chimera steady as the Sheriff dismounted, "'tis you I have grievance with Sheriff, and grievance to spare for such an old woman. You'll be hearing me out, you will, unless you've no reason left in the piddling lot God gave you. Riding out of here like a madman, without so much as a by-your-leave or a word to a single soul, and no guard at your side or on your worthless tail. 'Tis a fool's head you've got on your shoulders, you and your hot-headed ways that spare not a whit of caution. And while 'tis all the same to me if you find a dozen arrows in your miserable hide, you'll not be reckless with the likes of my lamb--" Nottingham held out his arms as Thea dismounted, catching her gently as she landed on weary, blistered feet. He thought he imagined it, the way she pressed briefly against him, her slender hands and cheek lingering against his chest. Tendrils of hair coiled like a frame of ivy about her face, and he longed to bury his fingers in the curls that spilled loose down her back, to smooth his hands along her wool-clad back to test the substance of her and reassure himself she was not some sylvan sprite Sherwood had sent home with him. "You see," he whispered in her ear, drinking in the fragrant warmth of her, "you were wrong. You should have stayed. I should have stayed. Good saints, if we are quick about it, we may yet flee this place." Thea's laughter rang like soft music, and she lifted her face to him, full lips curving, tempting him sorely to make good his suggestion. They could ride to the sanctuary of some dark, private wood-Except the wood was no sanctuary, he reminded himself. And her smile? More mystery there than truth. God in His heaven knew why she'd come back with him. "Flee Nottingham, my lord?" Thea whispered back. "Perhaps. Mildthryth? Not a chance, I fear. See how she's set on poor Simeon?"

"Now, boy, you be gone as well," the old Saxon woman was chiding, "for a child has not ears for the sort of scolding this fool-man deserves. And you--" Mildthryth whirled on the Sheriff like an angel of wrath, swelled with bluster and concern. "Ah, Millie," the Sheriff's voice boomed over the maidservant's indignant upbraiding, "save your chastisement for the morrow, or better still, save it altogether, for I'm fated to get the same verbal scourging from Gisborne the moment he rouses from cup, or bed, or wherever he finds himself of late. Come, instead see to your lady's welfare. The ride has been long, and she is in want of a bath and a bed." "Bah!" Mildthryth snorted as she took Thea in her arms and wedged herself between the Sheriff and her charge. "By the looks of you both, there's been bedding enough. By the soul of my dear departed Warrin, have you lost your wits to the sun and wind, man?" "I have kept my wits, Millie," he protested. "No, by faith, I swear it! I have kept my wits and developed such an abundance of patience and integrity you would scarce recognize me." "Aye, I recognize you all right. You're the same high-speaking Norman no-count that dashed out of here nigh three days gone by, come back now with a tankard too much in your belly." "And you, Millie, with three days to do naught but sharpen your tongue? Not ale, dear woman, but a draught of forest air and a crude bed beneath my pampered backside." "Ah, 'tis true, then. A bedding it was." "A bedding it was not. And that will be the word you spread when next you go bustling about kitchen and hall, bursting with your usual indiscreet chatter." He glanced at Thea across the top of Mildthryth's gray head. She deftly tucked away a smile and hid the amusement in her eyes beneath a sweep of dark lashes. Only the heightened color on her cheeks hinted that she remembered otherwise. A half-bedding, then, he conceded, with ecstasy and fulfillment held, as always, a half step out of reach. The recollection of sweet agony jagged through his belly. "Not a soul will believe you," Mildthryth claimed. Nottingham cleared his throat, stanching his thoughts and the hidden wellspring of desire that spilled through him, unbidden, each time he thought of Thea. "Then you shall make them believe," he said. "You might also let it be known that my surgeon lacks work, and I have failing tolerance for the ills of this castle. My scribe moans incessantly of an aching head, half my troops whine of sore feet, and I'd relish a meal served in my hall without the usual attendant sniffling and sneezing."

Mildthryth hugged her lamb closer to her bosom and dropped a kiss on Thea's mahogany curls. "The pair of you," she said, clucking her tongue in mild reproach. "Stubborn to a fault. Both of you. 'Tis a bedding you're needing. And badly. Aye, Sheriff, and you'd best wipe that saintly display of shock from your face. Such false piety, 'tis wasted on me, and you haven't fooled your sweet surgeon since the day she first laid eyes on you. Oh, she can work, to be sure. She should work, for she needs it as much as your scribe or your flat-footed soldiers. But 'tis something more you're both needing. Saints, were there ever two people whose longing for each other be writ so plain on their faces? And you can do naught but deny it with your every breath. Aye, a bedding, Sheriff. Though for the life of me, if you cannot accomplish it alone in the wilds of the wood--" "Millie," he warned, "a bath, a hot meal, and rest--not an endless monologue on my amorous shortcomings. Is it possible?" Thea smothered a laugh behind her hand. Of course, his surgeon was giddy with fatigue. There simply was no other reason for merriment when his homecoming was met with a nagging Saxon she-bear and a decided lack of ale. "Hrrmph," Mildthryth replied, but she bobbed a graceless curtsy nonetheless. "I'll go well enough, for my lady's sake. But mark my words." She steered Thea away toward the castle, pausing at the arched entrance to the great hall to call out over her shoulder. "A bedding, Sheriff. You think on that." The words hung clear and sharp on the night air, ringing through the deserted bailey like a haunting reminder his frustration-torn body would let him forget. *** "A bedding indeed!" Gisborne kicked at the cobblestone and skulked around the cover of the column, out of view of the bailey. "She'd hold them together like two reluctant hounds if that's what it took." "And well it may," Aelwynn said smoothly. "You heard what he said. Three days and two nights in Sherwood and she's still untouched? Rest assured. The man's not a saint. Perhaps there is no desire between them?" "Perhaps you'd do well to stop believing my cousin's lies. Lust has only made him kind." Gisborne spat the word through gritted teeth and slumped against the stone column. "I tell you, Aelwynn, he is losing his will to that witch, and we are losing him. And without him--" "The royal court seems very far away," she said. Gisborne glanced up at her. Darkness obscured all but a pair of uptilted eyes, whose greedy black irises ate at the outer rings of golden color. "It is far away," he said, meeting the woman's hypnotic, heavy-lidded stare. "Rotting away with Richard in the bowels of a German dungeon, unless Prince John has his way."

"And why should he not?" Aelwynn shrugged a supple shoulder. "The barons are tired of being taxed to fund Richard's luckless wars, more tired still of seeing taxes raised to pay for his ransom. They're ready for new rule, even if most haven't the gall to admit it. Even the kind of Frances sides with Lackland. Of course, if Richard is ransomed in time--" "Exactly. And don't think the Lionheart won't see our vitals aflame for the price of a failed mission. Christ!" Gisborne swore, striking the column with his spurred heel. "My cousin sits on a wealth of silver and an armory stock-piled with weapons, and still he moves at a snail's pace." Aelwynn smiled, soot-stained lids closing slowly over hungry eyes. "Many things take time, lieutenant," she purred, running a languorous hand over the smooth white column of her throat. "The intricacies of a coup do not unfold overnight. Besides, it is his way: slow, careful attention to every detail. He only appears idle, like a snake warming himself on a sunny rock--" "More likely in the wench's bed." "--Uncoiling so slowly, with such grace, that his movements are hardly detectable. Until he strikes!" Aelwynn hissed, clawing the air in front of his eyes with a red-taloned hand. Gisborne flinched despite himself, and the sound of her deep-throated laugh grated like sand on raw nerves. "Fear not, he woos the barons, lieutenant," she continued, wetting her painted lips with the pointed tip of her tongue. "Courts them with such delicate thoroughness they scarcely know when they've emptied their pockets or lent the advantage of their castles and fortifications. And with the others who are not so easily duped? Why Nottingham knows every one of their secrets, and I assure you, he is unequaled in the use of blackmail." "You tell me nothing I don't know already." Gisborne raked his fingers against his scalp, loosening the long hair gathered at the nape of his neck. Frustrated, he massaged the ropes of corded muscle in the back of his neck, digging deep to drive the tension away. "But what of the changes that woman has wrought in him? Surgeon? What has she done but slice the balls from him and dull his appetite for conquest?" "You could do as well as your cousin, I suppose?" Gisborne froze. He was neither deaf nor half-witted that he did not recognize a taunt when he heard one. Slowly he brought his narrowed gaze to bear on Aelwynn, eyes flitting over her slightly parted lips to her amber eyes. One dark brow arched high, winging out at its kohl-blackened tip. "Do you think I could not?" he growled. "I merely asked."

Nothing about her expression changed. Same assessment in the sulfuric eyes. Same rubied lips curling into a sultry half-smile. Same viper's tongue snaking over the painted red flesh, beckoning him. His voice came in a harsh, rasping whisper. "I could do better." *** The measured taper burned away by half, and still sleep would not come. Thea paced the workroom floor, stopping with every other pass to glance at the sleeping form curled near the warmth of the brazier. Mildthryth's snores rumbled from the lumpy tangle of arms and legs and sheepskin, the sleep of one well pleased with the day's events. And well she should be, Thea thought. The woman's discourse had not ended in the bailey, merely shifted to a stalwart proclamation of the Sheriff's good attributes once they reached the seclusion of Thea's chamber. Thea marveled that the man possessed enough virtue to fuel Mildthryth's chatter for three minutes, much less three hours, but the sainted woman was as inventive as she was long-winded, and the Sheriff lacked for nothing in her sight. She loved him. It was as simple and strange as that. Thea said little to contradict Mildthryth's praise, possibly because she was too busy savoring the rich, egg-thickened frumenty and slice of venison brought for her dinner. Or possibly because she enjoyed hearing an unblighted account of the Sheriff's life, spiced with the insights and intimacies only Mildthryth could provide. Perhaps the fond anecdotes were intended to relax her, like the herb-strewn bath Mildthryth prepared or the softly scented lavender oil she rubbed over Thea's bruisedsore body. Little did the maidservant know that any mention of the Sheriff's name had just the opposite effect. They had been parted only a few hours. It seemed far too long. Thea wondered where he was, if he indeed clashed words with Gisborne, if he were at this very moment dispensing orders to an assembly of his household staff and administrators, reasserting and tightening his control. Perhaps he slept, spread recklessly through the silks and furs of his bed, surrendered to an exhausted dreamlessness. Thea started toward her bedroom door, then turned away again, knowing how futile it would be to attempt sleep now. She wanted him, wanted to lie beneath the disarray of fine sheets and soft fur pelts with him. How easy it was to envision herself there, to splice together the remembered heat of his body and the imagined feel of their skin touching, for once, without the encumbrance of clothes. Throughout the evening, she had carved the image painstakingly in her mind's eye and tormented her flesh with the phantom press of his body against hers, and now she could dispel neither. If only Mildthryth knew how needless her persuasion was!

Every sensation her body had ever felt at his touch rose up within her--the burn of his breath as his mouth neared her shoulder; the silken scrape of his beard against the swell of her breast; the warm, unhurried tracery of his tongue-Thea hugged her arms tightly around her body, trying to contain the fervor rising within her. This was madness! What contagion had he planted in her body that she should want him so? In her entire life she had not known such a relentless tide of passion as this. Its mighty current sucked her under, drove the breath from her lungs as it scoured away her last defense, and drowned her in the strong, rhythmic pull of desire. Then, as quickly as it had come, it abandoned her, leaving her weak and trembling, wanting only that the next wave would crash upon her with the same sure force. He did this, damn him! Filled her mind and body with a rage of unfamiliar responses, promised her more, and left her with a roiling sea battering away at her senses. She could stand here all night, contemplating sleep and her empty bed, and her body would only rebel against his absence with a deluge of sensual memories. She grabbed a soft rose wool tunic and pulled it over the gauzy linen shift she wore. She did not bother with slippers or with braiding her freshly washed hair, but bolted for the door, wondering where in Nottingham Castle she could escape this unappeased torrent of longing.

Aelwynn drew in a breath and flattened her back against the wall, trying to make herself invisible in the shadows. The Sheriff's surgeon? Called on some late night errand of mercy? Her lips curved into a sinuous smile. Or was it as innocent as that? Perhaps the herb witch had only burst from her room in a fit of ill-contained longing to be at her lover's side. Aelwynn remembered that longing with a rise of bitter bile in the back of her throat. Less than three seasons had passed since the Lord High Sheriff had spied her in the great hall on the lap of Eduard de Geoffrey, and beckoned her to the dais and his table with a mere crook of his finger. That eve, filled with wine and brooding melancholy, he had summoned her to his bed. There she had stayed for a sennight while Nottingham slaked his seemingly unquenchable thirst for her body. The separation of day and night had blurred in that week. She woke when he needed her, slept only in snatches between furious, demon-driven couplings. Sometime in the fragmented passing of dark and light, he learned her every whim, memorized her every weakness. With his lean tiger's prowess, he staked her sore, strained body to the bed and

lavished her with the skill of a consummate lover, until she begged for release and promised to do his every bidding. And when he had enslaved her completely, he sent her away. Ah, yes, she remembered those nights when she ached for the mastery of his touch, longed to know the power that surged through her when his precious control at last slipped away. They were solitary nights, ruled by despair and carnal hunger, when no man who lay between her legs could break the spell with which the Sheriff bound her. In the end, she had fled her chamber and shamelessly come to him, employing every wile and expertise she knew to slide beneath his sheets again. In a few weeks' time, Aelwynn had seen Nottingham's fascination transform into mere tolerance; shortly thereafter, the tolerance wilted into disgust. And now this poor, pitiful creature, this simple, unsophisticated thing of the forest was in his snare. Aelwynn spared her no sympathy. There was only one way to cast off the shackles of the Sheriff's possession, and that was to find a source of superior strength. And she had. The one man Nottingham could never best. Or rather he had found her. And bought her with the indisputable sovereignty of silver coin. Aelwynn let the drift of rose wool and lavender scent disappear down a darkened stretch of hallway, then the smile dropped from her lips. Gisborne was wrong. Thea Aelredson was just the distraction they needed. *** Thea bent down and covered Simeon with a threadbare blanket. The boy stirred, burying his sleepy head deeper into a pillow of hay. With a gentle smile, she smoothed the stray locks of ebony hair off his forehead and brushed his cheek with the backs of her fingers. How was it possible that in just a few days' time, he had acquired enough dirt to obscure the faint sprinkle of freckles across his nose? Honestly, the child took better care of his prized bay stallion than he did of himself! Thea drew in a deep breath, determined to confront Simeon in the morning about his coating of grime. She sighed as she stood up and looked fondly at the huddled knot Simeon had made of himself in the hay. There were so many people like him here--men whose backs were bent by years of hard labor; women with thin, drawn faces and not enough milk for their

babes; children who went to bed each night with hollow stomachs--plentiful work for a castle healer if she could only win their trust. And if the Sheriff would stay out of her way. At the thought of Nottingham, she glanced down the stable passage to Chimera's stall. A pale, golden light spilled over the tops of the wooden walls and out the open door. Someone worked late on the stallion, feeding and watering him after his journey or-Her heartbeat quickened with the same excitement that had left her restless the entire night. Nottingham was there. She felt his presence, as warm and radiant as the glow of the single lantern that lit the darkness. Quietly she walked toward the light and paused at the doorway, peering into the stall. The Sheriff ran a comb through the stallion's raven mane, murmuring to the beast in his strange, Norman tongue. For a few moments, she watched him in secret, entranced by his long, fluid motions and his softly slurred words that sounded like a foreign lullaby. Light danced off his silkclad shoulders with every move, and Thea's gaze traveled down his arms where rolled up sleeves bared his forearms, to the long, blunted fingers that caressed the mane after every stroke of the comb. Such a simple thing, a horse's grooming, and yet the man made it eloquent. A wistful, wordless longing swept over her, and she realized her return to Nottingham had nothing to do with its poor, neglected citizenry, nothing to do with herbs and simples, and everything to do with him. She leaned against the doorjamb and sighed. "So you could not sleep either." The Sheriff gave Chimera a hearty pat on the rump and turned toward her. Thea gasped softly, discovery shattering her reverie. "I came to check on Simeon," she explained, a hot rush of color flooding her cheeks. Nottingham's glance jagged along her body, reminding Thea of the untied ribbons of her shift fluttering about her wrists and the billowing skirts of her tunic dragging in the stable straw, giving a occasional glimpse of bare feet. A sardonic rise lifted his brow. "Truth?" he asked. Somehow she found her voice. "Truth is he's sleeping like an overfed pup."

The Sheriff reached out and lifted a heavy handful of unbound hair that fell to the middle of her thighs. "Truth?" he asked again, inclining his head toward her. Her hair slid like spiraled silk through his fingers. Her breath caught in her throat, and honesty with it. How could she explain something that she did not even understand--that she had spent the better part of the night trying to outrun her thoughts of him, only to be led by fate to find him here? "Well," she demurred, "truth is that I'm escaping, my lord, as you did yourself but a few days past." "Ah," he said, nodding. "But a few hours here, and you long for freedom. I did try to warn you." "Oh, no, I would not leave Nottingham Castle! It's Mildthryth's snores, my lord. I am trying to flee the good woman's timber-rattling sleep." Not total candor, but an answer that brought a disarming grin to his face. His deep, resonant chuckle chased a shiver of delight through her. "To be sure," she continued. "Mildthryth could wake the dead. But worse than that, Sheriff." "Good heavens, what could possibly be worse?" He stepped toward her, took her hand in his, and kissed her bared wrist. The thrill of his touch raced through her arm, stinging her to life with a host of memories, remembrances of every time his lips had pressed against her, of the excitement that flew through her veins every time he engaged her with his dangerous wit. Her desire for him never went away now, but lay beneath the surface of every other feeling, needing only his touch to bring it to life. "Mildthryth has decided to plead your case," she said, trying to collect her thoughts. "Oh?" "The woman is convinced you're too cloddish to do it yourself." "Cloddish? She said that?" Thea tried to contain a smile. "I believe that was the word she used. Cloddish . . . doltish . . . something. Although somehow she made it sound endearing. Your cloddishness, I mean . . . my lord." "Meddling old fleabag," Nottingham said, drawing Thea into his arms. She drew in a sharp, slicing breath as his body met hers, as he fitted himself to her every curve as if by instinct.

"The woman is filling your head with tripe, Thea. I should throw her to the streets. Cloddish, indeed. I hope you set her straight." He caught her mid-smile, his lips settling over hers for proof, snug and intimate like the close embrace of his body. Until he kissed her, she did not know how much she'd wanted this, how much she'd waited for the flood of feelings that poured through her. Her eyes fluttered closed, and the sound of laughter trapped in her throat dissolved into a plaintive moan as threads of pleasure wove through her. The heat from his body was a tangible thing, ripe with the scent of myrrh, the taste of his lips exotic and intoxicating. And his kiss, as bold and brash as she remembered. She clung to him, savoring the moist pressure of his mouth as his lips molded to hers, as their tongues met, and mated. She had come here seeking escape, but it was not escape she needed, merely this. To find him again; to press into the lean-muscled substance of his body and hear his low, answering groan of pleasure; to feel him clutching her skirts, wrapping his hands in her hair, touching her everywhere at once, like a man hungry from denial. With a soft sob, she stretched up against him, arching into his swollen hardness. The feelings rushed through her one upon the other, tumbling into an urgency that obliterated all else. Passion uncoiled within her, like a spring too tightly wound for far too long, and a small, smothered cry broke against his lips. His breath pounded the small space of air between them. "Woman--Thea, you do not know what you're about." "I know I want you," she cried. "I know I came back with you because I wanted you." "Thea--" "Is it not what you've waited to hear? And now, with no vow to bind you--" He placed his hands firmly over her shoulders, pushed a painful distance between them. His face was haggard with desire, torn by need, by some kind of ambivalence she could not fathom. She had told him everything, confessed all, returned to Nottingham with him. What more could stand between them? "What would you have me do, Thea? Lay you on the straw and take you here like a common wench?" "Yes!" she urged. "And quickly, so that we might begin again, and again!" She could hear the sound of her own heart drumming in her ears, beating faster, louder, mirroring back the throb deep inside her. Her breath kept frantic pace. Nottingham let his mouth drift downward; she met it with a small, eager cry and felt the ragged restraint of his words against her parted lips. "Sherwood's fields? A stable floor?

Christ, Thea, I have waited too long for this to take you in some heated rush I won't even remember. Come with me . . . to my chamber . . . ." She arched her head back, sighing as the Sheriff brushed his lips along the curve of her neck, a slow, maddening counterpoint to the fury she felt inside. She wanted to tell him she could not wait for some carefully thorough seduction, that she needed him now. Only a quivering moan escaped. Somehow it was enough. He lifted her in his arms, his long strides carrying them away from Chimera's stall. She tightened her hands in his tunic and buried her head against his chest, inhaling the musk-myrrh scent of him. Beyond that, she knew nothing, cared for nothing, save the promise of his nearness. She felt herself being lowered and the heat of his body following her down . . . down . . . . A meadowsweet fragrance enveloped them. Thea stretched into the cushions of newmown hay and held out her arms to him. *** Nottingham knew, if he lived forever, he would not forget the sight of her--the fiery fan of mahogany hair curling through the sprigs of hay; the froth of rose tunic and pristine white undershift crumpled about her hips; a slender expanse of leg bared from thigh to small, dusty foot. Until that instant, he had not realized how much he had hoped for this, prayed for it in an awkward, wordless way. She had come to him freely, beckoned to him with each soft sigh, Blessed Mary, with her own words! His heart thudded deep in his chest--a rapid thrum that was part anticipation, part disbelief. It was not as he had planned. No wine or troubadour's song. No silks or furs or muted candlelight. Not at all what he'd planned--to feel control spiral away, far out of reach, every time she looked at him. To feel robbed of command, of self-discipline, of breath. Thea smoothed her hands beneath his open tunic and pushed the garment off his shoulders. It hung behind him, still fastened at his wrists like silken shackles and at the belt canted low over his hips. He could feel her cheek, warm against the bared skin of his chest and the hotter brand of her lips, burning a path of kisses up the length of his breastbone. He sank to his knees amid the mounds of their crude straw-bed. Filling his hands with her hair, he twirled the gilded locks around his fingers, then let the loops loosen as he framed her face and touched the uptilted curve of her cheekbone. "Thea," he murmured, trailing the tips of his fingers down to her kiss-swollen mouth. She turned her head slightly, letting her lips drag down the length of his fingers, and back, the heat of her breath searing his skin. He felt her lips part, the warm wetness of

her tongue swirl over one fingertip. The sharpness of her teeth grazed suggestively against him. Pleasure razored through his belly, and he forgot entirely what he planned to say, forgot to look arrogant and sure of himself, and sure of her. Every hope of restraint, of mastery, fled. With a muttered curse, he rolled to the hay beside her, pulling her half atop him. "Go ahead and take me, witch. You've made pudding of my resolve." Desire laced her laughter as she pushed herself up to kneel beside him, bits of straw clinging to her hair. "Will you be the one to tell Mildthryth she was right?" she teased, an enigmatic smile playing about her lips. Without waiting for a reply, she pulled the rose wool tunic overhead and tossed it aside. Her fingers moved to the ribbons of her shift. She glanced at the single bow gathering the bodice and wound the long white ties between her fingers, a last hesitation, quickly discarded. Her breathless smile faded--in its place a quiet certainty, a readiness he had never seen on any other woman's face, a longing more poignant than any he could have dreamed in the endless fantasies he'd spun about her. She tugged on the ribbon, and the shift loosened on her shoulders. Without looking away from him, she shrugged out of the delicately edged gown and let it fall around her. It settled like snow in her lap. She was more beautiful than he remembered, more ravishing than he could have imagined--a graceful, wood-nymph whom he'd breathed to life with his own passion. He could see the pulse beating in the slender hollow of her throat, the curve of her shoulders and breasts gleaming golden from the distant lantern light, and he wondered how such strength and boldness could come from this evanescent, fairy-sculpture of a woman. Then deliberately, she took his hand and guided it to the swell of her breast, and the illusion of her as something gossamer and unreal melted at the touch. This he remembered--the warm weight of her flesh cupped in his hand, the scent of lavender rising from heated skin, the dusky pink nipple hardening against his palm. Gisborne was right; she had bewitched him, and he did not care. The taste of her kisses had drugged his senses, an opiate of sweet shyness and brazen spice that drowned his cares and curled heat through his belly and loins. And now, this simple invitation, an innocent charm of a gesture, erotic, without artifice. He swept his lips across hers, hungry for her, then his kiss sank to the tip of her shoulder, to the fullness of her breast. Thea released a long-held breath as he eased her to the hay beside him. He could feel her shivering in his arms, past wanting, past need, each moment he delayed more torment for her.

How much he wanted this--to spend the night discovering her, to draw out each caress with exquisite delay, to feel her body quicken beneath his and hear her soft murmured moans begging for more. He gathered her close, starved for this long-withheld taste of her. His tongue teased over her nipple, then circled it slowly. One breast, the other, back again, hands kneading softly. He licked her gently, tugged her less gently, pulling, drawing her more fully into his mouth, drinking from her as a man parched for her flesh. He could feel the tension in her body building beneath him as she pressed against him, then writhed back into the hay. He thrust his hands under her, fingers striping down her arched back as he brought her closer, sucking strongly in a rhythm that matched hers. Her desperation seemed to mount, to seep into his skin, pour through his veins like a fevered delirium. The more he had of her, the more he wanted. He could not get enough. He moved his hand to the rise of her ribcage, playing lightly over her belly, her hips. Lavender-oiled, her skin slid frictionless against his fingers, inviting him further. Resting his cheek in the fragrant hollow of her stomach, he let his hands glide over the cream-silk surface of her inner thighs. He could feel the small tremors in the tightened muscles beneath his fingers, knew he denied her release past the point of agony. She twisted restlessly beneath him, her knees opening, rising, breath-filled cries breaking the silence. He moved between her thighs and slipped his hand under the tangle of her shift to expose the soft, sable triangle between her legs. Lightly, he grazed the whorl of hair, then slid his fingers downward, parting her. Thea stifled a gasp in her throat and rose into the pressure of his hand, moving against the length of his fingers. He lifted his head, gazing down at her, and a furious blush of color spilled across her cheeks as he felt her response. She caught her lips between her teeth, trapping a cry in the back of her throat. Before she could look away, he touched her again, and again, building a sure and steady pattern that she matched with the movement of her hips. "Please--" Small cries mixed with her ragged breaths as he stroked her deeper, faster. "Let me touch you," she pleaded unevenly, reaching for him, finding only the silk of his tunic to clutch. He wanted that, could feel the answering throb lengthening, hardening his sex. But he had waited so long for her willingness, for his own freedom from the haunting visions of Locksley that once plagued him so. The completion he wanted most was to feel her tremble and cling to him, to know she had found release in his arms. "Later," he breathed.

"Later, later, later . . . I cannot bear later! Do you dare torture your prisoners so?" "Torture, my lady?" He touched her, rubbed her, lazily circling the tender bud of pleasure with his fingertips. "Sweet saints, yes!" she cried. "A year of torture, this--no, a century--" He laughed shakily. "A century? You over-estimate my self-restraint." "Damn you, Sheriff. Damn you . . . damn you . . . ." Her eyes drifted closed as his tongue replaced his fingers and his fingers delved into the tight, liquid heat of her. He slid his tongue over her, then again, very slowly, breathing her name against the dampened inside of her thigh. Her hands caressed his shoulders; her fingers, trembling, raked through his hair. He knew he could not finish with her, not like this. The control on which he'd prided himself shredded, and he ached with the effort of holding back. She seemed to read his mind. "I don't want you to wait," she whispered, and pulled him above her. Her skirts were in his way, his breeches, the damned corded ties-He rose up on his knees, wrestling her shift higher, fumbling with the knotted laces at his waist. "Sweet Christ," he groaned, "I cannot have you quickly enough!" He heard it then, punctuating his words. The one sound that haunted him day and night. A single, unmistakable, horrible sound. The whistling hum of displaced air. Fear clutched his gut. "God! Thea! No!" he cried, and slammed his body down on hers. He heard the arrow streak by them, heard the smack of its fiery tip plunging into the hay above their heads. He gulped in a futile breath, found only heat and vacuum pouring into his lungs. His back exploded in pain. Then blackness. Chapter 21 "Guard!" Thea's voice. Frightened and, to his ears, far away.

The churning pit of unconsciousness closed, refusing to swallow him; blackness became gray, then a chaos of unfocused color. Her hand on his face, cold, yanked him back from oblivion. "Oh, God!" she cried, as his eyes opened. "I thought--" He shook his head, sending a weight of pain caroming from side to side in his skull. Nothing compared to the lance of fire in his back. His lips felt dead, his mouth packed with sand, and the damnable fog around him refused to lift. Fog-The air beside them screeched apart with a blur of heat. Not fog, but smoke! He bolted upright. Fire ate at the top of the hay rick where they lay, sending fingers of flame groping in their direction. Without thinking, he clasped Thea against his body and rolled clear of the burning bed of straw. Another arrow sizzled by. With a loud thump, the ash shaft plunged into the hay-strewn ground at their feet, its tip glowing with a glob of fiery resin. The horror of the situation bloomed inside his head, bright like the firebursts that danced before his eyes as darkness grabbed at his senses. Somehow, this had all happened before. In Sherwood . . . Fire shot through the frigid air, streaking a comet's tail of smoke. A swarm of arrows, humming. Surprise pierced like shards of ice in his gut. They came out of the mist . . . the fog . . . the smoke, swinging down from tree limbs, leaping out from behind bushes. Four . . . five . . . six of his party dead. Two wounded, lying at his feet, their moans echoing in the preternatural silence. He dropped the horse's reins, held his hands aloft-"Guard! Someone help him!" Thea's voice roused him again, and he groped instinctively at his flank where his sword should have hung. Nothing. He was unarmed save the small dagger tucked beneath his belt. Unarmed, and hunted. Again. Still. Rage kicked at the trickle of fear coiling in his belly, replacing frozen paralysis with something as angry-hot and destructive as the flames around him. Panic and confusion melted away. The air was heavy with smoke, the scream of horses, and the arrows they had loosed to flush him out. Thea shrieked, and he pulled her back behind the cover of a cart as an arrow streaked by, skewering her skirts to the ground. Another arrow skidded between the rows of stalls, leaving a trail of fire in straw and sawdust. Beside them, the dry haystack crackled into a spontaneous explosion of flame. "Bastards!"

He filled his hands with the folds of Thea's skirts, where fire licked hungrily at her linen gown. With a savage bellow, he tore the shift from the arrow that pinned it, and flattened the flames with his hands. The wooden stalls around them ignited like dry kindling, sending up plumes of smoke and heat. Through a gritty veil of tears, Nottingham could see a single solder, crouched, running toward them. "Castle gate?" he called out. "Closed. Since nightfall, my lord!" "And the bridge?" "Drawn. I'd stake my life on it!" "Where are they firing from?" "The wall, sir." The soldier stopped, coughed. "Longbowmen. Four at least, maybe more, with eyes like bleeding falcons." "Do you have them, man? Do you have the bastards?" The Sheriff's shout was cut short by the fall of lighted thatch, spilling from the hayloft above, sending a spray of scarlet sparks pelting down on them. He shielded his face with his forearm and grabbed Thea with the other, bending low over her body as tiny pinpricks of flame fell across his back and shoulders. Through the rain of fire, he heard the familiar thunder of an arrow in reply--too close-and the answering bolt of lightning that jagged through his shoulder. He stifled a cry of pain and clutched Thea tightly into the cave of his body. Twice hit. Nothing mortal. He knew without looking that the arrow had taken a ribbon of flesh from his shoulder, but if they were not quick-He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He could feel the rivulets of blood scoring his back, raw lungs laboring to draw breath. His feet were lead, unable to move. "Thea--" "I'm here, my lord." A wave of pain washed over him, and he lost her face in a gathering sea of darkness, lost even the touch of her fingers lacing through his. All he could see was smoke---Curling in the mist, rising in slender spirals through the bare trees toward the drab, low-hanging sky. A tapestry of gray and white. They were hours from Nottingham. In the thick of the wood. No one would see.

He shuddered back to his senses, fighting the nausea of time trading places. The soldier stood before him, puffing, face blackened beneath his helm. The Sheriff shoved Thea into his arms. "Take her," he barked, as he ripped the crossbow from the man's stunned hand. "See her safely out of here!" "But you, my lord--" "Take her!" Sparing no time to see that his order was obeyed, Nottingham jammed his foot into the stirrup of the arbalest and drew the bowstring back into position. "Now!" he yelled, knowing without looking that Thea had refused to leave his side, that she still clutched the shift to her breast where it fluttered in the smoky half-light of the stable like a foolish white target. In another instant, he had nocked the square-headed quarrel and had run ahead of the soldier, the weapon raised to eye level, covering right and left as he cleared a path through the burning debris. He could see the door up ahead, could feel the clear night air racing into his lungs like ice water. They stumbled out into the bailey into a maddened throng of soldiers, stablehands, horses rearing out of control, neighing back to the others trapped inside. When he turned and stared back at the stable, flames were piercing the roof. A riot of black smoke roiled heavenward. He stood, shocked silent, listening to the death screams of horses, to the growl of fire out of control. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized the barrage of arrows had ceased. They knew exactly where he had been; they targeted only the stable. He swore violently, his hand flexing around the crossbow. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Thea start toward him and the soldier regain his purchase on her. She was alive. It was all that mattered. And he-He had stopped feeling the fiery throb of his wounds, stopped feeling anything but an odd fatalistic tedium that he had outlived them again--for now--that he was tired of fighting, of trying. Wearily, he glanced at Thea, still a struggling captive in the soldier's arms, her face, her hair, her gown grayed with ash. The crossbow dropped from his nerveless fingers as he started toward her-And stopped. His heart drove the air from his chest. Wildly, he swirled around, eyes searching the bailey, squinting through smoke and tears and darkness at the faces. He tried to call the name, felt it clog in a throat seared raw, knew it was useless. God in heaven, no! He was still in there!

The Sheriff whirled on his heel and looked at the raging inferno, watching the garish flames pierce and stab the black sky. "My God! He'll die in there!" No one heard the words; perhaps he had not even spoken them aloud. His mind had already closed the distance between the safety of the bailey and the inferno of the stable. His feet followed, slow, dragging at first, as he shoved his way through the crowd, then faster, faster, faster. Until he was running back into the fire's embrace. *** "No!" Thea screamed, feeling heat sear through her lungs. Gauntleted hands closed around her waist and dragged her backward. She heard the sound of her scorched skirts ripping from the soldier's hand and felt her hair tangle and tear on his mail gloves. The guard grabbed her again, pinning her fast against his body, as timbers of the roof crashed to the ground, sending up an eruption of sparks. A second scream could not get past her throat. "Sweet Jesus, he has lost his mind!" someone nearby gasped. "He's a fool--" "Or a madman--" A murmur fell over the crowd, and when the Sheriff did not emerge, a hush. Thea was dimly aware of people shaking their heads in bewilderment, others making the sign of the cross, breaths held in expectation. Time thudded by in a slow, dreadful cadence. The soldier who held her loosened his arms beneath her ribs, while a collective sigh of hopelessness rose from the bailey with the billowing smoke. Thea closed her eyes over the tears streaming down her face. "My lady, look!" Swiping the tears from her eyes with a grimy hand, she stared in the direction of the soldier's outstretched arm. The entrance to the stable was a giant, fiery maw. Silhouetted against the nightmarish backdrop, a figure appeared, stooped against the heat of the blaze, half running, half stumbling. And in his arms-Thea broke through the guard's hold and ran toward the Sheriff, a sob rising in her throat, tears coursing anew down her cheeks. They met midway, the crowd parting around them, a hiss of astonished whispers rising, then falling to an awe-stricken silence as Nottingham dropped to his knees. Simeon wriggled closer into the Sheriff's embrace, small hands fisted in Nottingham's charred and tattered tunic, his thin shoulders racked with coughs.

"Shush, child, you're safe," the Sheriff reassured him as he laid the boy in Thea's arms. "Thea's here. She'll look after you." Thea slipped a comforting hand over Simeon's until the child's fingers loosened their hold on Nottingham's tunic. She held him tightly like a babe against her, rocking him, letting him cough into her shoulder. In time, Simeon breathed easier and turned a soot-streaked face up to hers. "A bargain, Mistress Aelredson?" Thea felt her eyes fill with tears again. "Anything, Simeon." "Promise, none of your bitter brews and I'll swear to a bath at first light." She laughed and cried and hugged him close, brushing his cheek with her lips and feathering his long, ebony bangs back from his forehead. Then she glanced at the Sheriff. Their eyes met for only a moment before he looked away, fear and vulnerability quickly concealed. His jaw hardened, his lips pressed together grimly, and when he looked back at her, his eyes were glazed with angry defiance.

Aelwynn tipped up the glass of wine, swallowing in long, thirst-slaking gulps. She did not stop even when she had drained the cup, but put her lips to the wineskin and drank from it, willing the heady mixture to take her senses. With shaking fingers, she unthreaded the laces at the side of her bliaut and shrugged out of the gown, leaving the pile of ivory samite like a pool of rich cream at her feet. "Where have you been?" She started, her heart pounding audibly in her ears and temple. Tossing her auburn hair back off her shoulders, she lifted her chin and turned around slowly. Gisborne lay sprawled on the bed, still dressed in stained, soot-covered mail. A cup of wine dangled between his fingers. "Following him, perhaps?" "I?" "Like a bitch in heat ever since he returned from Sherwood." Aelwynn shrugged and walked to the bed, her hips swaying carelessly. "Were those not your orders?" she asked. "To find out what passed between the two of them in the forest? Well, lieutenant, I have come to report."

Gisborne dragged one muddy boot through the bedfurs, bending his knee; fluidly, Aelwynn slid between his open legs. "Alas," she said, "I fear my earlier assumption was wrong. About your little herb harlot, I mean. It seems the passion she neglected to demonstrate in Sherwood was merely postponed. Or perhaps the Sheriff has a preference of which I was unaware. When last I saw them, they were taking their pleasures lustily on the stable floor." Gisborne slammed down his cup. "Damn it, Aelwynn, make no sport of this. He was nearly killed tonight!" "A true disaster. I hope you caught the culprits." She smiled silkily and rubbed her hands up his chest, gathering the fabric of his surcoat as she went. "Surely you were heroic, to have earned all this--" she pulled the garment over Gisborne's head and held it pinched between her thumb and forefinger before letting it drop to the floor, "--filth." "You forget yourself, Aelwynn." "And you, lieutenant, forget our plan." "My plan," he interrupted, "is to save my cousin's undeserving ass long enough to see him join with Prince John, to see a trade of coin and armor and Nottingham Castle as a midland stronghold in return for royal favor. That is my plan, and nothing more--a position for myself as something other than the Sheriff's lackey--" "A position as sheriff yourself?" she dared. Gisborne stopped, his eyes narrowing to crystalline slits. "You said you could do it," Aelwynn continued, "could do it better--" "The drink has fogged your head." "You said it." "In a moment of frustration--" "You meant it," she pressed, and this time she did not wait for his rebuttal. "And I believe you could. The runes forecast it, and opportunity is all around you. Tonight, for example. Had you been less quick to rally the troops . . . had you been . . . unavailable . . ." Too late, she saw the dangerous turn in Gisborne's expression, sallow complexion flushing red with fury. He threw his cup across the room, splattering wine across the lime-washed wall. Before she could draw breath, his hands were an iron collar about her neck. "He is my cousin," he said, full lips flattening against his teeth in a feral growl. "Damn you to hell, he is the High Sheriff of Nottingham! You will not, for your self-serving means, bring risk to his life!"

"I?" she managed, the word croaking from her gullet. "Do you think Nottingham a fool? Or me? We have worked too long, planned too carefully to let a common castle whore cast our fortunes to the wind." "I would not suggest--" "Wouldn't you?" His hands twisted mercilessly. "A murderer is loose, Aelwynn. You reek of burnt oak and stable dung, and your skirts are scorched. Should I arrest you now and save myself the trouble of finding some other unlucky bastard whose neck I can stretch to satisfy justice?" Aelwynn laughed nervously. "Your devotion knows no bounds, lieutenant. Your charges, however, are baseless. I started no fire. Remember, I fancy the man alive. His bed emptied, perhaps, but--" Gisborne pushed her away, and threw his legs over the side of the bed. "You're not leaving?" Without looking at her, he strapped on his sword belt and filled the sheath with his weapon. "There is work left undone, suspects to question--" "But surely not tonight!" He did not answer her, shoving past her as she clambered from the bed. Deliberate strides carried him across the room; the door shut solidly in her face. A ragged breath shuddered through her. "Idiot!" she muttered. But that and another belly-soaking draught of wine did little to drown the niggling dread that curdled within her. Gisborne's loyalty to his cousin was as stolid and unflagging as ever. He was a spineless leech, plastered to Nottingham's side, sucking, savoring, sharing the Sheriff's ambition, as if it were his own. Worse, time was running out. She had made promises, taken payment, played the game of bored, disinterested concubine until her nerves screamed with impatience. Gisborne was no closer to assuming the role required of him. And the Sheriff? The Sheriff was still alive. *** Nottingham paused at the entrance to the barracks and surveyed the mayhem within. Soldiers pulled off hauberks and mail gauntlets and stacked shields and swords. There was a low, but audible undercurrent of discontent, a rumbling of oaths and curses flung aside with the discarded weaponry. From his particular vantage point, the Sheriff could not tell whether his men were disgruntled that they were called to arms or that the battle they had expected had never materialized.

He suspected they were as weary as he of skirmishes and ambushes, of protecting a castle in a forest-covered shire while titled knights and noblemen had traded such onerous duty for more glorious service under King Richard's banner. Nottingham did not fool himself that he had purchased his soldiers' loyalty with anything but harsh demands for respect and obedience, but they were good men, as soldiers went. Determined fighters. Without making his presence known, he swept aside the pain of his own injuries as he scanned the scene. He had no wish to appear weak in their eyes, not after the night they'd just spent, first in the stable, then going through Nottingham, door to dor, searching for the arsonists. Once the first soldier caught sight of his lord and stood, straight and suddenly silent, a contagion of quiet spread quickly throughout the ranks. Men froze in mid-motion, and the only sound was the nervous clattering of a sword dropped clumsily to the floor. The Sheriff gazed over his troops, meeting each pair of eyes individually in silent gratitude. Abruptly, he moved from his position in the doorway to the row of cots and tables littered with the casualties of the fire. No battle, no honor; just the same, inglorious deaths that seemed to follow him wherever he went. Tonight, again, men had traded their lives for his in this unending madness he did not understand, and could not end. The barracks had been hastily converted into an infirmary and now served as makeshift morgue. He saw Thea, her sleeves soaked to the elbow in blood, reach up and wipe distractedly at the loose tendrils of hair on her forehead, so intent on her surgery, she noticed neither him nor the pall that had settled over the men at his arrival. The Sheriff watched her for a moment, observing with an odd detachment the swiftness with which she wielded her blade and stanched the flow of blood from her patient's open chest where an arrow protruded upright. Her lips tightened into a grim line of determination as the wounded soldier convulsed, then grew still. Her hands, which had been so sure and capable just moments before, trembled as she pressed her fingertips beneath the soldier's jaw. "How many?" Nottingham asked, his voice subdued, but stern. He could see the very shock of the sound break through her concentration. She closed the eyes of the man on the table and drew the linen sheet over him. Slowly, she lifted her head and met the Sheriff's eyes. There was no expression on her face, merely the weariness and numbness of hours of futile surgery. "Eight dead . . . now." Nottingham cleared his throat uncomfortably. For such a feeble ambush, far too many had died. He passed along the row of bodies, lifting the white sheets back from each face in turn, counting off the names in a hushed monotone that grew louder and angrier with each man identified. "FitzRobert . . . Greeley . . . Royce . . . Knowlesly . . ."

He approached another body, smaller than the others, and snatched the gauzy fabric away. "Eduard," he pronounced, his voice dropping. "Knowlesly's squire. The lad had a way with horses, did you know? Loved them better than people, I think. Spent nearly all his time with Knowlesly's roan." He stopped and swallowed, grimacing at the raw burn in his throat. He had seen the horrors of war, had even grown quite indifferent to them. He wasn't certain he would forget the horror of the boy's mail hauberk fused into blackened flesh. "And the others?" he asked. "The wounded?" "Two were but grazed, and there were some minor burns. Another--I've removed an arrow. Possibly--" Her voice faltered, and she looked away briefly before continuing. "Then there is Ned. Ned Godwinson." "Yes?" "The stable master." "He lives?" "I could take his arm," she said, "but he's weak. Either way, I do not think he will last the night." The Sheriff nodded and rubbed his hand across his drawn, soot-streaked face. "I will speak to the families," she offered. "No," he interrupted tersely. "They were my men." He squared his sagging shoulders, the movement a jarring reminder of torn flesh, and drew in a harsh hiss of breath to clear the pain. He felt her eyes on him, on the ragged rise and fall of his chest beneath the shreds of his sweat-stained tunic, on the shoulder and sleeve which clung to him, silk black-wet with blood. When he looked at her, he could see only one thing: a forest woman, a sympathizer, the woman who, in another time, would have put her hands to the wounds of Robin of Locksley and his men. Something inside him tore, some buried, hurting place she had begun to heal with trust and affection. Old torments poured forth as from a reopened wound. "This is what I mean, woman!" he thundered, gesturing to the shroud-filled room. "This, damn you! Not some minor forest mischief! See what they have done? See what vengeance they have heaped upon these innocent men? Better yet, drag your herbs and instruments to the stable. See if you can put back the life of two-thirds of my horses. Chimera--" His voice broke. He could not continue.

Thea bowed her head, unable to meet his eyes or speak. The simple motion angered him even more. It would be like her to retreat from the truth, even when she carried the bloody evidence smeared on her hands and face. He warred with the instinct to blame her, for although he knew he could not hold her responsible for the actions of his attackers, it was equally true that she had stumbled into an alliance with these outlaws, and who else but Locksley and his brigands could have accomplished this night's sly, ferocious attack? She thought what he and his men had done to bring the fugitives to justice was harsh and cruel. What could she say now that she had seen violence loosed from the very bows she swore were used merely for hunting the king's deer? This was cruelty! This was barbarism! Tonight they had added eight men, perhaps others, to a list of victims grown too long to remember. Not one, but two enemy archers lay dead in the dungeon, their bodies pierced several times over. A third was in Gisborne's hands, and for once Nottingham did not care if his cousin indulged his every sadistic whim. The murderous bastard would be thrown from the battlements at dawn, but the mere snapping of his neck was far too fast and easy an end. Let him feel the fiery pain of irons and whips that flayed the skin with fire. Let him regret he had not fallen with his comrades. Damn it all, let him confess to the location of Locksley's secret camp while he yearned for the oblivion of death! The Sheriff looked at Thea, anger bubbling thickly within him. He should never have let her return with him. These feelings she caused to steal over him were dangerous, not to be trusted any more than she was herself. His jaw tensed. He had let his desire for her soften his convictions, had permitted her to cut through his resolve like a blade through warm butter. Damn it all! The Sherwood felons must be stopped, and he knew of only one way. Thea knew. Their names. Their camp. Probably more intimacies about their forest lives than he cared to dwell on presently. He had never pressed her, not really. She was and always had been his unseen advantage, yet he had protected her, exempted her from obedience, even from professing loyalty to him. And now he had let her become an impediment to him. He could not allow himself to be encumbered by his longings and this mad turn toward tenderness that had afflicted him of late. Thea was his to use, and far too rare a chesspiece to be wasted on carnal pleasure. He did not look at her, in fact, could not look at her. The very thought of her stirred the nest of vipers in his belly to writhe and strike at him with a gentle response he could ill afford. Vehemently, he pushed the barrage of memories from his mind, memories of her touch, her taste, her sweet, eager willingness. She would talk, he vowed. The secrets she kept

would spill from her lips as easily as the muted cries of pleasure he had wrung from her earlier. Deliberately, he snatched her arm, the pressure of his hand so intense that she dropped her blade to the ground. "Leave Godwinson to the priest," he said between clenched teeth. "There is more you need to see. Below." He could see that she was far too confused to challenge him. "My lord?" she asked, with bewilderment born of exhaustion. "Perhaps you can be of use to me yet," he muttered gruffly. With sickening satisfaction, he noted the change in her features: the way her slim brows drew together in worry; the way her eyes darkened as she searched his face for an answer he was not about to give; the way her lips parted to begin a question, then pressed together as she prevented herself from asking. She was afraid, the Sheriff realized, more afraid than she had been even staked and burning on the stable floor. Finally. After what she had seen today, and what she would see below, maybe she would realize how dangerous her alliance with Locksley was, and how lethal could be her silence. He said nothing more, but jerked at her arm with a viciousness that tore through his shoulder. He covered the grunt of pain, and with raw determination, propelled her out of the barracks and through the deep, cavernous tunnels that led beneath the main keep, to the gaol.

Chapter 22 It was a silent, ominous journey, furiously paced. The Sheriff pulled Thea behind him past a blur of storerooms and ale cellars, down the steep, narrow flight of stairs that curved around a high, central supporting column of stone and mortar. As they descended into the underbelly of the keep, any remnant of dawn's frail light disappeared. The pale, orange auras of weakly glowing torches, set in widely spaced cressets along the corridors, left them in darkness more often than not. Nottingham's eyes were accustomed to the dimness; his feet knew every worn step and plank along the way. He grabbed Thea's hand, ignoring the desperate clutch of her fingers, and shoved her ahead of him through the tunnels and down a final plummeting corkscrew of steps to the nadir of the keep. A group of guards scrambled hastily to their feet, upturning the table around which they were gathered with their game of dice. All eyes fixed on the Sheriff, and there was no sound other than the hollow, sporadic echo of water dripping far off in some unseen corner. "Where are they?" he demanded, his voice stirring the silence.

The cluster of soldiers parted, inviting entrance to their bleak, subterranean domain. A firepit glowing blue-hot issued forth a spiritless spiral of smoke that hung over their heads, draped across the motionless air like cobwebs and nearly obscuring the high ceiling of arched beams. The Sheriff urged Thea ahead, feeling reluctance in her fear-stiffened posture and hesitant step. "Cousin," Gisborne greeted him, diverting his attention momentarily from the man chained, spread-eagled, on a bloodstained table. Overhead, ropes and chains hung like tangled vines, interspersed with a malevolent assortment of implements. Thea turned her head aside and covered her mouth. Even the Sheriff grimaced, sickened by the too-familiar pungency of burned flesh. "The dead," he said brusquely. "Where are they?" Gisborne inclined his head toward a row of cells on his right. "Not that they'd escape," he said dryly. "I'd say their siege was ill-fated from the start. Dreadfully undermanned." His laugh was a bitter, choked sound in his throat. The Sheriff's eyes darted to Thea's colorless face as she braved a glance at the cells carved into the bedrock foundation of the castle. Low, whimpering moans implored from the confined darkness; skeletal hands reached between the iron bars of the cell doors, snatching at her skirt as she passed. The cell Gisborne indicated showed no movement at all, save the faint scurrying of rodents. "Open it," the Sheriff ordered. From behind Gisborne, the turnkey stood, a giant column of bronze flesh looming over the Sheriff's cousin. The man was stripped to the waist, and the muscles of his sweatslicked chest and arms knotted with grotesque definition. He lumbered toward the Sheriff, pulled a ring of keys from his leather belt, and fumbled one into the lock. His massive hand closed around an iron bar, and the cell door creaked open. The airless cubicle was dank and musty, but the stale odor that assaulted them was nothing compared to the stench of straw soaked in the filth of human waste. The Sheriff ducked beneath the overhanging stone and peered into the darkness of the cell, then backed out again. "Bring them out," he ordered. He turned to Thea. "I want to know who they are." He did not expect her to flinch, nor did she. Her chin lifted in that brave, defiant gesture he knew so well, and one slender brow arched with quaint dignity that struck him like a lance in his gut. He held her spite-filled eyes until the gaoler had deposited the bodies at their feet.

Thea's eyes broke with his, and by degrees her glance drifted down to the floor. The dead men wore the same homespun tunics and cross-gartered leggings of most woodsmen. Black-red circles of blood marked the entrance wounds of arrows too numerous to count, several still embedded in chests, backs, thighs. Nottingham pushed one lifeless arm with the toe of his boot. "Friends of yours?" he whispered. Thea shuddered and collapsed to her knees, a small cry bursting through her lips. For a moment, her hands hovered helplessly over the dead men as if she wanted, or needed, to make some last gesture to save lives that had already been ripped away. Gingerly, she pulled back the woolen hood that covered the face of the man nearest her. Behind her, the Sheriff froze, every muscle in his body contracted into granite stillness. Before Thea moved to the next slain attacker, Nottingham pushed past her and barreled his way into the center of the room where Gisborne and the turnkey bent over their living prisoner. "Damn you, Gisborne! That is no woodsman. Do you not know these men?" Swinging arms out wildly, he cleared his cousin and the gaoler out of his path. Viciously, the Sheriff's fingers dug into the prisoner's upper arms as he hauled the man up from his prostrate position on the table. The man groaned and his body sagged in the Sheriff's arms, his head rolling limply on his shoulders. Gisborne nodded in acknowledgment. "Roger Dunstan. Late of this very garrison." The man lifted his head and glared out balefully from pain-glazed eyes. Depleted of strength by untended injuries and those more purposely inflicted, he struggled weakly against the shackles that bound him, wrist and ankle. His cheek bore the imprint of hot irons, and a stream of blood washed down from a wound in his scalp. Trembling with effort, the prisoner shot a scathing look at the Sheriff. His body turned rigid as he worked his dry, cracked lips together soundlessly, and spat. The Sheriff held the ragged waste of a man in mid-air for a moment longer, then let him drop upon the table. Turning slowly on his heel, he wiped the spittle from his cheek with the tattered black silk of his sleeve. "And the others?" "Deserters. I've checked the roster. These three accompanied you to Sherwood in August--the day you were ambushed and left to die. They were missing, presumed dead." "Not nearly dead enough," Nottingham muttered. "Were there others?" Gisborne paused. "Not that we caught."

The Sheriff scraped his smoke-bleary eyes with his hand and turned away, pacing the length of the dungeon. Not woodsmen, although disguised well enough. Not even peasants. Soldiers. Satan's blood--his own men! "Why?" he asked, turning back to the prisoner. Gisborne tossed him a pouch, heavy with the ring of sterling. "They were paid, and handsomely. Undermanned, as I said, but this was a well-conceived plot, Cousin. Had you been less lucky--" He broke off, cleared his throat, and began again. "There is more silver here than these turncoats could make in a year. In two years. They were well-funded, well-supplied." Nottingham upended the pouch, spilling the coins into his palm until the pile grew too large to contain and silver coins fell through his fingers to the floor. "Not Locksley's men," he said in a shaken monotone. "Doubtful," Gisborne replied sourly. "Without his father's finances, young Robin hasn't this kind of wealth to spare." "He's stolen enough from my own treasury to hire a legion of men--" "If they weren't flocking to his side out of loyalty alone." Gisborne scuffed his boot heel through a rancid puddle of water. "No, my guess is that Locksley would've taken you on personally. The cocksure bastard craves a confrontation." "No less than I," Nottingham said. Abruptly he nodded, then thrust the pouch and its contents into Gisborne's hands. "As I feared, our enemies are more than one. And closer yet than Locksley's camp. I charge you, Cousin, to bring them in. Nothing less than splintered gullets for the lot of them." He glanced at the surviving prisoner. "I'll hang this bastard myself." Myriad conflicting feelings swirled within him, as if his world had been turned upside down and shaken soundly. He walked over to Thea, who still knelt beside the dead men, and offered her his hand. "Come," he whispered. She stared up at him for a long moment, her lips hard and angry, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears and horror, glancing from his face to his hand and back again. "Come," he repeated more forcefully, and extended his hand farther. Slowly, she gathered her burnt, bloody skirts about her, and laid her hand in his. He pulled her up off the floor and led her quickly to the upward swirl of steps. He did not look back, nor did he speak until they were well away from the gaol. Only after they made the turn down the last tunnel that would lead them back to the keep did the Sheriff stop. Bracing himself against the coolness of the stone, he let the darkness of the corridor cover his exhaustion. He knees gave way slightly; immediately, he corrected the small

lapse and stood straighter, concentrating on the solid feel of the damp wall as it caressed and lent strength to his back. He had not expected to be so affected by confronting his would-be murderers. He had thought it impossible to feel more rage than he directed at the criminals in Sherwood, but he quaked with a new anger that surpassed even that. He thought of the prisoner now in Gisborne's hands, and his mouth filled with bitter bile. Bad enough to be hunted like human prey by Locksley. Now his own men had turned against him. The man was a fool, of course, a hotheaded, money-driven idiot without reason or caution or purpose, and a poor archer at that. The woodsman's disguise was his only stroke of genius, and that not nearly enough to save him. Nottingham's fingers spasmed into claws as he imagined his hands around the man's neck. A hanging was far too swift a death. He hoped Gisborne took his time with the questioning. A faint movement at his side wrested his thoughts from the attempted assassination, and he looked down to see Thea, her face a pale oval in the darkness. Suddenly, he was reminded of their whereabouts and the painfully tight grip he had on her forearm. He did not share his multitude of concerns with her; it was enough that he had been wrong, stupidly, unforgivably wrong, that he had trumpeted his errors of judgment loudly for her to hear. He looked at her, for the first time without concern for his men or the prisoner below or his own skin and pride, and felt the atrocities of the day reflected in her stillness. She seemed too quiet, too small, as if the events of the hours' passing dwarfed her with the immensity of their import. Angry, yes, she was that, but now, he saw, she seemed too fragile as well. The flames had spared little of her delicate shift, licking the skirts with blackened grime and ash. The bodice was ripped, the rolled up sleeves soaked in blood. Smears of greasy soot streaked her cheeks and forehead. When the shock of it all wore off, she would feel the taut throb of fire in those cheeks and along her leg where he had smothered the flames against her, as he would himself in his hands and across his back. He told himself his own injuries were insignificant. There were no scars that would show amid the crosswork pattern already emblazoned on his shoulders, and the pain, if not the memories, could be doused with sufficient ale. But Thea! What had he done to her? How quickly his own fear and distrust had trampled his yearning for her! How easily he had forfeited every hope of something new and noble with her, and cast aside whatever small goodness she saw in him in favor of old hatreds and suspicions. He asked himself for the thousandth time who she was, and the only answer his mind allowed, maybe the only answer there could be, was that she was a village herb woman. A healer first. Always.

John Little and Locksley sought her out, it was true, but so had he when the need had arisen, and now he pressed her into a service far more gruesome than any in her simple country life. Was she ever more than a woman with simples and a steady hand? A birther of babies? A speaker of charms who spent her days gathering plants for her harmless potions? Old men with toothaches, runny-nosed children with sore throats, a mother without milk-these were her people. Not soldiers with ghastly arrow wounds and faces burned beyond recognition. Fatigue tempted him, and he felt the telltale portents of a headache throbbing in his temples and blurring his vision. He found himself favoring his damaged shoulder; his left arm lay useless at his side. A trickle of blood from his wound caressed his palm before forking between his fingers to drip on the floor, but the physical pain meant nothing. His mind strayed in circles of chaotic thought, anything to keep the emotional bedlam at bay. His eyes drifted shut, blotting out the world. "My lord," came her soft whisper, softer than he deserved, "you've seen to all but yourself. If you will but come with me--" His eyes opened, the pounding behind them knitting his dark brow into a weave of furrows. She reached out as if to touch his sleeve, then let her hand drop to her side, her redstained fingers curling into a fist, as if she did not trust her own impulse or the indeterminate period of calm that had fallen over him. He saw the haunted look in her eyes and knew she had found no pleasure in seeing Locksley and his companions proved innocent. Then he found he could not look at her at all--not at the smudged face, not at the blood on her hands, not at the remnants of the gown he had crushed to himself in a brief, splendid moment when neither of them had thought or care for enmity, let alone violence. She had seen too much. Far too much. Worse, he had been unable to protect her and could give her no oath of safety now, if ever. He should send her back to her cottage, to Edwinstowe and the trivial injury of common folk, to Sherwood and safety. If only he could. "There are still other matters," he said with forced harshness. "See to yourself. See to Simeon. There is nothing I have suffered that won't improve significantly when I've stretched that bastard's neck." He spun around and retreated into the shadows of the corridor, thundering through the passage that would return him to the living quarters of the keep. Thea paced the barracks, pausing to hold a ladle of cold water to the lips of one of the soldiers. The night had ended without word from him, but still she waited, her thoughts torn between the Sheriff and the men whose needs she tended to in a dazed rote.

The sight of the wounded kept the memory of the attack fresh in her mind, and feelings of grief welled up in her heart for the families of the men who had died. She tried to pray for them, but her silent words and the priest's sibilant litanies were not half as eloquent as the remembered sound of the Sheriff's voice tolling off the names of the men who had fallen for him. Her hands shook each time she thought of Nottingham, whether with rage or fear for him, she did not know. She remembered their brief passion on the hay-covered floor of the stable, how easily, thoughtlessly, she had given herself to him, assuming his feelings were genuine. She had trusted him, believed they had conquered the differences between them. Yet the embers of the fire had not even grown cold before he had accused the Sherwood outlaws and dragged her beneath the castle to identify his supposed attackers. How dare he use her friendship with Robin's men to accuse and indict them! It was the lowest, meanest form of manipulation she could imagine, even in a man who excelled at twisting things to suit his purpose. She had revealed to the Sheriff her connection to the outlaws and promised it was not the lethal alliance he believed it to be. She had even broken with John. God in heaven, she had nearly made love with the man and he still suspected her of some insidious treachery, questioning, challenging her loyalty to him. And his loyalty to her? The very concept seemed foreign to him. As did trust. Or devotion. Anger and a sense of betrayal mixed in her belly, and the cold, hollow feeling that resulted was not warmed as she thought of the execution that would follow when the sun rose. She walked to the door, gazing out at the bailey and up at the soot-stained tower from which Dunstan would be hanged. Was it just yesterday she woke in his arms and decided to return to Nottingham? Just an evening's passing since he held her, touched her, made her tremble with delight? And now, come dawn, he would hang a man. A man who could have been John, or Robin, or Much. What kind of man could do that--hold her gently, make love to her passionately, rage so furiously, and fling an enemy's torture-ravaged body to his death, all in the span of a single day? And what kind of woman had she become that she could love such a man? No, not loved. Not in a thousand years. She couldn't have meant that, couldn't have thought it. Never. Never. A crowd had begun to pack the square, and the soldiers spilled out of the barracks in noisy confusion. No one missed a hanging at Nottingham Castle. Thea turned and saw the priest make the sign of the cross over Ned Godwinson and cover his body with linens. The Benedictine's eyes, circled from lack of sleep, met hers, mirrored her sorrow.

Oh, God, if only she could go back. To her cottage. To Sherwood. Or only back to hating the Sheriff with the simple, narrow notion that he was her enemy, and despicable, and deserving of whatever fate befell him. To a time when everything was so clearly spelled out, good and evil, black and white, with none of the grays of a woman's confusion. Her eyes filled with tears, wetting her lashes and coursing down her cheeks in hot, damp streaks. Outside the gathering throng cheered, an enthusiastic display of anticipation. Man, woman, child--they all supported the Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham. Were they afraid not to? The sound reached through the castle walls, becoming a prolonged, muted clamor in her ears, peaking louder at the Sheriff's arrival, at his pronouncement of death. She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the sound. Drum roll. Silence. Suddenly, she could bear the barracks no longer, could not stand to be trapped by stone walls and stinking, dying men and more death outside. She tore past the priest blindly-"My child--" --As the crowd burst into a thunderous roar, running down the corridor, up the coil of stairs to her room. Breathless, she closeted herself behind the door, slumped against it. "Lamb!" Mildthryth started toward her, but Thea waved her back with a choked cry. She tried to lift the bloody shift over her head, but it clung to her, wet and sticky in places, dried stiff in others. Sobbing, she tore at the laces, her nails rending the fabric into useless strips until it fell from her. She jammed it into the fire and watched the flames take it as they nearly had before, big flakes of it separating like black lace, drifting up the chimney's draft. Mildthryth draped a soft fur over her shoulders, and Thea let herself be pulled into the woman's embrace. "Cry, lamb. You've been saving tears since I've known you, and 'tis time to let them go. 'Twill be all right." Thea cried into Mildthryth's shoulder, remembering how she had wept in the Sheriff's arms, how she was certain there had been no tears left to shed. Now she wondered if she would ever stop. Mildthryth crooned and murmured to her, letting her broken words spill out. "Oh, God, what have I done? What have I done?" "Shush, lamb. All that you could do. No more, no less." "I shouldn't be here. I should never have returned. There is naught here for me but pain--and him--and now he is pain. I thought I could make a difference--for him--I don't know--but clearly I cannot." "Nay, lamb, you can. You do. Every day you are with him, he changes, he--"

Thea shook her head and dashed the back of her hand across her tear-stained cheek. "Nay, he is no different. He is harsh, cruel, as always." "Is he?" "Aye, and demanding and unforgiving. A man who cannot give his trust, a man so consumed by anger it is devouring him from the inside out." Mildthryth nodded. "Aye, he is all those things, but--" "He accused me, made me go with him below--no, dragged me below, as if I were a piece of flesh at his disposal--and forced me to see the men Gisborne had captured. He thought I would tell him they were outlaws from Sherwood, assumed I would tell him their names. I was not sure if, before the day was over, he would have me chained and questioned. I swear to you, in his madness, he was but two thoughts away from the idea." "He would not do such a thing," Mildthryth said with utter conviction. "His feelings for you--" "Do not include trust. Or compassion. Or even pity. The man is merciless." "The man is afraid." Thea stared back at her, anger and hurt tempting her features. "The Sheriff of Nottingham is afraid of nothing," she said, sarcasm scything through her words. "Ask him. I'm certain he'll tell you." "He is human, after all." "Most of the shire debates that." "Do you?" Mildthryth's silver brows lifted speculatively. Thea looked away, staring into the fire as it lapped a stack of oak logs. It appeared a gentle flame, but she had seen what could grow out of something so seemingly harmless. Slow, insidious destruction, uncontrolled it would consume everything. She shut her eyes and shuddered, pulled back to the night before, to the dry, scorching heat baking her flesh, to the meadow sweet hay shriveling to foul, lung-clotting bitterness, to the crackle and crash of timbers falling-To the Sheriff's arms drawing her into the black-silk hollow of his body, putting himself between her and death only to kill her later with contemptible words and actions. "Today he hanged a man. He let a man be tortured, and then he executed him--" "Aye. And to the Sheriff, 'tis justice." "Nay, Mildthryth, not justice. Rage. And revenge. He is ruled by it, this need--this obsessive need--for vengeance, and it makes him a monster."

"And that is all he is to you? Do you not see more?" Thea did not answer. She wrapped the fur closer, trying to ward off the chill that seemed to have invaded the very marrow of her bones. "Someone wants his life," Mildthryth continued when Thea did not speak. "The fire was not a random act of arson, nor was it accidental that he was ambushed in Sherwood and felled by the arrow whose point you removed. He's in danger, and keeping a vicious kind of silence about him, like a show of bravery to the people, to his men, to you. But fear is sitting in his belly like a cold, dead thing, not letting him forget. So he searches, without cease, for the ones who did this to him. Who will do it again, as surely as the sun's rising, if they are not stopped. "Aye, the Sheriff suspects your Robin. I daresay he suspects everyone, even his own shadow. And, aye, Nottingham is one for revenge, but he is a man striking out of pain, a pain few have seen, or will see, I warrant. 'Tis a great, bold anger he has, and sometimes 'tis so powerful it sweeps away all else. But there is more to the man, lamb. Noble impulses that seep out without his knowing; good and kindly acts he'd just as soon squelch if he thought anyone noticed. You've seen them yourself, or there'd be no question of loving him, would there?" Thea glanced up at Mildthryth. "Aye, he hanged a man," the woman continued, "and 'twill not be the last, as long as he's Sheriff. But he did more than take a life." Mildthryth looked at Simeon, huddled near the hearth beneath a soft, woolen blanket. The sleeping boy snuggled his dark head into the goose-down pillow and dug deeper into the straw pallet. Thea felt tears begin again, forming hot in her eyes. "He saved a child," she whispered, her voice breaking. "Aye." Mildthryth patted her hand. "Had he strength or breath in him, he'd have saved every last one of his men, every one of those horses on which he prides himself so. I know that because I know his heart. Now there are others--those people who were in the bailey this morn--who do not care what's at the core of him, and what they'll remember is the hanging, not the man who carried a child in his arms. 'Tis the way of folks, and a mystery to me. But you are different, Thea. I know you see the other half of the man, the half he keeps hidden. Is there not enough there to love?" She glanced again into the fire's dancing colors, thinking of the mysteries she had glimpsed in Nottingham--the rare, gentle longing for something he could not have, could not even name; the quiet, privacy of the man; the tender, vulnerable need of his loneliness--fragile qualities so fleeting it had taken only a day to obliterate all trace of them. "I cannot love him," she said finally, her voice hushed as her gaze dropped to her lap. "He won't let me love him." "'Twill take someone brave. Someone with your courage, lamb. Someone with your gentleness . . . to show him how."

After a moment, the woman stood, shaking out her skirts and stiff joints. "'Tis a bath you're needing now, a good scrubbing, and I'll see to it myself." Thea did not argue. She let Mildthryth soap the grime and lingering smoke scent from her hair and skin and douse her with herb-scented water, and all the while, she thought of the Sheriff. She played the fruitless game of imagining where he'd gone when he'd left her outside the dungeon and where he was now. She asked herself if his soul were at peace now that he'd hanged the turncoat. And each time she thought of him, the need to see him grew. There were too many things left unresolved between them, too many things he had not let her say, and at the very least, she could not let him storm about the castle in an outburst of rancor with wounds that could be serious. "Now sleep," Mildthryth said when Thea was dry and her clean hair brushed and braided by the fire. "'Tis what you need most. I'll fetch some tea and sit with you, lamb, till--" "I'm going to him," Thea interrupted, the determination in her voice surprising even herself. "Are you now?" Mildthryth's eyes stretched wide with surprise. "He was hurt," Thea said with authority, as if to convince herself as well as her maidservant, "and no doubt has give little thought to the care of his worthless hide." "No doubt." "Someone must make him rest." Mildthryth smiled. "Someone should, lamb." "I'll need my bag of medicaments." Thea pulled on an undertunic and kirtle, hose and slippers, ignoring Mildthryth's bemused gloat of triumph. Something in the old woman's expression smacked of smug victory. "Of course, he'll hate this. He clearly dismissed me when we were below. He'll say I'm hovering, or disobedient, or he'll simply send me away in a fit of choler." "M-m," Mildthryth replied non-committally, adding a deft tug to the laces of Thea's gown. "But I must see him, temper or no. To see how he fares." "I think you should." Thea turned in Mildthryth's arms, and her expression turned thoughtful and sober. "There are no secrets with you, are there?" The woman grinned sheepishly.

"I agree with your Warrin, God rest his soul. You must be gifted with the Sight to know so much, to see people so clearly. But, Mildthryth, by God's truth, I don't know if I can love him. He's like someone being tossed by a tempest--one moment witty and charming, the next filled with ire and a brooding disposition. I thought I had begun to see past that, to see the man you say is underneath all those layers of pretense, but today I lost sight of the real Sheriff, if I ever knew him at all. I would find him again, if I could, but I fear there is something separating us, something I cannot see or break through. Something . . ." She shook her head, convinced Mildthryth knew better than she did what she meant. Hastily, she brushed a kiss on the woman's plump cheek and took the pouch of herbs and potions. When she reached the door, she stopped. "You love him, do you not?" she asked. "Aye, lamb, that I do." "How do you know what to say to him?" Mildthryth's lined face broke into a wide smile, and she shrugged her ample shoulders. "Oh, it matters little what I say to him. He'd not listen for a minute, foul humor or fair. Besides, 'tis not your words he needs, but your presence. Your hand in his. Your heart beside his." "Will that be enough?" Thea asked softly, wondering if she could give even that. *** She lingered at the Sheriff's door, giving herself every opportunity to change her mind. She had made so many mistakes with Nottingham. She had mistakenly believed she knew her loyalties, and could keep them hidden. She had believed her allegiance to Robin and his men could not be shaken. She had believed herself strong, resistant to the pull of desires she thought long dead, impervious to his smoky-voiced seduction and bold caresses. It was the height of presumption to believe she knew him, that she understood his quicksilver nature, when she could not even comprehend her own feelings. That thought alone was nearly enough to make her turn back. He had not called her, after all. She was going to him of her own volition, on some charity that he did not want or need, and most certainly did not deserve. She was going because she wanted to be with him, wanted to assure herself of his safety, wanted to hold him and erase the worry that creased his brow and the angry fear that kept his fists clenched at his side. She was going because she wanted no more strife between them when the world outside had turned mad and dangerous. She gripped her bundle of herbs and met the sentry at the Sheriff's door. To her surprise, the soldier stepped aside without questioning her, even bowed his head slightly as he opened the door.

Thea stopped short, just inside the solar, her pouch of medicines knocking against her knees. The Sheriff was bathing. Being bathed. She could see that much, and more, as the vision broke rudely into her thoughts. Large cask tub. Threads of vapor escaping the water's surface. One lean arm, wet, draped indecorously over the cask's edge; droplets puddling beneath his fingers. Head back. Eyes closed. Water lapping gently against his belly. She could see no more, wanted to see no more. The wet-bodiced girl who tended him froze. The fall of water from her pitcher stopped abruptly, and she clutched the vessel to her breast. Thea shook her head, but the image would not clear. It--all of it--was most definitely there, and reason was fast escaping her. Of course he would bathe. Of course. And Nottingham--it was his way--she knew that--to surround himself with wenches of the castle. She was, herself, she could not help but remember, one of those women. His surgeon. His surgeon. He possessed them all to one degree or another, in one way or another. And that she knew. She had only forgotten, or wanted desperately not to believe it. She felt every remaining hope disintegrate, every frail beginning they had made dissolve. "Forgive me. I intrude." She mumbled the words to him, to the girl, to the air, feeling quite separate from the scene and whatever intimacies the two had exchanged. She did not wait to see if either heard or paid her any heed, but turned quickly, unaccountably miserable, and felt for the latch on the door. She heard the stirring of water behind her, even as she fumbled with the bolt. Oh, God, how wrong she had been! To ever think of love and Nottingham in the same breath, to think he had need of her strength and her solace. The bastard obviously wanted for nothing he could not obtain for himself! His voice roused the vague, unnamed hurt inside her. "You are not intruding." Pause. Water dripped. "What have you brought?" Slowly, she turned around, gathering the angry passion she felt around her for protection, knowing it was not the hatred she felt, but something else as darkly burning. He rose from the water, a dusky-gold Neptune-being, and without taking his eyes off her, held out his arm for his robe. She wanted to look away, knew she should, must, that the sight of him unclothed would be but one more memory to torment her already tormented mind. It was not a thing she decided with her mind. Candlelight reflected off his wet shoulders with the sparkle of a hundred fiery prisms. She followed the tracery of rivulets that coursed down his chest and wet the thin arrow of dark hair that shot down the length of his belly, and hatred came soon enough. She hated herself for being drawn away from his eyes, which were not safe, but certainly safer, for gawking like a foolish maiden without the acquaintance of a man's body. And that was not the least of it. She hated herself for not hating him.

He did not help, standing there with studied indifference. With deliberate delay, he shouldered into his robe, the creamy brown silk of it clinging to still-wet skin. Thea lifted her chin as if unimpressed.

Chapter 23 "I recalled you were injured and not inclined to accept treatment. I was curious to see if the stubbornness had bled out of you yet." Thea set her bag of herbs and potions on the oak dining table and dared her eyes not to travel down the loose robe the Sheriff was casually belting at his waist. Nottingham's lip curved downward, an eloquent response. With a minute wave of his hand, he dismissed the girl and her pitcher. He waited until he and Thea were alone, his dark eyes fixed on hers in the interval of silence that seemed to stretch endlessly between them. When the door at last thudded shut, he spoke. "How does Simeon fare?" Thea drew a deep, steadying breath. "Simeon is sleeping soundly with Mildthryth to look after him. His breathing is deep and unlabored. He appears, miraculously, not to have taken in too much smoke." "I found him huddled in a little knot, belly against the floor, away from the worst of the smoke and heat. For all his youth, he has cultivated a surprising repertoire of survival skills . . . and good fortune." "An angel on his shoulder, perhaps?" Thea suggested. "If you believe in such things," the Sheriff said gruffly, his tone an indication that he, at least, did not. Thea cleared her throat, discomfited by the brittle shell the Sheriff had wrapped around himself. She had visited him, she thought, to reassure herself of his safety and to a lesser, unexplainable degree, simply to be with him in the aftermath of tragedy. But he had retreated, unreachable by any words she could have conjured up. "He has a few blisters," she continued, "mostly on his hands. They'll heal, if he'll abide more of the dreaded unguent he disliked so before and keep himself clean of stable leavings. And you, Sheriff?" Nottingham shook his head as if to dismiss her concern. "A scratch or two, nothing to warrant your hovering over me." "I did not come to hover, my lord," Thea bristled. "Will you be as difficult as Simeon about a harmless salve?"

"I am unscathed--" "That is codswallop. You nearly swooned when the arrows gouged you. If you are still up and about and provoking the dwindling reserves of my good humor, it is only because you are fueled by panic or anger or a skinful of stout wine. I assure you, when the glow of your bath wears off, your pain will return." He would have had to be a fool, and deaf, not to hear the sharp point of jealousy bared in her last parry. Thea already regretted the remark, counted it as some verbal misstep that revealed a weakness in her defenses. She opened her mouth to speak again, but his dark brows had already climbed into the dripping tangle of his hair, and he coughed through an unexpected laugh. "I'm surprised, Thea," he replied. "An attempt on my life. A desperately one-sided attack and its resultant carnage. And your worst cares are for a chamber maid?" She favored him with a withering glance. "Another unsuspecting victim." "The wench bathes me. She's one of several--" "I'll wager they fight for their turns," she said tightly. "It's a harmless indulgence--" "Swallow your lame explanations, Sheriff. I am here to see to your wounds. Nothing more." "As I feared." Nottingham shrugged in apparent resignation as he sat, cross-legged, on the sheepskin spread in front of the fire. Grimacing as the muscles of his back flexed, he shouldered out of his robe. The garment fell in a liquid sable moat around his hips. "Then do so." Thea pressed her lips together, stifling a curse. The incorrigible, manipulative gall of the man! She sent a blistering glare in his direction, trying to ignore the fire-bronzed definition of his shoulders . . . the hard musculature of his arms and chest, chiseled by a lifetime of sword practice . . . the sinewed wrist . . . the long, blunted fingers whose gracefully affected movements belied their permanently callused tips. He patted the sheepskin beside him. "You cannot tend me at thirty paces, Thea." Her gaze traveled down the shadowed midline of his chest, past the flat plane of his abdomen, to the brown silk pooled in his lap, then jerked away. Saints! She did not need to imagine what she had so clearly seen just moments ago. The insufferable lout had already carved a surfeit of sensual memories into her addled brain. She must examine his shoulder, his back, and nothing--not his banter, not even his casual disrobing--could prevent that or turn the purpose of this meeting. Thea snatched up her pouch of herbs and stepped past the puddled water around the tub, past the pile of discarded clothing to the spot the Sheriff had claimed so definitively on

the floor. She knelt in front of him, opened her bag of supplies, and spoke without looking at him. "You should know, my lord, there is only so much I can do. Grazed flesh may heal, if I'm quick and the physic strong enough. An arrow's piercing, as you have seen, tests my ability to its very limits. I may as well credit luck, or prayer, as skill. And there are more horrible contagions, I assure you, that I can do nothing about. Permit me an observation, my lord, but you are at far greater risk to one of those than to a stray arrow or two." "Hardly stray," he reminded her. "And you are being obtuse. Say what you mean, Thea. That you think I have slept with a dozen women in the past fortnight and have no caution for the consequences." "I have not kept count," she said blandly. "And it isn't caution that will spare you, but restraint. The Sheriff tucked a slanted smile into the corner of his bearded lip. "I am not a restrained man." "Evidently not." "What would you have me do, Thea?" He grinned, placing two fingers beneath her chin and lifting her face to his. "Limit my amorous pursuits to a single woman? To you, perhaps?" The heat of his words blazed across her cheeks. "I would suggest celibacy, my lord, if I thought it were at all possible." "Would you now?" He laughed out loud, head thrown back and firelight glinting amber and orange across his raven hair. "God's blood, woman! Don't you know that I have made it my utmost ambition to woo you beneath the furs of my bed? Had those treacherous bastards a knack for better timing, I might have succeeded." The solution Thea had concocted to swab the arrows' gashes shook in her hands. She put the bottle down, drawing her hands into fists. No more of this poor humor and meaningless chatter, she thought. No more of his nearness and suggestion upon suggestion, when they could not even speak together frankly. Did he think she had forgotten the night before, that one brief slice of time when what she knew and felt of him was bold, honest truth? Not this taunting artifice, not this smokescreen of insincere banter, but truth! Thea ached with remembering, and the pain lodged deeper inside her with every quip they exchanged. No more! she swore silently. It was past bearing! "Stop," was all she said, and that quietly. The barrage of words fell to a thundering end, and the solar was left muffled in utter silence.

Thea sighed, breathing shakily into the rare hush of peace between them. "Why do we do this?" Nottingham tucked his chin low to his chest, his expression stripped of the animation that had so completely masked his true mood. "I think, because we do it so well." He glanced up at her, a crooked, beleaguered smile on his lips. "Verbal coupling, it is." "And not war?" "I don't think so," he said softly. "Although you are angry enough to draw blood with your wit." "I am not--" "You are angry," he repeated, firm words following hers so closely as to fall on top of them before she was finished. "And it has nothing to do with the red on your cheeks or the singed ringlets about your face or even with the line of blisters on the inside of your wrist. You are seething with the need to rail at me, to give me the sharp edge of your tongue and wield it as mercilessly as a Celt's battle-ax. You come here docile and meek, asking after my welfare, when in truth you would sooner string me up by my heels--or some weaker part of my anatomy--so you could fling at me one vindictive oath after another and plead to heaven and your bevy or saints to send my black soul to the farthest reaches of Lucifer's hell." "Where you would no doubt dwell happily among the other heartless demons of your ilk. No, Sheriff, hell is too easy for you--" She caught herself and bit her lip to stymie the unbidden rush of words. "Do not stop, Thea, You are vexed enough and, as I've been given countless occasions to remember, aptly skilled at listing my innumerable offenses. God forbid you spare me now. There is more, is there not? Out with it! Tell me how wrong I was. Call me a fool to the highest heaven. God's oath, woman, we were making love--" Thea twisted away from him, pain and rage and confusion tumbling into a blur inside her. He seized her wrist and turned her toward him, forcing her to meet his eyes. "We were making love," he repeated, meting out each word as if he could imprint in her brain each touch, each shiver, each sigh and soft moan that had passed between them the night before. "Damn you, if we can share such an intimacy as that, can you not rake my deserving ass over the coals?" "You accused them!" she cried, unable to keep silent a moment longer, "and me, without evidence, without knowing. You used me to identify Gisborne's captives, men who could have been my friends, and you forced me to look upon their dead faces! Yes, we were making love, and I was giving my body to you and my heart to you and my very soul to you, because I know no other way and you--not a few hours past and you were calculating a means to trade every small mote of trust between us for a chance to indict your damnable outlaws. God in heaven, what am I to you? A political prisoner to do your will? Someone to whore for you until you get the answer you want? Do you think I don't see? It's not me you want, but them!"

"That is untrue--" "They claim your every waking thought. Every plan, scheme, and motive that drives you comes from them, from Locksley, from Sherwood. It's a madness, an obsession, some decay of your soul that saps the very life from you until you cannot breathe for cursing Robin's name. You cannot even gaze out at the splendor of the wood, your shire, Sheriff, without your fists clenching to fight. "What would you barter to see them all in chains, innocent or not? Justice? You have bartered that. Your people are starving for it; your land is barren of it. Honor? As much as you had, you've surrendered to Robin. Love?" She ripped her wrist from his hand, choking back tears she had sworn he would not provoke. She could tell she had gone too far, cut too close to the core of what lay between them. His face was leeched of color; even the words that tumbled glibly from his lips at other times seemed dried in his throat. "And worse," she sobbed, "oh, yes, even worse than any of that, is how unforgivably angry I am at myself. Because I feared for you. I dreaded the sound of each arrow coming, felt each one tear through me, because I knew it was meant for you. God, I would have traded my life for yours, my soul for a longbow to protect you--" She stopped and looked up at him. "And would again." Nottingham reached for her, fingertips brushing the spill of curls at her cheek, then stopped, respecting the hand she thrust between them to keep him away. Thea had but to look at him to see the private war played out on his features. She imagined the myriad excuses poised on his lips, all ones she had heard before, none that made any difference. And in his eyes--a silent agony she did not understand, probably would never understand. When he spoke, finally, his voice was low and somber, lashed with remorse she thought never to hear. "I have lost whatever was between us, have I not? Forfeited some small beginning I should have treasured. Sold it. Bartered it . . ." Thea could only shake her head, vowing not to give in to the tears that hung on the fringe of her lashes. "Clumsy of me, as always. I keep thinking I am beyond that, that if I can disguise you in Norman finery--" he gestured to her soft woolen kirtle with its complex weave and embroidery, "--then I can look at you and not see Sherwood. That if I keep you here, then the forest cannot possibly come between us." "And yet it does." "And yet it does," he repeated after her, turning to stare into the weaving dance of the fire. "The wood plagues me. It lives inside me like an evil thing. Like a demon. Like a legion of demons. And no priest, no leech with bloodletting and purging and incantations to God or beast can rid me of it." He laughed bitterly. "The good citizens of Nottinghamshire say Sherwood is haunted, but they are wrong. My dear surgeon,

Sherwood haunts me. Would that there were some nostrum in that bag of yours that could cleanse my mind of every memory that blasted forest holds." He seemed to catch himself, to hear the loss of reason and control in his own words, and clamped his teeth over the last of them, sending a muscle in his jaw pulsing with the effort of restraint. With a shudder, he wiped a trembling hand over his face. "Thea-" He paused, unspoken anguish marring his features. "I've no wish to hurt you. Last night, if I lost your affection and earned only your contempt in its stead, it was a poor bargain indeed, made by a fool. The devil take Locklsey and Sherwood and my suspicions . . . if he will only leave you for me. Rob all else from me, but not again--not again--" He broke off, flinching as if the effort to muddle through such a plea of apology were alien to his nature. Then he looked at her, his eyes grown black by firelight, and for a moment, the air grew thick and heavy, glutted with the same unknowable energy that had always existed between them. Thea knelt rooted to the spot, the last of her fury drowning in the Sheriff's admission. His first. But admission of what? Of the very madness she feared? And if that was so, how infinitely more dangerous her plight, for he sat but a hair's breadth away, heart beating, lungs pulling in air, alive-And she was glad of it. Her blood poured through her veins, sending relief to every nerve in her body. The very fact that they could sit here, quarreling, was a thing to rejoice. The reality that he could stare confused and brooding into the fire, instead of lying marble-cold beneath a death shroud lifted every burden of her anger. She had been afraid to look at him before, not wanting to risk the magnetic power he commanded so effortlessly in muscle and tissue, the coiled strength that whipped him into frenetic motion one moment, propelled him with the fluid, stalking grace of a big cat the next. She had even dreaded the sensual pull of his voice, both raging roar and soft whisper in the same sentence. But now she devoured his presence, raking in the sight of him in the few precious seconds when he was unaware of her observation. She had no miracle potion, knew no physic for the wounds he would not share with her, for all the scars on the inside of his heart that he kept hidden in darkness. All she possessed was a chaos of emotion, something she had never felt before--and not half the courage Mildthryth claimed she would need. Cupping her hands beneath his chin, she raised the softly bristled jaw in her palms, and gazed from his lips, so unaccustomed to blurting out the truth of his errors, to his eyes, where truth and regret were clear. "I came back with you willingly," she whispered. "I shall not leave." Gently, she placed her lips against his, sealing the promise. She felt the harsh exhalation of his breath and his lips moving over hers.

"I do not deserve this mercy--" She shushed him with a simple breath of a kiss--once, twice, again--then tore away before the desire to linger overtook her senses, and his. "It isn't mercy, Sheriff. It's forgiveness." She started to touch his shoulder, but was at once mindful of his injuries, of the cost to him of ignoring them. She drew out her herbs and dared him to refuse her a second time. "Now let me see to your 'scratches.'" She had drugged him--something she had sprinkled in his wine that even spices and warm mulling by the fire could not totally mask. The drink had left him awake, but drowsy, oddly insensate to the sting her potions should have caused. Nottingham had heard her quickly stifled gasp when he bared his back to her and felt the cool trickle of herb-infused water meet the fiery stripes of skin laid open by the arrows, all with a sluggish detachment. And now she smoothed something thick and viscous into the twin grooves, something that slid over his raw, blistered skin beneath the soft whisper of her fingertips. A painless caress, drawing oblivion over him like a warm blanket. His lids struggled to counter the weight the wine had put on them. He had nearly lost her--first to the fire, then to his own stupidity--and could not bear to relinquish the precious sight of her to so paltry a thing as sleep. He lay with his head pillowed on her thigh, breathing in the lavender scent of her. His hand curled around the dark blue wool of her kirtle, color like the wash of early evening's inky sky, like her eyes, and slowly edged the skirt and ivory shift up to bare the pink flesh of her leg. She did not protest, either with words or affronted wriggling to regain her modesty. He let his fingers trace indolent patterns against her skin, until they collapsed, tired and leaden, possessively against her. She had unmanned him--or her white-powdered witch's brew had--filling him with lazy inertia that rendered him harmless. The smooth, liquid paths her fingers made on his scarred back stirred him into a somnolent, gray whirlpool. Gray . . . white . . . a column of smoke writhed skyward, weaving in and out of the lace of leafless winter branches, disappearing into a sky dark with snow clouds. They were surrounded. His men scattered like fallen blackbirds over the hoar-frosted deadfall on the forest floor. Blossoms of scarlet pooled on their chests . . . backs . . . where arrows had stolen life. Two lived, divested of blades and crossbows, their hands high above their heads in compliance. The coach . . . He glanced at the wagon tilted precariously toward its broken wheel, noted the flaming arrow that slumped the driver over his reins, the flames teasing at the wood of the seat. A quarterstaff prodded between his elbows and ribs, levering his arm away from his side. At the end of the thick length of ash, a swarthy face peered out from beneath a nutmeg hood; a black hedgerow of brows angled low over humorless eyes.

"Sheriff of Nottingham . . . I do say. Look ye, Martin, we done poached us the high and mighty Sheriff." "And be dangling by our necks because of it. Christ Jesus, ye done slaughtered half his men--" Farther away, calling from the edge of the clearing, came another voice, shaking like the arrow he trained on one of the soldiers. "I'm fer quitting this place . . . the spirits are thick among us. Can ye not feel them?" "Aye, and me as well," another agreed. "I say we get our arses to safety before there's more of these Norman-helmed bastards come to see what's detaining their lord and master." The hooded man smiled, revealing a crenelated set of yellowed teeth, his eyes searing blackly into the Sheriff's. "Our fortune's here, lads." Highwayman. Murdering, thieving felons. They had warned him, told him the wood was rife with cutthroats. His wood. He met their leader with a rigid, unforgiving stare, his hand flexing instinctively, wanting to grip the hilt of his sword. The quarterstaff slammed against his ribs, cracking bone. He caught the breath in his throat, swallowed the pain. "And leave a sheriff what has gold a'plenty in his pretty purse?" The outlaw's fingers clawed at him, ripped the thongs barehanded from his belt, and held the coin pouch aloft. "See, ye poor doubting fools? Did I not tell ye the Sheriff'd be bleeding rich?" "And we be bleeding dead! God's teeth, let's kill these others and be gone from here!" The outlaw turned, snarling over his shoulder at his reluctant companion. "And waste this? Have ye turned coward on me? Or is yer belly so full ye don't feel the need of buying a decent meal?" A slight distraction. Enough. He drew his knee to his chest and kicked out powerfully with his booted foot, thrusting the nailed leather sole squarely into the man's chest. His hand closed over his sword and the sound of steel sang through the frozen air. Behind him, a blur of movement. The back of his skull exploded in a burst of black, visionless pain. He felt himself slump forward, balance gone in a sea of vertigo. Reins slid through numbed fingers . . . . His cheek met the crust of new snow. He lay there, dead to the whoop of cheers that went up around him. Icy wetness seeped through his surcoat and the metal rings of his hauberk, soaking the quilted vest beneath and chilling sweat-slick skin, the cold in contrast to the warm, sticky flow that matted his hair against his scalp and neck. Oblivion closed. Parted. Closed again, smelling of woodsmoke, of fire-The coach--

His eyes jerked opened to a stampede of thieves at his side. Dirt-encrusted hands searched him; feet wrapped in rags and leather jabbed his side, mocking his attempts to rise. "Fight us, Sir Sheriff. Bare-fisted. Without yer noble's weapons." He crawled to hands and knees, feeling the sour rise of bile in his throat, and forced the sickness down. Several men hauled him roughly to his knees. One of the thieves dangled his sword in one hand, his dagger in the other. His companions roared with laughter. He was unarmed and outnumbered--only two of his men alive, and they with arrows nudging their spines. And Gisborne? He did not remember seeing Gisborne. Was his cousin lying among the dead? Alone then, but this was his wood. And he was Sheriff. He pushed the dizziness away, channeling the pain into anger, the anger into motion. The highwaymen lost their purchase on him as he tore from their grip and launched himself at their grinning leader. The impact sent them both staggering backward, crashing through bracken and ice-covered vines to land in a forest carpet of frozen leaves. His rib protested painfully at the graceless fall, and the breath fled from his lungs as he circled his attacker's wrist and brought it down sharply on the ground. He heard the snapping of bone, the grunt of a pained curse. Saw the outlaw's crude weapon fall from his mangled hand. Rolling, kicking, jabbing with elbows, he embraced the miscreant with deadly vengeance. His knee thrust up, aiming for groin. Not the fight of a noble lord or the Crown official they had made him, but that of a stableboy, scrapping in a stew of snow and mud. With satisfaction, he felt his knee connect with soft, unprotected tissue, heard the yowl of surprised pain, and threw the outlaw to his back. Victorious, he climbed upon the man's body, straddling his belly, and smashed his fist into the hooded face. Teeth tore across his knuckles; blood spurted warmly over his hand. They were on him from behind like a pack of rabid hounds--all the men who had been reluctant enough to stay, but not reluctant enough to see their leader bested by a weaponless Norman. Blows rained on him. Feet, fists, staffs, knives--he could not tell. He fought them all, thrusting himself at the den of thieves until the pain of their pummeling did not hurt at all, and a whirring roar of blood drummed in his ears. Someone grabbed a hank of his hair, yanking his head back until his neck arched against a dull, rust-coated blade. He did not feel the sting, only the infuriating trickle of blood creeping down his chest. Blackness descended . . . .

. . . Lifted. He'd been stripped to the waist, his wrists tied together with leather thongs, arms pulled overhead, grotesquely straining from their sockets. The shrouded sun pierced the stand of oaks and beeches with frail angled rays, reflecting off ice and snow. Night soon. He could feel the bones of his ribs crunching against each other, plum bruises splotching over back and face, blood coursing from his temple. He squinted, his swollen eye blinking away the rivulet that tinted his vision red. They had reduced him to raw, cudgeled flesh, strung from the bough of a gnarled oak, waiting for the scavenger ravens to pluck out his eyes and tear the battered flesh from his bones. He raised his head, gritting through the pain that jagged through his skull. The coach was aflame; smoke curled around it in a hazy shroud. Better this way. Easier. Though something tore inside him, something deeper and more keen-edged than any pain the felons had caused with their fists or knives or booted feet, like an arrow to his heart, an ache he doubted would ever go away. She slept, perhaps, knocked cold by the coach's wild ride or its lurching, axle-grinding crash against the trees. The smoke would take her. Quickly, he prayed. Make it quick. "Make it quick," he mumbled aloud. Voices surrounded him with disembodied threats, the thieves' usual altercation and debate, and while it was his life they argued for or against, he did not care. "I say hang him, now, and be done with it!" "'Twould be kinder--" "If ye kill him, there'll be Normans crawling these woods day and night, and another one, just like him, come to replace him." "There'd be no end to it, no safety in Sherwood, in the whole bleeding shire, for that matter--" "Maybe if ye just teach him a lesson, let him know who rules Sherwood--" The hooded face stared at him, firepit eyes searing into his. With a foul-smelling breath, he turned his head and spat. "Quit yer mewling," he called over his shoulder to his men. "He's dead already." With menacing languor, the outlaw reached awkwardly to his belt with his uninjured hand. Withdrew a knotted whip, uncoiled it one slow loop at a time. "Ye can't be thinking--" "He's not a common sort. Ye cannot flog him, for Christ's sake!" "Jesus, he's the Sheriff, not a serf!" The outlaw answered with a slow, rhythmic wave of his wrist, letting the whip skitter along the ground.

"Come on now, ye've done enough. Norman bastard won't last the night as it is--" Fire lashed his back, breaking skin. His body jerked on its leather cords, dangling like a broken poppet. Again the air cracked. Molten steel poured down his back; steam from fresh blood hissed into the frosty air. He ground his teeth together, biting back agony. Sweat blurred his vision as he looked toward the coach, focused hard on it. Flames licked along the roof, dancing around the cross-shaped arrow slit, sending curling black ribbons of smoke skyward. The door jiggled--a small, indistinct movement. He prayed he had not seen it, prayed the sting of the whip had taken his senses, his sight. The coach rocked. Now he could see the desperate fumbling of the latch. Heard coughing; a soft, panicked cry; the thud of small fists, pounding. God, no! "No!" The whip bit into him, slicing the length of his back from shoulder to buttock. He prayed, fumbling at words and petitions he barely recalled, saints whose names were but a cloudy lesson lost in his memory. Because if they did this to him, how much more they would do to her. He struggled, shredding the skin of his wrists against the leather ties, twisting, swinging his body. No . . . no . . . "Stop!" The door of the coach burst open. Through the haze of smoke he saw her, a slight figure, a fall of silver-blond hair, simple gray eyes widening in horror as she saw him and what they did. The whip stopped. He could hear the outlaw's labored breathing, see it fill the air with crystal puffs as he swept a wet tongue over frost-dried lips. "It seems we've one left alive." Blood dripped down his back, pooling beneath his feet in gelatinous, crimson puddles. He thought of the thieves--five . . . six . . . seven--the throbbing in his head made it impossible to count. Saw the hound-hungry expressions as intent passed from one to the other in leering, cock-sure grins. "Better than gold," one said. "Aye, Martin. Now this I'll be staying fer." The woman stopped, her fingers working nervously at the ribbons of her mantle, her eyes uncomprehending.

He wondered if the first one to take her would kill her, or if they would all have their turns with her, leaving her, torn and bleeding, for crueler games when their initial lust had been sated. They promised no kindness, no restraint, only a death as slow and vicious--and as certain--as his. Somehow he made his choice. He took a last look at her, at the curtain-straight length of hair, at the cheeks and lips frost-bitten to deepest rose, at her eyes, glistening with fear, with trust he did not deserve. "Run," he said, although the word barely escaped his parched lips. Then louder, gruffer. "Run!" She trembled, afraid, confused, looking at him like a frightened deer caught in an arrow's deadly path and unable to move. "Run, damn you!" The hoarse warning tore from his lungs, taking breath with it. Through a fog of sparkles graying the edge of his vision, he saw her lift her skirts, step beyond the coach, saw her tiny, slippered feet turn in the snow--

Chapter 24 "Alyce! God . . . Alyce!" The Sheriff bolted upright, clawing his way through the nightmare to wakefulness. The solar was closeted in darkness, save for the stand of candles where flames guttered in wax-draped stubs. In the muffled darkness, his breathing sounded strident. He could feel his lungs laboring to draw in air and the cold prickle of sweat stinging his body. Someone touched his shoulder, and he jerked around, heart pounding. Alyce? He peered into the gloom of night, half-expecting woodsmen with bows--and whips--but saw only the black shadow of his silhouette, elongated against ochre-gray walls. And Thea's dark blue eyes reflecting his own panicked image. He was surprised to find her still there, seated beside him near the hearth, surprised to find his fingers knitted desperately into the fabric of her kirtle. "A dream is all," she said, brushing aside the wet strands of hair plastered to his forehead. The events of the past few days came back to him, scattering the remaining fragments of his dreams. His body ached--no, worse. His back and shoulders felt as if they had been seared by one of the gaoler's irons, his head as if he had dunked himself into a vat of brown ale and drunk it dry. And to add to this physical insult, his surgeon had let him sleep the night through on hard timbers with only a paltry cushion of rushes and sheepskin.

He exhaled shakily, trying to laugh, to appear relieved. "Why this arcane taste in bedding, woman?" he groaned, willing away the effects of the sleeping potion. "A forest floor? A stable floor? That poor excuse for a mattress in your cottage? And now this--" he gestured with bone-jarring stiffness to the disarray of furs and skins, "--lovenest. What have you against eider-down or satin and a decent tapestry to ward off the chill?" She continued to watch him, saying nothing, narrowed eyes seeing his words for the diversion they were. She knew something, he realized; everything in her manner, in the forthrightness of her stare, bespoke it. What she knew, or how, was a mystery he did not care to unravel. It was enough that, in sleep, he had unknowingly revealed some secret he had guarded with his life and invited her into a private place where she did not belong. The nightmare crept back, worrying the edges of his thoughts with its hazy, halfremembered presence. He pushed it aside. He had vowed years ago never to share it. He found his robe and, rising, stabbed his arms into its sleeves. "You filled me to the gills with wine and mandrake," he said gruffly, as he wrapped the floor-length satin tightly around his body. "Likely I spilled endless confessions for your amusement the night long. Regaled you with fractured accounts of my exploits in Wales, waxed drunkenly about the last whore I bedded." The remark was a whipcrack to his soul; he could not believe he had said it. One glance at her face told him she could not believe it either, that whatever he had let escape from his dreams had been infinitely more serious than any inflated boasts he could invent. The blood drained from his stomach and plummeted to his feet, making him feel weighted and clumsy before her all too discerning gaze. "Why did you come back with me when you could have stayed in Sherwood? Why did you insist?" he asked suddenly, with a viciousness that sounded more like attack than the defense it was. "To hover so closely that my nights are not even my own any longer? To aggravate me with impertinent opinions and challenge my authority at every turn--" "Because I wanted to be with you," she said simply. "Because I think you need me to be here with you, although you will not allow yourself to voice such a sentiment. Because Mildthryth believes I love you." It was not what he expected. Never. Her candor swept through him like a storm, undermining his intentions with the same swift destruction. He was convinced that she desired him, even found him tolerably amusing at times. Obviously, she even found something exciting in the rapid-fire duel of wits in which she engaged him at every opportunity. But love--? No one had loved him in his entire life--no mother he could remember, no father he could name. No woman he had ever bedded dredged up more than acquiescence from her heart, self-serving lust if he were fortunate. Love was some mysterious thing sung and chanted about by bawdy minstrels and priests alike, lauded equally by knights and their ladies fair and every innkeeper's daughter who had ever spread her legs for him--a

one-word panacea for the ills of the world. Some holy mixture of purity and ecstasy of which he was undeserving. Something always withheld. And yet she had let the word slip out between them, let it linger in the air like a tantalizing balm to the empty, scarred hollow of his soul. Not a profession of love; she was careful to avoid that. But better. More certain. For she had said Millie thought it so. Candle flame spiked the darkness of the chamber, gilding her features. For a moment, she seemed as surreal as the dreams. A vision that haunted him. A slight figure in soft wool and laces, her face half-hidden by the copper-lit curls that spilled to her lap. "And what do you believe?" he asked, watching her with an intensity that divided him in two: half straining to hear her echo Millie's sentiments as her own; half preparing himself for the rejection he feared. She stood and walked to his side, then took his hand and gazed into the well of his palm, her face as pensive, as unfathomable, as a teller of portents. When she looked up at him, he saw her chin quiver with scraped-together courage, as if she dared herself to be bold. "I believe I have been half enamored of you from the night you first came to my cottage, wounded, but proud and fierce and unyielding, unlike any man I had ever known." She lowered her eyes and stared again at their joined hands. "I have been of two minds ever since." He wished now he had not asked, for she talked in riddles, and he steeled himself for what he suspected would come--a disclaimer of some confused, half-felt passion that was all she could give because he was unworthy of more. "There are things in you I admire," she admitted, her eyes downcast. "The way you cared for Mildthryth and Warrin and provided for her after he was gone. The way you argue with her and play the role of recalcitrant son. The way you love her a little, I think. The way you laugh with your soldiers, slap their shoulders and share their ribald jests. And grieve when they're lost. Your ability to see falseness in those around you and the courage to call it to light. The way you dare much, fight hard, and bend not at all. Many things, I suppose." She stopped and looked up at him. "But there's another, darker side of you. The tempests of rage; the cruel, vindictive set of mind when rage overtakes you. The arrogance. The suspicion. The obsession. The absolute certainty you are none of those things. The absolute refusal to let me see who you really are." "Who I am?" He laughed with bitter amusement, feigning the stiff, regal air and imperious tone she abhorred. "Why, I am the Sheriff of Nottingham, woman, lord of this castle, tyrant of this shire, despot of Sherwood Forest--" "So you proclaim, so loudly and with such fervor there is scarce a soul who would not quake with fear and utter conviction. Yet there is a chink in your wall, Sheriff." She reached up, caressed the silk of his bearded jaw with the backs of her fingers. "I would tear it down."

He knew in an instant the reason she had come back with him, could feel the insidious sapping of his strength and intentions, could feel the wall already crumbling. Uneasiness settled alongside desire, cold and heat running parallel in his veins. He pushed her hand away. "You wouldn't like what you found." "And what would that be?" He strode past her, angry, afraid. "What is this, Thea? Some feminine determination to see inside my soul? I will spare you the trouble. There is nothing behind the wall. Nothing. I am as you see me, as you know me to be. Ambitious, corrupt, brutal, soulless--" "Truth, my lord?" The word struck him like a blow. He turned slowly in her direction, fingers curling under in fists at his sides. "That is truth, or a very pale version of it. Christ, woman, you are relentless! Have you not heard? I am the Sheriff of Nottingham! I am evil, the devil incarnate! If you had your wits about you, you would cease this nonsense about love and hie back to Sherwood and your outlaws and praise God for His mercy in sparing you!" "I don't believe any of that." The gravity of her tone cut through his tirade. "Then you fool yourself." "If you are evil, it is more a shield than a weapon. You could put it down, if you wished." "And be weak?" "Is it evil that keeps you strong? Not some nobility of heart, some integrity of spirit?" He turned away, disgusted with her words, with himself for falling so short of her expectations. "I am not what you think I am," he said. "Not noble. Not honorable. You've confused me with some fantasy you've spun--" "Then tell me. If I am so mistaken, tell me for truth what I do not know. Take down the wall yourself." He turned toward her slowly, face hardening at her challenge. "Or you will tear it down for me?" "Stone by stone. Until I find what I know is there." "And what would that be?" She looked at him with a directness that pierced every league of distance he had tried to put between them. "The part of you I love," she whispered, her expression softening. "The part of you who saved Simeon. The man who loved so much, so selflessly, that he

would trade his own life for that of a seven-year-old stableboy. That man, Sheriff. What would it take to see him again?" He wanted more than anything to answer her, to proclaim that here was that man and promise to fulfill every unfounded dream she had of him, but words would not come. The one thing she loved in him, he could scarcely explain--a single, impulsive gesture born without his knowing or willing it, acted out without foresight or thought for the consequences. Christ, if she only knew. If he gave her the truth she wanted, if he told her of the dreams and the crime he had committed in Sherwood, then she would certainly despise him. And he would lose her. Nottingham shuddered at the thought. No, it was easier to keep his dark shame than to see the truth tear them apart. Let her think what she would, there were things about him she was safer not knowing. His brows knotted, and he bent his head into the cradle of his hand, middle finger rubbing his creased forehead as if he could drive away the nightmare images lingering in his mind. He drew in a hiss of hair through clenched teeth, bade the throb in his temples to abate, and sighed the breath out again. "Simeon--" he began. "Saving him was an accident of nobility, nothing more. You see goodness where none exists." It took every strength he had to pretend apathy, to deny the one thing in himself she had said she loved. He turned his back, poured a cup of wine to overflowing, and drained the bitter, lukewarm liquid. The fire settled in the empty pit of his belly, stinging his gut, and he grimaced. He followed it quickly with another. "Evil men are not troubled by dreams such as yours," she said quietly. "They are indifferent or, worse, take pleasure in their misdeeds. They are not haunted." He emptied the cup and said nothing. She did not know, would not . . . ever. "Thea. No." Silence crept uncomfortably between them; the sudden shifting of embers in the fireplace jarred his head, igniting the memories, the horrors. He poured a third cup and a fourth. Until he could not hear when the door closed behind her, until the sun rose and the dreams receded in the gray light of dawn.

Thea thought staying busy would help, so she filled her days from cockcrow to late after midnight tending to the soldiers and stablehands who had survived the fire. More often than not, Simeon was at her side, carrying her bag of herbs and medicaments, prattling endlessly about the family they had just left or the one they were to visit next. With his unreserved trust and effusive praise of Thea's abilities, the child opened doors to many a skeptical goodwife who thought Thea only the Sheriff's leman. Once inside, Thea's gentleness and concern--and the recovery of the injured--did the rest.

It was not enough to banish rumor, but ample to unseat it. In the days that followed, the nature of hushed whispers that rose and fell in the wake of her visits changed from one of suspicion to one of guarded acceptance. Consort with the Sheriff though she may, she gave freely of her simples and guidance, spoke to the people in their own Saxon tongue, and accorded respect to those she treated. To the wives who were dealing with the difficulties of their husbands' impairments, she showed empathy. To the numerous children who clambered into her lap, hoping for an apple or a rare piece of honeyed treacle, she demonstrated genuine affection. In time, word of her healing spread. Her practice grew. People waved and called out to her in the bailey, wishing her good morrow or good eve. Children tugged at her with grimy hands to attend the births of kittens and pups. She listened to rheumy chests, measured the quickening of unborn twins, made liniments for aches and teas of chamomile for those who could not sleep. When Simeon finally tired of her rounds, she tucked the boy into his pallet and lulled him to sleep with tales of the new stable being built and the bays and sorrels and blacks that would fill it. And then she left again, working late into the night with those who needed help. Mildthryth said little, perhaps the old woman's way of disapproving of the dark circles Thea knew were forming beneath her eyes or the too-pronounced hollows beneath her cheeks. She knew her maidservant visited the Sheriff, could tell from Mildthryth's wearily-lined face, if not from castle gossip, that the man rarely left his chamber save to pace the battlements at night; that he drank indiscriminately from watered wine and stout ale alike, as if the longed-for stupor of oblivion hung barely out of reach; that he ranted and roared until all but the most foolhardy left him to his lonely den atop the castle tower. Thea did not breach Nottingham's self-imposed exile. The Sheriff, she reminded herself countless times a day, knew well how to order her presence in his chamber, on the battlements, or in his bed, if that was where he desired her--yet he did nothing. In every way, he proved himself intractable, infuriatingly filled with stubborn pride. He deserved either the heat of her anger or a cold word or two, and she would give him both, she decided at least a dozen times a day. As many times, she recanted her decision. In the end, she could not forget how sleep had loosed his pain or the agony she had heard wrung from him in tortured cries. "Alyce!" She remembered that. "You should eat something," Mildthryth prompted her. Thea jumped, her thoughts scattering, and looked up from the herbs she was grinding. How many minutes had she sat there, pestle unmoving in her hand? Without asking permission, the woman pushed a bowl of stew across the table. "You're as thin as winter gruel and nigh as colorless. If you don't sup or sleep, you'll waste away

before my very eyes. And that milk of gillyflower you gave to young Winnie Smithson to make her breasts grow? You'll be needing the simple yourself before long." Thea glanced ruefully up at Mildthryth, at the reddened Saxon cheeks puffed out indignantly and the hint of haughty chin buried between generous jowls. Behind her, the fire had turned to a bed of embers, piled and covered for the night. Rain pelted against the drawn shutters, the only sound. "At least sleep if you will not eat." The rich aroma of mutton, potatoes, and carrots spiced heavily with rosemary made her stomach heave. "Mildthryth--" "Are you breeding his babe then? Is that it, lamb? 'Twould explain your lack of appetite, I suppose, and--" "Mildthryth, please!" The old woman's face drooped, her tiny lips bracketed by creases of concern. Instantly, Thea regretted her sharp tone. "I'm sorry. I did not mean to snap at you." She smiled feebly and patted the woman's hand. "How could I be with child? Ah, Mildthryth, you old romantic fool. First you want a bedding, now you want a babe. And the truth of it is, we are so unsuited-- your Sheriff and I--we cannot speak to each other without swords being drawn. I push too hard; he retreats to sullen silence. We're as predictable as this foul weather of late, each hopeful hint of sun blown away by storm winds and dark clouds." "You love each other." "How can we? We cannot stop quarreling long enough to kiss." Thea sighed and pushed her stool away from the worktable, shrugging stiffness from her cramped shoulders. "I am worried for him, that much is truth. Never have I left someone with wounds like his without going back to offer treatment, but I knew you were caring for him and, Mildthryth, I could not bear his pain. Call me a coward, but I could not stand by while he made naught of my work with his drink and his wrath. I could not watch him torture himself." Mildthryth remained silent for a moment, her eyes downcast, her fingers unraveling the edges of her tunic sleeve. "He needs you there," she said softly. "What can I possibly do for him? He as much as sent me away. If you only knew--" "But I do. I know how it is when he dreams." Mildthryth looked up, and Thea felt her gaze caught in the woman's unwavering stare. Her lips parted in surprise, questions dying before she could utter them. "Aye," Mildthryth repeated. "I know. From the first night in this castle, when he arrived wet and frozen, hiding himself in that sleet-slick mantle he wore. The dreams started then. Reminders of what they did to him."

Thea's brows drew together in confusion. "'They'?" Mildthryth paused and looked away, as if seeing some distant, private vision. For a moment, sadness haunted her eyes. Then her heavy bosom heaved, and her lips pressed firmly together. "'Tis not with an easy conscience I break his confidence. But 'tis time you heard a piece of it." She turned toward Thea. "You see, he was bound for Nottingham through Sherwood, preparing to take on his duties as sheriff. Outlaws ambushed his party. To a man, his soldiers died, all save Gisborne, who fled and hid till it was over. A yellow-livered cur, I always thought, though were it not for him, 'tis doubtful the Sheriff would have lived. They strung him up, you see, flogged him till his skin hung in ribbons and the bone showed beneath. Left him to die. And he would have, from the bleeding or the pain, from thirst or freezing, except Gisborne returned, cut him down, and brought him by night to the castle. "To this day, I do not know how the Sheriff managed. Rode his own horse through the gate, he did, seated stiff and proud like some granite statue, pretending nothing was amiss while shock washed the color from his face. He wore no expression, and his eyes were empty as a dead man's. I think it must've started then, the tales of the mad Sheriff of Nottingham, for the beastly figure he cut that night was one that chilled the breath and blood of every soul who looked upon him. A man who had seen hell. And brought it with him." Mildthryth worried the frayed edge on the hem of her sleeve. "Gisborne sent everyone away with a growl and a flash of his sword. Everyone save me. He commanded me to come to the Sheriff's chamber. I tended the new lord as best I could for an old woman with paltry skills. I begged him to let me send for the leech, but he would have no one know, would have no one else witness how close the great Sheriff of Nottingham had come to being broken. 'Tis a secret to this day, lamb, a secret you must carry to your grave." Thea had forgotten to breathe, and when she drew in air, it was ragged, like shards of ice scraping throat and lungs. She closed her eyes with a shudder, the memory of Nottingham's scarred back vivid in her mind, the feel of ridged flesh imprinted on her fingertips. So much explained: his injuries; his single-minded hatred of the outlaws, of any outlaws, of the forest itself; his unrelenting pursuit of the brigands of Sherwood. "He dreamed that night," Mildthryth continued, "and nigh four years later, the nightmares still haunt him when he's weary and exhausted from running from them. When he's weak. 'Tis like the devil's loose inside him, keeping the pain alive. Aye, he tortures himself. With things long dead and buried. With cursing God and the outlaws and himself in a single breath. With guilt, and grief. Not a day has passed that I have not bent my knees, begging mercy of the saints that he might lay it all to rest, knowing in my heart 'tis only one thing that can take away such wounds as are in him--and that is love." Thea reached up and wiped tears from her eyes. Mutely, she shook her head, unable to speak.

"I know you said he was a hard man to love, and I'll not be arguing what is plain and simple truth. But he is not difficult out of contrariness or whim or meanness. He's like a wounded animal who slinks off to some private lair to lick his wounds, snarling, snapping, biting at the very hand that would help him. Beneath the scars on his back are wounds fresh and raw and bleeding still, left from something he's covered up for so long, he's all but convinced himself it did not happen. And the rest, he will not let himself forget." Thea knew instantly there was more Mildthryth had not told her. The flesh rose up on her bones as she remembered the Sheriff's cry. "Alyce," she whispered softly. "There was someone named Alyce." "Aye." "Who--?" "'Tis something he should tell you himself," Mildthryth said somberly. "If you go to him--" "He doesn't want to see me." "Ah, lamb, you are so wrong. He wants confession and forgiveness; he wants the warm and tender touch of healing, of love. The man cries out for it with everything but words. What do you think lies at the root of your quarrels if not passion, wanting to be heard? Aye, I've seen passion, and I'm not too old to have forgotten what 'tis like to be tossed by the tempest of it. To have feelings so strong they defy sensible words and come out in twisted bits and pieces, not hinting at half of what you mean. Good saints, you have but to look at the pair of you, to see the way his eyes crave the sight of you, the way he reaches for you, then forbids himself the favor of your touch. Or to see you, even now, care and wanting so clear on your face your whole heart is laid bare. He wants to see you, lamb, rest assured of that. With everything save proud words, he begs you to be with him." "But Alyce? How am I to know--?" "I cannot tell you that." Mildthryth was firm. "I can only tell you where you'll find him." *** The rain had stopped. In its stead, an occasional flake of snow drifted down from the ebony sky, wafting through air grown frozen in the night. An early winter, Thea mused, and he without a cloak, as if he were impervious to the cold. She had found the Sheriff, just as Mildthryth had said, in the midst of a small graveyard whose high stone wall and gate gathered it into the protective shadow of the church. He stood with hands clasped behind his back, head bowed, thoughts leading him to so far off a place he did not seem to hear her approach. Candlelight gleamed through the church's narrow, ice-beveled windows, silvering his hair and the haggard lines of sleeplessness carved deep in his face.

Thea watched him for a moment, noting the slow, frosty breaths he exhaled, then glanced around. A somber array of stone crosses and sepulchers memorialized souls long departed. She could make out the name on one: Mildthryth's Warrin, entombed in marble like a nobleman. But where Nottingham stood? Hoary stubs of grass poked between a cobblestone path, but the plot itself was empty, devoid of even the humblest marker. She was intruding. Despite Mildthryth's urging, despite the numerous times she had come to the Sheriff without invitation, this time was different. He seemed draped in private silence, in some kind of aloneness that shunned human company. She did not know if it were courage or utter foolishness that pushed her forward. They had not spoken in a fortnight, and no words came now. She simply drew his mantle from beneath the cover of her own and spread it across his cold-stiffened back. Her hands lingered, and she pressed her cheek against his shoulder. Long minutes passed before he acknowledged her presence, and even when he did, he did not move or turn to look at her. "I cannot forget . . . ." His voice was the distracted monotone of a man trapped in the past. Words faltered and he began anew. "A soldier sees many things: knights whose entrails have spilled into their own hands, who survive miraculously and later do not remember--not the blow of sword that laid open their bellies, not the pain, not the battle or how gray the sky or how muddy the field--" He broke off abruptly, peering into the distance. "Alas, I remember too well. I can still see it--the little coach that carried her. Her small white hands folded on the pelt of rabbit fur she held in her lap. That's how I remember her . . . her small white hands. And then I see the coach atilt on its side, one wheel spinning . . . and smoke. There was this arrow slit in the side--in the side of the coach, you see--and it was shaped like a cross, and smoke was pouring through it. Gray smoke, rolling out of this slit. And I knew they had fired it--fired the coach. I could not go to her--they would not let me go to her--" He laughed bitterly. "I was quite helpless. They had seen to that. They had taken the whip to me, circling round and laughing, wagering on how many lashes it would take before I swooned. And I thought, God, let her lay low in the coach and not breathe too much, and they would not notice her. They had me. I was all they wanted. Me . . . or my silver. Or some winter merriment." He bit down hard on the words, the muscles in his jaw tightening. "But she could not breathe. I knew when I saw the smoke. It had grown too thick, too black. She must have choked on it until she could stand it no longer . . . and then she broke through the door." He hung his head, shivering, as cold and the memories swept over him. "There were so many of them--five, six, surely more I could not count--all with eyes fixed on her, a look I've seen in men too many times."

He looked up, and the wind tore through his hair. "They meant to have her, made bold dares and jests with one another. And Alyce--she was so small, as slight and fragile as a bird, and so unaware, so innocent . . . still. And in my mind, I saw their hands on her and their mouths on her and her fur-trimmed gown in shreds. I imagined I heard her cries, her pleas to me for help. And I could do nothing. I saw her look at me in horror, so many questions in her eyes, the danger of her own situation not even dawning on her." Thea caught her lip between her teeth, not daring word or breath. He exhaled raggedly, and small scraps of memory flickered far back in the granite-gray depths of his eyes. "They were howling like wolves gone mad, damned outlaws, some grabbing at the laces of their trews, rubbing at swollen crotches, one drunken behemoth stroking himself--I could not save her, and yet, I knew I could not let them take her. I thought, if death were to come to her, it should not be like that. It should come quick. Quick." He stopped and swallowed hard. "I told her to run, knowing they would react like all criminals, with gut instead of head. So I told her to run . . . God forgive me. I told her--" Defeated, he bent his head to his chest, darkness obscuring his face. "--And they put four arrows in her back." "I thought it seemed--merciful--" his voice broke, "but to see the arrows cut her down like a frightened rabbit, to see her blood seeping into the snow where she lay, to know that I had caused that, that I had taken her life as surely as if I'd slain her myself--Alyce, who would not harm anyone, who never had an evil thought. And I as much as killed her. My own wife." He turned his head toward her, his face grown white and cold in the night, and she saw the pale glimmer of tears caught in the web of creases at the corners of his eyes. "Yes," he said, voice hardening. "Now you know." Shock emptied her mind of response. Thea saw only the pain he had locked away for years, raw and undisguised on his grief-ravaged face. "You did not kill her," she said quietly. "If anything, you spared her." "So I have told myself every night for the past four years. It does not help. I tell myself there should have been another way. If I had not struggled with the outlaws, if I had not taken on their leader so foolishly, perhaps they would only have taken my silver and fled. If I had not come through Sherwood, so sure of my position and myself. If I had been quicker, stronger--" "You did all you could--" "I should have saved her!" His grief ripped through her, tearing into places she had thought healed when she had returned to Nottingham with him. She saw Brand, tossing feverishly for three days, every skill she had acquired in a lifetime of study rendered useless. She remembered the

cold knot of powerlessness that had taken root in her soul when she could do nothing to save him. And Nottingham, to whom power meant so much more, whose very life seemed defined by the breadth and strength of his authority? She could only imagine the sense of failure he felt, the awesome, overwhelming burden of the guilt he had assumed. She knew it would be futile to tell him the fault was not his, so she reached up, touched his lips with her fingers, silencing him. His hand closed around hers and held it tightly against his mouth as if he could drink sustenance from it. "You must have loved her very much," she whispered. His expression was indecipherable, as if she had presented him with an idea he had never allowed himself to consider. He drew her hand away, staring at their locked fingers, then back at her. "I could have, perhaps. Had we time. I knew her so briefly." "Tell me." She watched him struggle, lips forming words, then pressing together to prevent their escape. Somehow trust won out. "She was the youngest daughter of a merchant who quartered officers in my regiment, and the very sight of her was respite to my battleweary eyes. She had a noble way about her, a delicate refinement, an innocence that was balm to my jaded spirit. I cannot say we knew each other well--a few polite words exchanged over dinner, an occasional smile--but she dressed in fine linen and smelled of something other than sweat and blood and the odors of war, and perhaps because of her, I spent many an eve pondering that I was meant for something other than another skirmish on the border of Wales." His eyes narrowed and took on a faraway look, and for a moment he paused, lost in the past. With effort, it seemed, he forced himself to speak again. "When I achieved this sheriffdom, I contacted her father and arranged our marriage. It all fit so perfectly, or so it seemed. We were wed, spent a single night together under her father's roof, and left for Nottingham the next morn. I was in such a hurry to be here--" he glanced around, palms held out as if to encompass the castle, the whole of the shire, "--to be Sheriff. It suited my pride, my self-importance. "But love, you ask?" He shook his head. "I think perhaps I loved what she meant to me--some fine nobility I lacked." His laugh was broken, rueful. "Ironic, is it not, that I robbed myself of all that, of every possibility of a gentle life? Alyce, dear Alyce, who would have been safer in a convent, safer than in Sherwood, safer than with me--the Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham, hanging impotently from a tree--" "You did what you could--" "If you knew--if you only knew--how much I craved the sweet taste of oblivion. I never even screamed out when they took to lashing me again. Soon they tired of their game. Left me there. Alyce was gone, and I waited while numbness crawled through my body. I prayed for death."

He shook his head as if, even now, years later, he could not believe the twisted turn of events. "But Guy came skulking back, bent on rescue. Somehow he convinced me of the merit of living. Reminded me of who I was and the promise of power I had waiting for me in Nottingham. "In time, it was not oblivion I craved, but something infinitely sweeter. I wanted revenge. I demanded it. And how better to accomplish that than to survive and take up a whip of my own? I vowed I would have the cutthroats who hid in my forest, if I had to hunt them down myself, that all of Nottingham would watch as rope chafed their necks and their bellies were laid open for the ravens. I promised when I rode into Nottingham that night that the people would know my strength and authority, that they would never guess at the pitiful thing I had been in Sherwood." "And Alyce?" His face softened; his eyes filled with wistful sorrow. "Her body was borne here, privately, and I entrusted her burial to an old peasant, a man named Warrin, whose wife saw to my wounds." "Mildthryth," she said. He nodded. "I made certain no one else knew, that no one saw what I had suffered or lost. I could not let them know what Alyce's death had wrought in me." "Because to grieve would have been weak?" He did not answer, but there was no need. Thea saw for the first time how it had happened--how fear and hatred spread through his veins, crowding out warmth with rancor, replacing hope with distrust, tenderness with ill humor. Thea imagined him as he must have been--stunned and in silent shock, coming to Nottingham with a horrible vision, a single, brutal aim. She realized now that in the years that followed, whenever his control proved anything less than absolute, whenever failure dogged him and the bandits of Sherwood laughed in his face, he redoubled the violence of his efforts. He had made quite a legend of himself. No one knew how diligently he cultivated the temper and demonic aspect that kept people cowering in his presence, and kept his shame hidden. And while she had come to know the mask he wore, she could hardly have guessed at the truth behind it. "To keep the sadness locked away will only make things worse," she said softly. "I know. I held tightly enough to my own pain for far too long." "But I cannot forget her! Christ, Thea, can't you see?" He dropped to his knees, pulling her with him, and clawed his fingers through the icy splinters of grass. Clods of soaked earth came away in his hands, and he clenched them in his fists, squeezing the mud through his fingers.

"Do you see this? This was my hope--this land, this shire, the whole of Sherwood. I seeded it with my own blood, yet that I could forget. The pain, the piddling creases that have scarred my back--that I could forget, as well. I could forget the men I lost, the silver I had robbed from me--my God, the very pride they took! But Alyce? Lying here in this frozen sod?" He flung the dirt away, hissing breath through gritted teeth as wind sawed across his tear-streaked face. "Forget her? By Christ, I cannot!" Thea caught his muddied hands in hers, feeling the pent-up rage and grief that shuddered through his fingers. "No, my lord. Nor should you." Gently, she eased him into her arms, and her gaze fell on the tiny, unmarked grave. She winced inwardly at the past they shared in common--the loss, the emptiness, the overpowering need to make things right again at any cost. If she could only share with him something of the healing, as well. "She was your wife and a fine lady," she whispered soothingly into his hair. "Perhaps it is time you remembered her." Chapter 25 Odd, the jumbled assortment of remembrances that came to mind when he thought of his wife. Her talent with tapestries. The ease with which they conversed in Norman French; how lonely he had been in this strange land where he was but another foreign invader. Her silver-blonde hair and the fragrance of tuberoses that stirred when she walked. Yet in a much shorter time than seemed possible, the Sheriff had told Thea all he knew. Although he searched his mind for some other memories Alyce had left behind, he had few recollections beyond the horror of her death. He could not even recall on which finger she wore the ring he had given her or the inscription that circled the inside of the band. Nottingham glanced at Thea and found her eyes full of regret, as if she ached with him, shared his emptiness, and longed to restore to him everything death had so brutally ripped away. She had said little, letting him sift through memories in his own time, but now his words stumbled to a sad, helpless stop. He had forgotten so many of the little details. Sherwood, and time, had left him only a hazy image of his wife, a faint impression of youthful sweetness, of mildness and a gentle nature, taken swiftly and cruelly away. Alyce seemed but a pinpoint of light against a gray backdrop of the bleak years that followed. Something wraith-like and insubstantial. He shivered, unsure if it were the cold or reminder of his loss that left him weak and hollow.

Thea's arms tightened around him, drawing him out of his lonesome silence. "I know," she said quietly. "There are times when I cannot remember Brand's face. I can tell you that his eyes were brown, that there was a scar on his chin that made his beard grow oddly askew, but I cannot see him. I cannot remember the sound of his voice exactly or whether it was ragwort or buckthorn that made him sneeze. It seems some of the memories have vanished, along with the pain of losing him." Nottingham shuddered again, numbness giving way to the wetness of the ground that seeped through his mantle. The wind had become a whiplash of ice crystals stinging his cheeks. "You're freezing," she said, burrowing into him, warming herself, warming him. "Let me take you in." He hesitated, taking ragged, uncertain breaths. He had compromised the shield of estrangement that kept him alone and unknowable, made his very soul naked to her-something he had done with no other woman. He wondered that she could sit there, limbs knit together with his against the cold, offering comfort, when Aelwynn or any other woman would have celebrated having wrung the truth from him. But this was Thea, he reminded himself. No smugness tainted her features, and he needed only the touch of her hand against his brow to know no treachery would grow from the secrets he had shared tonight. His confession had earned neither pity nor contempt, but bound her to him in a way orders and threats and smooth seduction had never accomplished. He gazed into her eyes, marveling that Fate's strange twists had given him someone who knew his pain, who had lived it herself in her own way, and sought only healing for them both. Tentatively, his lips grazed hers, awkward from the cold and surfeit of feelings crowding his heart. "Do not leave me tonight," he begged, his throat grown raw and tight with unaccustomed emotion. "Stay with me--lie beside me--" For a moment, he felt the sweet, surrendering sag of her body against his and the fleeting taste of heat as her lips parted beneath his. Then she sat back, apart from him. "Your very blood is ice," she said, putting her hands in his. "Come." She helped him to stand, and for once he had no will to protest the solicitous gestures she lavished upon him. Her hands felt warm to his chilled flesh, the small strength of her body strangely sufficient to support him as he walked with bone-aching stiffness across the cobbled bailey courtyard to the keep. Thea was no hazy memory, no indistinct form whose face he half-remembered. He had only to turn to see how torchlight illumined the exotic cant of cheekbones, eyes, and brow. The full, lush lips rosied by the cold. The sienna curls struggling free of braids. He anchored his hand at her side to steady his steps; beneath his fingers, her ribs rose and fell with breath. With life. His own lungs kept pace, quickening with each thought of her.

Climbing the spiral stairway, he braced himself against her, drinking in her closeness and the reality of her presence. Surely it was madness that swept over him, madness to cry out for his long-dead wife in one hour and crave the solace of another woman the next. Yet he had had enough of ghosts and grief, of a life ruled by death and the lust for revenge. He wanted more--so much more--and he wanted it from this woman. Suddenly he stopped and pulled her beneath the shadowy archway that led from the corridor to his chamber. Darkness swallowed them. He could hear only her startled gasp and the racing thrum of his own heart, pounding blood and life to his body. He fisted one hand in her mantle, soft wool and satin ribbon twisting around his fingers. The other he thrust into her hair, cradling the back of her head. In the pitch-blackness, he reached for her, his mouth brushing her neck, her jaw, settling on her lips. He had found what he wanted in this woman, some magic that soothed his pain and calmed his soul, some witchery that made him forget the past, forget himself--and find himself again. He kissed her with all the bold impulse of discovery, driven and starkly needful of her, unashamed that she knew. He broke from her only long enough to murmur against her mouth. "Will you stay? Thea, sweet--stay with me, be with me, lie with me--" Her answer was simple. She stopped his words with her lips, with her tongue, with her hands tugging boldly at the ties of his tunic, unlacing each one in turn until the garment lay open to his waist. She fumbled with his knotted belt, loosened it. "You would have my surrender in the hallway, then?" He laughed, a deep, rich sound that spilled from his belly where her lips touched. Her hands sought and found him, full and hardened with desire. Her breath was close, hot, threading through the fabric of his trews. "It is not your surrender I want." His sorrow ran deep, as deep as any wounds Thea had ever seen. She had broken through the wall, finally, and found his pain, layered between years of mistrust: the hidden need he kept so well-disguised; the ache of loveless days and nights he'd tried fruitlessly to drive away; the white-hot flame of anger that burned within him, blotting out the grief, enabling him to survive. Yet confronted with it all, she knew no surgeon's cure. All she possessed was a woman's fragile love with which to soothe him, and a yearning for him stronger than any she had ever known. She searched his face, the features held like chiseled stone against the onslaught of emotions that tore through him. Desire was there, so prominent, as if her very presence were necessary to him, like air to tortured lungs or water to parched lips. She tucked her hand inside his and tugged him toward his room. "No interruptions," Nottingham said in a low voice to the soldier guarding his chamber.

Within the cavernous room, the fire leaped up, striping the walls and vaulted ceiling with sinuous, elongated shadows. Candlelight poured its buttery hue into puddles among the rushes, illuminating an area near the hearth where large, silk-tasseled pillows lay among the furs and sheepskin throws. He met her eyes briefly, intently, then caught her up in his arms and carried her there, knelt down, and laid her among the pelts. Quickly, he untied her mantle and pulled tunic and kirtle from her, leaving only the pale, translucent silk of her shift. In this light, the garment was not snow, but cream; her bare arms turned to dusky suede. And what the shadows did to him . . . He pulled back slightly, and she could glimpse the tangle of shadow and light that spilled through his hair and struck glints of gold in his darkened eyes. She had thought him a demon once, in a time long ago when she had been wrong about so many things. But there was nothing cruel or distant about him now, certainly nothing evil. If there were beauty in such maleness, then he was beautiful, the perfect blend of power and vulnerability, of command and need. She welcomed him into her arms, caressing his back until the chill slipped away from his body, pressing against him until his shivering ceased and only an urgent tension remained, ripening in the heat between them. His mouth covered hers, and the solar became a dizzying swirl of candlelight. Beneath his heavy silk tunic, she felt the hardened muscles of his chest. Threads of strange, Arabian oil wafted up from his flesh, mingling with the spiced, male scent of him, as enticing as the taste of his lips and the mulled wine flavor of his tongue. She threaded her fingers through the silken twine of his hair, giving herself up to his kiss, to the smooth, spellbinding magic he wove. A languorous heat coiled in her belly, like embers gently prodded and stirred, sending a warm glow drifting through her limbs. The heat of his body melted into hers as he pressed her into the pit of pillows and skins, wiping all else into dark oblivion. She knew only what she felt: the insistent weight of his body atop hers; the intimate press of his lips; the gently probing thrust of his tongue. Her movements turned liquid, as she matched the slow, sensual motion of his kiss. She met the tip of his tongue with her own and slid against its warm, velvet roughness, as soft sounds of pleasure escaped his throat. He held her close, binding her to him with the lazy, drugged enchantment of his mouth. When at last they parted, reluctantly it seemed, he rubbed his kiss-swollen lips against hers. "It is the only thing that calms me," he whispered. "The taste of you. I knew--" his tongue played over her lower lip, "--the first time I kissed you. I was certain you had concocted some wicked opiate to wipe all reason from me, that you had planned some devious wood nymph's plot--" "No--"

"It doesn't matter, didn't matter. Even then." He drew his lips along the slant of her cheekbone, and back again. "I would have given anything, given it all, to have more of you. If it had meant death to come inside you, to feel your tight, wet warmth around me, I would have died." His words pulled at the heat in her belly, adding tinder that sent flames spiraling through her body. "It would not have meant that," she whispered, her voice shaken by his admission. "Then you are not some slow poison I have learned to crave? Some lethal alchemy to unman me?" A smile crept across her lips. "Sheriff," she said, "you hardly seem unmanned." She nudged against him suggestively and felt the rumbling response of his laughter against her breasts. "Ah, Thea! You make me forget myself, forget the damnable tedium of my days and the drunken havoc I make of my nights--forget it all! If there is a price in this--" "There is no cost in loving me," she promised quietly. "--I would pay it. I swear to you. Anything. This castle. My sheriffdom. The whole of haunted Sherwood for your beloved outlaws." She stopped breathing, forgot to breathe. The rampant beat of her heart drummed louder than even his passion-blinded words. At one time, in their faraway past, had he made such a lover's bargain, would she have traded a night in his bed for a treaty? Given herself to him for a promise of peace? She could not think. Not now. His hand slipped between their bodies to cup her breast. His fingers captured the silk of her shift and the aching nipple beneath, tracing maddening circles around it, massaging, pulling gently until the ache transformed into the razor-sharp throb of pleasure. "You have long suspected I would be the death of you," she said shakily. "You, or Gisborne, filling your head with doubts. But there is nothing I want, Sheriff, but to be the life of you. To have you come inside me--" she held his dark gaze as she repeated his words and made them her own, "--to be filled with you until thinking and remembering cease." "That you may have," he vowed, his breath hot against her lips. Longing spread through her body as his kiss took her again, and the deep, rhythmic stroking of his tongue described his intent in stark detail. He wove his hand in her hair and tilted her head back, arching, baring her neck, as his mouth left hers and grazed against the soft flesh at the angle of her jaw. She felt her pulse beat wildly against his lips. The heated dampness of his tongue pressed against her, smoothing upward to trace the delicate curve of her ear.

"Thea," he murmured, drawing her close, "send them all away--the dreams . . . the fears . . . Send the world away . . . ." She had wanted only to comfort him, to give of herself until he was emptied of pain, but the touch of his hands and the desperate plea of his words filled her with a need as urgent as his. Her body trembled with the fever of wanting him. The fire in her belly splashed against her, running over, spilling through her thighs. He rolled to his side, bringing her with him through the sea of pillows and furs. As they lay side by side, he trailed the tips of his fingers down the length of her spine to the swell of her buttocks. She did not need to know the slur of Norman words he poured against her lips. His body spoke boldly of their meaning as he slid his hand down the back of her thigh and lifted her leg across him, pulling the heat of her close. Beneath the voluminous gathers of her shift, she felt the hardened rise of his erection, felt him thrust against her. Her breath caught in her throat as pleasure washed over her and her need became one with his. He had taught her this--this maddened desire that sprang from nowhere and invaded her body with the force and speed of a storm; this wild, uncontained need that separated her from her senses, that blurred the world around her and brought into focus only his lips, his hands, and the exquisite, primal ache of her body in response. Clutching his shoulders, she moved with him as he tempted her body with the swollen length of his shaft. He muffled a groan of pleasure against her shoulder. Oh, God, this power he gave her! To feel such sublime torment. To give it back to him and watch the slow shredding of his self-control. He was devouring her, tasting her with his tongue, sucking the flesh of her neck into his mouth as if he hungered for her the way she thirsted for him. His teeth grazed her collarbone; his beard scraped the fullness of her breast. Caught in a dreamlike stir of sensation, Thea felt him move over her once more, pressing her back into the furs. His body lay half atop hers, hovering like a warm shadow. He lowered his head to dip his tongue in and out of the crisscrossed laces that closed the front of her shift, dancing against bare skin from the vee of her breasts to the middle of her belly. She wanted him lower, wanted to feel the bewitching pressure of his tongue between her thighs, sliding between the flames, driving them higher, higher--then dousing them in the last moment before they consumed her entirely. The heat of his breath blasted through the thin silk of her shift, and she cried out in anticipation, but he moved up over her body instead, leaving her empty, her thighs parted and quivering. "Do you know what you do to me?" she cried. "Do you know?" "A fraction of what you do to me?" He grasped her wrists and brought them over her head.

Thea gripped the furs as his hands skimmed back down the undersides of her arms and his fingers lightly traced the outer curves of her breasts. The delicate touch set her flesh aflame. The fire-trail of touches enclosed her, and she whimpered as he took her breast in his hand, kneading softly. With his thumb, he slid the silk of her shift back and forth across her hardening nipples, then bent to her, warm breath teasing before his tongue reached to caress her through the thin fabric. His lips closed over her, drawing down with gentle insistence as he took her breast more fully into his mouth. Thea dug her fingers into the furs, twisting and pulling them as she arched her back into the lightning streaks of sensation, offering herself to him. Oh, God . . . this wanting . . . this subtle, splendid agony! Why did he torture her so? He eased the shift away and lifted the fullness of her breast to his mouth again. Slowly, he suckled her, drawing deeply like a starved babe, and when she thought she would cry out with the intensity of his need, he pulled back, his lips and the slick heat of his tongue pressing, rubbing, licking lightly across her. Even when his mouth left her, his breath did not, falling hot and ragged against her kiss-flushed skin. And then she knew. It was not his intent to torture her at all, but to please her--and to make the pleasing last forever. This time there would be no frantic coupling. They could have had that--in the forest, in the stable--but not here, not now. His touch was the slow, thorough adoration of a man whose flesh was soothed by hers one moment, stirred by it the next, who did not understand the effect she had on him and was past caring. Thea could feel him revel in her response, impassioned by the desire he incited in her. As if through a pleasure-fogged haze, she heard the sigh of laces being pulled through the silk of her shift. She held her breath, listening to the runaway beat of her heart. The Sheriff pushed himself away, sitting back on his heels between her parted legs. While she watched, he hooked his fingers beneath the fabric of her shift and slid the garment over her hips as she lifted them for him. Her eyes drifted shut as she stretched into the furs, luxuriating in the strange commingling of the chamber's wintry air and the fire's warmth on her naked skin. With a smile, she heard the rustle of silk settling in the distance where he'd tossed it, felt hands comb the ivory hose below her knees, down the length of her calves. Then suddenly he was still, and she opened her eyes. He knelt above her, the fire at his back, light glowing off his dark silhouette like a golden aura. His chest rose and fell in labored, uneven time as he drank in the sight of her. "No, do not move," he said hoarsely as she instinctively covered herself with her arm. "Stay as you are." She lifted her arm back over her head and watched as his gaze drifted past the rise of her breasts to her hips, to the leg draped wantonly over a plump floor cushion. No man had

ever looked at her with such longing or held her motionless with so commanding a stare. "Christ, you are beautiful!" he murmured. At that moment, she wanted him more than she ever thought possible, not to be his prisoner with her hands fisted in the furs, not to languish passively in the spell he wove with his lovemaking. She wanted to touch him, to taste him, to have every part of him he'd ever denied her. "Thea--" "You, as well," she breathed, her gaze falling from his open tunic to the laces of his trews. His need was blatant, if unspoken. He reached for her, but her hand met his; their fingers laced together. She knew so little about him. The hypnotic scent of his skin. The intoxicating taste of his tongue. The way he held her at the edge of ecstasy and kept her there with his devastating touch. Beyond that? She had never known the luxury of lying next to him unclothed, of discovering and mastering his body as he had hers, of returning the indescribable feeling of release. Her voice was firm. "Undress for me." His eyes never left hers; his expression never wavered. His raven hair lay in a frenzied riot against his forehead and shoulders. He breathed heavily, but soundlessly, and she watched the rise and fall of his chest as it took in air and emptied itself again, tension stringing out between them with each moment he delayed. He unclasped her hand, slowly drew his fingers from hers, and without glancing down, pulled off the belt she had loosened in the hallway. Boots followed, then snug, woolen breeches. He shrugged easily out of his tunic, baring his chest. Firelight bronzed him. The flickering play of candles gilded his broad shoulders and sinewy arms, as he shook the heavy mane of hair back from his face with the regal grace of a lion. "Now you would have your way with me?" he teased, as he stroked her bare arms from shoulder to wrist. The anguish of memories had fled, leaving only a seductive smile weaving in and out of his bearded lips. She rose and knelt in front of him, her thighs grazing his. "I think so," she murmured, caressing the sculpted muscles of his chest, the wine-dark nipples. Her own breath came in uneven bursts. "Yes." Her fingers drifted down to the taut plane of his abdomen. There she found the cord of his braies, and tugged. They loosened, sagged on his slender hips for a brief instant before he opened them, pushed them down, and away.

His shaft rose thick and proud from its glossy, black nest of curls, nudging her belly as his thighs brushed hers. She curled her fingers around the base and caressed upward along its velvet-steel length, memorizing him so she would never forget what wanting her had done to him. She stroked the full, straining length of him, absorbing the heat and hardness in her palms, watching his hips begin to move with her touches. She stretched out alongside him, and he pushed against her, his thick, male hardness filling her hand with its pulsing, heated strength. She placed her lips against his, feeling the tremor of his breath coming harshly against her. "You told me once that you wished me in your bed," she said. "I wanted you even then. And every day and night that have passed since. Every time you touched me, and did not take me, every time I dared let myself think of you holding me, kissing me, taunting me, I ached to have you, to feel you growing hard inside of me." She did not know where such brazen words came from, save she needed it as much as he. Her feelings were quicksilver, shifting from tenderness to desire and back again. She ached to comfort him, to lead him through the night until his pain and the memories were far behind him, to feel him bury himself in her body, to drive deep inside her without restraint, mating his power to her softness. "Let me make love to you," she murmured. Her tongue slid along the curve of his mouth. He touched it with his own, drawing it inside his mouth, where heat and dampness surrounded her and the slow, serpentine strokes they played against each other mimicked the movements of her hand upon him. With a groan, he abandoned himself to her. His fingers sank into the furs, and smoothly, steadily, powerfully, he thrust himself into her hands. It was unlikely she could stop him now, not after they had lingered so long. And she did not want to stop. She wanted him beyond bearing, with all the ferocity she had learned from his bold touch. She wanted to drown him in bliss, to give him the sublime pleasure his intimate touches and kisses had given her, to worship his body, make it part of hers. Her lips brushed his nipples, traced along the center of his chest where the scent of myrrh and musk wove around her. She pressed her open mouth to his belly, swirled her tongue inside the tempting recess of his navel. He twisted beneath her, slurring the sound of her name through soft moans. Her own breath was coming in gasps as she bent to take him with her mouth, letting him feel the welcome heat of her tongue as his movements brought him between her parted lips. He cried out, a single, sharp exhalation of desperation and delight, and arched his hips toward her. One hand dug into the pelts at his side; the other cradled the back of her head as she explored him, tasted him, bathed him with the relieving wetness of her mouth. She could feel him still reaching for control, despite the tremors that took his body. His hands roamed over her, clutching her back, at every last shred of self-restraint he

possessed. Her tongue caressed him, her lips pulled against the hot, hard length of him, finding a languid rhythm. "Thea--" His eyes closed, and he moaned deep in his throat. She was shaken by the depth of his need--this man who had needed nothing, who governed himself with absolute perfection, who let nothing happen unless he commanded it or willed it to be so. She had brought him this rapture with simple, unlearned passion, with nothing but the assurance that she could do for him what he so masterfully did for her. "Thea--Thea, sweet--let me be inside you . . . ." The slow unraveling of his self-control and the thwarted cries he choked back only filled her with a hunger of her own. She drew her hands up the length of him, imagining how it would be to join with him, to feel his glorious, throbbing hardness fitted fully within her. The thought cut deep into the aching emptiness between her thighs. Imagining was not enough. Weakened by passion, she let him pull her away and up into his arms. "You are shivering from wanting me," he breathed as he clasped her tightly to his chest, "and I from wanting you." His shaking hands tenderly stroked her back, her hair, her face. She could feel herself trembling in his arms, could taste the faint, salty taste he had left on her lips. He kissed her deeply, endlessly, as he urged her beneath him. She heard the helpless, inarticulate cries in her own throat, saw herself arching against him, writhing among the furs as if she were a stranger to herself--some bold and brazen wild thing transformed by the sheer need of him. And yet his kiss only drove the ache deeper within her. She wanted more--something--something more. Something she had forgotten or never had. Something she would die without. His mouth left her lips parted, gasping, sobbing, and found her breast, her belly, the inside of her thigh, kissing, sucking, murmuring against her. Each touch pulled her into a fiery whirlwind of sensation; each caress of his tongue sent the breath from her, dragged her deep within the turbulence of passion where there was no air, no respite, only a yearning she could not bear. He had lit a fire in her, fanned it, spread it through her without mercy until she could not move, lest she crumble to ash. She could only whimper as he eased her legs apart, could only cry out as he sank his finger into the aching wetness of her. She moaned aloud, insensible to everything but the plunging, filling promise of relief and the torment of unquenched desire when he withdrew. He found her wet, and one finger became two, as she followed the deep, slow invasion with her hips. He gave to her what she needed as if he needed it himself, took it away with a groan as if he too were deprived, gave it to her again and again and again, until all she could feel was her need for him and his for her, and the slick rhythm that drove them together.

She was close, too close to know, to care, to stop, when the rhythm broke and she felt the harder, thicker, hotter flesh of his penis pushing into her. She cried out, bringing him inside her, meeting him as he thrust into her, once, powerfully. The world spun darkly around her and she clung to him, surrendering to a blinding explosion of ecstasy that left her shuddering, safe in his arms. Chapter 26 It was as if she had slept--or died. The air came into her lungs in unsteady breaths; her shattered senses lay all around her, filtering through the bliss of fulfillment. When the world stopped spinning and Thea could breathe again, she felt how fully he possessed her. He filled her completely, as if he had been made almost too generously for her, stretching her tightness with the long, thick hardness of his sex. Buried deep within her, he lay still as the pulses of her body against his shaft gentled into a fading cadence. When he moved, slowly, pulling from her, she reached for him, her hands gliding over the smooth, taut muscles of his buttocks to urge him back inside. She wanted him again that quickly. Her eyes fluttered closed as he arched into her, letting her honeyed wetness smooth around him by slow degrees as he pushed deep inside her. "Look at me." His voice rasped with a blend of passion and command--the masterful Sheriff of Nottingham, caught in the act of wanting her. She held her breath, mirroring the languorous motion of his hips. His movements had grown deliberate and unhurried, as if he had overcome, or dismissed, the urgency of moments before, as if the very act of arousing her sated him in some indefinable way. She felt it, too--how the currents flowed thickly between them, winding and delving deeper than ever before, touching places in her heart she had thought unreachable. When she opened her eyes, a smile was playing lazily at the corners of his lips, confirmation and return of every feeling she possessed. In coming inside her, he had filled her emptiness; she had been balm to his. He had fit into the hollows of her life as he fit into her body, fully, without concession for his strength or power, tense and thrumming with vibrancy she had forgotten. Her body welcomed him without reservation, smoothing the ache from him with slow, sensual friction and the warm salve of her wetness until he was stripped bare of pain and the artifice he wore to hide it. She glanced down at the place of their joining and slid her hand between their bellies, reverently touching the hard, silken steel of his shaft as her flesh opened and wrapped itself around him. So wondrous! So unbelievably, shatteringly right! And yet there was something new in this, newer even than the desire he had awakened in her. There was a bond of closeness that she had never shared with any man, an

intimacy she had never dreamed existed. Time spun out endlessly behind them, unraveling the dark fabric of the past. And before them? There was no sense of time at all, only this moment when she looked into his eyes and saw the man she loved. He started to speak, then stopped, caught in a shudder of passion as she squeezed tight around him. "Witch," was all he managed. It was a breath of adoration. He rocked against her, slowly, steadily, melding his movements to the needful rhythm of her hips. For once, no quick rejoinder came to mind. Nothing came to mind at all. She was everything he thought her to be. A sultry enchantress spread among the furs. A Celtic priestess driven to lust beneath the rising moon, drugged on the magic his body made in her. A fairy wood nymph captured in his arms, whose vaporous presence he defined with his touches, his kisses, with the building thrusts that drove him inside her. Her need grew, flooding her with a heavy arousal she had thought sated. Tension returned, tightening her limbs around him, freezing cries in her throat. "Come with me again, Thea," he whispered. "Thea--Thea--come, sweet, take me again." Holding her close, he rolled to his back, bringing her to kneel astride him. She moaned softly, feeling him deeper within her than she thought possible. Her flesh ached with wanting, and instinctively she moved against him. Sensation spiraled around her, and she let her head drop back. The weight of her hair fell behind her, spilling across his thighs like burnished silk. She had thought to take him, truly, thought to make him mad with passion, but her body had turned traitor to her every seductive plan. She could only move with him, feel herself, soft and melting-wet, shuddering down the length of him. Her thighs quivered as she pulled back, missing him. She was lost in this, lost to this. He had made her drunk on the feel of him. "Thea--" The sound of her name drew her back. She opened heavy-lidded eyes, closed lips grown slack with passion, and took in the sight of him with unsurpassed longing. Perspiration gleamed on his brow, on the gilded expanse of his chest. His face bore an open, needful look, as if his senses had ravaged him and made his hunger for her unbearable. Hypnotically, his gaze drifted from her eyes to her breasts. He reached out and grazed her hardened nipple, then trailed his fingers down her belly, to the dampened curls wreathing his shaft. "Here, sweet," he said, sliding his finger against the front of her, finding, circling, massaging the swollen bud of desire. "Feel me here." The simple touch took her breath away. She swayed into the pressure of his hand, then back into the sweet, glutted fullness within her. Her movements quickened as she rode him, rubbing against him gratefully, then wantonly, wickedly, without restraint.

Desire glinted dark in his eyes as he watched her, absorbing the effect he had on her as if her pleasure doubled his. She felt his hands move to her buttocks, drawing her down on him, kneading, demanding the fiery friction of their bodies as he thrust up against her. Every muscle in her body burned, begging for release, and--oh, God!--deep inside she ached, wanting him touching her, reaching her, again, and again, and again. An erotic haze engulfed her, blotting out everything but the thrill of loving him. She found herself on her back, anchored beneath him, dazed, crying her breath away in small, desperate sounds. He took her leg in his hand, cradling the back of her knee as he spread her wide and thrust into her ruthlessly, with an abandon that drove her senses from her. She circled his hips with her legs, meeting him, matching his intensity with the force of her need, driving the last of his demons away, leaving nothing but the fury of her love. He buried himself in her, over and over, filling her with sensations she did not know existed, bringing her higher, higher, closer to the blazing, surging heat of him, to the hardness of him. She felt every nerve in her body shatter, breaking her apart, and in the last minute before she knew she would die from the pleasure, she felt him stiffen, felt his harsh cry burst against her neck. He sank into her with a body-wracking shudder, calling her name, sweeping her with him into the maelstrom of release. They did not move for minutes--hours--afterward, both dazed by the enormity of what had happened between them. In time, Nottingham withdrew with slow, gentle care and pulled the furs around her. She lay in his arms, her cheek nestled against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, the racing, pounding reminder of life she had restored to him. Outside, the wind howled through the castle turrets, driving ice against the shutters. Odd to think that once she had hated this place, thought it sinister and forbidding. Complained about the discomfort of cold stone and narrow, airless corridors. She had never felt safer, had never known more comfort than that of lying wrapped in this man's arms, listening to the crackle of the fire. The Sheriff breathed deeply now, shakiness departing, and in time he stretched catlike among the furs, rolling her beneath him. "You're looking smug, Thea," he murmured, nuzzling her mouth with his beard. She smiled, touching her tongue to the fullness of his lower lip, sucking it, pressing her mouth against his. His tongue joined hers as she slid within his mouth, weaving slowly around hers, drawing out the kiss and the maddened drumming of her heart. "Victory becomes you," he whispered as their lips parted. "I should let you have it more often."

She felt the stain of color warm her cheeks. His fingers traced her lips, the arch of her neck, the hollow of her throat. Fire followed his touch, sizzling a path between her breasts. "Speak of smugness," she managed, but her voice broke as his hand fanned across her belly to her inner thigh, easing her legs apart. "You thought you would leave me lying vanquished and spent? So easily? So soon?" The rich, throaty sound of laughter welled within her. "I cannot believe I could want you again so quickly," she said. "But I do." "You're becoming decadent." "I know," she sighed. "There is naught for me but a nunnery." "Nunnery, indeed. There is naught for you but a bed and several nights of a man's diligent attention." "And days?" He bent to kiss her, and she could feel the length of him growing hard, pressing into her. "Perhaps--possibly--it would take days, as well." *** "I'm sorry, Sir Guy. The Sheriff left word he was not to be disturbed." "Disturbed? Disturbed? Damn it all! Morning is nigh spent!" Coming through the heavy oak door of the chamber, the words sounded muffled and far away. Nottingham heard them through the last vestiges of sleep and lifted his head off the pillow, grimacing at the anticipated intrusion. "He will summon you, Sir Guy--" "Summon me, you witless imbecile? God's oath! Have you gone soft in the head? Has he? It's not every day we see a royal visit in these God-forsaken hinterlands!" Gisborne's growling receded down the hallway with the ring of nailed boots, and the Sheriff heaved a sigh of relief. For once, his guard proved himself to be adequately intractable or his cousin had the good grace not to intrude. He wasn't sure which; he didn't care which. Prince John's arrival was well over a fortnight away and nothing, absolutely nothing, that happened today would tear his attention from this bed. And Thea. He lowered his head to the pillow once more, rousing to the intimate embrace they had found in sleep. He lay half atop her, his arm and thigh crossing her body in bold possession, as if he had not yet had his fill of her and would mount her again at her next

waking. Her limbs draped loosely around him, as if she had only to open her eyes to be ready. Even the length of her dark tresses bound them together; the mahogany skeins of her hair streamed across the pillows and twined about his fingers. Without moving, he relished the fragrant silkiness and recalled how he had buried his hands in that softness the night before, how it had tickled the inside of his thighs. He felt his body stir at the recollection but kept very still, hardly breathing. Thea slept soundly, and he would not wake her. Nor would Gisborne or the castle noise or the whole of the shire should they beckon him today. The thickening in his loins he could live with. His need for her had become a familiar companion, an intermingling of delight and frustration that washed over him whenever she was near and grew tenfold when they were apart. Now the frustration, at last, was gone, and he knew it was not due solely to the night's lovemaking. Something was different. Changed. He buried his lips in the warm, fragrant crook of Thea's neck, reassuring himself of her presence. She was here, beside him, still, sharing his bed, sharing herself, bringing him pleasure that made his every fantasy of her pale by comparison. There were no ghosts between them now, no specters to battle or hide from, just the reality of belonging to someone. As difficult as it was for Nottingham to believe, there was another part of Thea entwined with him now, as unfathomable and mysterious as the haze of erotic memories that filled his mind. Her availability to him, her selflessness, her gentleness, her caring-all those things he admired in her, the traits so opposite the ones inherent in his own nature--lay within his heart, as real to him as the lavender scent he had soaked from her skin. In giving herself to him, she had bestowed upon him a host of tender, fragile emotions he had never known and left behind something remarkable, something very akin to the feeling others called love. It was a sentiment that the arid recesses of his soul lapped up eagerly. He lay with these strange, new feelings as they played alongside the more familiar, physical responses of his body. The old, rarely restrained urge to sate himself with someone as close and tempting as Thea--that was something he comprehended. But love? He was not certain. Had he ever truly loved before? Even sweet, young Alyce whom he had barely known? He was not certain he would recognize such a feeling were it to sprout in the hardened soil of his heart. And yet some strange dichotomy existed within him now, for as much as he craved her, Thea's need for rest won out over his need to have her again. Ah, he was not himself. That much he knew. He was no more the evil despot, but a man whose strength and power could be subdued by the faint, sleepy rhythm of his lover's breath against his shoulder. The Sheriff sighed and brushed his lips across the rose of Thea's cheek. He should have known. The woman's witchery had altered him forever.

He would not have moved at all had the air of the solar not turned bone-piercingly cold. Aside from Thea's body and the tangled bedclothes that covered neither of them, the only warmth came from a bed of dying embers in the hearth. If he did not get up and tend the fire, the chamber would soon become frigid. Reluctantly, he extricated himself from the chaos of bedwraps and settled two of the warmer furs over Thea's sleeping body. He could not immediately remember where he had left his clothes. They were neither in the sleeping alcove nor on the steps, although one of Thea's stockings lay draped across the high back of his chair. He picked it up, trying futilely to recall how it came to be there. He bent low over the hearth and spied the nest of pillows and sheepskin where he had first taken her. A flush of heat consumed him. No, he had not "taken" her, but joined with her in a way alien to him--unlike the strained, hurried couplings of his youth or the polite, deferential bonding of his wedding night. And a world apart from the countless eves of blurred decadence he'd sought from nameless castle whores. He had experienced it all with Thea: the frightened excitement of an untried lad; the gentle restraint of a new husband; the wild, uninhibited abandon of a man surrendering to his senses. Experienced all that and more: the deep, soul-confounding moments of giving himself to her fully, unreservedly, of letting her reach within him and draw away the darkness from his heart. He scratched his tousled head and knelt to the ash-covered hearth. Perhaps she had taken him. He grinned. They would have to replay the sequence of events to be sure. He blew the ash from the coals and added scraps of kindling, prodding the embers until flames shot up. Thea slept through his attempts at firemaking and, he was quite sure, would sleep for hours more. He had exhausted her. He smiled, then corrected himself again. They had exhausted each other, which did not begin to explain how he could be up and feeling such stamina, such . . . hunger! That was it! He found his braies cast to the far side of the rumpled furs and slipped into them. Shouldering into his robe on the way, he went to the door and opened it halfway. "Fetch one of the kitchen girls," he ordered the guard outside. "Yes, m'lord," the guard replied, his eyes lit lasciviously. "No, you fool!" The Sheriff cuffed the sentry's helmeted head. "I want food! Bread--hot bread, none of that stuff left over from last night--and cheese. Some weak ale. Tap a fresh keg." He paused and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "And honey," he added, as if he had made a wonderful discovery. "Bring butter and honey. And be quick about it! I'm ravenous!" He closed the door, almost giddy with feelings of rejuvenation. It was a new day, he realized, flinging the shutters wide. Snow covered the shire; he could think of no reason to leave this room. He had an army of soldiers and household servants to insulate him from the world, and the most exciting creature in all of England warmed his bed. By the

saints, what had she done to him that his heart should pound so? That his breath should catch somewhere in the region of his knotted belly? Still not wanting to wake her, he made a trip to the garderobe, then splashed icy water from the basin over his face. This simply would not do, he decided. He could tolerate water that had lain beneath a thin layer of ice, but Thea must not be subjected to such harshness. Not a woman who was used to bathing in sun-dappled forest pools-The tap at the door came more quickly than he expected, interrupting his thoughts. Were even his servants more efficient on this miraculous morn? He flung the door wide. "Millie!" "Aye." She pushed her well-padded hip against the door and eased her way through, carrying a large, breakfast-laden tray. "I expected--" "Discretion, perhaps? From a kitchen wench?" The Saxon woman huffed with indignation as she placed the tray on the oak dining table. "Sheriff, you addle-brained twit, sleep till noon and there will be talk." "Noon?" "'Twas all I could do to pry your sentry's ear from the door and buy his silence with a hard-earned tuppence. And Gisborne--why that fool is fair pacing a trough in the corridor outside, spouting his vile suspicions at every turn. Sweet saints, man, 'tis my lamb you've got there tangled in your bedfurs. Have a care for her." "I do, Millie. I do!" Nottingham followed close on Mildthryth's heels as she barged past him, picking up the stray items of clothing strewn across the solar. "Besides, I could have sworn it was what you advised. A bedding, you said. Quite succinctly. Unequivocally. A bedding." "Aye," Mildthryth said, closing her fist around Thea's wrinkled shift and shoving the garment under his nose. "But can you manage it without blaring your conquest to the shire like a cock at dawn? Must I save you from yourself with such regularity? Must I be saving her?" Nottingham straightened and faced Mildthryth with as much dignity as he could rake together in his disheveled state. "I did not harm her, Millie, nor would I. She is more to me than life itself. She is life. If I thought I might do her wrong, bring her dishonor or a moment's regret--if I thought I would cause her to shed as much as a single tear, I would send her back to Sherwood so quickly--" "Aye, that I believe," she said softly, "but there is the rest of the world to consider, and the rest of the world is at your door this morn." The Sheriff glanced at the iron-banded oak planks, fully a hand's length in thickness. Suddenly they seemed a flimsy barrier.

"Do not fret. I can keep most of them away. For a while." She patted his hand. "Now tell me, save a priest--" she looked at him pointedly, "--what have you need of?" "Privacy," the Sheriff muttered, feeling as never before the burden of his title and power. "A fresh gown for my lamb, to be sure, and her hair brush," Mildthryth enumerated. "Come on then, I am trying to help you here." "A bath then. And soaps." "Ah, yes! Her lavender oils." "Privacy," the Sheriff repeated, and this time he knew his face was written with the desperation of a man whose precious time of respite was quickly running out. Mildthryth smiled. "'Twill take some doing, but I can buy you the rest of the day. Perhaps another eve. I'll spread the word that you've taken ill, that is if you can keep from popping your head out the door and claiming to be 'ravenous' for all the world to hear." "You once told me I was a besotted fool. Do you remember, Millie?" The Saxon woman shook her silvering head as she stooped to pick up Thea's stocking. When she looked at him though, the Sheriff saw only the breaking of a pleased, selfsatisfied grin on her ruddy face. "Aye, Sheriff. And that you are. I've thanked Our Lady countless times for the blessing of it. She is a rare thing, my lamb, and made for you like no other woman the Maker's thought to piece together. And you, despite your faults, are made for her. 'Tis a fit, like lock and key, perfectly fashioned. Now, Sheriff, to bed with you!" She waved him aside, rehearsing aloud the rumors she would spread. "I'll say your belly's revolting from last eve's mutton. 'Twill be easy enough to believe. I'll say you're abed and called your surgeon for a purgative--" "Charming--" "And any soul with a whit of sense would steer clear of your chamber, indeed of this very tower, if he relishes his head on his shoulders come dawn. Perhaps 'twill work." She gathered the armful of clothes in her apron and held the bundle close to her bosom. "'Twill at least explain the moaning and--" "Out!" the Sheriff raged, although both he and Mildthryth knew the anger to be but pretense. "You're a bawdy, lecherous-minded old woman. Christ knows why I've tolerated you as long as I have." "What you've done to deserve me, 'tis more like it." Mildthryth winked as the door thudded shut behind her.

The Sheriff could only agree. He drew a deep breath, unsteady at the prospect of a day cloistered away from the world with only Mildthryth's iron will to hide him. A day, he mused. Only a day. It should be a lifetime . . . . Now that breakfast had arrived, he had an excuse to wake Thea, to waste not a minute of the time given them. He picked up the tray, carried it up the stairs to the sleeping alcove, and set it beside the bed. "Thea?" he whispered. She muttered something indiscernible and rolled her head toward him, but did not wake. He called her name again, louder, with no acknowledgment at all this second time. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the breakfast tray with its basket of bread and pot of honey. He removed the lid from the pot, swirled his middle finger into the golden syrup, and ran his finger lightly between her parted lips. Though still half asleep, she met his finger with the tip of her tongue and tasted the sweet stickiness. Her lips curved up into a half-smile, and slowly she opened her eyes. How startling they were, he remarked to himself. Somehow he was never prepared for the swirling night-blue color or the smudge of black lashes surrounding them. Never prepared for the drowsy look of seduction that teased within their depths. He felt her mouth tug insistently on his finger as she drew the tip into her mouth and licked the honey off with sinuous strokes of her tongue. "Thea--" She released his finger with a brief kiss that slid down its length and buried itself into his palm. "I was dreaming," she said huskily, as she reached up and pushed the robe off his shoulders. "About?" Her hands circled his neck, then smoothed down his back, drawing him closer. "About this," she whispered, finding him beneath the thin linen of his braies. "About not leaving this room until I've had my fill of you." "And when would that be?" he asked. "Never." She reached up, drew his head down to hers, and shared the honey-sweet flavor of her kiss.

"Sleeping! Resting! That's what she says he's doing--that battle-ax, she-bear--" Gisborne turned on his heel, grinding rushes beneath his boot. "She says he's ill. Bah! There's only one thing that could keep my cousin abed past Prime, and that's--"

"Incompetence?" Aelwynn lifted the tangled mass of hair away from her neck and flexed her supple shoulders, stretching the sleep from her limbs. "--That simpering, whey-faced excuse for a surgeon. It's anybody's guess which piece of his anatomy she's been called upon to cure." Aelwynn rose from the bed with the liquid grace of a cat and walked slowly toward Gisborne. He watched the yellow silk of her gown glide across her slender legs with each step, felt her cool hands framing his face, trying to force the morning's woes from his aching head. Nothing helped, not even her kiss, thorough, icily provocative, regally detached. He shoved her aside and poured himself a tankard of ale. Aelwynn's brow lifted, and she eyed him with blatant speculation. "There was a time I begrudged him the use of her myself, when I learned what he felt for her was more than just a moment's infatuation." "When your wiles would no longer hold him," Gisborne finished for her, trying in vain to wash the sour taste from his throat. Aelwynn bristled. "When I saw how feeble his lust has made him." Gisborne stopped in mid-swallow, watching her over the rim of his cup. "Then you see?" Aelwynn shrugged. "How tame he's become?" Gisborne rushed at her with a barrage of words. "How meek and preoccupied? How absorbed he is in her, in doing nothing more than frolicking in the forest, than sleeping past noon--" "I see how impatient you are. How eager." Her voice dropped. "How desperate." She wore an oily smile of triumph, as if his admission had given her a rare advantage. And likely it had. Gisborne cursed himself with a silent oath. He had handed the whore a fine piece of treachery, and with no more thought than he gave when he put himself between her legs. No doubt, she would take it to Nottingham before the day was done, use it in some fruitless attempt to barter her way back beneath his sheets. She fingered the embroidery of his surcoat. "You would do well to put Thea Aelredson from your mind, my lord." "It is not the wench--" he protested. "No. Indeed, it is not. Oh, please understand. I know it troubles you. You--your cousin's keenest rival, always a slow, faltering step behind him--having to forfeit to him, again, something that by all rights you won for yourself."

Gisborne frowned, uncertainty creeping into the hollow pit of his stomach. "The wench means nothing," he said. "I could have any number of Saxon peasants on their knees, damn you, begging for my favor!" "Indeed you could, my lord. If you only had from him what you truly want most." Aelwynn's fingers hooked beneath his knotted belt, and she pulled him against her. "What I--?" "His sheriffdom," she murmured. "His title. This castle. The whole of the shire to plunder as you wish." Her lips were impossibly close. He could feel the air between them vibrate, the cloud of her wine-spiked breath tickling his throat as he turned his head aside. He could not think why she pursued this treachery; he could only deny her with a harsh, shattered rasp. "No--" he shook his head fiercely, "--Nottingham holds no lure for me. This decrepit castle?" "You are content then to follow behind him, always rushing to do his bidding like an underpaid clerk?" Gisborne stiffened as if slapped, drawing himself up to full height. "I am lieutenant of his guard--" "You are dog piss to him!" Aelwynn spat. She expelled a breath of frustration, then visibly drew in her anger, like a cat sheathing its claws. "And a poor liar, as well," she continued. "You covet his position as obviously as you covet his surgeon. Any fool can see that." Abruptly she released him and turned to the wineskin, fingering the filigreed cap. "It only remains to be seen what you will do about it?" "What I will do?" he shouted, offense seething from every pore. "Why, I will do nothing! He is my cousin. He bought this sheriffdom himself when my earnings in the lists would not have bought me a cheap whore on a cold night! This shire is rightfully his, by law, by appointment of King Richard--" "Your unflagging loyalty is quite touching," she said. "And quite unwarranted. Are you not the same cousin who, moments ago, spoke so eloquently, so angrily about the Sheriff's shortcomings? About his preference for lying abed with your wench while he neglects the responsibilities of his office." She glanced at him from beneath slanted brows, her sulfuric eyes trapping him, accusing him. "I am merely concerned," he managed. "The time for Prince John's visit draws nigh. There are still taxes to be collected. The knights' portions of Richard's ransom--a sore twenty shillings no knight wants to pay--and the priory at Lenten owes us as least the loan of their silver plate--someone must see to it--Christ, that embarrassing spectacle with the stable burning down--Sherwood teeming with felons--" "Put it all aright."

He was not certain he had heard her correctly, so soft was her whisper. Perhaps he had not heard her at all, and it was the desperate, deranged notions of his own mind, taunting him now as they had for weeks. For years. "Who is he but a bastard stable boy? A nameless wretch who squirmed into your family's embrace and used their wealth and good name to make of himself something more than a serf? By God's very bones, Nottingham was no reward to him. He bought it, and from a king who would've sold London itself was there a buyer. And having bought it, what did he do but let the forest rabble rule it, as easily as they--as she--rule him? He has failed. You, my lord, will not." Gisborne shuddered. "You don't know what you say, Aelwynn. He has scorned you, turned you from his bed for another, and your wrath has taken the better of your senses." "Is that what you think?" "Aelwynn--" "Then I shall tell you," she announced, turning toward him, her face haughty with the look of success. "The shire barons are not at all satisfied with the way the Sheriff has handled his duties. And they've spared nothing in communicating their displeasure to Price John. There's the matter of motive, you see. Is he merely ineffective, or does he have another purpose? Even now, Lackland has begun to doubt the Sheriff's loyalty." "Impossible--" "Possible enough, I'm afraid. Lackland has become convinced that Nottingham's political maneuvering smacks of personal ambition, that even now the Sheriff weighs the possibility that there is more to be gained should he hold the castle for Richard." Gisborne choked on his laughter. "Then your sources do not know my cousin," he said bitterly. "He may not relish falling at the feet of that dark, little rodent who is prince, but neither does he favor an absent king who cares nothing for England, save the people's ability to finance his wars. No, Aelwynn, my cousin has held Nottingham Castle well for John, and will relinquish it, gladly, in exchange for his highness' royal favor." "He will not get the chance. Lackland plans to remove your cousin as sheriff and entrust the castle to William de Wendeval and Ralph Murdoe, two constables whom he trusts." "He cannot!" "He has the backing of the barons. Sampson de Stradley, Galfred Luterell, lord of Gamston--" "Enough! Why this is ludicrous!" Gisborne downed his ale in a single, hearty gulp. "You yourself blared of his incompetence. Is it ludicrous to think no one else would notice? Baron Monteforte, whose son was killed in Sherwood, was most outspoken."

"Why that sniveling, pork-bellied--" "Silence!" Aelwynn warned. "It is all but done! Would you ruin your own chances with a reckless tongue?" "Chances? What chances do I have without my cousin? Our plans, our every effort on Lackland's behalf--" "For safekeeping, Prince John will be convinced to tender Nottingham Castle to you instead," Aelwynn said. "To me?" Aelwynn did not reply at first. She merely poured a cup of wine and held it aloft, then inclined her auburn head to him in a gesture of obeisance and bent in a fluid curtsey. "My lord sheriff." Gisborne brushed past her. "How did you come by this information?" he asked gruffly. "You mean with whom did I sleep?" "That is your usual method of currying favor. I see no other way for a common whore to know the minds of barons and earls--and kings." Aelwynn put her cup down untouched. "I did it for you," she demurred. "Who?" "Monteforte," she admitted. "When you left me to entertain him that afternoon of the Sheriff's . . . absence." Gisborne remembered. His cousin returning from his tourn of the shire, eager only to see Thea, foisting off the burdensome baron with a flick of his hand. He closed his eyes, suppressing a wave of nausea. It was happening then. The slow unraveling of his cousin's power. The sapping of his every plan. The crumbling destruction of Nottingham's every ambition. Just as he'd feared. As he'd wished in some dark, loathsome part of his heart where he'd buried his secret envy of his cousin alongside his admiration for the man. Gisborne felt sick. "Monteforte is nothing," he said. "A piss-ant in the scheme of things. He has no power. And loyalty? You would speak of loyalty? Why he still has not graced the coffers with Wythestead taxes!" Aelwynn's eyes flitted away from his, and in that moment, Gisborne knew she withheld some other truth. His hand shot out, taking the woman's stubborn, defiant chin, jerking her face toward him.

"Who else?" he demanded. "Monteforte hasn't the means to plant such a foul scheme in Lackland's head. You've traded yourself to someone far more influential than a backwoods baron. Who?" She shook her head, but his fingers bit sharply into the thin flesh of her jaw. "Tell me!" "Someone who would have more for you, who wants more for you than to follow in the footsteps of a stable boy. Someone who could give you--" "Tell me his name!" The words rang out so loudly the candles flickered in their sconces. The blood drained from Aelwynn's face, leaving only the vermilion slash of her mouth and calculating, kohl-blackened eyes. She lifted her chin, higher even than he held it, and stared at him with cool bravado. Her voice hissed into the silence. "Your father." "My--?" The name clogged in his throat, stuffing air back into his lungs until he choked on the thought and the world grayed, fuzzy and indistinct, around him. His gut turned to water. "What has my father--?" He could not bring himself to finish the sentence. The word alone ripped through his throat like ragged metal, left him bleeding with a deluge of raw memories. God's oath! What was she saying? What did she know? How did she know? Instantly, he regretted everything he had spoken to her, every time he had trusted her, touched her, lain with her thinking it made him more of a man. Bile rose in his mouth, and he tasted the betrayal of her every kiss. In his moment of shock, she managed to break his grip on her and pushed herself free. "Ask me no further questions," she said frostily, shaking out her skirts and smoothing her sleeves. "I see you are speechless with gratitude." "Aelwynn--" "Perhaps words will come to you by Christmastide. Your father travels with Prince John's caravan. A gracious acceptance of his offer would be wise, unless you prefer the companionship of your cousin in the streets!" "Aelwynn, I never wanted--" "Don't compound your foolishness with a lie," she said, disgust evident in her tone. "You wanted Nottingham's strength as much as I did. You basked in it while he lorded over you, hating him, loving the authority he gave you. It is the way of men with no power of their own." "And women?" Gisborne sneered and his eyes met hers, slicing through the traitorous, amber depths with a steely gaze.

"I am the mistress of Lord Roger deGisborne . . . and his son. Is that not power enough?"

Chapter 27 "Enough of this madness!" Nottingham bounded out of bed, grabbed the bedclothes in both hands, and dragged them off the bed with a vigorous tug. Thea shrieked, then laughed and lunged for an edge of fur just as it escaped her fingertips. "The day is done. You would keep me here all eve as well?" The Sheriff scooped her up in both arms and carried her swiftly out of the alcove and down the steps. "Millie has prepared a bath, stoked the fire, and brought a tray of wine and cold meat from the kitchen." "You think too much of your stomach, my lord," she said, circling her arms around his neck and laying her head on his shoulder. "Yes, well, one of us should, since it seems you have an unsubtle plan to keep me occupied until I perish of starvation." Slowly he eased her into the large tub, and with a sigh, Thea relaxed into the herbscented water. "Starvation?" she asked dreamily, as the mist curled around her, threading like tendrils of smoke in the creamy candlelight. "Or exhaustion," he continued. He poured a single cup of wine, drank from it, and passed the goblet to her with a rare, self-effacing smile. The expression touched Thea's heart more certainly than any of his practiced techniques and smooth words. The transformation she witnessed in him still astounded her. It had been less than a day since he'd opened himself to her, yet she felt as if she had always known him like this: relaxed and easy in his skin; murmuring sweet endearments and witty banter with equal ease; loving her with generous, unbridled passion that never failed to take her breath away. "So you have reached the limits of your endurance, Sheriff?" she teased, knowing, of course, he had not. She stretched out in the over-sized cask, one arm bent as a pillow beneath her head, and closed her eyes. From the lazy luxury of her bath, she heard a ripple and felt a gentle, wet slosh against her chin as he stepped into the tub and sank into the steamy water beside her. The Sheriff did not answer, but shifted his position until he lay alongside her and held her in his arms. As he began rubbing the cake of soap over her back and the round weight of her breasts, the sensations in her body reminded her of what he did not need to say. The man was indefatigable. "Is this anything to compare with your pool in Sherwood?" he asked.

Thea opened her eyes, drowsily content. "Warmer. Somewhat more crowded." She smiled. "Better." She stroked her fingers along the soap in his palm and outlined the features of his face, loving him. The high forehead, the near aquiline perfection of his nose, the scruff of black beard in need of a barber. "Tickles," he said, scratching his nose. Then suddenly he ducked beneath the surface of the water, rinsing the tracery of suds away. Thea laughed as he came up sputtering, water streaming from the tumble of sodden black curls that fell to his shoulders. So like the day they had spent in Sherwood together, she recalled wistfully, when she had shoved him into the stream and they had played in the grasses on the creek bank. Their mouths met as if by instinct, as if he remembered as well; his hands fashioned slippery caresses against the satin of her skin as he drew her against him. Just like that day. Save this time she had what she'd so wanted then. This time she had it all. *** He was drunk and knew it. Gisborne slid his hand around the blurry tankard of ale, missing it completely, and scowled in the direction of the serving girl who had paused at the table. From her expression, the wench was tallying the trips she had made from the buttery to the great hall with an increasingly sour disposition. He would have grabbed at her, too, but his movements had grown leaden as well as imprecise and he had no wish to be the topic of her derisive chatter when she returned to the kitchen. Gisborne drained the cup, not bothering to wipe the brown-flecked foam from his lip. Damn Aelwynn for the traitorous whore she was! The courtesan had slid easily enough from the Sheriff's bed to his. Why had he ever assumed she would stop there? And damn himself, as well. Knowing Aelwynn as he did, why had he ever thrust her into Monteforte's arms, even as a momentary diversion for the man? Bitterly he wondered which ring on the baron's thick, bejeweled fingers had bought what passed for Aelwynn's loyalty. Damn Monteforte! Damn Richard and John and the miserable shifting of political intrigue on which his fortune so wobbly rested. Damn them! Damn them all! Gisborne kicked at the rushes, striking sparks against the stone floor with his spurred heel. He and his cousin had struggled for years in endless, nauseating submission to the fat-pursed barons of this shire. De Stradley and Luterell, with their estates and their titles. Monteforte with the rolling acreage of Wythestead around him. When had the lard tub of a man ever broken sweat for his wealth, save the few grunting moments he must have passed between Aelwynn's thighs? Gisborne glared balefully around the hall. Behind which tapestry? he wondered. On which table? In whose borrowed bed? Damn her!

He had come full circle, knowing only that his cup and gullet were dry. He banged the empty tankard on the table, calling for more ale, wanting only oblivion, or an evening clouded enough that he did not--could not--think of the choice Aelwynn had given him. His father. Gisborne shuddered and his stomach heaved, sending the sour froth of ale up into his throat. He remembered the estate in Normandy, the years spent under his father's black, polished boot--loveless, haunted years when he came to know how piddling an excuse for humanity he was in his father's eyes. He remembered the endless hours of lifting a sword too heavy for his stringy arms, of lessons in horsemanship with the whip always close at hand. He possessed not a single attribute his father demanded in a son. Small, imperfect, awkward in a gangly way from limbs that grew overlong for his runty stature--only a viciously tempered will kept him from crumpling into tears at the end of a day's grueling efforts at knightly skills. True, he lived with wealth and finery, but anger and hostility undercut every advantage. To this day, all he could remember of his father was the scent of leather, the strike of his hand, and the stern, unforgiving lectures that burst unexpectedly from his thundercloud visage. And the rest? While he grew up all too aware of his position as a landless younger son, he had been spared the worst of his father's disapproval. That Lord Gisborne saved for the stable boy, Gisborne's only friend. His "cousin" in all but blood. "Whipping boy," the stablemaster had called him, resentful of having lost a good hand to the manor house. But while it was true, Gisborne acknowledged darkly, he had refused to hear such an ignominious title laid on his adopted kin. He'd put a pitchfork in the man's thigh for the remark. That was the beginning, he supposed, and that small seed of loyalty had grown and blossomed as his peculiar comradeship with the boy developed. His cousin was the one relief in an otherwise bleak and oppressive day, the one person he could reliably best at swordplay, thereby earning a small smirk of approval from his father. The boy accepted him as he was, puny and sniveling-rich, and pulled no punches. Not with words. Not with fists. With his stable-soiled dignity, the boy taught him the meaning of survival and invented daring, fun-filled exploits with which to balance Lord Gisborne's cruelty. God's oath, he had pulled his cousin's ass from one hapless incident after another, from the childish pranks they concocted together to the horrors of their near-fatal ambush in Sherwood. And he had bound himself with words, with deed, long past the time when childhood was done. Gisborne clambered to his feet, calling loudly for ale. "Where the hell did the girl go? Where are my servants?" he demanded, the drunken roar of his voice sending the hounds into a nervous skittering at his feet. Disgusted, he threw the tankard aside and staggered from the hall, lurching down the dark corridors.

He had not minded leaving Normandy, or his home. As he remembered, it had even been his idea, for the bent of his father's temper had grown lethal and murderous. It was a coward's insult to steal away under cover of night as he had, repudiating his father's efforts to secure him a position in the king's service. And yet Gisborne had turned his back on his father without regret, choosing to follow his cousin instead. Even an uncertain life in the lists was preferable to one his father designed for him, one where he would be but a strategically placed pawn linking his father and the royal court, where the only requirements of him would be silence, deference, and an obsequious manner. Instead he and his cousin traveled from tourney to tourney, scraping together a living off their winnings and finally amassing armor and horses enough to secure positions in the king's army. Eventually, his cousin rose through the ranks and obtained the post of sheriff. And always the unspoken loyalty lay between them. In the intervening years, he heard through others of his father's wrath, learned that, as in childhood, he had escaped the brunt of it. As angry as he was at his son's departure and the toppling of his carefully laid plans, Lord Gisborne still predictably faulted the bastard stable boy for his son's errant ways. "As if I had no mind or will or spirit of my own!" Gisborne growled into the darkness. "As if I am the Sheriff's puppet . . . or his!" Caroming off the side of the stone wall, he urged his feet up the first coil of steps, scraping his elbow against mortar and mail. A rumble of laughter cracked deep within his chest. Ironic that even now, years later, his father had found a way to reach to England, and Nottingham, to soil his manicured hands with the dirty, ignoble work of manipulating the monarchy. "It would seem the old man has managed well enough without me, squirming his way into Lackland's good graces, siphoning off promises in exchange for support. Does he think me a fool? The game has not changed at all. Only the stakes are higher." Gisborne paused. "A sheriffdom . . ." No. He shook his head. There was still a price for his father's offer. And a motive. The same motive that had always existed in Lord Gisborne's resentment-filled mind. Remove the bastard Sheriff, and with Nottingham stripped of his position and prestige, buy back the fealty of his son, to use in his political games. Gisborne squinted through the murky, half-light of his ale-fogged world. Oh, yes, he could see himself in his cousin's silks, could envision the same servants who were slow to fill his cup, bowing and quaking at his feet. But the cost? To be his father's man, bought and paid for? To feel the crushing weight of his polished boot again? To lose his cousin, for whom he felt both admiration and envy, who had earned, and now commanded, his loyalty with a power his father could not begin to grasp? Aelwynn could not fathom how hopeless was her cause. He would warn the Sheriff now, drunk or no, let him know he would not be duped into this treacherous scheme. Not for the barons or his father. Not for anyone.

He reached the top of the stairs, ale sloshing in the pit of his stomach like liquid fire. Fighting down the urge to retch, he found himself at the passageway that led to the Sheriff's chambers. Suddenly he stopped, his head spinning with the memories from that morn when some poor excuse of a sentry had sent him away. And later that smothering Saxon protectress had flapped her skirts at him with a hale "Begone!" He was there--Nottingham--undoubtedly still pleasuring himself with his surgeon, with the woman he had found in the meadow and marked for himself. Christ, what a craving that spirited, defiant wench had ignited in him! With the haughty rebellion in her midnight blue eyes, the daring thrust of her chin, the exquisite coolness of her lies--he had wanted her, wanted her now with excruciating unslaked thirst. And yet-Gisborne braced himself against the wall as his knees buckled and the world spun dizzily around him. Cold sweat prickled his forehead and upper lip, causing the desire in his blood to stir with sickening, drunken arousal. She was with him, wrapping her sweet, herb-scented flesh around him, whimpering her love for him, moaning her passion. For him. Because he was Nottingham, the lord high sheriff. While he-Gisborne closed his eyes, shutting out the too-brilliant nimbus of torchlight. He was nothing. An underling. Nottingham's lackey, if not his father's. A man beholden to his cousin for his future, if not his very existence. A man who surrendered his woman to the Sheriff without so much as an argument. Because he was Sheriff. Jealousy roiled in his gut, and his fingers clawed into fists. "Are you here again?" He heard the swish of skirts and the heavy waddle of the Saxon servant. "Are you?" he muttered, opening his eyes to the lancing pain of pulsing torchlight and the woman's shrewish frown. "A boon, Mildthryth. Surely the man's seed has run dry by now." "He's ill, Sir," she said, stiffening her oxen-strong shoulders. "Ill--" "And I've seen eels less pickled than you are now. The reeking stench of you will set poorly with his offended belly." "His belly, you say. Tell your tales somewhere else. I've important news." "'Tis not a thing can't wait till the morrow, till you've cast off the rankness of your ale and he's more fit to hear you." "But I must tell him. The whore--Aelwynn--"

"Are you telling me, my lord, you can't keep the she-wolf occupied and out of harm's way for a single night? Are you needing help with that as well?" "Mildthryth--" The warning died in his throat as the woman huffed an indignant breath and turned her back on him. Damn it! She would not speak to him this way. She would not dismiss him out of hand. Not if he were anything but a common soldier. Not if he were sheriff. Gisborne glanced toward the Nottingham's well-fortified door, imagining the feel of sable beneath his bare back, the soft curtain of Thea's mahogany hair spiraling around them, the blood-red flesh of her lips-If he were sheriff. "You will have me smelling like a flowery mead. The bees will be trailing me from as far as Fletcher's Gate." Thea arched one brow, and a smile eased across her face as she slid her oiled hands down the center of the Sheriff's chest. The scent of lavender permeated the air, and he wrinkled his nose and sniffed as if to make his point. Her smile broke into laughter. "Lavender brings refreshment, restores vigor," she cited in a voice pretending at neutrality. Of course, it did no good to play the herbal authority with this man. Vigor was not what he needed; he had that in ample supply. Once, early in the afternoon, they had managed to dress. The Sheriff had fumbled reluctantly with the laces at the sides of her woolen kirtle. Thea had struggled with his belt and boots only to pull them off again, then his trews, quickly, frustrated beyond understanding that she could want him again and again when he satisfied her so thoroughly each time. Nottingham had made a wanton of her, and they had passed the day loving--fiercely at first, as if they could not have enough of each other; then leisurely, drawing out the pleasurable tension with kisses and touches that lasted for hours. The snow had stopped and started all the day long, piling soundlessly into white drifts below the tower, and now the pale sun dipped below the horizon, reflecting the purple twilight of evening through the windows. They had left off any attempts to dress again--Nottingham remaining in braies by the fire; Thea clad only in a shift of white silk--an unspoken surrender to the passion that spiked their tender loveplay and intermittent snatches of sated sleep. Thea smiled to herself as she smoothed the aromatic oil over the Sheriff's shoulders and streaked it in a glistening trail to his belly. She had never known such bliss, had never known the lazy indulgence of spending the day wrapped in the arms of the man she loved, of sipping languidly from a shared cup of wine and murmuring the sweet, nonsensical endearments that so often ended in a kiss. So rare it was--this peace, this quiet intimacy that grew between them with each touch, each word, each moment spent captive in the dark trance of his eyes.

She loved him with the intuitive certainty that she had known him for centuries, lived beneath his skin with him, shared the same heartbeat. Yet each time she looked at him, she thrilled to the power and beauty of the man as if seeing him for the first time. Never, not even in the sanctity of marriage, had she known a man's body so thoroughly or felt such need as she felt for Nottingham. It leapt from nowhere, born of nothing more than a stray touch or a whisper of a thought, seeming to match some desire in him that ignited with as little warning. In the fragile moments that followed their lovemaking when the Sheriff invariably drew her close and anchored his body briefly to hers, Thea wondered if they ever dared venture from this room again. Surely they could not walk from solar to great hall without his fingers seeking hers or his gray eyes blackening with the memories of what they had shared. Perhaps Mildthryth would stay at their door forever, guarding them from the rest of the world. The Sheriff flopped unceremoniously to his belly and clutched a wadded handful of sheepskin beneath his head for a pillow. Thea's thoughts scattered as she saw the scarring of his back. The stripes overlaid each other, angled right to left, from shoulder to buttock, then left to right, as if the outlaw had set some deliberate pattern in his own brutal mind. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she reached out gingerly to trace a welt with oil-smeared fingers. Outlaws had done this. Not Robin or John, but criminals who lived as they did, hiding in Sherwood's haunted sanctuary, feeding off the king's land, and taking whatever else they needed with well-executed thievery. She could see how the Sheriff had blurred the distinction, even forgave him for assigning the same cruel motives to men she trusted. If only he could be convinced. They would never have harmed him so. She stopped suddenly, her hands splayed over the span of his shoulders. Would they? Would Robin and his men have been any more merciful with the Sheriff in their grasps? Would they have spared his soldiers? His back? His wife? A season ago, she would never have doubted it. Now? She did not know. In a fit of rage, John had asked her to take Nottingham's life, and there had not been a soul among Robin's men to see the madness in more bloodshed. "Most have looked upon that with revulsion. You with only quiet contemplation." The Sheriff's words startled her, making her realize how distant her thoughts had become. She became aware again of the scarred flesh beneath her hands and of the heated oil that bathed him. "They are battle wounds," she said softly. "As honorable as any title a king could bestow." "And yours?"

She looked at him, perplexed. "You think I did not notice? In all this time we've been together, when I've touched you, kissed you there?" He reached out to touch between her breasts, and her lips parted in surprise. Thea glanced away from him, her hands twisting in the silk of her shift. She had not wanted to remember, and for nearly a day, she had not. Now the strife in Sherwood came back to her, the enmity she could not heal with all her physic's skill. She pushed it aside. "It is nothing." She felt his fingers lace through hers and pull her hand to his lips, dragging her gaze with it. "So you are not the creature of perfection I thought you to be," he quipped. A smile curved above her knuckles as he dropped a kiss there. "This is a game with you. A way to charm me out of my shift . . . again." He reached for the ribbons of her shift, unlaced them, bared her shoulder, a breast, and the valley between. With one finger, he traced the pink, rippled skin. She felt the burning sting as if the cut had just been made, felt the precise nick of the sword, the single, swiftly executed marking that bit through thin flesh to the bone beneath. Memories burned as well--of the meadow, of Norman soldiers, of the Sheriff's lieutenant and his artless intimidation. She tried to cover the mark, but Nottingham's lips found her shoulder and slid between her breasts. She gasped, stiffening at his touch. "Don't." "Thea?" "It is nothing--" The garment sagged loose on her shoulders, riding the ragged rise and fall of her breast. For the merest fraction of time, she trapped his enigmatic eyes, watching them darken as he frowned. As quickly, the frown was gone, dissolved like the rest of expression from his face. "Who did this?" he asked, gentle words barely breathed. "Gisborne," she replied. The gentleness fell away. *** He had known the answer even before he asked, felt a shudder run the length of his spine with her confirmation. Nottingham felt his jaw grow granite tense as he closed his eyes, sealing the anger deep within.

"Damned, misbegotten mongrel!" he hissed between clenched teeth. "I'll have his scrawny neck in a noose!" The anger would not be contained. It rankled within him, eating at his gut, at every scrap of self-control. The Sheriff bolted to his feet and grabbed for the pile of discarded clothes. "My lord, no--" "That feeble excuse for a man!" He stabbed his feet into trews. "It matters not!" Thea clutched his tunic, tearing the garment from his hands before he could pull it overhead. "It happened long ago, at harvest time, when he first came to Thur-leah in pursuit of a pickpocket. He questioned me. It was a means of intimidation, nothing more--" "Disloyal, skulking bastard--" "He's a fool," she said, her hands gripping his shoulders. "A predictable, swaggering bully--" "Has he touched you?" "I--he--" She blanched, as if the crash of his voice frightened the very words from her. "Tell me!" "Gisborne struts himself proudly enough, but his sword is soft, his threats nothing more than wishful boasting. It's nothing," she protested. "Had I known it would upset you so--" "I will butcher him--ballocks and prick, inch by inch--" "Then it will make for a quick death," she said, her voice and humor sanding the edges of his anger. "Please, I pray you, don't let him rob us of this time." He pulled free of her hands and turned for the door, hauling it open with such force that the oak cracked against the stone wall. The corridor was a melee of men, armor, and Mildthryth's descriptive oaths. Three sentries held Gisborne--by arm and elbow and scruff of neck--and still he wriggled in their grasp like a serpent set afire. "Damn you to hell, you miserable flock of vultures!" he shouted. "I have come to report! Let me go or, by Christ, I will have you in irons!" "Cousin?" The Sheriff's voice was laced with steel, rage frozen in each clipped syllable. The soldiers who held Gisborne fell back into stone-stiff postures, mail-cowled chins tucked into their chests. Even Mildthryth managed a quick curtsy, dusting straggling gray hairs from her forehead.

"What is the meaning of this commotion?" Nottingham asked, eyeing the much-subdued parties before him. "I tried to stop him, my lord--" "Out of my way, you old cow!" Gisborne tugged the hem of his surcoat tight and shoved past Mildthryth's failing attempts to halt him. He would have plowed into the solar had Nottingham not stopped him with a large hand braced over his shoulder. "You presume much, Cousin," the Sheriff said. "I presume that what I have to say you would not want these crows cawing from every castle tower." With a sneer, he jerked his head in the direction of the guards and Mildthryth. "Unless you are without care for the dispensation of His Majesty's . . . ransom." Sarcasm was unmistakable to anyone within earshot, the rush of fetid breath as obvious. Clearly, Gisborne had spent the better part of the eve with his head in a vat of ale, drowning both caution and discretion. Nottingham cursed under his breath and moved aside. "Then report, and be quick about it. Your timing leaves much to be desired." Gisborne shouldered past the Sheriff. "My lord, if you require--" "No, Mildthryth," Nottingham interrupted. "Busy yourself elsewhere for the while." He saw the woman's eyes narrow with suspicious misgivings, and resolutely closed the door. Thea had risen from the furs on the floor, her bearing regal, magnificently affronted, despite the tangle of hair that fell in disarray about her hips and the too-large fit of his robe, which she had donned over her shift. A deep gurgle of laughter tore his attention back to Gisborne. "You don't think she is slipping you poison with every kiss?" The lieutenant's gaze slid the length of Thea's silk covered body. Rage slammed through Nottingham's veins, sizzling along nerve endings until all he saw was scarlet fury, all he felt were the corded sinews in Gisborne's neck flexing convulsively beneath his hands. His thumbs pressed into the flesh of his cousin's gullet. "Say the wrong thing, Gisborne!" he warned. "Show yourself for a fool for, by God, I have cause to murder you where you stand!" "Murder--? I--" The words barely croaked past his cousin's throat. "For any number of offenses. For incompetence. For dereliction of duty. For drunkenness. For simply being the aggravation that you are!" He saw Gisborne's lips purple and tremble, saw the milky eyes bulge with terror.

Slowly the Sheriff's hands loosened their hold and fell to his side. The man was not worth the punishment of mortal sin. He turned away, glanced toward Thea, then quickly aside, ignoring Gisborne's coughs and gasps for breath. "Report then, damn you, and be gone." "In front of Locksley's spy?" Gisborne's reply was clogged with disbelief. "Or have you won her over so completely as that?" Suddenly he stopped, seeming for once to glean from the Sheriff's silence that he had gone too far. "I have been at your back from the beginning, Cousin, giving my loyalty to no one save you. Credit me for that, if for nothing else." Nottingham faced him again, squinting through the candlelight at the man. "Your report." "It all seemed so perfect. Your plan to divert the tax silver to Prince John, to win our fortunes. A brilliant plan, brilliant . . ." Gisborne stuttered to a weak end and started again. "But there is one thing neither of us anticipated." "And that is?" "Someone has seen a way to thwart our arrangement." "Impossible. The silver is secured, the prince's visit nigh upon us--" "Someone, I fear, who makes a stronger alliance with Lackland than you or I could ever hope to make." The Sheriff stopped, something in Gisborne's certainty stealing the rebuttal from his lips. This was more than a drunkard's idle fears, something more than ale stirring up last minute reservations in a belly gone weak with treachery and deceit. Beneath the quiver of Gisborne's guttural voice lay a conviction of doom. Nottingham lifted his chin and stared hard at his cousin. "Who would dare?" Chapter 28 Thea shivered and wrapped the giant robe closer about her, trying to seek heat from its heavy, silken folds. The room felt unnaturally cold, as if winter had seeped through the castle walls and into her veins where fear ran like ice through her body. Nottingham had talked with Gisborne for the better part of the evening, his rage at his cousin dissipating with each passing moment. In the end, the two of them had parted company, if not amicably, then at least without the uproar of temper Thea had first witnessed. Now the Sheriff sat facing the fire, as silent and unyielding as she had ever known him to be, his fingers steepled beneath his chin, his dark eyes and darker thoughts surrendered to the hypnotic dance of the flames. "You still intend to go through with it." She spoke without realizing it, the thought she secretly harbored slipping past her lips before she could measure its discretion.

The Sheriff glanced sharply at her, his unfocused stare turning black with hard-edged scrutiny. "I thought--perhaps--" she stammered, unable to say what she truly hoped: that loving her had changed his heart, changed his mind, made of his soul something new and noble. Thea swallowed hard and looked away. When had she had a more foolish notion? She had held him, comforted him, lain with him because of her own desires and her longing to heal his suffering. He had made no profession of love, only of his need, and little enough of that. She had heard him confess all the torment locked inside him, allowed him to slake some momentary thirst for her, but to have expected his transformation was fantasy. Nothing had changed. Mildthryth could not keep the world from their door after all, and the truth rushed in like a wintry storm. "The silver belongs rightly to King Richard," she said, lifting her chin, daring him with an imperious tone to deny it. He said nothing, merely turned from her and gazed back at the fire. "Your office, your responsibility, requires justice, more so with the king gone. He entrusted you with the care of this shire, of its people. Would you abandon them now for your own ambition? For greed? Whatever hopes you had for Nottingham are still possible, but not this way--not by allying yourself with John. The man is no ruler. He wants only the power his brother has, as Gisborne covets yours. Twin wolves, both of them, and without conscience." She saw his eyes lower fractionally, his fingers grip the arms of the chair like claws. "Damn you, speak to me!" She put herself between him and the hearth, knelt at his feet, her hands tugging his. "You know I cannot allow this! I cannot stand by and watch what you're doing. It's madness! It's beyond reason, beyond all humanity! There may have been a time when I was fooled into believing that wrongdoing came as natural to you as breathing, but I know you now. And you can't pretend that any of this is right. If there is change needed, so be it. I concede that. But this is not the way!" He still refused to meet her eyes, although she could tell by the clenching muscles beneath his black beard that he heard, and rejected, every word. She stood and tightened her fists in the robe, holding it close as if it could lend her strength. "I cannot let this treachery continue," she said with quiet resolve. "You know that. Throw me in your dungeon for, by God's oath, if you do not, I will stop you. I will find a way to stop you!" "Save Sherwood from me, is that it, Thea?" he spoke at last, words slicing through the tension like a Saracen's blade. "And how would you accomplish that? Sneak past my guards in the dark of night? Rob me of a horse, perhaps a crossbow to defend yourself? Make for the wood alone?" He stood, looked at her with all the fiery magnificence she remembered in his eyes. "But then you are quite adept at navigating Sherwood's paths, are you not? Moonless nights pose no threat to you and--"

"You bastard--" "For bringing up a past you could never lay to rest to begin with? Thea, Thea, how long do you suppose we could have kept up this pretense? Gisborne knows you for what you are. Do you think I do not? Do you think I have not known since the first day I met you?" Suddenly he broke from her, strode to the far end of the solar, and jerked open the top drawer of the chest. He rifled through parchment until he found what he searched for, then slammed the drawer shut and held out his hand to her. Her worn journal lay in his palm. "That is--" "Your confession," he finished for her. She was too incredulous even to reach for the book. He had known even before she had admitted the truth to him in her cottage. God in heaven, he had known all along! Frantically, she tried to recall the pages she had written, the names she had used, the places she had described. Her heart pounded violently with each entry remembered. "There is enough information to indict you and your outlaw friends thrice over. Oh, perhaps not written as overtly as I would wish, but I am Sheriff, and the law bends fully to my interpretation." "I don't understand. If you had the evidence you needed to arrest me, to find them--" "I should have handed it over to Gisborne? Watched as he questioned you, tormented you, tortured you and delighted in it? Having wrung the truth from you, knowing of your guilt and your complicity in Locksley's crimes, what, as Sheriff, could I have done but sentence you to hang for aiding known outlaws? Gisborne would have demanded it. Justice, Thea, would have demanded it." Slowly, she allowed her gaze to drift from the journal in Nottingham's hand to his face. He stood in semi-darkness, his features obscured by shadow, his eyes narrowed with an iron control he had hammered out of nothing but sheer will. "But left secret . . ." His voice trailed off. "And now you intend to use it to bind me to you. You would have me do nothing, to let this travesty with John and the barons take place, in return for your silence." "You have lain with me and still think me capable of that? God's blood, woman! Had I the power, I would not let you leave. If need be, I would take you to my bed again, and again, and yet again, until you could not remember why you ever wanted to be any place else." He laughed ruefully. "But as you see, my power in this shire is as much a sham as I am myself, and my power over you--" He shrugged. "I can claim your body, but I cannot even capture your heart. How powerful is that?" "You have every power to do good--"

"We are caught, you and I, in some horrible division of the soul that cannot be repaired. You, girded up with immutable conviction that you are right, that honor dwells within the rebellious deed of your woodsmen friends, and I--" He laughed softly, as if to himself. "And I, as devoid of honor as ever a demon was, cast upon this earth in a man's body. Stop looking for nobility, Thea, where none exists." He approached her, held out the journal to her in offering. "Take it. By rights, it is yours." Tears blurred her vision as she looked down at the tattered volume. She had thought herself stronger than this, thought she could tear down the wall of his defenses by loving him, but what existed between them seemed suddenly too monstrous. Some division of the soul, he had said. Something she could not piece together as easily as she had sewn his arrow-torn belly, something even the union of their bodies could not make whole. "Take it!" he demanded in the moment she hesitated. His voice had become newly forged steel. "As for the rest, I am Sheriff of this shire, and my plans remain unchanged. If it so displeases you, do all in your power to thwart me. By the saints, Thea, I would expect no less of you. Simply know that when Prince John arrives, you will not be clad in Lincoln green, returned to the grateful nest of those forest vipers you so admire. You will be by my side, day and night if I so desire, at my table, in my bed, until this whole miserable ordeal is past." "And afterward, if you are so lucky as to survive the treachery planned against you?" The fire-bronzed color faded from the Sheriff's face, and any pretense of anger with it. He glanced away, and for a moment, Thea caught the slight smudging of shadow beneath his eyes and the tiny seams of fatigue and worry at their corners. "There is London," he murmured distractedly, "a royal appointment. I will have done with this sheriffdom, and the forest." "And with me?" He did not answer immediately. It was with reluctance, it seemed, that he even forced himself to look at her. "When I am through with this scheme, you will not have me." *** "My lady?" Thea lifted her head at the concern in Mildthryth's voice. "Will you not eat?" Mildthryth nodded toward Thea's untouched supper, as she sat next to the hearth, spindle and yarn cluttering her lap. "'Tis a new recipe, something devised to tempt the royal palate of his highness the prince. Take a taste and see, before it grows cold." Thea shook her head.

"What is it about the man? You can spend the better part of two days in his chamber, loving him--and don't waste your breath denying the truth of it--then come back here, as pale as any ghost, refusing the best mutton pie the cook could conjure up. Did the Sheriff steal your appetite, as well? Oh, more's the pity for he'll not want a scarecrow of a girl on his wedding night." "Mildthryth--" "Nay, and don't be denying that as well. 'Tis a wedding I see, and a gown of white and silver for you, lamb, glinting like crystals in the sunlight. A crown of fresh heather woven through your locks--" "Mildthryth, stop! I can't bear it!" "'Tis the Sight, my lady, and never false--" Thea stood, walked over to the old woman, and took her gently by the shoulders. "You are a weaver of dreams," she said. "Forget such tender notions as fill your head. I fear Nottingham wants nothing more than a shiny bauble on his arm when he greets Prince John. A trophy, perhaps--something from Sherwood he has managed to capture." Mildthryth hissed in a scandalized breath. "It went as well as that, did it? Given your time alone, could the two of you do naught but cross swords again? Saints, lamb, I swear 'tis the fighting you love, the both of you!" Thea pushed away the memories that threatened her--memories of lying in the Sheriff's arms, willing and pliant to his every touch, wanting him with a ferocity that tore all reserve away from her. The lingering passion she recalled was all too real. Even now the touch and smell and taste of him surrounded her, multiplying the misery she felt at their parting. He would have had her stay, she knew. Would have had her in his bed another night, and another, until she was his, thoroughly and irrevocably, until not a soul in the castle would have dared whisper a suspicion of her loyalty to him. Yet he had let her go without debate. And in the intervening days, he had not visited her or called her to his chamber. Instead, he had plunged into the preparations to ready the castle for the royal visit, delegating tasks and overseeing their completion. The royal apartments in the upper bailey were freshly limed and the floors strewn with fragrant herbs mixed among newly gathered rushes. The great hall was draped in garlands of holly and ivy, and everywhere the scent of bay permeated the air. Straw was harvested for the extra pallets required by the prince's staff and courtiers, and the recently reconstructed stable was supplied with feed and hay for the additional horses. Nottingham personally inspected the prince's quarters, chastising the chambermaids for their stingy use of tallow candles over finer beeswax. It was even rumored he dictated a fortnight of menus to the cook, and threatened him with disembowelment should the platter of peacock turn out the slightest bit bedraggled when presented fully plumed for his highness.

By the time Lackland's arrival was imminent, the Sheriff had made of Nottingham Castle a Christmastide retreat that banished all memory of its rough, inhospitable reputation. Of himself, he had made a specter of stiff formality, brusquely efficient and smoothly elegant in his presence. When she had seen him from afar, he even seemed to have mastered the fugue of preoccupation that had come over him when Gisborne had warned him of his father's plans. Thea shuddered. The possibility of Guy of Gisborne wearing the chain of office was unthinkable. Never mind that the man seemed to have not a single honorable thought in his head. He was weak, too easily swayed by avarice and his own ambition, too bent on self-indulgence to achieve for himself what others could achieve for him. Why, the moment Gisborne assumed the title of Lord High Sheriff, John Lackland and his baron cronies would be leading him by his thin, hawkish nose. The villainy that resulted would make pale by comparison any misdeed Nottingham had ever committed. That Gisborne had rushed to the Sheriff with this news was no consolation. The loyalty he bore for his cousin was inconsistent at best, driven as much by jealous rivalry as by devotion. If he appeared now to be at the Sheriff's side, it was only that he was safer there, or perhaps there was more to gain. Thea paced to the seat nestled in the stone embrasure and lifted the oiled hide that kept the splinters of ice and snow from her window. The storm had abated, but not the cold; her unsteady breaths were white puffs against the blackness. "Very well, then," Mildthryth said. "Starve yourself for all the good 'twill do. There'll be lavish enough spreadings soon enough. Mulled wine and song. Dancing and merriment. The Yule log burning in the firepit. Oh, I'm one for this blessed season, I am, and even the pock-marked visage of the weasel-prince cannot rob me of that." "Why, Mildthryth," Thea said, startled to hear the slightest defamation rise from the woman's lips, "you do not like the man yourself!" "Hush, lamb! 'Tis indiscreet to blather such nonsense. Besides, it makes not a whit of difference if I like the little bastard or not. He's the prince, and will make himself England's chosen one soon enough." "But if he's stopped--" Mildthryth's brows lowered sternly over her eyes. "I'll not be hearing of it. Do you think I don't know where your sympathies lie? Aye, you're a strong woman, with strong enough sentiment, to be sure, and, sweet holy saints, 'tis no doubt you are bold, but--" Mildthryth sighed. "You are no warrior, lamb. You're a healer. A peacemaker. Surely you would rather bind up the wounds of this land than to tear it further apart." "I have bound the wounds of this land for more years than I care to count, Millie. Bound them with the best physic I know, only to see them rent open again because the hatred goes deeper than any herb or charm or prayer can heal. What have I done here, or in Sherwood for that matter, but take wasted, half measures?"

"You have loved him," Mildthryth said quietly, "and in a way that has taken his heart, made him new and whole again." "Nay, truly, I fear I have not." "You have given him strength when he could not find it on his own, helped him bury the worst of himself along with the memories that nothing else could erase. You have taught him gentleness. Honor." "Have I? He seems so willing to forsake it." "You must trust him." "Trust? In the Sheriff of Nottingham? Oh, God, that I could!" Thea wanted to cry. The old woman was as deluded as she. She returned to the hearth and sank forlornly to the floor, laying her head on Mildthryth's knee. "You must, lamb," Mildthryth said, tenderly stroking Thea's hair. "'Tis the very beginning of love. Without it, all that you have, all you hope for, will crumble and die." Thea reached out and took Mildthryth's hand, gently rubbing the gnarled, callused fingers. Age had dimmed neither wisdom nor patience in the serving woman's eyes. "Oh, Mildthryth, don't you see? It's because I love him that I must stop him. If someone does not prevent this plan, more than England's monarchy is at stake, more even than the fate of all those who have toiled to provide King Richard's ransom. What will become of the Sheriff of Nottingham if Prince John has his way? Even if Nottingham were to challenge the prince and Lord Gisborne to retain his sheriffdom, what price would they demand? The very honor you said I taught him? Think, what notorious name will he earn for himself if he casts his lot with traitors to betray his true king?" Mildthryth squeezed Thea's hand in return. "What choice does he have, lamb? The prince is not a man to cross, and the barons have weapons and hired soldiers enough to take Nottingham Castle if 'tis not surrendered. What way out of this do you have in mind that the Sheriff has not thought of twice over?" "There is a way," Thea said in a hushed voice. "But a way Nottingham would never consider." "Sweet saints, and what would that be?" "I would need your help," Thea said tentatively. Mildthryth was already shaking her gray head, plump jowls wagging about her small, pinched mouth. "You'll help me leave the castle tonight--" "Nay, lamb, I won't."

"Not an escape, Mildthryth," Thea promised quickly. "A delivery. To the inn at the base of the castle rock." "The Trip to Jerusalem? The place is crawling with Nottingham's soldiers, any one of them likely to recognize you! Come morn, you'd find yourself in irons for sure, or worse, used or murdered by the Norman bastards. Nay, you'll not be leaving here, not while there's breath in my body." "Then--" "I'll go myself, if 'tis such a thing you must do." Mildthryth wrung her hands in her tunic, and Thea could see her struggle with the division in her heart, could feel the tearing of the woman's loyalties as she had felt her own allegiance shredded in the past few months. "Mildthryth--" "I'm an old woman, aye, but I've graced the presence of the Trip before, hauling my Warrin home by dawn's light." She sketched a cross at her ample bosom. "Bless his soul." "Mildthryth, I cannot ask you--" "And I cannot let you risk yourself on some fool mission when so much is at stake. Besides, I could use a pint of the Trip's finest to chase the chill of winter away. And--" Mildthryth paused, her eyes lowered to the spinning she'd left idle in her lap, and her voice dropped to a serious whisper. "And I love the man, as a mother loves a wayward son she cannot quite lose hope for. Few enough know that, save yourself. Fewer still would understand. But the Sheriff was good to me and my Warrin, and I cannot stop praying for him, knowing in my heart he is worth saving. If your plan will do that--" "Save him?" Thea shook her head. "Nay, Mildthryth, Nottingham must do that for himself. All I can do, possibly, is prevent the tax silver from going to Lackland. The Sheriff may still harbor some malevolent intentions in his heart, but if he is prevented from carrying them out in deed, at least there will be no treachery done here." Recognition sparked in Mildthryth's eyes, but if the woman disapproved, she offered no censure. "'Twill involve your outlaws," she guessed. "Aye." Mildthryth nodded solemnly, then drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "Tell me then what I must do." To argue with the woman was useless, and to thank her--? Mildthryth would brush such words away as heedlessly as she brushed the lint from her lap as she laid her yarn and spindle aside.

Thea stood and took up her journal. She leafed through the pages until she came to the last entry she had made the night the Sheriff had come to her cottage, the night all of this had begun. She tore out the first blank page of parchment, found quill and ink, and drew a single glyph: the Locksley cross. Folding the paper several times, she placed the message in Mildthryth's hand. "Deliver this to the inn, to Alan, the minstrel, who takes his evening meal there. Tell him your mistress is in want of a Yuletide song, perhaps with accompaniment." Mildthryth's gaze drifted up from the note, her eyes unreadable. "And then?" "He will know what to do." Thea drew an uneasy breath, trying not to think of the fairhaired lad with the lilting voice whose name she had just divulged. If she did not get word to Sherwood, far more lives would be forfeit than his. And if he failed, or if Mildthryth became suspect--nay, she could not allow herself to think such a thing. Mildthryth had already heaved herself from the chair and donned a heavy woolen cloak, pulling the hood close about her face for warmth and secrecy. Thea rushed into her arms and held the woman fast, grateful beyond words. Hastily, she dropped a kiss on Mildthryth's worn cheek. "Go with God, Millie," she whispered. The Sheriff dismissed the guard stationed on the rampart and waited as the ring of the soldier's nailed boots died in the night. Shivering, he wrapped his mantle tightly about him against the night air. Below him, Nottingham and its environs had adopted a carnival atmosphere associated with the prince's arrival. Even in this desolate cold, the streets were clogged with merchants who hoped to use the occasion of Lackland's visit to fatten their purses. Wagons and stalls of vendors crowded the pathways even more thickly than on market days, and the Trip bulged with guests already celebrating the royal visit with food and drink. Beyond the walls of the city, the hills bloomed with campfires. Tinkers and farmers, mummers and tellers of portents, the ever-present pickpocket or ten, and the priests sent forth by the abbey to convert them all had assembled well in advance of the prince himself. Tomorrow, come cockcrow, the aroma of meat pastries would fill the air, mingling with the calls of peddlers hawking their wares. No doubt, Gisborne would have to dispatch extra troops to keep the people from erupting into the chaos that always followed on the heels of too much excitement and freely flowing ale. He wondered if he should bring this to Guy's attention, as his cousin had become restive, if not agitated, as the time of the prince's arrival drew nigh. His mind had been increasingly on his unwilling role in his father's scheme to secure the sheriffdom on his behalf; if he truly coveted the position, and Nottingham did not fool himself into believing that it had not crossed Guy's mind, at least he had the good sense to hide it behind a facade of anxiety and continued ineptitude. But then his own role in this charade became foremost in his thoughts. Over the next fortnight, he would be confronted with every man who wanted his undoing, in one way or another. The Sheriff dragged the wintry air into his lungs and

expelled the breath into the frosty night. From his vantage point, the division of horizon and wood was an indecipherable blur, as hazy and unfocused a panorama as his own life's course had become. He had not seen Lord Gisborne in twenty years, yet the memories of living under his boot, under his whip, forever indebted to the miscreant for every morsel of food he took in the manor house and every thread of clothing he wore on his back still rankled him. What the lord had done in rescuing him from a life in the stable, he had done only for Guy's sake, and not a day had passed that Roger deGisborne had not found occasion to remind him of the cost of that charity. He had tasted the fruitfulness of life as a nominal noble, but he had also suffered the ceaseless insults and cuffs to the head when he was slow to learn, the boxing of his ears for daring to lift his chin in Lord Gisborne's presence, and the whip for growing into a body and mind that put his cousin in a dimmer light. Harsh punishments to body and soul, but they were childhood injuries, a fading stain on a long ago past he had almost forgotten. DeGisborne, however, had never forgotten. Twenty years, and the man had clutched tightly to his hatred, let it grow like an unchecked contagion, nurtured it until it had sprouted a feasible reprisal. Nottingham knew deGisborne had managed to turn a sizable handful of the barons against him. Odd that this sheriffdom meant so much to him now, and yet, without it, without Nottingham, who was he? A war-weary soldier, struggling through one inglorious skirmish after another, living beneath the muck of the earth and the blood of his slain men? A rogue champion of the lists, spending his youth to win horse and armor, seeking with each lance thrust to gain the respect that had always eluded him? A stableboy, nameless save the epithets the master flung at him, lonely, dirt-covered, without a mother's love or father's pride, without notion of belonging to time or place or family? If he was not Sheriff, what was he? Did not his miserable, useless life distill into something more notable when he slipped the chain of office over his head and felt its weight across his shoulders and chest? Roger deGisborne be damned, he would not relinquish that! He was the Sheriff of Nottingham. God's blood, he was that, if nothing else. He owed his title to no man, and no man would rob him of it. An icy gust of wind blew the hair back from his forehead and bathed him with the spatter of wet crystal fragments. Sleet. In an instant, the sound drew him back to the night he had spent with Thea. The steady bombardment of ice against the shutters as they had stormed together in their own tempest. He remembered how firelight danced off the sable furs and sheepskin and the dusky bare flesh of her shoulders; candlelight and the steam of the bath swirling from her fingertips as she caressed his face; her kissswollen lips reaching for his; the spirals of her hair, gilded and unloosed, dragging across his body like streaks of flame as she mounted him; the exquisite tension that swelled between them, that drove them together in an inexorable rhythm.

The frozen whip of air across his face lashed at the images in his mind. Oh, God, the cursed irony of the greenwood! To have supplied him with a creature who tormented his mind and his vitals and his very soul. What had Thea done with her innocent visions of justice and peace but erode the baneful will that had kept him loyal to Lackland? What had she done to him with her naive nonsense that he could make something good of himself and this maddened world into which he'd been thrust, to make him believe in the unlikeliest of possibilities? Crave her as he did, she was the most dangerous of all his obstacles. Slowly Nottingham looked upward. Behind the cover of clouds, he could see the night's stars struggling to break through, a silver spray of wealth in the heavens. Silver enough for any king's ransom, if only he could reach it, net it somehow, and drag it back to earth. He shuddered and quickly closed his eyes. Thea demanded too much. He was just a man--no god with superlative strength or unwavering goodness. Easier to reach where he could: the barrels and trunks of silver in the dungeon vaults. It was a crime, true, but no more or less a wrong than any he had committed since coming here. It was, as well, the only way to gain back the favor of the man who would be monarch of England. Lackland was en route; there was no turning back. Inevitably, the prince would arrive, expecting warmth and drink, raucous revelry, and a wench to lie on either side of his royal flesh. Demanding more. Demanding the silver of every estate in the shire, the life's blood of every serf, Richard's one hope for freedom. Demanding the sacrifice of Thea's illusion that he, Nottingham, was anything more than the monster Sherwood had made of him. Demanding treachery. *** "Look, Mistress Aelredson!" Thea followed the length of Simeon's arm as the boy pointed through the open shutters. A ripple of wind feathered his hair back from a scrubbed-pink face, and the child laughed with anticipation. "I've never seen a prince before! Have you, Mistress?" "Nay, Simeon. Only a king. Once. And then from afar." Thea smiled with the memory of how she and Brand had stood for hours along the road from Edwinstowe, waiting for a glimpse of Richard, of being rewarded only as the sun set, gilding the king's hair like a crown, turning the crimson caparisons of his stallion to violet. How proudly he had ridden, his nobly chiseled chin just slightly aloft with royal dignity. She had held her breath in her throat as he passed, understanding something of the mystery that led the young noblemen of the shire to flock to his Crusader's banner. The king embodied a certain presence, a magnetism that shone as palpably as his armor in the golden light.

Nothing like the man she saw now, as she raised herself on tiptoe and peered out the castle window over Simeon's raven head. Horsemen carrying the Plantagenet banners distinguished him more than stature. Small and squat in his saddle, Lackland all but disappeared in the midst of his entourage. Prince John appeared to have brought every soldier at his beck and call, and his ranks were swollen further still by the households of Nottinghamshire barons who had sworn him allegiance. Thea saw Baron Monteforte's gray gelding plodding spiritlessly behind the prince and his retainers, the baron swiping at his nose with an ermine sleeve. A full score of armored knights followed; behind them, the banners of another titled lord, his knights, his lady and her waiting women, then another lord, and another, ending with a full contingent of the Sheriff's soldiers guarding the rear. The procession stretched the length of the unpaved road through Nottingham Town and beyond. Thea found her breath trapped in her throat again, not unlike the time Richard had passed and she could scarce curtsy her heart was pounding so. Only there was no excitement now, no awe, no glee. This time she could only see the sheer number of soldiers, the watery sun's pale glint off steel swords and lances. There were so many of them, armed, and every one with a traitor's heart. Reluctantly, she looked back at Lackland and the tall, dark figure of the Sheriff, who rode beside him. The two appeared to be engaged in conversation, and even from this distance, Thea could tell their talk was animated, jovial, full of laughter. Her heart sank. "Simeon, we should not be here," she whispered, and moved to close the shutters. "But you promised! My Lord Sheriff promised! He said as long as he was below--" "Sh-sh, child." She ruffled the boy's fine hair, then laid her hand on his shoulder. "The Sheriff promised you could stay and look only if there was no work to be done. And from the size of the prince's retinue, there'll be horses trampling over one another to be watered and groomed and bedded for the eve. Come. They'll need you in the stables, and I'll not be chided for keeping you from your tasks." Simeon scowled, his full lower lip thrust out in disappointment, and Thea winced at the edge in her voice. She had not meant to admonish the lad so, certainly not for the exuberance he could contain no better than any seven-year-old getting his first glimpse of royalty. If only it had not been that royalty, that awful wood-slime of a man who held his dagger at England's purse strings, at his brother's back. At the Sheriff's throat. Prince John hardly deserved the child's unabashed admiration. "The scoundrel does not even sit a horse properly," Thea muttered under her breath. "All slumped over like the spineless thing he is--" "Mistress?" "Never you mind, Simeon. Perhaps if you're lucky you can tend to the prince's steed. Come now. They'll be through the gates any moment."

Simeon hurried out ahead of her, but Thea paused at the window, gazing out a moment before she latched the shutter. The snowy hills were scarred with the muddy ruts of torn earth, as far as the eye could see. She looked past the hills, to the rise of the forest, and frowned, her lip caught between her teeth. Mildthryth had succeeded in locating Alan, the minstrel, and delivering the message, but in the interval that had passed before Lackland's arrival, no word had come from the wood. She had waited, patience fraying into anxiety, jumping at each knock on her door in anticipation of seeing John disguised in his too-short priest's garb. She missed him, she realized. Try as she might, she could not erase her staunch defense of the Sheriff and their awkward parting the last time they had met in Sherwood. Nor could she invent the words now that would explain her change of heart in terms John would understand. How, after all, could she tell him her decision to intervene in Nottingham's scheme was but a way to demonstrate her love for the man, to prevent him from sealing a fate that would forever link his name with villainy? She could not even explain it to herself. Now she feared their breach had been too final. Had she damaged their friendship irrevocably? Had he abandoned her? Had Robin? Was she even now anathema to them because she had dared speak on the Sheriff's behalf? Her fingers trembled on the shutter latch, as her gaze combed the countryside a final time. By God's holy oath, where were they?

Chapter 29 Aelwynn cast a backward glance at the darkened corridor and held her breath, listening to the tramp of receding footsteps as the paired sentries turned the corner and vanished down an adjacent hallway. Easing her flattened spine away from the cold stone and mortar wall, she stepped out of the shadows and pushed open the oaken door. God's teeth, but that healing wench had taken her time in departing! Long after the rest of Nottingham was lined along the prince's parade route, the peasant had stayed, chattering with that stable brat who clung to her side like so much horse dung to one's heels. Even the old woman seemed in no hurry to haul herself to the upper bailey for a final inspection of the royal apartment. Aelwynn eased the latch into place and paused. The pungent smell of the herbalist's wares assaulted her nostrils, and she winced at the mingled odors. Rows of dead, dry plants rattled like bones above her head, and a variety of wooden and crockery vials, each inscribed with a curious script, filled the nearby shelves. Aelwynn's thin lips turned down at the corner. So the witch could read, could she? And write. A waste of talent, to be sure. Better the simpering fool develop a taste for suspicion and a flair for survival, qualities that would stand her in better stead.

Aelwynn pulled the cork stopper out of one bottle and sniffed the ingredients. Frowning, she wet the tip of her finger and brought the crumbs of dried leaves to her tongue. A hot, bitter taste filled her mouth, and she spat, swearing aloud. Foxglove, and without the mask of honey that made a serviceable purgative. It would do, of course, but not nearly well enough. Not quickly enough. And it must be quick. At least it was some small comfort to know that among her cures, the Sherwood whore kept a goodly stock of poisonous compounds. She replaced the stopper and ran her finger along the row of jars. The herb witch had amassed quite a store of simples, when she was not busy in the Sheriff's bed. Aelwynn did not possess more than a rudimentary knowledge of herbs, but Monteforte had made that unnecessary. Surreptitiously, she took the pouch that dangled at the end of her girdle and loosened the ties at its neck. He had provided the means, the instructions, everything save the gall to carry out his dastardly plan. And that he had left to her. Aelwynn chose a vial at random, emptied its contents onto the table, and replaced them with the henbane Monteforte had provided, reserving enough for her own purpose. She returned the bottle to the cupboard, and folded the remaining herbs back in their parchment wrapper. Efficiently, she swept the herbs she had removed from the vial into her pouch and added the parchment square. There were few, if any, among Lackland's party who would care should the Sheriff take suddenly ill; in truth, Monteforte would have rid the shire of him weeks ago and spared Aelwynn no admonishment on the failure of her other attempts. What could she say? Nottingham had been lucky. So far. No time remained for delay or another bungling of their plans, or the Sheriff's unfathomable ability to escape the fate planned for him. Nottingham must be removed before the weakening in his loyalties ruined everything. Monteforte had insisted upon it. And Lord Roger deGisborne promised to reward her handsomely for opening the way for his son to assume the main role in the transfer of silver. Aelwynn thought briefly of Guy of Gisborne. Not a leader, but then that was not what they wanted. He would do what was required of him and had neither the intelligence nor the spine to question his orders. A season ago, she would not have given the lieutenant more than a passing glance, perhaps stooped to a trifling flirtation were she bored. But a season ago, Nottingham had been hers, and the outlaw woman from Sherwood had not even existed. The Sheriff had indeed outlived his usefulness. Vehemently, Aelwynn tugged the strings of her pouch closed. So, for that matter, had that simpering witch who had robbed him of his ambition. If suspicions were to be raised over her lover's death, let them fall on her. *** The Yuletide season traditionally lasted from Christmas Eve until Twelfth Night, and Thea had managed to escape the few days and evenings after Prince John and the barons arrived by keeping to her usual routine of caring for the sick. However the Sheriff had made it clear that he expected her attendance at the Yuletide festivities; keeping to her chamber was not an option.

Mildthryth had spent the better part of the day fussing over last minute preparations of Thea's gown, and as the sun dipped below the hills of the shire, Thea had given herself reluctantly to the serving woman's ministrations. "I know what you're thinking, lamb," Mildthryth said, lowering a shift of embroidered ivory silk over Thea's head, "but you cannot delay further. Besides, he needs you there." "To watch him make the worst mistake of his life? Why must I be witness to that?" "He needs your strength," was all Mildthryth would say as she tugged the laces tight at Thea's waist and again at her wrists where the long, narrow sleeves ended. "I could do without the gaiety and revelry. In truth, I don't think I can abide this masquerade." "You'll manage, and he'll manage better with you at his side." "It's the powerlessness, Mildthryth. Knowing what is about to happen and being unable to do a single thing to prevent it. It seems as if I am doomed to stand by and watch as those I love slip beyond my grasp. It was that way with Brand, and now Nottingham. Is it so wrong to want to challenge the unfairness of it all? Brand lay dying and I cried out to God, wondering how He could give me the talent to heal and then strip it from me at the one time that mattered most. And now--if love is so powerful a thing, how is it that my love is not enough to alter the Sheriff's course?" Mildthryth shook her head. "You cannot blame yourself for the Sheriff's steadfastness. If he is doing wrong, 'tis for him to correct his course, not you. His errors are not your burdens, lamb. If 'tis treachery, or sin, only he will be judged." "But I will be punished, for what worse sentence is there than to be forced to watch as the man I love commits the one act that will surely separate us forever? If I could, Mildthryth, I would stop them all! If it meant bringing Nottingham Castle down to a rubble of stone, I would do it!" "You've done all you can." The softly spoken reminder hung in the air between them, and Thea closed her eyes against the tears that threatened. Mildthryth took the dark green gown Thea had chosen to wear, and lifted it over her head. Green, like the forest, she had said, when she'd picked it over a number of more luxurious kirtles. The soft wool fit her snugly over her breasts and waist, but the sleeves fell into long trailing bells at her elbow and were knotted at the ends to prevent them from dragging in the rushes. The hem of sleeves and skirt were embroidered with gilt thread that sparkled under the candlelight, and a narrow gold cord girded her waist, her one concession to senseless finery. Mildthryth had coerced her spirals of hair into braids and woven handfuls of tiny gilt filaments through them so that every turn of her head caught the light and glittered like coppery fire, but Thea would wear no veil or wimple, no jewelry, no stain of berries on her lips or cheeks.

Undoubtedly she would look out of place among the other ladies of the prince's entourage, but she didn't care. Let them see her swathed in the colors of Sherwood, let them laugh and joke behind their milk-white hands of the peculiar woman the Sheriff had employed as surgeon. Let the rumors run rampant; no doubt, they would anyway. A knock sounded at her door, and Thea knew he had come for her as promised to escort her into the great hall. "Are you ready, then?" Mildthryth gave the skirts a final brush of her hand and pinched Thea's cheeks to redden them. "This is a travesty," she muttered under her breath. "My soul will burn in hell for even playing a part in it." "Aye, well, you'll look like heaven itself on your way then, if I do say so myself." Mildthryth opened the door and stood aside as the Sheriff entered. For a long moment, no one in the room spoke. Thea's throat tightened as she pressed her lips together grimly, and held out her hand to him. *** The great hall had been utterly transformed. Ablaze with torchlight and myriad candelabra, the room seemed afire with revelry and expectation. Banners hung from the vaulted ceiling; one emblazoned with the golden Plantagenet lions on a scarlet field formed the backdrop for the high table, which was draped in snowy damask and festoons of ivy, winter berries, and gold ribbons. Centerpieces, each comprised of twelve candles and surrounded by an equal number of holly springs, adorned the high table as well as the two tables juxtaposed at either end. Silver plate and gem-encrusted goblets sparkled at each setting. For a solemn, midland fortress, Nottingham Castle had made an elegant display of itself. A great crush of people filled the room, and the noise of their talking was momentarily deafening. Thea halted just inside the arched entrance, fingers biting into the Sheriff's forearm to detain him. "I can't do this," she murmured. Even as she spoke, the sound of laughter swallowed her words. Nottingham looked down at her, his eyes lit with amber threads of candlelight. He looked resplendent, garnets and intricate embroidery of gold and burgundy trimming his black, fur-edged cloak. The pattern of jewels and metallic threads was repeated on his tunic, rimming the neckline and striping down each tight-fitting sleeve. If there were hesitancy on the Sheriff's part, he disguised it well. "We mustn't keep our guests waiting," he said, bending his head close to hers. "Ah, here she is!" A booming voice called out, and the hall fell to silence. Clusters of parti-colored tunics and gowns parted with a silken rustle as the guests moved back, bowing or curtseying, to make room for Prince John of England. "Our Lord Sheriff has whetted our appetite for you, madam, with tales of your miraculous cures. You did not say, Nottingham, what a rare vision she was."

Thea had a glimpse of dark hair cut blunt at a square jaw, of a swarthy complexion and discerning eyes meeting hers with something less than amusement or geniality. In a pause that stretched out a trifle long for propriety, she met his gaze, then bent into a stiff curtsey. "Your Highness." "An absolutely charming piece of baggage," the prince continued, dismissing Thea without so much as a word. Lackland laid his hand on the Sheriff's shoulders and steered him aside. "Tell me," he continued as the two of them walked away and the crowd resumed its chatter, "however did Aelwynn take being rousted from your bed. Now there's a talented wench. You could search the countryside and still not find a tastier meal than what lies between that woman's thighs." The Sheriff's reply, if there was one, and the prince's lewd ramblings mixed with the clamor of the other guests, and Thea straightened, her hands drawn into tight fists amidst the folds of her skirt. Enough then, she had made an appearance and would be damned before she subjected herself to breathing the same air as that man and his cohorts. Nottingham had all but disappeared into the throng of his guests, and she would not be missed. She turned on her heel and made quickly for the doorway, only to feel someone yank on her sleeve. She wrenched away from the hold and started to hurry past, but an iron hand circled her upper arm and drew her roughly aside. "Leaving before the first course, lass?" Thea's heart turned over beneath her ribs, then raced headlong into panic. "John!" "And I hear there's to be quite a spread. Roast venison in pepper sauce--and where do ye suppose they found that, I ask? Meat pies with pastry as brown as ye'd like. Pig turning on the spit in the kitchen, dripping with seasoned oils. I'd as like come fer the victuals as much as yer message." "You fool! Hide yourself!" She shoved him into a darkened corner behind the privacy of a hanging tapestry. "Aye, and thank ye fer such a warm and hearty welcome, Thea." "God and all the saints!" A host of emotions slammed through her, and she covered her face with her hands and sobbed. "Shush, lass. And I put on Tuck's finest habit to impress ye. Here now, 'tis nothing, shush--" She threw herself into John Little's arms, and in the next second pushed herself away from him. "You came! I was past believing there was any help. Why did you not send word? Why did you--?" "Dry yer tears, now. Did ye think I'd leave ye alone when the time came? Didn't ye know, lass? One word, and I'd be at yer side. No tiny row between us would change that."

"But I thought--" "And not I alone, ye'll be glad to know," he continued, winking at her as a sly grin spread through gingered whiskers. "I'll not be so bold as to point them out, but stay a while and enjoy yer feast, and see if some of the faces don't look a tad familiar to ye." "They're here?" Thea asked incredulously, already looking over her shoulder at the milling crowd. John turned her cheek back to him. "Aye, if yer manner don't send them scurrying fer the nearest doorway." He laid a large finger aside his lips. "Try and see if ye can keep yer wits about ye fer a change." "How ever did you manage?" "Hell, lass, Nottingham Castle done flung open its gates fer every last man and woman in the shire. T'weren't nothing, save fer Alan, who tried to get in the proper way, saying he was a minstrel and all. But I fear the lad's ballocks have dropped; his voice has taken on a peculiar bass at inopportune times, and the Sheriff weren't having--" "How can you even jest about such a thing?" "Best do my laughing now, lass, fer there's work to do later, and plenty of it. The vaults are nigh swollen with silver and armaments, and ye cannot be about the halls without tripping over a dozen of Nottingham's soldiers, all being on their best behavior fer once. Damn the bleeding lot of them, but they don't intend to make this an easy one." "What must I do, John?" "Well, ye sit at yer bastard Sheriff's side and enjoy yer venison. Sip yer wine. Smile ever so sweetly. See if ye can't keep a respectful tongue in yer head so no one is the wiser." "But--" "Stay out of trouble. Do ye think ye can do that, lass?" "Aye, but, John, there must be more! Let me--" "Keep out of harm's way, Thea," he said, a somber look in his green eyes. Thea gritted her teeth, and a muscle worked in her tightened jaw. "I can help." "Aye, ye have. We're here. Now let the lads have their fun." "Damn you, John, I am--" "Listen to me, and listen well, fer it's as clear as the look on yer face ye haven't considered what will come of this." John folded his hands over her shoulders and stared at her with intensity she had never seen in the man. "Should we make off with the silver,

should we succeed, there will be hell to pay fer it. Not just fer us, but also fer ye. And as fer yer Sheriff, whether 'tis by Lackland's hand fer fouling his plan or Richard's fer playing party to treason, the man's coming down, and there's naught to save him. I know ye made yer choice back there in the wood, and while I cannot say I like it, I allowed it. But the time has come, lass. Stay with him, and ye sign yer own death warrant. Not even I can rescue ye from that." "But--" "Be ready to leave when I come fer ye." "John, I cannot--" "Ye can and ye will, lest ye have me truss you like a squealing piglet and haul ye out of here myself. Until then--" He tilted his cowled head in the direction of the festivities, and a brief smile supplanted the look of danger and warning on his face. "I sampled the venison myself. 'Tis quite tasty."

Aelwynn traded glances with Baron Monteforte across the crowded room, then she scanned the hall for the familiar faces of her other accomplices. Ah, yes, de Stradley, bedecked like a barnyard cock in yellow and red, swaggering among the guests as if he owned the place. Luterell, whose effeminate features and vapid smile belied his treacherous thoughts. And over beside the hearth, away from the others, sulking as if the eve's events were not at all to his liking was Gisborne. Aelwynn allowed a brief frown to cross her face, then replaced it with studied nonchalance. Gisborne had seen to his duties well enough, if not altogether soberly, but he was still unpredictable. He had said little of his reunion with his father save that the man's ambition had not mellowed in the intervening years. When she had prodded him for details, wanting to know if he had been forgiven the lapse of his youth, wanting to know if he had managed to salvage their relationship, Gisborne had only snarled contemptuously. "He wants me as sheriff, does he not?" It was not an altogether satisfactory, or reassuring, response, and Aelwynn had spent the better part of the eve coddling the lieutenant's insecurities and assuring him he was made for something more glorious than a common soldier and lackey. She hoped she had been convincing. The Sheriff was but a millstone around Gisborne's neck now, and Gisborne knew it. Best to sever whatever strange ties of loyalty bound them before he made a complete fool of himself. The plan had been set into motion, whether he realized it or not. By tomorrow, he would wear the chain of office and Nottingham Castle would be his. He had only to play the role of witless pawn. Aelwynn's gaze drifted to the Sheriff, and for a moment, a rarely felt spear of regret lanced through her. Unfortunate that the tide had turned against him, for he was truly a

magnificent man in nearly every respect. Even now, she was able to appreciate the fineness of his dark figure, the boldness of his gestures, the keen sexual fire that he lit wherever he went. If only he had not allowed that Sherwood vixen to come between them; if only the witch had not softened his heart and his drive and his all-consuming authority. She shrugged, and dismissed the months she had been a servant to her lust for him. That was the past, and now she would use him as he had used her. She had not survived as long as she had, alone, without recognizing that shifts of power were as natural and inevitable as the changing of the moon, without predicting who would next hold the reins of control and quickly assessing how she might insinuate herself into his sphere of influence. She looked, at last, upon the man she had chosen for herself, long before he had even set foot in the shire. Lord Roger deGisborne had the wiry stature of his son, the same hollowed cheeks and angular jaw, the same darting eyes that lent him the appearance of a watchful hawk as he surveyed the room from the periphery of the crowd. But there all similarity vanished. His hair, although Norman-sheared, was a lush crown upon his head, gray streaked equally with black and white. His attire was immaculate and understated, as was so often the case among those who had inherited their fortunes, took their abundance easily for granted, and saw no need to flaunt their largesse. Through his aide, he had promised Aelwynn a personal audience were her mission successful, during which he no doubt would discuss his son and his rise in power. Aelwynn had other intentions, however. At one time, she might have settled for being the consort of Gisborne, as sheriff. Indeed, she had spent enough of her time with him when he was without title or importance. But her eyes were set on something, and someone, infinitely more fitting her appetite. Roger deGisborne owned an estate in Normandy to equal few others and had Prince John's undivided attention, such prestige as Gisborne could only hope for, and her blood ran hot and thick in her veins at the prospect of a liaison with a man of such dominance and potential. And wealth. She caught Monteforte's questioning gaze again as a minstrel announced the meal and the lords and ladies took their seats at table, and smiled silkily. She glanced at the Sheriff's place at the high table, and back at Monteforte, a triumphant look upon her face. *** Nottingham had surrendered his seat of honor to Lackland, and the shire barons and their ladies lined the table on either side of the prince. The Sheriff being merely a royally appointed keeper of justice maintained a position farther away from the nobility who came by their titles through birth. It came as a relief to Thea that she was not wedged between any known traitors, but rather found her place beside the Sheriff at the far end of the dais. The feast marked the breaking of Advent's fast, as well as the arrival of the prince and barons, and she could only imagine what a display of food and beverage Nottingham

had ordered to impress his guests. It would not matter, she thought nervously. She could eat none of it, knowing that as she dined here, John and Robin were hatching a plan to be the Sheriff's undoing. She looked at Nottingham, tempted to beg leave for a sour stomach, but one look at him kept her silent. The tension in his body was visible, and as she took her seat, she could feel the rigidity of his thigh brushing hers. He bent his head low, his voice privately muted. "Twelve courses and subtleties in between. You'd be well advised to eat nothing." Her eyes widened, then darted to Lackland whose servant tasted the first slice of venison and pronouncing it fit. "Not him," the Sheriff said under his breath. "But if what Gisborne said is true, I have been threatened and warned. It would make a tidy way to dispense with my cumbersome presence." "But--" "Smile, sweet, you are being watched. It appears Roger deGisborne has taken a particular interest in you." Nottingham raised his wine goblet in the direction of the lord and nodded his head in polite recognition. His eyes blazed with cold hatred, although his lips curved into an appropriately subservient smile. "What am I to do?" "Pretend courtesy. Pretend to be engrossed in an absorbing discussion with me. I believe you are sly enough for that, are you not?" He had said few enough words to her all eve that those he spoke now struck her heart with the impact of an arrow. "You said you wanted my company. There's no need to give me a lesson in cruelty." His lips tightened, as he bit back the bitter remark too late. "Forgive me. I have used my allotment of tact for the day, and weary of deceit." He looked askance at her. "I am glad you are here. It makes it somewhat easier to bear. Pretend I am not such a crass idiot." Thea pushed the food around their shared trencher with her knife, trying to stay the trembling in her hands. "If they are intent on removing you, what loyalty do you owe them now? If you would but see reason--" "I will not have you argue this tonight of all nights! I beg nothing of you but companionship and a willingness to let drop this constant badgering. Barring that, silence will suffice." She pushed her chair back, but found his hand gripping her thigh. "Silence." She glanced at the fingers wrinkling her skirts, then at the Sheriff's face. His features could have been carved from granite; his eyes glinted like polished steel. They all

wanted pretense from her--John, Mildthryth in her kindly way, now Nottingham. Yet how could she pretend not to care that the world he had built was crumbling down around the man she loved, that in days, or maybe hours, he would find himself beneath the deadly rubble of his own making, and she could do nothing to prevent it? "Play your game? Is that it, Sheriff?" He said nothing. Whatever conscience or heart he possessed seemed buried beneath an impenetrable mask, if either existed at all. "Very well," she said tightly. "But do not expect me to remain at your side and gloat for your good fortune. Deliver the silver. Save your undeserving arse. Reap your rewards. I will not stay past tomorrow's dawn to bear witness to another moment of your undoing." He turned away, attention focused on the goblet of untouched wine as he dragged his forefinger around the lip of the cup. "Do as you wish. I will not stop you. Only, tonight . . ." His voice trailed off, and he looked up again, something far away and unspoken in his eyes, something she could not begin to understand, or condone. The uneaten remains of their first course were dumped into the alms basket, as were the second and third courses. The Sheriff dropped into a doleful, if watchful silence, his gaze continuing to drift from one corner of the great hall to the other. No one could assume he was anything other than a consummate host, carefully observant that all details of the feast went as planned. One course blurred into another, tension sharpening some events, numbing Thea's senses to others. The entertainment between the courses provided an inane counterpoint of merriment. Minstrels, tumblers, mummers, those Nottingham had employed as well as those who were a part of the prince's entourage, all performed, and none of it meant anything save the end of another course and the beginning of another. As the evening wore on, it took on an air of unreality, of implausibility. Though she had tasted no wine, Thea felt as if she viewed everything from behind the veil of a drunken stupor, removed and alone, insensate to the endless celebration around her. Toward the end of the feast, the cook and his staff brought forth a subtlety of sculpted sugar fashioned into the shape of a lion that was paraded around the room and presented to Prince John. Lackland stood, already a little unsteady on his feet from a surfeit of wine, and raised his cup. "Trusted friends," he said, and the hall fell silent, heads turning toward the dais. He drew out the moment, narrow eyes commanding the attention of every one in the room. "Were our brother here to see for himself how valiantly you have flocked to our side in this, England's most needful hour. Alas, 'tis his very absence that makes us needful, and for that we salute him." An uncomfortable rippled of laughter circled the room.

"Those here present, who have come to our aid with your sworn allegiance, far more valuable than treaties, with your armaments, with such donations of material wealth that we are humbled by your generosity, you are the vanguard of England's new age." Thea cast a look around her, watching the assemblage of Prince John's supporters. It seemed as if every political turncoat in the land was gathered here; the number and wealth and prestige of Lackland's allies made real what had been before only a threat. This man would rob King Richard of the throne. He had the strength, the backing, and the unmitigated gall. "We have labored long, sacrificed much," the prince continued, "but now the rule of our absent king is at an end." He stared at the carved subtlety for a long moment, then looked back over the crowd, a twisted grin at his lips. "Raise your cups and drink with us! A New Year, a new rule!" The crowd echoed his words loudly, enthusiastically. Lackland took his meat dagger, raised it high into the air, and brought it down upon the sugary beast, lopping off the lion's head with a decisive strike. The hall erupted into gales of laughter, then cheers, deafening to Thea's ears. "I won't abide this a moment longer," she said, although she knew the noise drowned out her words to all but the Sheriff. "That Judas, that animal, no more deserves to be king than--" "Raise your cup," Nottingham said tightly without looking at her. "Minstrels!" the prince called out. "We favor a song! A dance! A celebration!" The hall filled with music as lords and their ladies spilled onto the floor, and Thea felt the Sheriff's hand close around hers. Over her protests, Nottingham led her from the dais to join their guests, and she forced her clumsy, leaden legs to mimic the steps of the round and carol dances. The music sounded like a roar in her head; the intricate steps became a jumbled blur; the drunken laughter reverberated in her aching head, fraying shattered nerves. She let herself be handed off from one partner to the next, a small stiff smile frozen in place, as she sought constantly to keep her eyes on Nottingham. Then suddenly she stopped, her abrupt halt causing several of the dancers to stumble into her. "I beg your forgiveness," she mumbled, not looking at any of them, stepping away from the broken ring of revelers. She was dimly aware they had closed the gap, clasped hands again, continued dancing without her, continued laughing. No one even heard her small gasp as she looked toward the dais. Lord Gisborne leaned against the end of the table, forehead perspiring from the dance, and lifted a goblet of the Sheriff's wine to his lips--

She shoved through a knot of spectators, felt the jab of an elbow in her ribs. "No! Let me pass!" --Drank heartily, refilled the cup-"No, you must stop! No!" --And drained it. Behind her the musicians ended their song and the dancers broke apart, weaving in and out of her field of vision as they returned to their places at the table. Nottingham appeared at her elbow. "Thea?" She could see deGisborne look at the cup, his brow furrowing. "Oh, sweet Mary!" She pushed past the Sheriff without acknowledging him and rushed to the table, coming to a breathless halt among the rushes. "My Lord Gisborne." "Ah, yes, the . . . surgeon, is it?" "My lord, I beg a word with you--" "And my dear Sheriff. I must make complaint of your wine, sir." He grimaced. "I've not had such bitter swill since--" "My lord, I must implore you--" "Thea?" She paid the Sheriff no heed, but reached for deGisborne's arm to steer him aside. "If you will come with me, perhaps--I mean to say, the wine--it is truly vile. We noticed it ourselves and were--" "A forward wench," deGisborne said, "but I could expect no more for the tastes of a barn bastard." Nottingham drew into a taut posture beside him. "I fear the wine may have been tainted, my lord," Thea continued, trying in vain not to call attention to their discussion. Already, several people had clustered about them. "I can supply a remedy, but you must come now." "DeGisborne?" Baron Monteforte pushed his way to the front of the enlarging circle on onlookers, his usually florid face grown slack and jaundiced. The lord's face was flushed, and Thea lifted her hand to his cheek. He slapped it away. "Away, wench! Nottingham take your whore aside!"

The hall seemed to quiet at deGisborne's bellow. Several of the other nobles flocked to the dais. "There's been a mistake--" Thea began. "The wine could be fouled, sir," the Sheriff said. "If you will permit my surgeon--" "Damn you!" "Haste is of the essence--" "Here now, what it the trouble?" Prince John sidled through the crowd, a smirk of irritation on his face. "Not up to our English dances, deGisborne? God's teeth, man. Are you ill?" "I fear it's the wine," Thea intruded, earning only a scowl of heated wrath from the prince. "Impudent wench! Sheriff, do you care to explain this?" "Your Highness--" Nottingham inclined his head slightly, "I've no wish to cause alarm, but if you will beg my indulgence, it is imperative that Lord Gisborne accompany my physician. Let us retreat to a private chamber where he may be tended--" Already the crowd had begun to whisper. "Is it poison?" "Did she do it? The herb woman?" "It's the Sheriff's cup. Perhaps she meant it for him." "Enough!" Nottingham's voice rang out, silencing the clamor. He turned again to deGisborne. "Sir, if you will come without delay--" "Get your filthy hands off of me!" DeGisborne thrust the Sheriff aside, then stumbled back against the table, confusion and disorientation filming his eyes. Thea saw the dilated pupils, the labored breathing. Dissolved in wine, the poison would speed to his heart. She reached out to him just as his knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor, dragging the damask tablecloth with him. Silver goblets clattered to the floor, and the upturned wine spilled in bloody pools around him. "My lord, please, I beg you. Come with me." Lackland frowned, the possible seriousness of the situation beginning to dawn on his dark features. "Send for my surgeon," he ordered one of his servants. "A purgative, deGisborne," he joked hollowly, "'twill set you aright come morn." The Sheriff signaled for two of his soldiers to come and help deGisborne to his feet and assist him from the hall.

"I'm going with them," Thea announced. *** Prince John's surgeon paced back and forth in the darkened chamber, muttering to himself and stroking the graying beard that came to a point at his chin. "Henbane, I suspect. Or belladonna. One cannot be certain." "There is no rash," Thea offered. She had stood by as Lackland's leech had induced vomiting with mulberry bark boiled in vinegar, then followed with an antidote of goat's milk, mustard seek, and honey water. She could find no fault with his course of treatment, but deGisborne was not responding. "I would suggest henbane." "I would suggest you leave this matter to one with true knowledge," the physician returned. "Or are you so experienced with the administration of poisons that you know something I do not?" Thea stiffened at the affront. "Not with their administration, sir," she said with quiet authority. "But I know something of their effects." "Do you now?" Baron Monteforte commented. He had insisted on following the group to deGisborne's room, along with several of the lord's servants and an equal number of guards. "Then perhaps you might care to comment on how such a virulent compound made its way into the wine at table." "Unfortunately, sir, I cannot even hazard a guess, although I assure you the Lord Sheriff will turn Nottingham Castle inside out until the culprit is found." "Indeed," Monteforte sniffed. "Then I presume he need look no further than his bed. The wine was at the Sheriff's place; it was obviously intended for him, left by his latest disgruntled conquest. But that would be you, my dear, would it not?" The muscles in Thea's jaw quivered as she stifled a retort. She turned to the pacing surgeon instead. "Is there anything you require from my still room, sir? All I have is at your disposal." "If you are as well-versed in poisons as you claim, wench, then you know there is naught to do now, but wait. Keep forcing down such milk or butter or cream as he will tolerate to absorb the toxins. And if in the passing of time he does not respond, I could let the poisons from his veins." "I hardly think that advisable--" "And I hardly think you need question the methods of someone possessing more than your charlatan's skill!" Monteforte thundered. "Is there a problem?" Thea turned to see the Sheriff standing in the doorway. His face was haggard, circles graying his eyes, the vertical crease between his brows deeply grooved.

"Vastly understated, as usual, Nottingham," Monteforte muttered. "Lord Gisborne has lapsed into an unquiet sleep," Thea said softly. "I wish I had more heartening news, but--" "Is there anything than can be done?" "You can find his killer!" Monteforte interjected. "Damn it all, Sheriff, must I point out that you have a murderer on the loose, a result, no doubt, of inadequate security measures--" "Please, this is neither the time nor the place for such a discussion," Thea said. "I quite agree." Nottingham placed his hand on the baron's shoulder and turned him toward the door. "If you haven't confidence in my surgeon, still you cannot question the expertise, or allegiance, of Lackland's own man. Come. I would value your assistance and your keen observations in this matter. Perhaps you noticed something tonight that I overlooked." Monteforte appeared mollified, if yet reluctant to leave deGisborne's bedside. "As you will, Sheriff. There are questions to be asked." "And I shall take charge of the interrogation personally. DeGisborne was like a fath--" Nottingham paused, and began again. "The man was my only benefactor. Rest assured I shall have justice in this matter." "And, of course, the transfer of silver must proceed." Thea watched Nottingham's face darken, eyes narrow, his only reply. *** The night passed, and the next day, and deGisborne did not rally. He slept as if drunk, muttering incoherently, waking to hallucinations, and picking at the air with nervous, tic-like gestures. Lackland's surgeon bled him, to no avail other than to reduce the delirium to coma. The warm, flushed skin paled to an ashen gray, blue around his lips and nails. The racing heartbeat slowed. Thea had not been allowed to treat him, but neither had the leech sent her away. She had made herself useful, interposing herself between the lord and an endless barrage of curious guests, not the least of which was the would-be usurper himself. She bathed deGisborne's face and hands, tried to soothe him during times of frenzy, fetched food and drink for the surgeon. None of it was enough. When the Sheriff returned on the eve of the second day, she went to him, carefully pulling the door closed behind her.

"I do not think he will awaken," she said, watching Nottingham's face for the smallest reaction. "I cannot say with certainty even what the poison was, although I suspect henbane. It is deadly enough. Four leaves, ground, dissolved in wine--it would require no more." "How long, do you think?" The Sheriff peered down at her, his features an unreadable mask. "Hours." He looked at the heavy, iron-banded door as if he could see through it to the man inside, but said nothing. "How is Gisborne?" Thea asked finally. "Playing the dutiful, if belatedly prodigal, son. He has questioned staff, guests, conducted a search of rooms and belongings to such a thorough degree that this castle will no doubt be removed from the royal itinerary henceforth." Nottingham exhaled sharply. "Privately, he seems relieved. If there were ever any feelings between them as might exist between father and son, the last twenty years dulled them considerably. DeGisborne's attempt to make his son his pawn, once again, and after all this time, put to death anything that remained between them. It is something I cannot say I ever noticed in him myself--Guy's need to be his own man. I accepted his loyalty as begrudgingly as he offered it." "Then you do not think--? Forgive me, I have no right even to suggest such a thing." "That he poisoned the wine himself, to be rid of me, to claim my position? No, Gisborne is the least suspect of the lot of them. Even if he had the means." The Sheriff laughed ruefully. "God knows, if Gisborne coveted this office for himself, he could have let me die easily enough in Sherwood, or found any number of other ways to eliminate me over the years. And while I suppose the thought crossed his mind on more than one occasion, he would never carry it through. As much as Gisborne wants power, he does not have the courage to pick it up or assume the responsibility that comes with it. That he told me of the jeopardy I faced is all the proof I need. No, he is not the one." "Then who? Have you uncovered anything?" "There have been rumors, of course, which I have tried to lay to rest." "Yes?" Nottingham hesitated. "I suppose it is only a natural assumption, Thea, and I cannot protest overmuch lest I draw even more suspicion." "They cannot suspect you!" He shook his head, and when he looked at her, his eyes lanced through every shattered nerve she had tried to mend in the last few days. "No, Thea, they want you for questioning."

Chapter 30 Evening had fallen, and the remnants of the last meal of the day had been cleared from the great hall. The Yule log still blazed, and the garlands of holly and ivy still draped the hall, but no sign of festivity or merriment remained. The high table was lit by torches at either end and seated beneath the Plantagenet banner were Prince John and a group of several lords, Monteforte among them. Gisborne, too, had taken position there. The rest of the hall had been cleared, trestle tables broken down and pushed aside, sleeping pallets removed. Nottingham directed Thea to a single chair that had been placed on the floor below the dais, and she lowered herself to the seat, feeling dwarfed by the expanse of the hall. It had been hours since she had slept, and then only in intermittent snatches as deGisborne's condition worsened, days since she had first donned the now wrinkled kirtle or brushed her hair. She smelled of vomit and medicinal herbs, of sickness and impending death, and deGisborne's blood splotched her skirts and sleeves from carrying away the bowl after the surgeon had opened his vein. Nottingham had insisted she come immediately, to put an end to the nonsense and let him be about the matter of finding deGisborne's assailant, and, in truth, she had not had time to acknowledge the tension gathering within her. Now, sitting alone in the cavernous hall, a brace of candles at her side illuminating her face, she felt the first stirring of apprehension. Thea told herself she had nothing to fear. She had done no wrong, had rushed immediately to deGisborne's aid, had offered her services and supplies to the surgeon, and although her skills had been repudiated, she had stayed close at hand, performing the menial, but essential tasks of the sickroom. She buried her hands in the folds of her kirtle, and vowed silently to show her interrogators no alarm and every willingness to cooperate. They were assembled only to find deGisborne's killer, and of that she was innocent. No one knew that at this very moment, Nottingham Castle had been infiltrated by outlaws scheming to undermine these traitors' plans, that, indeed, she had been the one to summon them. No one need know. Thea heard the heavy double doors to the hall close behind her, sealing the room from any curious passerby. Two guards, armed and mailed, took position at the barred entrance, as the Sheriff mounted the dais and stood before his empty chair. He nodded to his scribe, who uncorked a bottle of ink and took up his pen. "Let the record read: On this, the 26th of December, in the year of our lord, 1193, the suspect, Thea Aelredson, comes of her own volition to be questioned in the matter of the poisoning of Lord Roger deGisborne, that present here are . . ." The words were empty of emotion; Nottingham seemed immobile with stiff resolution. It was a formality, Thea told herself, and he could not exempt her from undergoing what every other denizen or guest of Nottingham Castle had been through.

"Thea Aelredson--" She drew a deep breath, steadying herself, fingers gripping her stained skirts. "You are called here to answer in the matter of the attempted slaying of Roger deGisborne. Having proved yourself skillful and knowledgeable in the use of all manner of herbs, with, indeed, access to a store of such medicaments--" "You will find no henbane, my lord. Or belladonna, if that is the--" "I must caution you not to interrupt, but answer only when a question is posed you." "Then ask, and let me put an end to this nonsense!" Even from the distance between them, Thea could see the Sheriff's jaw clench, his gloved hand draw into a tightened fist. Clearing his throat, Nottingham repeated his last statement and continued, "And that possessing both ability and means, you have fallen under suspicion of attempted murder. Let the record also state that, at the request of those present, these proceedings will be conducted by Prince John of England, Count of Mortain, to whom I now relinquish the jurisdiction of my office. I attach my seal forthwith--" "What?" Thea rose to her feet. "What right has he to question me?" Lackland had been sitting slouched down in his chair. He now shoved his seat back and stood. He looked down at her for a moment, gathering the silence around him to his advantage. "We choose to disregard your outburst at this time, but we will not countenance another interruption." He glanced to the end of the table and said in a lower voice. "This need not be part of the record, scribe." "Mistress Aelredson," he continued, his flint-hard eyes boring into hers, "were our brother, King Richard, present, would you not submit yourself to his interrogation, as rightful ruler of this land?" "Aye, but--" "We rule England in his stead, and at his command. Furthermore, it cannot go unnoticed that your liaison with the High Sheriff hardly makes him an impartial judge. Not that you are here to be judged, mind you, but surely you must agree that in such a serious matter as the attempt on a man's life, we must take every precaution to achieve an unbiased interrogation." Color rushed to her cheeks, and she glanced at the Sheriff. Nottingham stared down at his clasped hands, avoiding her gaze. "You played their lackey? Coming to fetch me to this mockery of a trial when you knew all along--" "Silence!" Prince John's voice resounded within the empty hall. "You are even now in peril of your life. Be seated, and do not tempt our disfavor further by displaying your contempt of these proceedings." He strode from his seat to the end of the dais with slow,

measured steps, as if giving himself time to contemplate, then nodded toward the scribe, who dipped his quill anew in the ink. Thea felt for the chair with the back of her leg and lowered herself into the seat, her legs trembling. "To every question you are posed then, do we have your oath that you speak the truth?" "Aye, your Highness," she managed. "Very well. Are you familiar with the herbs which have been said to have rendered Lord deGisborne ill?" Thea swallowed hard. Her throat had grown dry; words seemed to stick to each other in her mouth. "Aye, your Highness. I know of henbane and its medicinal virtues. Its leaves can cool inflammation in the eyes, and if boiled in wine, can have a soothing effect upon joints that have stiffened in the cold. A decoction of the plant will kill lice--" "Have you used it in this way before?" Thea shook her head. "Nay, Sire, for there are other nostrums that bring similar results. I find them more useful." "So you do not, as a matter of course, use the plant in your healing?" "Nay, I do not." "Do you have it in your possession, on your person or in your chamber or in the castle garden?" "Nay, I do not keep henbane." "Liar!" Baron Monteforte's fist thundered down upon the table. "For your rooms were checked, wench, and it was found among your store of simples." "That is not possible. Perhaps the one who examined it was mistaken." Lackland drew forth a vial and set it on the table. "Would you examine it yourself, then, and tell us what this substance appears to be?" Thea stalled, feeling a chill rush through her. How could they find what was not there? Unless it had been placed there by another. "You may come forth," the prince prodded her. She rose on knees suddenly weak, and walked to the edge of the dais, reached up for the bottle, and removed the cork. She sniffed the herb inside, frowning at the foul odor, then spilled some into the palm of her hand, stirred it with her index finger, and brought a few grains to the tip of her tongue. She immediately felt the hot sting of the herb, tasted the sour spice of it.

"But this cannot be--" "Is this henbane?" "Aye, but--" "Aye!" Baron Monteforte interjected, "and found in your cupboard! You've lied to us about having the poison. Are we to believe you have any truth to tell in this matter? Your Highness, I believe the wench knows more than she's telling!" "As you indicated in deGisborne's chamber," Thea replied, her voice rising, "but I would not harm deGisborne. I would harm no one!" "You had the herb, the wine was at your place at table!" Color burned in Monteforte's face. "But I am no murderess! By my oath, I have done everything in my power, all that I was permitted to do, to save the man's life!" "Enough!" Prince John commanded. "Monteforte, your enthusiasm for the task at hand is duly noted, but we need no assistance from you in this matter." He leaned across the table toward Thea, bracing himself on outstretched arms, and although he feigned an air to evoke her confidence, his narrow eyes turned to blackened slits. "No one here accuses you of trying to harm deGisborne intentionally. However, there have been reports that, of late, you have engaged in argument with the Lord High Sheriff." "And what reports are these, your Highness?" "Servants, soldiers . . ." Lackland brushed the question aside with an impatient flick of his wrist. "Did you, in fact, argue with the Sheriff?" "I argue with the Sheriff all the time," Thea retorted, feeling her temper rise. "Ah--" "But there is nothing in the nature of our quarrels to warrant poisoning--" "A lover's quarrel, mayhap. A petty jealousy. It happens all the time. A woman feels slighted, decides to take revenge, something silly and inconsequential. Mayhap you thought to work your wiles on the Sheriff's gut. A plan to undermine him for the eve, keep him cloistered in the garderobe with a case of the flux--" "I did no such thing!" "Not murder, but an unfortunate accident, which you tried to remedy the moment you saw deGisborne take the wine." "Nay!" "We have caught you in one lie already. If you will--"

"I have spoken no lies!" Thea's words trampled over those of the prince, and if his face grew ruddy with mounting anger, it was but a fraction of the rage she felt. "Our generous nature permits you to save yourself, if you've a mind. Confess to your guilt and plead to the lesser crime--" "I confess to nothing! I have no poison, no henbane! If it was placed in the wine at the Sheriff's table, then look elsewhere for a culprit. Look to your own motives, to whoever among you has cause to do Nottingham harm, for did not you plan it all along? Did not you, Monteforte, make threat of--" Monteforte bolted from his chair. "I will not listen to the lies and accusations of this witch a moment longer! To make such charges against the nobility of this shire--a common peasant!" "A peasant, aye, but no murderess, and certainly no traitor to the Crown!" Monteforte choked on a gasp of outrage. "You would seek to condemn me?" Thea continued. "It is the lot of your who should be brought to trial! Every last one of you in evil league with this usurper!" "Sweet Mary and all the saints!" Monteforte roared. Two of the barons rose beside him; one seated next to Lackland slammed his goblet down, adding his voice to the furor. "You charge us? How dare you?" "I shall not suffer an affront from this woman!" "Nor should your Highness." Monteforte turned to the prince, fist thundering into his palm. "She should suffer for every false, evil utterance that spills from her lips!" Prince John grew more still the more enflamed the barons' speech. He looked down upon Thea as his jeweled fingers drummed a slow tattoo upon the table. When he had heard enough, his voice rose above the others. "And she will pay the price, Baron. But our cause is not to indict her today--or to rebuke her for what are obviously misinformed opinions--merely to determine the possibility of guilt. I believe we have done that." "Nay!" Thea cried out. "Lord Sheriff, have your men escort Mistress Aelredson to your gaol for safekeeping, where she may reflect upon her grievous errors and, in due course, confess her crime." The two guards appeared suddenly at her side, each grasping one of her arms, fingers digging in. "I have done nothing, I swear to you!"

"At the very least, you have tried my patience," Prince John said tersely. "Take her." She twisted frantically in the soldiers grip as they dragged her, forcibly, from the dais. She struggled to look back, to see the Sheriff, to find some stray glimmer of hope in his eyes, but one of the soldiers wrapped her braid around the palm of his hand and jerked her head forward. As they reached the door, she heard the prince's dry, humorless laugh. "I hope she's been worth it, Nottingham. This one will hang."

Outside the hall, the guards dropped all pretense of civility. They jerked Thea's wrists behind her, bound them, and once again on either side of her, shoved her forward. She struggled briefly, and paid for it with an open-palmed strike across cheek and mouth that sent her staggering back against the mortared walls. Her lip tore against her teeth, and she tasted the salty, metallic tang of blood even as she was hauled up indiscriminately by her kirtle and hair. "There'll be no mercy for the likes of you, wench," one soldier said, "a whore who takes the life of a nobleman. And do not think the Sheriff will save you. You'll not be the first he beds and hangs, when the cause is just." This time when they prodded her forward, she stumbled along between them, tripping over her skirts and the uneven stones that paved the corridor to the dungeon. When she did not keep pace with them, they dragged her; she felt her feet scrape stone, a slipper torn from her foot. Even before she had reached the bottom of the stairs that plunged below the bedrock of the castle, Thea could smell the rank odor of dampness and filth and death. The remembered horrors of her single visit to the dungeon flew back to her: the smell of roasting flesh, the sounds of implements sharpened on whetstone, the crack of the whip, the inhuman groans and whimpers, the darkness and decay. "Prisoner!" one of the guards announced, and the turnkey advanced to open the grate to one of the cells. His perspiring bulk loomed over her as he grinned, revealing a row of large, yellowed teeth, chiseled to points. "The Sheriff's whore. I remember you," he said. "Found the high and mighty Sheriff lacking and come to seek out other delights?" His large, bronze hand reached to caress her cheek where Thea could feel the beginning bloom of a bruise. "You'll be put to good use down here." His thumb traced her lips before plunging suggestively into her mouth. Thea bit down, tasted his blood mingling with hers. The gaoler yowled in pain, and the soldiers laughed. "This one's a murderess. And a witch. I'd be keeping your distance, Gryffyd." One of her captors thrust Thea inside the cell, watching in amusement as she landed hard amid soiled straw, and slammed the iron door shut. "For safekeeping, wench."

She ignored the continued taunts of her guards, and in time, bored with her silence, they returned to their duties in the hall. The turnkey continued to eye her warily, but even he kept his distance. She could see little in the darkness, could hardly move in the cramped space. There was no bench, not even enough straw to make a serviceable mattress, and the close air was thick with the odor of waste and sweat. She drew her knees up to her chin, clamping her mouth shut against the urge to retch, and took small, shallow breaths until she had grown more accustomed to the stench. Shivering, she huddled into a tight ball and fought the tears that gathered in her eyes. She thought of Nottingham, then pushed the thought away. He had let this happen, damn him! Coaxed her into coming with him to what she thought would be a fair hearing, then turned the questioning over to Lackland, her greatest enemy, allowed that braying jackass Monteforte to invent untruth about her. Not once did he try to halt the proceedings. Not once did he call for an end to the mockery. Not once did he even try to intervene. Damn him, damn him! Damn him to hell and back for selling her out to save his own miserable hide, to salvage his alliance with Prince John and his pack of powerhungry wolves. Damn him! The heat of anger dried her tears. How unreasonably naïve she'd become, how trusting, how gullible! How wrong! She had believed in him, and Nottingham had abandoned her. Every hope she'd ever had in him, he had taken in his gloved hand and crushed. He had used her no differently than he used any castle woman, to take what he wanted when he wanted it, then dispose of her. And, oh God, she had let him. She had invited him every step of the way. Thea struck the ground with her fist, despising him, despising herself for her own incomparable foolishness. She did not want to cry; she did not want to be afraid. She did not want to give him that power over her. But the tears came, streaking hot over her cheeks, gathering in the corner of her swollen lip. Shivering with the effort to contain them, she muffled her sobs against her knees. *** Aelwynn paced nervously in Gisborne's chamber. She had waited outside the great hall until the doors opened and two soldiers strode out, the struggling herb witch pinned between them. The clamor of angry voices had spilled out into the corridor in their wake, Monteforte's chief among them. She had hidden away from the torchlight lest she be seen, anxiously composing and discarding excuses for her latest failure with which to satisfy the barons. Even when the bell for Vespers had sounded, Monteforte--no one-had emerged from the great hall. Not wanting to draw notice, she had reluctantly retired to Gisborne's room, shivering in the meager heat of the hearth. Perhaps all was well. The Sherwood woman had angered them and drawn their blame, the little fool. And Monteforte could hardly throw suspicion upon her without also incriminating himself. She was safe from charges of murder, at least.

But to have poisoned Roger deGisborne! One of their own! The barons would flay her alive for that. Aelwynn swore under her breath. How inconvenient of the man to render himself completely useless to her! More importantly, what could she say to deflect Monteforte's anger? She twisted her hands together nervously, her ear to the door for what seemed the hundredth time, listening for Gisborne's booted footsteps. It was not time to despair, she told herself, but time to think! Monteforte would be angry, but she had dealt with angry men before. If she could only convince him that despite her failure to remove the Sheriff, nothing had happened that would prevent the barons' plan from proceeding. Ironically, Nottingham had sealed his own fate, revealed himself to be a man who consorted with a murderess, and one who could not hold her tongue at that. Surely that would breed disfavor with the prince, if not utter contempt. The barons could demand that the Sheriff be stripped of his office and the prince persuaded to appoint Gisborne in his stead. And Gisborne was predictable; he would deliver the silver without a second thought. Aelwynn turned on her heel. Gisborne, she laughed ruefully. To think it had all come to this: to be mistress of a malleable, spineless sheriff, buried away in a castle in the hinterlands, away from the royal court. An exasperated groan escaped her lips as she struggled to warm herself. It was not the power she had craved, but it was far removed from the dungeon of Nottingham Castle. And in time, with any good fortune whatsoever, she could parlay her position to one of greater esteem. Aelwynn heaved a sigh of relief as the events of the past days settled back into some predictable order, then swirled around as the chamber door opened. "Well?" Gisborne tore at the brooch closure of his mantle and threw the garment over the back of a chair. He poured a cup of wine and tossed it down his throat before replying. "Thea has been arrested. You should be pleased." "Why is that, my lord?" "The Sheriff's bed is empty once more." Aelwynn's laugh was a nervous twitter. "And why would I seek the bed of another man when I have one before me who knows far better how to please a woman?" Gisborne stopped in mid-motion, cup raised half-way to his lips. He looked at the wine, a curious expression marring his features. "Perhaps I should have asked someone to taste this first." "I do not know what you mean."

"But then you cannot go on casually eliminating men at random, for with whom would you ally yourself were I done harm?" Aelwynn shrugged her shoulder, pretending incomprehension. "I thought you said the Sherwood witch had been gaoled." "As she has." "And is that not what you've wanted all along?" "Well, I had rather wanted a taste of her first." Aelwynn laughed tensely, drawing her hand down her throat. "Yes, your small obsession. But she appears to have a rather lethal effect on her men, wouldn't you say?" "Where did you get the poison, Aelwynn." Vermilion lips pursed. "You think that I--?" "I know you wanted my cousin gone, but murder was a rather extreme move, don't you think?" "You're talking nonsense. The night has been long, and you are weary--" "Oh, indeed, I am weary. I am especially weary of your lies." "My lord, you are mistaken--" "I took you for an intelligent woman. A rarity in the species, I know, but I thought your deviousness had a certain admirable design to it, a boldness, a flair. Use your wiles to ingratiate yourself among the barons, do their bidding, agree to their insane plan to remove my cousin from office--" "I did that for you, my lord--" "You did it for yourself!" Gisborne hissed. Suddenly he loomed over her, firelight glancing off the angles of his cheekbone, off the golden hoop that dangled in his ear. His face was contorted with rage. "You seem to have planned it all so well, thinking I too much the weakling to do aught but allow it." "I never thought--" "Believing I craved his power as much as you, counting on my envy of him to keep me silent--" "But you--"

"Oh, I envied him. In truth. I envied his superior strength, his mastery of horses, his prowess with the sword, his relentless ambition, never taking by halves what he could take by whole. I even envied him his women." Aelwynn felt his gaze grow hot, branding her as it traveled from her face, to her breasts, to silk-clad hips. "But as much as you purported to know me, you did not know this: he is my cousin, and has saved my undeserving arse more times than I care to count; he is my cousin and because of him, I have a position that, as meager as it is, does not involve dying on the Welsh marches. Do I resent him? Yes. Do I feel jealousy curdle within me? A thousand times yes." "But--" Gisborne shook his head. "But to claim to know us both so well? For a woman of such insight, Aelwynn, I fail to understand how you never saw it. You expected to kill my cousin to make me more powerful? By God's own Mother, woman, my power comes from him! Everything I am I owe to him!" The guttural growl of Gisborne's voice echoed off the walls, as he lowered his head menacingly to her. "But here is where you plan so utterly failed," he continued, his breath against her neck hot with the aroma of wine. "You counted on me to say nothing, to do nothing, to let the barons rob him of what was rightfully his and bestow it upon me. You counted on my weakness. Not an altogether flattering presumption on your part." "But--" "My father will not live to see the morrow. I assume you want my silence on the truth of his death." He laughed bitterly. "But what protection can I offer you, a man you believe powerless save that you connive for him, murder for him, a man you can manipulate with a honeyed word?" "My lord, you are hardly weak--" "Spare me your coddling, Aelwynn. I've no need for it now." "But if you will only allow me--" "Oh, I will grant you silence," he continued. "After all, the Sherwood woman is where she belongs, no doubt, and for that alone I wish you some sort of clemency. But for underestimating me?" From beneath his tunic, Gisborne pulled out the vial Aelwynn had put in Thea's cubpboard. "I don't think I should forgive that so readily." He looked at her, his pale eyes blazing like fire on ice.

"I propose a compromise." He emptied the contents into the goblet and swirled the wine with his finger. "A choice. More than Thea was permitted. More than you gave to my cousin. Or to me." He held the wine up, his eyes narrowing as his mouth curved upward in an incongruous smile. "I can call the guard, and name you murderess, and watch you hauled below where the turnkey will carry out my every wish. The whip. Hot irons. The rack. He is quite proficient, utterly conscienceless. He can torture a man for days, and still spare him for the noose. And a woman? I believe your screams will only make him more imaginative in his methods." His voice lowered to a rasping whisper, as his finger trailed the silk of her bodice, from throat to the indentation of her navel. "He will split your fair skin, from breasts to belly, carefully, with a surgeon's skill, and let you watch as your entrails are pulled from you and torched. And when your cries of mercy have become but tedium, I will hang you myself." Aelwynn felt her stomach spew the sour burn of bile into her throat. "You cannot--you would not--dare!" Violently, she shoved his hand away. Gisborne cocked his brow, as if amused. "It is your choice, as I said. I can summon the guard. Now." He extended the wine to her with a cold sneer of contempt. "Or you can drink to the dismal results of your plan." *** "Open!" Thea's head jerked up, spinning the darkened cell around her. The tears had dried on her face, and she brushed the hair off her face with a grimy hand, wincing as she touched her cheek. "Where is she?" "Here, my lord." "Thea? Thea, by Christ!" Nottingham rushed to her cell. "Open this door, damn you!" he called to the turnkey over his shoulder. "I can't do that, my lord, by order of Prince John himself. She's to remain under lock and key." Thea caught sight of wrath as she had never witnessed before, each feature twisted with barely controlled rage, dangerous. The Sheriff swore viciously under his breath and turned back to her. "Are you well? Have they mistreated you? Come into the light. Thea, come to me!" Clearly the last person she wanted to see in this lifetime. Hay clung to her kirtle, to the ends of her tangled braids, and the ordure of the dungeon stained her face and forehead.

She looked up at him from her crumpled posture, willing herself to be dead to him, to the frantic tone of his voice. "There is nothing you can do. Leave me. Please." "I came as quickly as I could. You cannot imagine the furor your comments raised in the hall. Prince John has done nothing since you were removed but storm and curse and drink, dragging every one of the barons with him, step for step." She shook her head. "I don't care," she muttered, and put her head down on her knees again. "You must! Thea, by God, you must care!" "I don't care if their whole foul scheme falls tumbling in upon itself. I don't care if Lackland is so livid he can't enjoy his evening ale or midnight wenching." "Heed me, Thea. It is not too late to remedy this. I protested on your behalf--" "Did you?" Disbelief hardened her voice. "Thea, come to me, close, where I can see you, touch you--" She sighed heavily and rose, feeling every cramped muscle protest, and stepped toward the iron grille of the cell door. She saw the Sheriff's face pale as she stepped into the meager light, saw pain pass fleetingly across his lips as she tilted her bruised face up to his. "By God, I will have the eyes and ballocks of every man who hurt you. I will have them racked and--" "Will you start with yourself then?" "Thea, I could do nothing then, but this is far from over." "No, Sheriff. You are wrong. It is over now. Finished." "Thea, Lord Gisborne is dead." She crossed herself, then shuddered and wrapped her arms about her body, trying to ward off the chill that took her. "You cannot pretend unconcern!" "I will pray for his soul." She spoke as if she were dead, as if every feeling had fled her. "Thea pray for your own, for they mean to lay this at your feet. Even as we speak, formal charges are being drawn up--" "Did you ever expect it to be otherwise? If you did, you are as much a fool as I, for you put your trust in them. And I put my trust in you."

His face darkened, took on a stricken look, as if she had slapped him. He looked down, avoiding her eyes. "You have every right to be angry--" "Angry?" She laughed, and the shrill sound of it sliced her own nerves in twain. "I misled you." "You delivered me to them, you bastard!" "Thea--" "I would have expected it from Gisborne, something that self-serving, something-anything--to keep your precious plot alive! And then at the hearing, you let Monteforte rattle on with his lies, and never once did you uphold me! You did not admit to the threats on your life, which might have explained the wine, the poison--" "I could lend no voice to suspicion--" "Sweet saints, no! Of course not! Not when it would cast the barons themselves in dim light! Not when it would mean risking your stupid, stupid, plan! Or Lackland's favor, or your much desired reward. Far better to let suspicion name me, falsely, and remain silent!" "Thea, I have spent the last hours assuring them you had no part in any of this, that I know you only as the gentlest of creatures--" "Spare me your belated consideration!" "I believe they will listen--" "Oh, yes, until your back is turned. They are undoubtedly making a jest of you even now. The Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham, whose wits were taken by a peasant herb woman--" "Thea, marry me! Here . . . tonight!" Strong lean fingers reached through the iron bars, laced between hers, and drew them to his black-bearded lips. Thea felt the force of his words in heated puffs against the back of her hand--harsh urgent breaths that conveyed his insistence in a whisper. The tips of her fingers flattened against his mouth, silencing any more he would say. Madness, that this should come now--this proposal of marriage sounding every bit the ruthless command at which he so excelled. What motive did he have, for surely one existed? Torchlight sputtered behind him, stabbing the darkness with streaks of gold and vermilion. What little she could see of him in the wavering light she had already committed to memory.

Cheekbones chiseled high in a patrician face, casting planes of shadow more than light. Raven moustache sweeping over the bow of his lip. Precisely trimmed beard lining his clenched jaw with a midnight hue. All she'd ever wanted from him was some small admission of the truth. She searched his eyes, obsidian-glazed with a purpose she could not fathom. Truth, as always, was hidden. Held too long, her breath tore raggedly from her lungs. She let her fingers drop from his full lower lip to the gold chain of office draped across his chest, and his mouth hardened. Even in the darkness of the castle dungeon, she could see the vertical furrow that creased his brow. "Thea, we shall wed--" "Impossible," she said, her reply no more than a whisper itself, with none of the force of his demand for marriage. She hated the weak sound of it, knew it gave him an edge with which to press her. "Not impossible," he argued. "I will send for the bishop now, and--" He did not understand. Or would not. How accustomed he was to believing men pawns he could appropriate and order to his advantage. Even a man of the cloth. Yes, if he deemed it so, the bishop would be awakened from his peaceful slumber, dragged here without vestments, and forced to mumble the proper phrases to tie them inextricably together. A useless plan. She was tied to him already, if not through Latin vow. "You should go," she said, curling her fingers around the bars of her cell. "Damn you, Thea. It is my castle." She almost smiled. Instead, she lifted her chin and regarded him with a challenge as contrived, surely, as his proposal of marriage. "Then let me go." "That I cannot do." "As I thought, for Nottingham Castle is no longer yours. You have given it, all your authority, and all your hard-won power, to Prince John. And your honor, as well, such as you had." He was upon her in an instant, hands covering hers as they circled the bars, forcing into the flesh of her palms the cold reminder of her predicament, and her fate. "In their eyes, you are a murderess, woman! They have found evidence in your chamber. Monteforte says he saw you add poison to the wine, and cannot mutter your name save that he call you 'witch' soon after. Gisborne has testified that you've

consorted with felonious woodsmen. My God, Thea, you called the king's brother a traitor to his face. For that affront alone, Prince John will demand a hanging!" "Then your proposal?" she interrupted him with the calmness of her question, and watched the frustrated fury drop from his face by degrees. When he spoke, the words seem choked, as if, for once, he was unsure of the range of his power, as if the very authority that made him strong was crumbling beneath him. "I believe there is still some hope. Prince John favors a spirited wench, and could be convinced, I think, that your fiery outburst was nothing more than anger at me. If you say you meant the poison for me and that--" He stopped, his head hung low, tendrils of dark hair obscuring his forehead. "And even if they are resolved to punish someone for deGisborne's death--surely, they would not dare hang the Sheriff's wife." She saw then the truth she had sought--the fevered purpose of his proposal, desperately calculated, deliberately designed, sacrificing her honor along with his. Her fingers grew cold; even the heat of his hands could not warm them. He must have seen it, or felt it: the change that came over her the moment she caught him in the one act she despised most. She loved. He manipulated. It was so much a part of him, this need to command people, to dictate to the planets the destined order of his life. The very actions and thoughts were ingrained in him, tangled with the gentle nature she had learned was also there. "So your offer is to save me . . . from them." As it would be. No confession of the slightest need to have her as his wife because his heart desired it. But then what had she expected? The man had no needs past those he could secure for himself with his title or position. And love--? She swallowed painfully, feigning indifference with a frosty wit. "No offer then to unlock this door--which you could, were you man enough to challenge Lackland--and let me escape? No trial subtly altered that I might go free? No pardon bought with the prince's favor, which you have so faithfully curried?" "Thea--" "Then who will save me from you?" His gaze darted to hers in a fiery black flash of anguish. Immediately she regretted she had learned so well from him the art of cold sarcasm. She had hurt him, and that knowledge tortured her far worse than any method she imagined the executioner would employ. Oh, God, why had she done that? Rebuffed him with every icy word she could summon to make herself strong? Dealt him a sting for which she could provide no salve or simple, no surgery on heart or soul or mind, not even a comforting touch?

Thea watched the golden nimbus of torchlight reflect off his bowed head. An unlikely saint. Streaks of scarlet firelight mixed with the tousled black curls that lay against his neck. But no Satan either. That she knew, if she knew no more. She gripped the iron bars tightly, even when his hands released hers. Especially then. Every instinct she possessed clamored within her, compelling her to reach through the bars of her gaol cell and draw him close. To find some escape for them both from this place and the events that had torn them apart. But it was too late. He struggled to hide the torment etched in his face, burying that single glimpse of candor behind a mask of flame and shadow. "Your sentence will be one of death," he said, the crisp pronunciation of each word scalding her raw nerves. "Hanging is quick and painless, if done properly. Trial by ordeal, if Monteforte gets his way and the charge of witchcraft stands, would be . . ." His words trailed off, and Thea heard the tremble in his voice that no determination could disguise. He struck the iron bars with a closed fist, once, fiercely, every feeling, every impulse checked by a will as strong as the bars that imprisoned her. "Death either way," "And marriage to you?" "It is life, at least." "Is it? You ask that I betray everything--everyone--I hold dear. Is that not death as well?" He pushed himself back from the cell bars and turned away from her, black cloak following in a silken hiss. "Do you not think I am punished, too, Thea?" Words pushed past bearded lips like dagger points. "You? Why you will have everything you've ever wanted, ever worked for! Hardly a sentence of death, Sheriff." The spew of torch-smoke collected around them hanging in the air like dry, acrid fog. It burned her eyes and caught, with her breath, in her raw throat. She glanced at his back, severing one by one every fragile feeling that had ever grown within her, shoving aside the emptiness that remained. He spun back around. "Oh, fear not, Thea. I have been sentenced." He gazed down at her, and what she saw on his face was as undeniable an honesty as she had ever craved. Thea saw his truth even before he spoke it. "My sentence is to love you."

Chapter 31 Nottingham turned out of the dungeon, powerful strides taking him through the honeycomb of cellars and vaults, and did not stop until he was well away from the prison guards and the glare of torchlight. Alone, he slumped against the bedrock wall and raked his fingers through his hair and down across his face. For a long moment, he stayed there, face buried in his hands, letting the darkness, the aloneness, steal over him. There were no words of prayer, and the thoughts that tumbled over themselves in his head seemed as labyrinthine as the dank maze of corridors in the bowels of the castle. He was well and truly snared in Lackland's plan, and he doubted anything remained of their sham of a friendship to save him once the prince had his precious silver. Certainly little remained of the man's good humor, and his black mood conspired with his bloodied pride to make Thea's fate certain. Nottingham saw no way out. The chill of the corridors was nothing compared to the wintry fear that sluiced through the Sheriff's veins. Without Thea, it mattered not if he could ever squeeze himself back into Lackland's good graces; it mattered not if the chain of office were ripped from his neck. If they killed her, they would do well to string him up beside her, for left alive he would take the chain himself and garrote every miserable bastard who had spoken against her. He had maintained his alliance with them only with the bitterest silence, and only in hope of sparing Thea's life. He glanced back in the direction of the dungeon as if he could see through stone walls to her cell. She would never know the torment he felt seeing here there, bruised and battered, knowing his own greed and ambition had brought this upon her, and feeling powerless to change the course he himself had set into motion. If self-chastisement could have undone this coil of events, Thea would have been freed hours ago. He had not expected her to comply with his frantic proposal; he had certainly not expected forgiveness. He deserved neither. But, damn it all, neither had he expected to see her so uncaring of her own plight. Christ, he had robbed her of everything, of hope most of all, and he wanted her to live, if only to breathe Sherwood's green air again. If he could give her that-He straightened, unwilling to surrender to what seemed inevitable, then froze. A flash of something, under torchlight, quickly gone. A scuffle of padded footsteps. "Halt!" he ordered, pulling sword from scabbard. The footsteps died in the distance. He knew he was near the vault where the silver was stored. Perhaps a guard--but then a guard would have made himself known at the command. Nottingham sprinted down the low-ceilinged tunnel, rounded a corner, and darkness exploded into light. ***

"Give me one good reason I shouldn't slit his bloody throat right now!" Sound returned even when vision did not, echoing off the walls, the dizzying slur of words churning with nausea in his gut. He felt the wetness of stone at his back; opening fluttering lids, he saw torchlight orbit from one dark horizon to the other before blackness returned. He lay on his back, the skin of his temple split, a hot rivulet of blood coursing down his cheek and neck. Someone's hand grabbed his hair and hauled him into a sitting position. His body followed limply, having no will of its own to protest. "Because we need him. At least for the moment." He opened his eyes again, steeling himself for the lance of light, and found himself shadowed by a giant face. Scruffy roan beard, weather-reddened cheeks. Beneath the cowl of a priest's robe, unruly brows knit together in a frown and the fist tightened in his hair. "But I'll be fer killing the bastard myself once we're done here." Nottingham's head seemed to wobble sickeningly on his shoulders, the only part of his body alive. He glanced at his numbed hand, empty of sword, at his belt, devoid of dagger. He felt bile gather in his mouth and forced away the urge to retch. "Pray you make it quick, then," he muttered. "Only after you tell us where she is." He slipped through a crack in consciousness. "Thea . . ." Pain in his scalp dragged him back again. The priest's face loomed over him, features taunting the ragged edges of his mind. The Benedictine's free hand curled around a quarterstaff as thick as the Sheriff's wrist. "Aye, Thea, damn ye! What have ye done with her?" Nottingham forced reason back into his pounding head. The reddish beard-"God's teeth, John, you knocked him senseless!" "Not nearly senseless enough fer my liking." John. Little. The giant with the vicious hold on his hair. Nottingham made a feeble attempt at a laugh, but the motion sent pain ricocheting through his skull. Outlaws in his castle. How oddly appropriate. "Tell me where she is, ye mongrel Norman, or I'll take yer bleeding tongue and force it down yer bleeding Norman gullet!" The quarterstaff with which he'd been bludgeoned slammed into his belly, and the Sheriff doubled over in pain.

"Might I suggest, John, if you want him to talk--" "Cram it, Alan! I'll be handling him my way!" The quarterstaff clattered to the floor and two massive hands grabbed his cloaked shoulders and pulled him to his feet. The wall rushed up behind him to crash into his spine. With effort, the Sheriff opened his eyes. Blood from the gash at his temple tickled the corner of his eyelid, tinting his vision scarlet. "So help me, ye pitiful excuse fer a man, ye'll not have harmed her else I'll have yer balls fer breakfast. Tell me where she is!" A fist whipped his head sideways, slicing his lip upon his teeth. He swallowed blood. "You might try listening to your man, you overgrown imbecile," he managed. The fist raised again. "John! He cannot answer you if he's dead! Let the bastard speak!" The fist stopped in mid-air, then grabbed his shoulder again. Nottingham felt his feet beneath him, sensation returning to weak legs and knees. He stiffened against the wall, lifting his head with a pride he did not feel. With effort, he looked up at the woodsman, only a hand's width taller than he, but with twice the girth and the strength of a bear. The cowl had slipped from a head of coarse red hair; he could see moss green eyes staring back at him, angry, oddly fearful. "Thea--" Nottingham stopped as soon as he began. "Aye?" John Little's hand moved to circle his throat, tightened warily. Air fled his lungs, and darkness fluttered before him like the beating of crows' wings, and somewhere in the failing of his senses, the idea sprang to life. Ridiculous. Ironic. Desperate. He forced his own hand to grip the giant's sinewy wrist. "I think you might be of service." *** "The dungeon, you say?" John Little's feet pounded the chamber floor, crushing the rushes into dust at each turn. The man paced like a caged animal, swearing in a Saxon vernacular whose meaning, while foreign, was unmistakable. Nottingham nodded and swiped at the blood that occasionally dripped onto his cheek. He still marveled that he was alive, that the felon in priest's disguise had let him live long enough to speak, that, indeed, he had followed him to his solar to discuss the matter privately, if not reasonably. They had made their way along the corridors without any more suspicion than might ordinarily have ensued were he to beckon a priest to his

room; undoubtedly most of his people believed wholeheartedly that confession and penance were long overdue. "And her trial? If ye can call it that?" The Sheriff shook his head. "I'm not certain, although I'd wager the prince would rather dispense with it sooner than later. But I don't want to wait for the trial. I don't want her in that place a moment longer than need be, so we must be swift." "How many guards?" "Two, at the entrance to the gaol, and there's Gryffyd, the turnkey." The Sheriff grimaced ruefully. "So, four, all told." The mathematical jest was lost on the giant outlaw. "And along the way?" "None that matter. You'll be coming to console a doomed prisoner. No one will think anything of it. And if I accompany you--" "No offense, Sheriff, but I'd rather not have ye about, mucking up my plans. Were yer own cursed scheme what landed her there. Best ye keep Lackland entertained and off my back. Scathlocke, here, and I can take care of it." "Getting into the dungeon is the least of your problems, Little. Getting out of Nottingham Castle . . ." The Sheriff wandered to the hearth, bracing his forearm against the stone arch, and peered down into the bed of glowing embers. The heat touched his face, thawing every frozen feeling he had tried to keep in check. Little would free her. Arrows, his damnable quarterstaff, his bare fists, if necessary. It didn't matter. Likely the challenge of downing three men and pulling Thea from her cell was but meager exercise to the man. Scathlocke, he supposed, could disappear back into the throngs from which he appeared. His mind stopped at the completion of their escape only because it refused to think further. Thea would be gone. Safe, true. But gone. Consigned to a life as a murderess in Sherwood's own prison. Pardon unthinkable. Parted from him forever. He closed his eyes. The pounding in his head had abated to a dull throb, nothing compared to the anguish of losing her. Selfish bastard! He stopped himself. Thea would be safe. And the huge forest felon who had come for her-Nottingham looked over to John Little, huddled head to head with his felonious companion. No doubt that Little cared for her, loved her with a clear and simply honesty that she deserved. He would protect her; no harm would ever come to her. If tortured, sleepless nights were his own end, at least they would not be filled with worries for her

safekeeping. This time, the greenwood would not have stolen something from him, he would have surrendered it, willingly. Somehow, the rightness of that brought him no peace; the very idea of living some kind of parallel existence with the woman he loved was unbearable. To know she lived, maybe even thrived, but never to see her or touch her, never to wake to the warmth of her body nestled against his. He supposed it was penance enough, at that. "Aye," he heard Little say, and turned to the two outlaws. "Then we'll be about it." He saw the giant's hand clasp Scathlocke's in agreement. "When?" Nottingham asked. "Now. Tonight--" "But I had hoped to see her again--" The words slipped out before he could stop them, and he could not tell if it were amusement or understanding that colored John Little's cheeks. "Best to do it now when 'tis unexpected, before the morn when Lackland might prove hungry for a trial to start his day proper and all. While 'tis dark and we stand a chance of passing through the gate." Reluctantly, the Sheriff nodded. He drew a painful breath and looked out through the arched windows to the blackened horizon beyond. The moon reflected silvery light off drifts of snow. Only one question lingered. It hardly mattered, but he asked it anyway. "You did come to rescue her, did you not?" Silence. He looked around at the giant's all-too-ingenuous face. "You did come for that purpose, did you not?" he repeated. "Belated though it may be, you are here for her--" He stopped suddenly, his senses clearing with an onrush of insight. "Just how many of your men are in my castle?" John Little answered him in silence, but the Sheriff caught Scathlocke raising an anxious face to his stoic companion, his expression one of a deer trapped by nocked arrow. "How many?" Nottingham roared, his own voice like thunder in his skull. "Enough," Little replied, never moving, his features as stolid as his bulk. "Christ Almighty!" Nottingham swiped at bleary eyes. "Then you did not come for Thea, but to--" "Nay, we want her as well."

"As well as my silver!" "'Tisn't yer silver, Sheriff--" The Sheriff's hand sliced through the air, cutting off the woodsman in mid-statement. "When were your men going to carry out your intended embezzlement?" "I am not at liberty to say." "Then your plan to rob me is intact? No, do not supply a needless answer. It is written as plainly as the guilt across your faces." He paused, stroking his chin. "Then I daresay there are a legion of your ilk in every corner of my castle? Enough to down the guards at the vault and every step between there and the gate? Enough to cart a goodly number of barrels and chests? To man and drive a treasury wagon?" Nottingham laughed under his breath and pivoted toward the window. "My God, did Thea tell you? Never mind. It doesn't matter." His mind raced beyond the obvious dilemma, that the security of his castle had somehow been breached by a rabble of thieves bent on stripping him of his last tenuous purpose. It raced even beyond the fact that surely Thea had somehow sent word to the forest that the transfer of silver was imminent. His thoughts sped ahead of reason, taking devious, hopeful turns as he conspired within himself, tempting him with his first taste of pleasure since Lackland's arrival. Slowly, he turned back around, and fixed John Little with a skeptical stare. For the first time, the outlaw's face was marred with the frightening possibility that he was trapped, likely to be arrested and thrown to the hounds, with the horrible apprehension that he had not only surrendered the secrecy of his conspirators, but forfeited Thea's rescue in the bargain. On any other occasion, the Sheriff would have relished the moment, for he had won, had Locksley's chief accomplice and a goodly number of his men within his grasp. Finally. It was all he had lived for since the first time he had entered the castle gates. Nottingham smiled ruefully, the irony digging sharply into his belly as he shook his head in resignation. "Your cassock is too short, priest." "What?" "Anyone within ten paces would spot you as counterfeit." "I made it this far, did I not? Nay, Sheriff, do not stop me now, not fer the love of that blood money sitting in yer--" Nottingham cut off the spew of words. "Merely an observation, Little."

Every bone in her body ached. Thea longed to stretch out her limbs as much as her cramped cell allowed, but she had no wish to disturb whatever vermin shared her

quarters or to find, by accident, the foul leavings of the previous captive. She had huddled into a tight knot in the center of the stone cubicle, her knees drawn up to her chin, her forehead resting on her knees, and prayed for sleep that never came. For hours she had entreated God and an endless list of saints to deliver her, but to a one, they mocked her earnest pleas, leaving only the echo of the Sheriff's last words as painful company. Had she been less angry, she would have cried. Had she been less weary, she would have whiled away the sleepless hours of night conjuring ways in which the faithless bastard could meet an end as gruesome as the one Lackland obviously planned for her. But nothing remained in her mind or heart or soul. She was hollow, a void, with only her aching body to remind her she still existed. Tendrils of thought whispered at the edges of her consciousness, dragging her back to the time after Brand's death. She had felt like this then, emptied, insensate, with each minute, each hour stretching in front of her in some cruel and endless torture that would have been unbearable had she been able to feel it. Giving into tears or venting rage would only have opened doors she preferred latched shut. Better to feel nothing than to embrace the monster of her grief. Until the Sheriff had opened the doors for her, one by one, and stood by her, holding her steadfast against the tidal onslaught of feeling while it rushed over her, through her, and became nothing more than a gentle pool of memories. If only he could have stopped at that. If only he had not also warmed every frozen feeling in her veins and reminded her to revel in the fury of breath and life. If only he had not taught her the splendor of passion. If only he had never admitted that he loved her. The sound of his voice resonated in her ears, and she clasped her hands to her bowed head as if she could block out the sound. If only she had not loved him in return. Of all her mistakes, and there were many, it was this one that truly condemned her, and Thea knew with utter conviction that when she faced the executioner, it would be with no one to blame but herself. "Open!" The word startled her, and she looked up from her cell. "By order of the Sheriff, who commands that his prisoner be given spiritual solace--" Thea squinted into the dimness at the vague familiarity of the voice. A small man, raggedly dressed, soiled scarlet cape hanging from scarecrow shoulders--Will Scathlocke? And beside him, the bedraggled Benedictine garb and cowled head-She bolted to her feet, hands grabbing the bars of her cell.

"And I got orders she see no one," Gryffyd said, ambling toward them, "from the prince himself." "Aye, aye, but," Scathlocke stammered, "his royal majesty, er, highness, the prince there thought she may confess and spare herself the worst of it. No trial, and a quick and painless hanging if she owns up to it now--easier work for you, now, wouldn't it be?" The turnkey moved in front of the cell door, legs planted firmly apart, hands on his hips. "Then let the prince come down here and tell me himself. She's seeing no one." "Ah, well, now, that's a shame, see--" Thea heard the goaler grunt, saw him double over, his huge form collapsing over Scathlocke's thin shoulder, nearly toppling them both to the ground. "Stand back, lass!" Gryffyd fell to a crumpled heap of bronzed arms and legs, and Thea saw Will twist his blade savagely into the turnkey's belly, withdraw it-"Will, no!" --And slice the neck efficiently from ear to ear. The priest was already fumbling at the gaoler's waist, tearing away the ring of keys. The scuffling of booted footsteps sounded behind him as he jammed a key into the lock-"Behind you, man!" Will called out, and the priest swirled around, fist connecting with face, belly. One guard slumped to the floor at Will's feet, blood burbling from his split throat, and Will caught the second as the man fell wheezing from the priest's blow. The Benedictine spun back to her, turned the key, threw open the cell door. "God, John!" She started to rush headlong into his arms, but Will was between them. "No time for it. Your guards are bloody fast!" "Your guards--?" "You might want to ditch the cape, put on the mail instead. Can you manage?" The voice was unmistakable, and assuredly not John's. Will bent to the task, and Thea grabbed a handful of the priest's worn cassock. "Your guards?" she repeated, jerking the cowl back. Guttering torchlight reflected off Nottingham's black hair. "Sweet saints, what are you doing?" "Rescuing you, if you'll keep your voice down." The Sheriff turned to Scathlocke as the outlaw struggled into a mail shirt, then retrieved a Norman helm from one of the fallen guards and slammed it down on Will's head.

"But--" Thea protested. "I've just helped murder three of my best men, so I'm hardly in the mood to argue. Can you use this?" Nottingham shoved a quarterstaff into her hands, not waiting for her answer as he nodded to Scathlocke to take up the dead soldier's sword. "Aye, but, Sheriff--" He turned toward her, and Thea swallowed her words with an indrawn breath. For a moment, everything stood still and silent around them as she gazed upon his face, taking in the gash at his temple, clotted with blood, the plum-colored bruise along his cheek, the split and swollen lip. Her gaze traveled back to his eyes, dark, unfathomable. "What do you think you are doing?" she whispered hoarsely. "Seeing you home." She did not speak further, could not, and there was nothing Nottingham needed to say. His eyes softened and tautness left his jaw, as his ravaged soul showed as clearly as the damage on his battered face. He leaned toward her, pulling her toward him, close, and bent his lips to hers. "Aye, aye," Scathlocke interjected, "and if you can't keep your codpiece on a moment longer, Sheriff, you'll be having us drawn and quartered beside her." Nottingham drew back, suddenly mindful of the outlaw beside him, sweeping the back of his fingers across Thea's cheek before releasing her. "Although, Blessed Jesus, Thea, your taste in men! Have you lost your wits, girl?" "So you found them," Thea said quietly, ignoring Will, her gaze fixed on Nottingham's eyes. "In truth, they found me. Now come, quickly. There isn't much time." He picked up Will's discarded cloak and settled it about her shoulders, bringing up the hood to obscure her face. "We've a clear way out of the dungeon, but there are guards along the way who might take notice. Now go with Scathlocke--" "But--" "Resist the soldiers, if you must, but make haste." "And you?" Nottingham grinned, grimacing only slightly at the pain of his torn lip. "I'll be going ahead to prepare transport. Scathlocke--" He turned to Will, and clasped him by the shoulder, "do you remember the way I told you?" Scathlocke nodded, the helm bobbing on his head. "Aye. Down through the tunnels."

"Very well." "But, Sheriff--" Thea interrupted. "And see if you can keep her quiet, although Lord knows, if you can, you are a far better man than I." Nottingham turned to Thea. "Stay here a few moments, then go with Will. You are a woman following a soldier to some dark corner of the castle." He shrugged eloquently. "Play the role. No one will notice." She felt his hand tighten briefly on her shoulder, and though there were so many things she wanted to say, she only nodded mutely. The Sheriff strode toward the door to the gaol without a backward look, and only after he had disappeared did Thea think to ask. "He was wearing Tuck's robe." "Aye." "Then where is John?" Will smiled and rocked back on his heels with unabashed delight. "Helping the Sheriff. Preparing the transport." *** John Little slammed his back against the corridor wall and gulped in a chestful of air. He did not count the Norman bodies that littered the trail behind him, for there was no time for it. The vault lay ahead. He glanced to his side where Much had scrunched himself beneath the giant's shoulder. He could feel the lad quaking, but when he searched his face, he only saw determination and a rare courage that made him feel proud. Thea would have his hide for this. She would roast his balls over a campfire for sure. But nothing mattered if the campfire were in Sherwood, far away from this God-forsaken castle. If she were safe, and home. Beyond Much, lined up as if for execution, were Alan and Donald and Wyrm. And to his right-John turned to the man beside him, and tense blue-gray eyes met his in acknowledgment. "Well done," the man said. "I had not thought the bastard to be trusted, but he knew his men and their stations to the one." Even in this darkest turn of tunnel, his pale hair shone like a beacon. "Yer hood, Rob," John reminded him. Locksley's hand drew dark fabric about his face. "Mothering me, still, are you Littlejohn?" "Aye, and where would ye be without me?"

"Likely not in the bowels of Nottingham Castle in the dead of winter, freezing my arse off." John grinned. "Ye always said I'd come in handy." "There are two guards posted outside the door," Locksley's voice grew sober. "And those inside." "Easy pickings." "And the ones between here and outlet." John shrugged. "Probably snoring in their sleep." "And God knows how many barrels and chests to be carted away. If the wagon is there as he says. If he's not lied through his Norman teeth and is waiting to cut us down like stringed poppets." "That's what I like about ye, Rob. Always looking on the bright side." "You're that sure about him?" "About him? Nay. About his feelings fer Thea?" John felt a spike of discomfort wedge beneath his ribs. "Aye," he finished, and dropped his gaze to his boots. "We have nothing but his word. We could be caught, all of us, red-handed at the gate." "I saw what I saw in the man. And I seem to recall ye know something about that kind of love." John looked up, and Locksley's face wore the faintest shadow of a smile. "And I seem to recall you know something about it yourself," Robin replied. "Aye, well--" John stiffened his spine and, avoiding the outlaw's eyes, looked over Robin's head down the last coil of passageway. "Work to be done, Rob. I'm fer it. Are ye?" Robin of Locksley clasped his shoulder in firm assent. "A devilishly cold night spent offering my belly to a pack of Norman hounds on their own hunting ground? I wouldn't have it any other way." *** "But our orders were--" "Your orders have been changed," the Sheriff said tersely. "Bring the wagon around now, or I'll feed what's left of your miserable corpse to the carrion-eaters. That's as nicely as I'll ask."

The soldier gulped at the lethal smile Nottingham displayed. "And none of your men lingering about the place," the Sheriff warned. "The prince demands absolute secrecy." "But how will you carry it all, my lord?" Nottingham adopted his best malicious sneer. "Did I ask your advice, soldier?" "No, my lord." "Mercifully correct. Now be gone before your boots root to the floor." *** "All clear!" Will called out in a strained whisper, and Thea sidled out of the dungeon door to join the woodsman. "Now, just as the Sheriff said, mind. If we're lucky, we'll pass whatever soldiers are along the way without much notice taken of our passage." She nodded and followed as Will advanced down the tunneled corridor, her heart hammering in time with their steps. She tried to walk slowly when all she wanted was to break free and run as fast as she could, but she forced her pace to be casual, and kept the dark red hood of Will's cloak pulled close about her face. They had made three turns when Will pulled up short, tugging at the straggled excuse for a beard on his narrow chin. "What is it?" Thea asked. "I'm not sure--he did say left, then left again, then right--" "Holy Virgin, Will, you haven't forgotten, have you?" "Nay," Will said, obviously affronted, looking around the corner with perplexity twitching at his features. "Then go!" "He said there'd be a door--I remember a door--that's what he said--" "Halt!" Thea swallowed a quick gasp of hair and caught Will's sleeves in trembling fingers. "Who are you? What are you about down here?" Will turned to the Norman guard whose patrol they had stumbled upon. "Sir William of--de Bois," Will said with a slight flourish, as Thea shuddered.

"I don't recall no de Bois in the garrison." "Right you are. I'm--new. Called in this morn. From France." Thea grimaced, shading her face with her hand. Leave it to John to put her with the poorest liar of them all. "France, you say? You don't sound French." "Ah, well, my sainted mother, you see--" "And who's this with you?" the soldier trampled over Will's lame words. "The Sheriff don't take to women making rounds with his men, you know." "Aye, aye, that he don't. But--she's my missus, she is, and we haven't seen each other in such a long time, and, besides--" He nudged the guard's rib jokingly. "I hear 'tis a good place down here, alone and all private-like--" "What's she armed for?" The sentry nodded toward Thea's quarterstaff. "Oh, that, well--she needs it to walk." "I hurt my foot," Thea rushed to explain, lifting her skirts to show her ankle, indeed scraped and blue from the soldiers' rough treatment of her. She flashed the guard what she hoped was a disarming smile. The Norman peered through the darkness at her swollen ankle. "Well--" he hesitated. His gaze traveled up her cloaked body to her down-turned face, and he frowned, tilting his head in an effort to see her better. "I know you--" he began. "You're the Sheriff's wench. You're the one who--" Thea turned a desperate expression to Will. "Sweet saints," she muttered under her breath, and before the guard or Scathlocke could react further, she struck the quarterstaff soundly against the soldier's shins. His yelp of pain and surprise transformed into a grunt as she shoved the heavy staff into his gut. He doubled over and, wincing, Thea knocked him alongside his head. "God forgive me," she said, as the guard slumped like a sleepy bear to the floor. Will's jaw hung open as he looked from the downed man to Thea and back again. "Remind me to have you by my side more often," he said with astonished disbelief. "Remind me to have Robin teach you left from right," she returned. *** John Little hauled the limp body up by the shoulders and tossed it aside as if it were so much Norman refuse, the last man guarding their way to King Richard's ransom. He dragged his hand across his brow to swipe the sweat away from his eyes, and turned to Robin.

Locksley slung his empty bow across his back and dusted his hands together. "By God and Allah," he said, astonished. "I've not seen treasure like this since--" "Since last tax collection time and ye were away," John finished for him. "The Sheriff's quite a knack fer bleeding the shire dry." "There must be thousands, millions--" Stunned, Robin ran his hand through the contents of an open chest. Silver coins, trickled through his fingers, landing amid silver and gold plate, ornate jewelry, gemstones. "Enough to buy a kingdom fer Lackland." "At least." "Or to buy a king fer the kingdom," John said. Robin looked up sharply, and John saw resolve tighten the muscles in his jaw. "We're not out of here yet." "A matter of moments," a voice came from the door. "The wagon awaits." John glanced toward the entrance to the vault. The Sheriff of Nottingham had discarded the now useless priest's frock and stood still, as if carved from black granite. For a moment, out of reflex alone, John's fingers twitched, wanting bow or sword or quarterstaff with which to give the bastard his due, but he did not move, and remained silent. He glanced from the Sheriff to Robin. Two more disparate figures the earth could not have conjured, with Robin's white-blond hair and rugged woodsman's attire contrasting with the Sheriff's black cloak. For a moment, neither man spoke. He could feel the tension in the air thickening between them, could smell the wariness of each man for the other as their eyes locked in a fierce, wordless struggle. "Locksley," Nottingham said finally. "We meet at last." "And on less friendly turf than I would prefer, Sheriff." "I am certain that at one time I would have said the same about Sherwood." "And now?" The Sheriff shrugged. "It is of no matter. The treasure you seek is here." "And you intend to let us have it? As simple as that?" Nottingham strode into the chamber and closed the lid of the strongbox where Robin stood, slid the iron bolt through the hasp, locking it shut. "You'd best hurry," he said, not meeting Locksley's penetrating gaze. "I'd like to have it through the city gates before dawn." "Why?" Robin insisted. "Why do you help us? Why now?"

The Sheriff smiled faintly. "Because I am charged with the keeping of order and law in the shire." His words sounded soft to John Little's ears, with none of the bluster and roaring of which he knew the man capable. "Because the citizens of this shire look to me to see that their taxes are well-spent. Because they love their absent king and expect their loyalty to be rewarded with his return home." "And your loyalty?" Nottingham raised his eyes to Robin, the same vague smile curving his black-bearded lips. "As you've always heard, Locksley, my loyalty is to myself." "I don't understa--" "I would like nothing more than to spend time debating such mysteries with you over my finest wine, but the sun will soon rise. I'd like to be away." "You're going with us?" Incredulity showed on Locksley's face as clearly as in his words. Nottingham paused, striking his fist gently against the locked chest as if making his decision final, not for Locklsey, but for himself. "I said I would see her home." Chapter 32 Squat and square, made of heavy wood reinforced with iron, the treasury wagon still managed to creak and groan under the weight of so many strongboxes. The Sheriff held the horses harnessed to pull the wagon and had long ago ceased to count the numerous trips Locksley and his men had made to and from the castle vault. He cast one wary eye on the horizon, watchful of the sun's imminent rising, then glanced again down the secret tunnel exit at the bottom of the castle bedrock. Scathlocke and Thea should have arrived already; indeed, he had counted on the outlaw to aid the others in loading the wagon. The horses neighed and moved restlessly, as impatient, as nervous as he, and he held their bridles more tightly, whispering to them in the darkness. "There, there. Almost ready." John Little's lumbering shadow approached him. "That's the last of it," he said. "Couldn't fit another farthing in her if we tried." Nottingham nodded. "Then go. All of you. While it's still dark." "I don't like it, Sheriff. Ye driving and all. What's to say ye won't turn around and have yer men unload the wagon soon as our backs are turned?" "I'm letting you go." "Aye, empty-handed as it were."

"Better than dangling by your necks. If I wanted to save my own skin, I'd have arrested you hours ago." "Aye, as soon as ye could stand up," the giant man reminded him. Nottingham winced at the reminder. "Yer quick with yer head, if not with yer fists, I'll give ye that, but God help me, if ye're using Thea to lead ye to our camp, if ye more'n think of using her to redeem yerself with Lackland and his cronies, if I hear so much as a single Norman footstep in Sherwood, I'll spend the rest of my life hunting ye down, ye good fer nothing Norman bastard!" "I don't doubt that you would." "Aye, well trust in that. And where in bloody hell are Thea and Will?" "I was wondering the same thing," Nottingham said, more than a little anxious. "I should go back. Something may have happened." "Then I'll go with ye." "No, I don't want you--" Robin of Locksley appeared at John Little's side, surrounded by his men. "Locksley, be gone with you," the Sheriff said. "Now. And tell your pet cocker to follow." "But Thea's not here!" Little protested. "Nor Will. I won't be fer leaving this place till--" "John." Locksley's voice came through the dark, his single utterance firm, imbued with gentle understanding. "He'll bring her." Little turned to his leader, and in the gloaming, Nottingham saw Locksley nod in silent reassurance. In the next moment, the Sheriff heard the staccato of footsteps in the tunnel and relief fell over him like a warm blanket. He stood aside as Will and Thea were engulfed with embraces by the outlaw clan, as Locksley clapped Will on his back and Little dragged Thea into a hug that swept her off her feet. There were muffled congratulations and clasping of hands, and then Thea broke through them, ran to him, pressed her body close to him. If he had ever harbored any second thoughts about the madness of his plan, they dissolved in that moment. Her slender hands reached around his waist beneath his cloak, slid up his back, and she pressed her lips against his. Nothing else mattered. He could have stayed there forever, drinking in the heat of her mouth, the wonder of her presence, the myriad feelings that she caused to course through his veins, all strong, all certain, dispelling every doubt, shoring up his resolve with her love. But he was all too

aware that haste was of the essence, and he did not need the clearing of Locksley's throat or the scowl on Little's face to remind him they could not tarry. With her arms still wrapped about him, Thea glanced over her shoulder to the woodsmen. "Go. Quickly. I will see you all in camp." "Thea, are ye certain ye know the man?" Little asked, doubt still riddling his voice. "He could betray us all." Thea looked up at the Sheriff, and Nottingham saw the certainty on her face, even before she spoke. "I trust him." They did not look away from each other, even as Locksley and the others said their farewells and hurried off into the darkness. "There is much to say," the Sheriff began, as the hush of the night surrounded them. "There is nothing to say," she whispered back. "Thea--" He felt her soft fingertips caressing his temple, his bruised cheek and lip. "Likely there is a tale to go along with all this." He nodded. "Tell me along the way." *** Sherwood Forest breathed mist like a wintry dragon. From atop the treasury wagon, everywhere he looked, bare-branched trees rose up around them, limbs sheathed in ice. Even the color of the sky seemed to blend with the white of the snow, blurring their surroundings into some magical fairy world. When the sun rose, it glinted off the trail before them as if the path were strewn with diamonds. So different now, Nottingham thought. He remembered his first trip through these woods, Twelfthtide, his first encounter with outlaws, Alyce. He had been quite certain he would go to his death in this frozen hell, and perhaps he had. Somewhere in the length of time he had hung by his wrists in the oak, lashed, bleeding, feeling numbness steal over his body, whatever man he had been had died and was born again to something that only hate had kept alive. For years afterward, he had dwelt in that selfmade purgatory, blind to everything but his own hatred, his own need for revenge. Odd, it had taken Thea to show him the beauty of this place. The magnificent, awesome, breath-taking splendor of it. "Are you remembering?" Thea asked, bringing her hands from inside the warmth of his cloak to cover his frozen, rein-filled fingers with her own. "Yes," he said quietly.

She leaned her head against his shoulder in solemn companionship. "It's over now." His breath met the frosty air in a puff of cloudy vapor. "I know." And this time, he truly believed it. "What will you do when you go back?" He smiled ruefully. "I daresay, I've sealed my fate with Lackland. He'll remove me from office. Probably lock me away until he can come up with an end gruesome enough for the one he thinks I deserve." Thea shivered beside him. "Don't even say that." "If he appoints Gisborne sheriff in my stead, and I believe he will, Guy will think of a way to delay an execution." Nottingham laughed softly. "He's always managed to save my hapless arse before. And with all this tax money going to bring Richard home, with any luck I'll be out of my dungeon before I'm terribly gray and feeble." "I don't want you to leave," she said, snuggling closer to him. Her hands on his pulled sharply at the reins, causing the horses to halt along the snow-covered trail. "Why go back at all? Why?" The Sheriff turned to her, tipped her chin up, and stared into the intense deep blue of her eyes. "Because. Because this is the first noble thing I have done since coming here. Because, as unfamiliar as the feeling is to me, there's a rightness in this of which I am certain, and I will not skulk away like some cowardly criminal. Because Lackland will know, by my own admission, what an abominable creature he is; because I want the chance to stand tall among the barons and speak the truth and be unashamed of what I've done. Because I would not have you love a less than honorable man." He watched as her eyes filled with tears. "Don't, Thea," he said firmly. "Don't start. You have been strong for me when I could not be strong for myself. Don't abandon me now." "But--" "You gave it all to me. Hope. A true sense of who I am, or what I could be. You let me embrace the past and release it and gave me every reason to believe I could create some better future. This is not the end, sweet. Do you not see that? It is only the beginning." "But to be parted from you--" "I will think of you every moment in every day. In my mind, I will see you, imagining the sun on your face, Sherwood's wind in your hair. I will know you are safe from any harm, that you are going about your work of healing the ill, comforting the infirm, bring new life into this world. Not a day will go by that I will not remember how you believed in me, trusted in me, and draw solace from that. And in time--"

He hesitated. So much uncertainty lay ahead, but he needed to promise her, not just to allay her fears, but to bind himself to his oath and find purpose in it. "I will come for you," he said, and his voice sounded strong with conviction. He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her slowly, savoring the heat of her mouth as she opened to him, as their tongues touched, entwined, drew apart again. He smiled as they broke the kiss. "If only to keep that overgrown Little fellow from stealing you away." "John?" "He's quite in love with you." "Hmm," Thea replied noncommittally. "Which is understandable, and perhaps even for the better, as I'm sure he'll look after you." "John is nothing but an old mother hen." "But then you did not meet with the end of his quarterstaff." The Sheriff slapped the reins lightly on the back of the horses and urged them forward again. "I can think of only one way to make certain he doesn't sweep you off your feet and claim you as his wife." "I would never--" "And that is to marry you myself." "What?" Nottingham glanced askance at Thea and smiled. "I do believe you have a priest among you? A Benedictine? Friar Tuck?"

The revelry had all but died. The flames of lingering campfires striped the wattle and daub of their makeshift shelter with gold, burnishing the darkness, and the emptying of the last jug of mead had all but silenced the chatter outside, save for an occasional muffled laugh. Nottingham gazed down at Thea, her hair a mahogany tumble on the makeshift straw bed, her skin an intriguing chiaroscuro of shadow and light. He placed a kiss in the darkened valley between her breasts, then took her hardened nipple in his mouth. He could hear her sudden gasp in response, feel her back arch and her hips move against his as he drove deeply inside her again. Her hands clenched his back as she rose to meet him, as their rhythm waxed and waned and waxed again. God, how he wanted to prolong this, make it last forever. Or take her and take her again. Anything to stave off the dawn, to keep her next to him.

He was long past words, long past being able to tell her again and again how he loved her, but his body spoke for him, and her soft answering cries were a reply all their own. Too soon, he felt the mounting pressure inside him, the tension as his shaft grew harder. Unable to stop himself, he thrust into her with a desperate abandon, sliding fluidly into her heat, withdrawing, plunging into her again and again, until he felt her body tighten around him, and the strong pulsing pull of her climax drew his seed from him. They lay together, unmoving, their heartbeats racing in tandem, their breath heating the air around. Then she was pulling him closer, her hands sliding over his sweat-slicked back to his buttocks, using her inner muscles to caress him into hardness again. "There they go again," he heard a drunken voice from outside, and an answering chorus of laughter. "You'd think they'd sleep, wouldn't you?" "I don't know about that, Will. Would you sleep through your wedding night?" "I don't think the bastard knows how to sleep." Nottingham recognized John Little's voice. "Making baby Sheriffs is all," a younger voice piped. A tumult of groans rose up from the campfire. "Give me that jug of mead, Rob." "It's empty, John." "Aye, well, Much needs a crack over the head fer that one." Nottingham felt Thea's laugh along his belly and chest, and chuckled with her. "And I'm leaving you alone with this bunch of rabble? I must be insane." She kissed him, teasing his lower lip with her tongue. "You can always stay," she tempted him. He moved within her, renewing their lovemaking with a languorous tempo, and silenced her with a kiss. *** He watched her as she slept, huddled amid the sheepskin and coarse woolen blankets, her arm outstretched, fingers curling gently inward toward her palm. She looked so peaceful, so perfectly wrought with dawn's pink fingers reaching through the wattle and daub to rosy her cheeks and the sun's early gilding setting off the fiery streaks in her hair. He wondered if she knew how much risk still lay ahead of them, or if she dreamed, oblivious to all but the smells and sounds of the forest that welcomed her home.

He watched her draw deep, even breaths through slightly parted lips, wondering where he would find the strength to leave her when his plans were so uncertain and the outcome of the day too mysterious for even the wisest sage to predict. He leaned over her, touched his lips to hers, and waited, feeling the small pulses of heat from her mouth drugging him more surely every minute he lingered. He drew in a sharp hiss of breath, as if he could inhale her very essence and carry it with him, then rose quickly and ducked through the hide flap over the doorway without looking back. "Ye're leaving then, are ye?" The Sheriff straightened, squinting slightly at the figure of the man who stood backlit by the early morning light. John Little stood braced against his quarterstaff, powerful hands fisted around the tall length of wood, leather-wrapped feet planted amid the scramble of frosted leaves and twigs on the forest floor--a giant oak of a man. "I must," Nottingham replied softly, brushing past the outlaw, somehow unable to meet his eyes. He had underestimated the one they called Little John, given poor credit to the man's resolve and devotion. He would not do so again. "Lackland will be in an uproar no amount of ale or whoring will calm, and I--I had best be about the business of saving my arse." He heard the woodsman chuckle under his breath, then the guttural bark of a Saxon curse, wrapped in deep laughter. "God's blood, man, if there be slime as slick as ye, I've not found it yet. Why, ye be every much an outlaw as the rest of us. More so, as ye hatched the plan yerself with that low-weasel mind of yers." "Indeed." The corners of the Sheriff's lips curved upward, despite his best attempts at sternness. "As if I needed reminding." "Returning to Nottingham, 'twould be like going back to hell with that Lucifer Lackland breathing fire down yer neck. 'Twill mean the fanciest bit of conniving yer twisted mind has ever conjured, and no one--not a soul in that castle--to take yer side of it. They'll call ye inept, at best. Have ye in irons before day's end. Lackland will lay blame for his failure right at yer feet." "Where it rightly belongs," Nottingham said. "They'll be fer hanging ye straight away, or goaling ye and hanging ye only when the ravens have naught to feed upon." "And would that matter?" The Sheriff looked up and saw the deep cast of the forest reflected in the outlaw's eyes. John Little's jaw clenched; his lips thinned to narrow bloodless strips amidst the gingered beard. "'Twould matter enough to her," he said, jerking his head in the direction of the lean-to.

Nottingham glanced back over his shoulder, unable for a moment to trust himself with more than a gruff nod. "I intend to make things right, no matter the cost." "And that will keep ye safe?" "Perhaps. If my wit and good fortune have not deserted me completely. If you and the others spare no time in seeing that tax money to King Richard's aid." The woodsman scratched his woolly head, scuffed at a tuft of hoar-covered moss at his feet, clearly bewildered at the icy words that passed for humor. "You would do better to ask who will keep Thea safe," the Sheriff said. John Little looked up at the quiet prompting. "Aye, man, that I would, since ye're set on abandoning her--" "You will," the Sheriff interrupted. There was much left unsaid in the moment that followed. Nottingham saw the giant's ruddy face trade confusion for gradual understanding, saw the momentary flash of acknowledgment that, without words, a pact lay between them, as solid as any blood oath. Useless to promise success in Nottingham, or that he would live long enough to ask for the pardon he would very much like bestowed upon these men. More futile still to spill his feelings for Thea into words this outlaw did not share, or feel himself, thrice over. "Remind her, when she wakes, that I will come for her . . . again . . . soon." If it were a lie or an impossible vow to keep, still the outlaw said nothing. Nottingham saw him swallow hard and nod, tucking his whiskered chin to his chest where no emotion could betray him. The Sheriff looked toward the narrow path that led away from the camp, days--weeks-months of memories rushing through his mind with the speed of the January wind whistling through the canopy of bare limbs above. January . . . and the demons of the forest were gone. Shriveled to nothing, carried away like the fragile wisps of ash borne skyward from the outlaws' campfires. His gaze followed the spirals of smoke, reaching at last the muted white of the heavens. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, drawing in the sharp cold and the wild smell of the forest, feeling suddenly, inexplicably, free. With a wry smile, he let his eyes drift open again, let his gaze turn to the man to whom he had entrusted so much. John Little extended his hand, a callused paw torn by work and weather. "Aye, man. I'll tell her."

Nottingham grasped the man's hand in his own, held it firmly, measuring the strength and certainty there. It was all he needed to know. More than he could ask of the Fates that controlled his destiny. Thea would be safe. Watched over. He turned and started down the trail that led out of Sherwood Forest. *** He was gone when she awoke, and for a moment Thea could do no more than curl into the indentation his body had made in the straw beside her, imagining the warmth that had long since departed. She had never expected him to stay, to be sure. Despite the appealing image of the Sheriff of Nottingham dressed in hunter's leggings, his shock of raven hair disguised by a woolen hood of Lincoln green, he no more belonged in Sherwood Forest than John and his ruffian friends belonged in Nottingham Castle. Thea smiled wistfully. He belonged to the life she had witnessed firsthand: standing among royalty and titled men, his bearing regal and proud and cool with a mystical undercurrent of power no one could miss; conversing easily, persuasively; listening intently; delicately maneuvering through the hazardous waters of politics and the Crown. No doubt he would argue that he was nothing more than a bastard stableboy who happened upon his sheriffdom by his wits and a pocketful of spare change. No doubt, he would be wrong. The ruse with the silver belonged to the lowest highwayman; her daring rescue from the gaol more aptly suited a rogue knight. But in the end, Thea had seen nobility in the Sheriff's determined actions no one could deny--nobility that went past pretense to the soul, where the measure of a man was truly taken. It struck her odd that what she missed most was not his unwavering strength or his carefully devised defiance, but something far simpler. What she longed for now was the assurance of his arms about her, the rhythm of his breath stirring the hair against her neck, and the intimate, inadvertent touches their bodies made in sleep. She closed her eyes against a hot wash of tears, inhaling deeply the faint scent he had left behind, willing her strength to follow him if she could not. He would manage, she told herself. By winter's end, Richard would be free, and the king would send his traitorous brother off with his tail between his legs. And with the Sheriff's talent for turning events to his favor, Nottingham would likely convince the Lionheart to overlook his initial compliance with the conspiracy and reap a pleasant reward for his part in bringing the king home to England. With a sigh, she left the crude bed they had shared and ventured outside. A few of the outlaws looked her way, approving smiles and nods accompanying respectful silence. She smiled back, cheeks flushing hot in the bitter chill of the winter wind. "Ah, there ye be, lass, and a late rising to ye!" John Little's long strides took him to Thea's side, and he fell into slow step beside her, laying a woolen shawl over her shoulders. "Too late, I fear," Thea said quietly.

"Aye, well, he wanted it that way. Wanted to leave ye sleeping in the warmth, not out here in the cold, stumbling over a leave-taking ye'd both be loathe to make." Thea glanced sidelong at the giant's face only to find him looking at her with peculiar understanding. "I doubt the Sheriff would be about confessing such nonsense to you, John, even deprived of sleep and the last whit of reason the man owns, which surely he forfeited with that hare-brained scheme of his." "Aye, and it were a glorious scheme--" "Foolhardy at best, damn the man! Damn you both! You should track him down, you should, and bring him back, for I've a good mind to hang him from the tallest oak in Sherwood, and you right beside him, John, for the risks you took." "'Twas all the Sheriff's doing," John said charitably, "the notion of it, the planning of it, the maneuvering of it, 'twas all his idea, every bit of it." "And you yourself, you'd have naught of such high-minded trickery, now would you, John?" "Nay, on my life, but were it to save yer pretty skin. And the throne of England," he added belatedly, "what the Sheriff did most nicely, fer all that he's a snake in the grass and a Norman." Thea managed a shaky laugh. "By my soul, John, were I not more sure of your loyalties, I'd swear there was a touch of admiration in your voice. You haven't become the Sheriff's champion, have you?" "Well, he saved ye, didn't he? And brought ye here to Sherwood and made an honest woman of ye, so Tuck won't be listening to yer confession till the end of his days. And more, I suppose. Gone back to Nottingham, back to that devil Lackland still without his breakfast hanging and hungry fer the distraction of yer lovely neck in a noose. He could've stayed, ye know. We'd have all taken him, every last man here, or hid him till he managed to get his hide to France or such. But he was set on making things right somehow. Making sure ye was safe, lass, 'tis the best of what he did." Thea scuffed the toe of her slipper through a pile of frost-limned leaves. "And the silver?" "'Tis a fair portion of the ransom, if not the whole of it. Enough to make German Henry sit down and talk, maybe enough to win Richard's release with a promise of more to come. Maybe. We'll know soon." John paused, and Thea could feel the weight of his stare, reaching deep within her. "But then, lass, 'tis not the silver what's on yer mind. 'Tis him, yer Sheriff." "John--" "I told ye once and ye'd not pay me mind. I'll tell ye again. 'Tis plain, lass, ye love the man. Nay, don't try and make it easy on my pride. I saw it fer myself at the Yuletide

feast. The way ye held to his arm, yer fingers toying with the braid at his sleeve. The way yer face were all lit up, pink, like dawn coming over night, yer eyes shining like candles been fired behind them. And I saw it again last night, when Tuck married ye, yer smile--fer a moment there was no care in yer life but to hold to this man, cleave to him, draw from his strength somehow, like a woman does from a man she loves. And him--" John drew a deep breath, huffing it out with an audible sigh. "I tried not to look at him, but there he was with ye, lass, and I saw him look at ye as if fer all the world there were naught but ye and him in the world. Saw him lean close to ye and whisper sweetly. And I asked myself, was this the bastard Sheriff we knew, who was lacing his fingers with yers beneath his cloak when he thought no one was looking? Could the beast be that tender, that full of heart? "Ye think I don't notice, that a big man like me can't see the small things like that. But I do. And I did. And what I see in ye is something I've not seen in all the years I've known ye. Ye gained something of his power, lass, and he, something of yer softness, and in my mind, there can be no explaining how that happens, that bartering of bits and pieces of people's souls, unless love is there, somehow making it all possible." "I will not argue a word of it, John, save--" "Save what, lass?" "If something should happen--I've lost one husband--" "Are ye worried about his hide, then?" John asked with a gently chiding chuckle. "The rascal we've all wanted to drown in the Trent? The same varmint ye wanted hanging from Sherwood's oaks just moments ago? Aye, Thea, ye're in love all right, and so unused to the feelings what come with it ye're thinking like a half-wit. 'Tis the Sheriff of Nottingham we're talking of, lass. The same slippery eel of a man what our arrows couldn't find even when our aim was good. The same smooth-talking snake whose silver tongue spewed venom and half-truths one minute and charmed ye into his bed the next--" John held up his hand, cutting off Thea's rebuttal before she could make it. "Don't be glaring at me, lass. Ye haven't half a right to knot yer brows in my direction after I spent the eve bedding next to Will Scathlocke and his thundering snores whilst you and yer Sheriff--well, all I'm trying to say is, ye need not worry fer his safety. He's wily and careful and too bleeding mean to be killed, and if that weren't enough, he has ye, lass, and the thought of ye loving him to carry him through. Although worry, if ye must." He smiled. "It's a refreshing sight to see ye beside yerself with a tender feeling or two." "Oh, John, truly, I meant for none of this to happen. If I could have chosen--" "But ye did, Thea," John said with quiet firmness. "In yer own way, ye did. Maybe it was time for the mourning to be done. Or maybe it was something in the man what drew ye to him. But still, lass, ye chose to be with when no one else would. And ye gave him the best any man could hope fer. Ye believed in him. What man in his right mind could not love ye back fer that?"

Thea glanced up at John, catching a faraway look of longing on his face. "Aye, lass," he admitted with a small shrug, "I love ye still. Always will. No Sheriff can take that away from me. But what I wanted most, Thea, was to see ye drawing breath again, laughing, hurting, feeling. 'Tis him what did fer ye what I could not. I should be thanking him, I suppose. Maybe in my own way, I am, fer I haven't killed the son of a bitch yet, though the itch is still there some from habit." He laughed easily, a low rumble that Thea felt through her own skin as he pulled her close to his side. "It's odd, when ye come to think of it, how yer Sheriff's Robin turned inside out. Like the opposite sides of the same coin, but made of the same stuff inside. He's a scrapper, yer Sheriff, a fighter. Aye, I like the man well enough." John nodded, affirming his feelings. "Ah, Thea, 'tis a strange world, not nearly as easy to figure as ye'd think." Thea sighed, leaning her head against his shoulder as they walked arm in arm through the forest. "Sometimes there is no sense to it all, is there, John?" John grinned and brushed the top of her head with a soft kiss. "And sometimes, lass, the only sense of it be found in yer heart." The revelry had all but died. The flames of lingering campfires striped the wattle and daub of their makeshift shelter with gold, burnishing the darkness, and the emptying of the last jug of mead had all but silenced the chatter outside, save for an occasional muffled laugh. Nottingham gazed down at Thea, her hair a mahogany tumble on the makeshift straw bed, her skin an intriguing chiaroscuro of shadow and light. He placed a kiss in the darkened valley between her breasts, then took her hardened nipple in his mouth. He could hear her sudden gasp in response, feel her back arch and her hips move against his as he drove deeply inside her again. Her hands clenched his back as she rose to meet him, as their rhythm waxed and waned and waxed again. God, how he wanted to prolong this, make it last forever. Or take her and take her again. Anything to stave off the dawn, to keep her next to him. He was long past words, long past being able to tell her again and again how he loved her, but his body spoke for him, and her soft answering cries were a reply all their own. Too soon, he felt the mounting pressure inside him, the tension as his shaft grew harder. Unable to stop himself, he thrust into her with a desperate abandon, sliding fluidly into her heat, withdrawing, plunging into her again and again, until he felt her body tighten around him, and the strong pulsing pull of her climax drew his seed from him. They lay together, unmoving, their heartbeats racing in tandem, their breath heating the air around. Then she was pulling him closer, her hands sliding over his sweat-slicked back to his buttocks, using her inner muscles to caress him into hardness again. "There they go again," he heard a drunken voice from outside, and an answering chorus of laughter.

"You'd think they'd sleep, wouldn't you?" "I don't know about that, Will. Would you sleep through your wedding night?" "I don't think the bastard knows how to sleep." Nottingham recognized John Little's voice. "Making baby Sheriffs is all," a younger voice piped. A tumult of groans rose up from the campfire. "Give me that jug of mead, Rob." "It's empty, John." "Aye, well, Much needs a crack over the head fer that one." Nottingham felt Thea's laugh along his belly and chest, and chuckled with her. "And I'm leaving you alone with this bunch of rabble? I must be insane." She kissed him, teasing his lower lip with her tongue. "You can always stay," she tempted him. He moved within her, renewing their lovemaking with a languorous tempo, and silenced her with a kiss. *** He watched her as she slept, huddled amid the sheepskin and coarse woolen blankets, her arm outstretched, fingers curling gently inward toward her palm. She looked so peaceful, so perfectly wrought with dawn's pink fingers reaching through the wattle and daub to rosy her cheeks and the sun's early gilding setting off the fiery streaks in her hair. He wondered if she knew how much risk still lay ahead of them, or if she dreamed, oblivious to all but the smells and sounds of the forest that welcomed her home. He watched her draw deep, even breaths through slightly parted lips, wondering where he would find the strength to leave her when his plans were so uncertain and the outcome of the day too mysterious for even the wisest sage to predict. He leaned over her, touched his lips to hers, and waited, feeling the small pulses of heat from her mouth drugging him more surely every minute he lingered. He drew in a sharp hiss of breath, as if he could inhale her very essence and carry it with him, then rose quickly and ducked through the hide flap over the doorway without looking back. "Ye're leaving then, are ye?" The Sheriff straightened, squinting slightly at the figure of the man who stood backlit by the early morning light. John Little stood braced against his quarterstaff, powerful hands

fisted around the tall length of wood, leather-wrapped feet planted amid the scramble of frosted leaves and twigs on the forest floor--a giant oak of a man. "I must," Nottingham replied softly, brushing past the outlaw, somehow unable to meet his eyes. He had underestimated the one they called Little John, given poor credit to the man's resolve and devotion. He would not do so again. "Lackland will be in an uproar no amount of ale or whoring will calm, and I--I had best be about the business of saving my arse." He heard the woodsman chuckle under his breath, then the guttural bark of a Saxon curse, wrapped in deep laughter. "God's blood, man, if there be slime as slick as ye, I've not found it yet. Why, ye be every much an outlaw as the rest of us. More so, as ye hatched the plan yerself with that low-weasel mind of yers." "Indeed." The corners of the Sheriff's lips curved upward, despite his best attempts at sternness. "As if I needed reminding." "Returning to Nottingham, 'twould be like going back to hell with that Lucifer Lackland breathing fire down yer neck. 'Twill mean the fanciest bit of conniving yer twisted mind has ever conjured, and no one--not a soul in that castle--to take yer side of it. They'll call ye inept, at best. Have ye in irons before day's end. Lackland will lay blame for his failure right at yer feet." "Where it rightly belongs," Nottingham said. "They'll be fer hanging ye straight away, or goaling ye and hanging ye only when the ravens have naught to feed upon." "And would that matter?" The Sheriff looked up and saw the deep cast of the forest reflected in the outlaw's eyes. John Little's jaw clenched; his lips thinned to narrow bloodless strips amidst the gingered beard. "'Twould matter enough to her," he said, jerking his head in the direction of the lean-to. Nottingham glanced back over his shoulder, unable for a moment to trust himself with more than a gruff nod. "I intend to make things right, no matter the cost." "And that will keep ye safe?" "Perhaps. If my wit and good fortune have not deserted me completely. If you and the others spare no time in seeing that tax money to King Richard's aid." The woodsman scratched his woolly head, scuffed at a tuft of hoar-covered moss at his feet, clearly bewildered at the icy words that passed for humor. "You would do better to ask who will keep Thea safe," the Sheriff said. John Little looked up at the quiet prompting. "Aye, man, that I would, since ye're set on abandoning her--"

"You will," the Sheriff interrupted. There was much left unsaid in the moment that followed. Nottingham saw the giant's ruddy face trade confusion for gradual understanding, saw the momentary flash of acknowledgment that, without words, a pact lay between them, as solid as any blood oath. Useless to promise success in Nottingham, or that he would live long enough to ask for the pardon he would very much like bestowed upon these men. More futile still to spill his feelings for Thea into words this outlaw did not share, or feel himself, thrice over. "Remind her, when she wakes, that I will come for her . . . again . . . soon." If it were a lie or an impossible vow to keep, still the outlaw said nothing. Nottingham saw him swallow hard and nod, tucking his whiskered chin to his chest where no emotion could betray him. The Sheriff looked toward the narrow path that led away from the camp, days--weeks-months of memories rushing through his mind with the speed of the January wind whistling through the canopy of bare limbs above. January . . . and the demons of the forest were gone. Shriveled to nothing, carried away like the fragile wisps of ash borne skyward from the outlaws' campfires. His gaze followed the spirals of smoke, reaching at last the muted white of the heavens. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, drawing in the sharp cold and the wild smell of the forest, feeling suddenly, inexplicably, free. With a wry smile, he let his eyes drift open again, let his gaze turn to the man to whom he had entrusted so much. John Little extended his hand, a callused paw torn by work and weather. "Aye, man. I'll tell her." Nottingham grasped the man's hand in his own, held it firmly, measuring the strength and certainty there. It was all he needed to know. More than he could ask of the Fates that controlled his destiny. Thea would be safe. Watched over. He turned and started down the trail that led out of Sherwood Forest. *** He was gone when she awoke, and for a moment Thea could do no more than curl into the indentation his body had made in the straw beside her, imagining the warmth that had long since departed. She had never expected him to stay, to be sure. Despite the appealing image of the Sheriff of Nottingham dressed in hunter's leggings, his shock of raven hair disguised by a woolen hood of Lincoln green, he no more belonged in Sherwood Forest than John and his ruffian friends belonged in Nottingham Castle. Thea smiled wistfully. He belonged to the life she had witnessed firsthand: standing among royalty and titled men, his bearing regal and proud and cool with a mystical undercurrent of power no one could miss; conversing easily, persuasively; listening

intently; delicately maneuvering through the hazardous waters of politics and the Crown. No doubt he would argue that he was nothing more than a bastard stableboy who happened upon his sheriffdom by his wits and a pocketful of spare change. No doubt, he would be wrong. The ruse with the silver belonged to the lowest highwayman; her daring rescue from the gaol more aptly suited a rogue knight. But in the end, Thea had seen nobility in the Sheriff's determined actions no one could deny--nobility that went past pretense to the soul, where the measure of a man was truly taken. It struck her odd that what she missed most was not his unwavering strength or his carefully devised defiance, but something far simpler. What she longed for now was the assurance of his arms about her, the rhythm of his breath stirring the hair against her neck, and the intimate, inadvertent touches their bodies made in sleep. She closed her eyes against a hot wash of tears, inhaling deeply the faint scent he had left behind, willing her strength to follow him if she could not. He would manage, she told herself. By winter's end, Richard would be free, and the king would send his traitorous brother off with his tail between his legs. And with the Sheriff's talent for turning events to his favor, Nottingham would likely convince the Lionheart to overlook his initial compliance with the conspiracy and reap a pleasant reward for his part in bringing the king home to England. With a sigh, she left the crude bed they had shared and ventured outside. A few of the outlaws looked her way, approving smiles and nods accompanying respectful silence. She smiled back, cheeks flushing hot in the bitter chill of the winter wind. "Ah, there ye be, lass, and a late rising to ye!" John Little's long strides took him to Thea's side, and he fell into slow step beside her, laying a woolen shawl over her shoulders. "Too late, I fear," Thea said quietly. "Aye, well, he wanted it that way. Wanted to leave ye sleeping in the warmth, not out here in the cold, stumbling over a leave-taking ye'd both be loathe to make." Thea glanced sidelong at the giant's face only to find him looking at her with peculiar understanding. "I doubt the Sheriff would be about confessing such nonsense to you, John, even deprived of sleep and the last whit of reason the man owns, which surely he forfeited with that hare-brained scheme of his." "Aye, and it were a glorious scheme--" "Foolhardy at best, damn the man! Damn you both! You should track him down, you should, and bring him back, for I've a good mind to hang him from the tallest oak in Sherwood, and you right beside him, John, for the risks you took." "'Twas all the Sheriff's doing," John said charitably, "the notion of it, the planning of it, the maneuvering of it, 'twas all his idea, every bit of it." "And you yourself, you'd have naught of such high-minded trickery, now would you, John?"

"Nay, on my life, but were it to save yer pretty skin. And the throne of England," he added belatedly, "what the Sheriff did most nicely, fer all that he's a snake in the grass and a Norman." Thea managed a shaky laugh. "By my soul, John, were I not more sure of your loyalties, I'd swear there was a touch of admiration in your voice. You haven't become the Sheriff's champion, have you?" "Well, he saved ye, didn't he? And brought ye here to Sherwood and made an honest woman of ye, so Tuck won't be listening to yer confession till the end of his days. And more, I suppose. Gone back to Nottingham, back to that devil Lackland still without his breakfast hanging and hungry fer the distraction of yer lovely neck in a noose. He could've stayed, ye know. We'd have all taken him, every last man here, or hid him till he managed to get his hide to France or such. But he was set on making things right somehow. Making sure ye was safe, lass, 'tis the best of what he did." Thea scuffed the toe of her slipper through a pile of frost-limned leaves. "And the silver?" "'Tis a fair portion of the ransom, if not the whole of it. Enough to make German Henry sit down and talk, maybe enough to win Richard's release with a promise of more to come. Maybe. We'll know soon." John paused, and Thea could feel the weight of his stare, reaching deep within her. "But then, lass, 'tis not the silver what's on yer mind. 'Tis him, yer Sheriff." "John--" "I told ye once and ye'd not pay me mind. I'll tell ye again. 'Tis plain, lass, ye love the man. Nay, don't try and make it easy on my pride. I saw it fer myself at the Yuletide feast. The way ye held to his arm, yer fingers toying with the braid at his sleeve. The way yer face were all lit up, pink, like dawn coming over night, yer eyes shining like candles been fired behind them. And I saw it again last night, when Tuck married ye, yer smile--fer a moment there was no care in yer life but to hold to this man, cleave to him, draw from his strength somehow, like a woman does from a man she loves. And him--" John drew a deep breath, huffing it out with an audible sigh. "I tried not to look at him, but there he was with ye, lass, and I saw him look at ye as if fer all the world there were naught but ye and him in the world. Saw him lean close to ye and whisper sweetly. And I asked myself, was this the bastard Sheriff we knew, who was lacing his fingers with yers beneath his cloak when he thought no one was looking? Could the beast be that tender, that full of heart? "Ye think I don't notice, that a big man like me can't see the small things like that. But I do. And I did. And what I see in ye is something I've not seen in all the years I've known ye. Ye gained something of his power, lass, and he, something of yer softness, and in my mind, there can be no explaining how that happens, that bartering of bits and pieces of people's souls, unless love is there, somehow making it all possible."

"I will not argue a word of it, John, save--" "Save what, lass?" "If something should happen--I've lost one husband--" "Are ye worried about his hide, then?" John asked with a gently chiding chuckle. "The rascal we've all wanted to drown in the Trent? The same varmint ye wanted hanging from Sherwood's oaks just moments ago? Aye, Thea, ye're in love all right, and so unused to the feelings what come with it ye're thinking like a half-wit. 'Tis the Sheriff of Nottingham we're talking of, lass. The same slippery eel of a man what our arrows couldn't find even when our aim was good. The same smooth-talking snake whose silver tongue spewed venom and half-truths one minute and charmed ye into his bed the next--" John held up his hand, cutting off Thea's rebuttal before she could make it. "Don't be glaring at me, lass. Ye haven't half a right to knot yer brows in my direction after I spent the eve bedding next to Will Scathlocke and his thundering snores whilst you and yer Sheriff--well, all I'm trying to say is, ye need not worry fer his safety. He's wily and careful and too bleeding mean to be killed, and if that weren't enough, he has ye, lass, and the thought of ye loving him to carry him through. Although worry, if ye must." He smiled. "It's a refreshing sight to see ye beside yerself with a tender feeling or two." "Oh, John, truly, I meant for none of this to happen. If I could have chosen--" "But ye did, Thea," John said with quiet firmness. "In yer own way, ye did. Maybe it was time for the mourning to be done. Or maybe it was something in the man what drew ye to him. But still, lass, ye chose to be with when no one else would. And ye gave him the best any man could hope fer. Ye believed in him. What man in his right mind could not love ye back fer that?" Thea glanced up at John, catching a faraway look of longing on his face. "Aye, lass," he admitted with a small shrug, "I love ye still. Always will. No Sheriff can take that away from me. But what I wanted most, Thea, was to see ye drawing breath again, laughing, hurting, feeling. 'Tis him what did fer ye what I could not. I should be thanking him, I suppose. Maybe in my own way, I am, fer I haven't killed the son of a bitch yet, though the itch is still there some from habit." He laughed easily, a low rumble that Thea felt through her own skin as he pulled her close to his side. "It's odd, when ye come to think of it, how yer Sheriff's Robin turned inside out. Like the opposite sides of the same coin, but made of the same stuff inside. He's a scrapper, yer Sheriff, a fighter. Aye, I like the man well enough." John nodded, affirming his feelings. "Ah, Thea, 'tis a strange world, not nearly as easy to figure as ye'd think." Thea sighed, leaning her head against his shoulder as they walked arm in arm through the forest. "Sometimes there is no sense to it all, is there, John?"

John grinned and brushed the top of her head with a soft kiss. "And sometimes, lass, the only sense of it be found in yer heart." Epilogue April's sun broke through the clouds and shone brightly over the greening landscape. Thea strolled from the castle herb garden, already brimming with a wealth of plants and new shoots. In the crook of her elbow, she carried a gathering basket full of new herbs as well as a few of the wildflowers that were starting to spring up along the garden wall. She made her way to the churchyard, stopping to chat with the soldier whose twins she had delivered the even before, and promised to check in with the new mother and her babes before the afternoon passed. A little further along, one of the stable master's brood stopped her to show off a litter of pups, sleeping together in a furry pile of brown and white spots. All around her, the world seemed to be awakening from its winter slumber and bringing forth fertile abundance of new life. She smiled wistfully, stopping at the gate of the churchyard, and let the breeze slip through her hair, buffeting her face with a caress full of the scent of newly turned earth. The Sheriff knelt at the gravesite, plucking at the overgrown grass that had sprung up around the new marble headstone. As if sensing Thea's presence, he looked up, spotted her, and stood. "Kendall is remiss in his tending of these plots again. I must have an urgent word with him," he called out. "Everything is growing so quickly after the rains," she replied, coming through the gate to join him. "I noticed it in the herb garden as well. All winter, I've chafed at having not enough to do, and now that spring is here, there are not enough hours in the day." "You need to start training someone, a suitable apprentice who can help you with your potions and such." "Aye, I've thought about that." Nottingham glanced at the headstone. "The stone mason did a fine job with this, did he not? I'd contemplated something more ornate, at first. Angels or some such, but this seems more fitting. Alyce was never fond of frivolous decoration." "It's lovely. Solid and permanent. So she will always be remembered." Thea knelt and put the bouquet of wildflowers on the green sod below the Celtic cross. "I should do something similar for Aelwynn, but I must confess, I've not quite the charitable spirit for it. Enough for now that she lies in holy ground. She was deserving of far less, as the priest insists on reminding me." "Did Gisborne ever say much about the night he found her?"

"No," the Sheriff replied. "I suspect he knows better than any of us why she took her own life. I can only gather that she could not continue to live with all she had done, the attempts on my life, the fire, deGisborne's death." He shrugged, and Thea could see him casting off the memories of that other time that seemed so long ago now. "So what are you about this morn? More justice to dispense?" The Sheriff smiled and, linking his arms through hers, steered her along the narrow path that led out of the churchyard. "In case you haven't noticed, the Lionheart made rubble of part of my castle in his attempt to wrest it from the barons. I am deep in debate with the masons about repairing the fortifications. The battlements are quite a disaster. And I keep waiting for the next hard rain to bring the roof of the hall down around our ears. All I hear from my advisors is how much expense will be involved, and that reptilian little scribe of mine does nothing but nod and concur, then plunge into some dreary accounting of my depleted treasury." "Nottingham is the Crown's castle," Thea said. "The Crown should help maintain it." "Richard is forgiving, sweet, but already bent on a new war in France. A double-edged sword, if you'd like: he's putting all his funds into armor and munitions, but he's far too busy planning his next adventure to be watching me. I suppose I should consider myself fortunate he was willing to overlook my previous transgressions and allow me to continue here again, once he'd secured the castle." "It's largely due to you that he's home at all!" "Hardly something I want to take credit for, Thea. The man's a warrior, a glory-seeker. He'll be gone the first chance it gets. I, on the other hand, would like to make something of this shire. I'd like to see Nottingham become something more than a mere military stronghold. I'd like to see it flourish, to give to the people something other than my legacy of oppression." Thea smiled and squeezed his arm. "Well, the archery contest is an excellent idea. Your men will get to show off their skill, their ladies will have an excuse for new gowns--" "And Robin of Locksley will beat them hands-down. It will be nothing more than an exercise in humiliation." Thea laughed. "Which reminds me," the Sheriff continued. "I've been holding something of his." Thea glanced at him with a puzzled expression. "Of Robin's?" "In a manner of speaking. I know what you'll say, of course, but I could not quite prevent myself. I mean, it was all there for the taking. All that treasure. The silver. The gold. After all, who would miss it, I thought?"

"You stole from King Richard's ransom money?" Thea could not quite prevent the astonishment from slipping into her voice. "It was only a bit, Thea." "And you say you've mended your ways. Honestly, Sheriff, are your very bones made of nothing but deceit and mischief?" "See, I knew you would say that." "Then why did you take it? That money did not belong to you!" "Yes, but--" Nottingham faltered, then began again in a sterner voice. "Your friends in Sherwood have stolen on more occasions than I care to remember, and yet you never once chastised them for their larcenous behavior. I take a mere nugget--" "A nugget? You took a nugget of gold? Do you know how much that was worth?" "Yes--" "You'll return it this instant!" "I'll not be corrected like some errant child, wife! Sweet saints! Did you leave your gentle nature back in Sherwood, woman, or is it just something about my castle that turns you into a harping shrew?" "I am not a harping--" The sound of someone clearing her throat, silenced them both in mid-argument. Mildthryth waddled over to them, wagging her head, clucking her tongue, and spewing forth such a scolding of Saxon verbiage that Thea immediately turned to Nottingham. "Now you've done it. It's either listen to her lectures on marital harmony or wait until she locks us in the solar together until we work out our differences, and I can't say I prefer one over the other." "I certainly prefer being locked away with you--" "You would. Then you can ply me with sweet words and your ever-efficient kisses and worm your way out of putting that gold back where it belongs." "But it belongs with you!" "It does not belong--what? What on earth are you talking about?" "She's being mule-headed, Millie." Nottingham cast an imploring eye toward the maidservant. "Just as I predicted." Mildthryth cuffed him gently upside the head. "You ignorant whelp! Mishandling things again, are you?" She raised her hands to the heavens as if entreating help from the

saints. "I can't seem to teach you a thing. Stop talking the thing to death and give it to her!" "Give what--?" The Sheriff reached inside his tunic, then extended his hand to Thea. When he uncurled his fingers, a gold ring lay in the palm of his hand. "We didn't have one when we were wed," he said. "Somehow it seemed appropriate." Thea stared from the ring to the Sheriff's face. "You made me a wedding ring from stolen coin." Nottingham coughed, futilely trying to cover his guilt. "Yes." Thea shook her head, speechless, but when he picked the ring, she nonetheless held out her hand and let him slide it over her finger. "I am wearing King Richard's ransom," she said, still staring down at the wide circular band. "Well, if you feel that strongly about it, you can always give it back." She snatched her hand away from him, balled her fingers into a fist, and looked up at him. "Perhaps I was too hasty." "M-m-m." "It's a sweet gesture." "Yes?" "And it sparkles so beautifully." "As I thought." "No one would miss it." "As I said." "You're always doing such unexpectedly noble things, Sheriff. I don't quite know what to make of you." She glanced down at the ring, then up at her husband. Nottingham wore a bemused expression, and amusement danced behind his dark slate eyes. "Very well," she acquiesced, smiling up at him. "It shall be our secret."