AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Have you been sleeping all morning, Lady Robin?” Emma asked. “Are you ill? You look stifling. Those brutes wouldn’t let me enter your tent, and I had no way of knowing if you were safe!”
I blinked, shaking my head to fight off the cobwebs that had infiltrated my mind from the relaxing bath. I’m in public again, which means constant distress and questions. Better get used to it.
Before Emma could continue lambasting me, I brought her into a hug and put my mouth close to her ear. “The Merry Men will always keep me safe, Em. That’s something you’ll learn about them if you stay with us long enough.”
She threw her head back and took me to arm’s length. “Stay with you? You mean . . .”
I nodded deeply. “I’d like you and Ada to stay with me and the Merry Men. I can watch after you that way.”
Her lips parted and she stared slack-jawed at me, like it was the first time she’d ever seen me. Her eyes looked dewy, but that could have been a reflection of the sun.
Much raised a finger, destroying the moment. “Erm, do you . . . have that authority? You know, after last night with the staff and the mean bug and—”
“Shut up, Much,” I snapped out the side of my mouth. “Go wait over by the fire. I’ll call you if you’re needed.”
He puffed his chest out and exhaled quickly. “Right. The fire. I’ll just be over here next to the fire.”
He wandered off, leaving me and Emma alone. She was still staring. Other Merry Men were around the various fire pits in camp, the early afternoon chores starting, raising a clamor.
I realized there were twice as many men here as there had been last night. Crisp must have made good on his promise of getting the others back, even after Tuck knocked him out cold. Which meant word of my abdication must have swept through camp by now, and everyone was pleased Will Scarlet had taken over as leader of the Merry Men.
I pushed down the twinge of hurt. “Emma? You’ve been quiet for a while. Would you like to stay—”
She lunged at me and threw her arms around my neck, stuffing her cheek against mine. I yelped in surprise, laughing, as she squeezed the life out of me. “Oh, Lady Robin, you have no idea what it means to hear you ask that. I’ve never had a home, well . . . anywhere.”
I clamped my jaw. Right. Because even at my estate in Wilford, she was just our handmaid. Our servant, brought on because Mama needed workers for her dress shop. And before that, she’d been an orphan at the almshouse.
Her words came out in a flurry, her freckled face darkening with every rushed sentence. “It was awful after Sir Thomas left the estate, ma’am. Just as awful with him at the estate. And your mother was nowhere to be seen, and I was all alone in that big, scary manor, and guards and cloaked men kept coming by. Did you know one of the serfs was killed right outside in the fields? Who did that?! And then Sir Gregory showed up and—”
“Emma, you’re going to pass out from breathlessness,” I said, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder.
She didn’t hear me, barreling forward while staring at the dirt, screwing up her eyebrows in comical ways. “—I wasn’t even sure I could trust him, even though he’d been so nice to you all your life and he’d never laid a hand on me or any woman, far as I knew. And then the lawmen came and evicted me, but then changed their mind and said I was part of the property, which was no longer owned by your family, which shocked me. I asked if he could do that, but how was I supposed to fight the Sheriff of Nottingham on matters concerning the law, as a handmaid for your absent, sick mother? Poor Joan. Sir Gregory came back before the Sheriff arrived and told me Mama Joan was dead, but I’m not sure if I could believe him anymore because he seemed different and—”
“Wait.” I held a hand up. “Did you say the Sheriff of Nottingham took my family’s estate and you with it?”
She panted, nodding. Slowly, her mouth closed as she studied my face, which was creasing with anger and bafflement. “Ada and Liz were handmaids for other families. He shipped us off to Rufford Abbey together.”
I had already known Sir George and the government of Nottingham had reclaimed my estate for their own greedy purposes, yet I’d no idea Emma had been taken with it. It incensed me beyond reason that they could do that, treating her like she was a part of the walls and tapestries to be sold.
I needed to meet this Sheriff, firsthand, and see what he was really about. Because the picture everyone was painting—Little John most of all—was not rosy. If I wanted to get Sir Guy of Gisborne off the Merry Men’s back, I had to go to the source and take care of his employer.
Doubt clouded over me. How the hell can I do that when he has the law on his side, the friendship of Prince John, and the garrison of Nottingham?
It was a tall task—one I hadn’t seriously considered tackling yet. Now, with Emma here, things started to come to focus. Little John told me the Sheriff hates him because John killed his brother. So, if John is alive, there’s only one man who has any reason to keep him alive, and that’s Sheriff George.
The entire time during the tournament, I had thought the masked man beating me in the competition, Sir Oliver of Mickley, was Sir Guy of Gisborne—the Sheriff’s hound.
But Oliver turned out to be my brother Robert. Which means Guy had free reign to skulk around the forest during that final bout, and pinpoint Little John. If John had been so focused on keeping me safe during that match, he wouldn’t have been watching his own back. The other Merry Men were triangulated at separate parts of the forest. John was alone. Guy preyed on that, and must have ambushed him and took him.
I felt I had a stronger understanding of what happened that fateful day. Oddly enough, it gave me renewed hope—if my theory was correct—that John was still alive. Because the Sheriff won’t want to kill him. He’ll want to torture him long as possible.
“Are you sure the men will let me stay?”
I looked up as the concerned voice of Emma filtered in and brought me back to the present.
“They seem . . . rough around the edges,” she finished.
My brow furrowed. “The Merry Men? No need to be coy, Emma: They’re proper bastards. But, yes, they’ll let you and Ada stay. Because I’ll tell them to, and that will be the end of that.”
