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John looked embarrassed. “Er. No. She didn’t.”
“Then that’s what we’re doing. As ladies.” Marian flapped her free hand at John’s suspicious expression. “Don’t worry, Giant John.” Her eyes dipped lower. “I won’t let her escape your torrid imprisonment.”
With that, she gripped my arm and took me up the slope.
“Oh,” she said, stopping at the top and turning around. “Tuck, I wouldn’t mind limping out of here myself. Come back in fifteen minutes.”
The friar frowned, hesitated, and inclined his chin. “Ma’am.”
Maid Marian dragged me to the river. I’d been getting dragged along a lot lately, and I didn’t much like it. However, I couldn’t deny my curiosity about this flamboyant firebrand of a woman, so I went with her willingly.
Anything to be away from the stuffy, overbearing, masculine nature of those beastly men for a bit.
Perhaps I can learn from her. She’s unabashed in the way she speaks and carries herself. She has a comfortable familiarity with these men, it seems. And, judging by how she speaks, she clearly isn’t afraid to use her body to get what she wants.
At the bank of the river, she stopped and stepped out of her flat shoes. Her toes wriggled in the muddy grass near mossy stones. “Strip, girl.”
I fervently shook my head. “Why does everyone want me to get naked around here? Is there no decency among you people?”
“Decency doesn’t exist in the wilderness, lass. We all want you to get naked because you stink to high heaven, and, I assume, because the men want to get a gander at your goods. Bathing is a crucial step in how the Merry Men comport ourselves.”
I looked her up and down, from her curve-hugging dress and corset to her pristine, ghostly face. “Are you a Merry Man?”
She snorted, hands on hips. “Do I look merry? Or like a man? I’m an associate.”
“You sound like an accomplice, if anything.” It was hard not to act bratty around this silver-tongued woman. My natural inclination was defiance.
She studied me, eyes narrowing. Then she began unstrapping her dress in front of me, and turned around so I would help with the laces of her corset.
I obliged, staying quiet. My fingers worked sluggishly.
Once she was out of the confines of her dress, wearing only the thin sheen of her undergown, she said, “I’m going to teach you something, girl. If you’ll listen.”
Before I could answer, she pulled her gown over her head and stepped out of it, dropping the garment to the ground. She stood naked in front of me, her pale breasts heavy, her nipples hard against the breeze.
She cupped her bosom and squeezed together. “This is your only currency here.”
I gulped and clasped my hands in front of my belly. My eyes moved away from her nudeness—her wide hips, the slight swell of her belly, the heaving breasts. “I don’t have . . . that.”
She chuckled. “I called you titless, and I’m sorry for that. But you do seem to have something under that band holding you back.” She gingerly stepped into the river, ankle-deep, and shivered. “It’s not the tits I’m talking about. It’s the whole package. The attitude, the bat of your eyelashes, the sway of your hips. The mysterious appeal of a woman’s body that all men are entranced by.”
“Alan-a-Dale didn’t seem too entranced.”
She laughed again. “You’re funny. Most men don’t like queer girls, but I think these ones might find the appeal. Alan-a-Dale is a special case.” She curved her hand toward me as she waded deeper into the water. “Come, girl. I won’t bite.”
“That’s what they said, too.”
“And did they?”
“No.” I tapped my chin. “Well, Alan said he would.”
She smiled, bobbing her eyebrows.
I sighed and slowly started disrobing. Since my tunic had been ripped in half by that tempestuous brute Will Scarlet, I didn’t have much to take off. Just my hood, boots, trousers, and the cloth band wrapped tight around my middle.
Once I was free of it all, I barred my breasts with my arm and put a hand between my legs to hide my modesty. I took a deep lungful of air. God, but that thing was tight. The hem of the band had bitten into my skin.
“There she is,” Marian said. Her eyes glittered with mischief. “More woman than you pretend to be.”
