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. . . And coarse warmth covered my shoulders.
I furrowed my brow, looking left and right.
He had gathered my cloak from the table behind me and thrown it over my shoulders.
I gasped. “W-What are you doing?”
He closed the cloak for me, tightening it at the middle, and relief instantly skittered across my clammy skin once I was swaddled in the heat of the garment and at least partially covered.
“Don’t want you freezing to death before your big journey,” he said simply. “Wherever it may lead you.”
Guy reached behind me again. This time I didn’t close my eyes—I stared into his black orbs, searching for something like mercy or . . . understanding.
I didn’t find either. I was as confused as ever.
“I took something from you,” he said, touching my lips with the glove of his forefinger, motioning toward my mouth. “And given you something in return.” Something dropped inside my drawn-back hood as he finished speaking.
The madman smiled, curled his hand around the spine of my neck with a soft touch, and leaned forward to whisper in my ear. “And I want it back next time we meet.”
Chapter 43
Robin
Sir Guy left shortly after his ominous demand, leaving me alone to wonder and mull things over for nearly an hour. To marinate in the dreary situation I’d found myself in, and his parting words.
I had more questions than answers. Clearly.
What was that? What did Guy put in the hood of this godforsaken cloak? Why did he get so furious when he learned the Merry Men would come looking for me, and it would lead to their deaths?
One sentence he’d said rang out above all others, and as I heard footsteps coming down a staircase overhead, I thought I’d figured it out.
“I suppose I simply enjoy playing the big cat to your little mouse too much.”
The realization struck me in the jaw, gripping me tighter than Sir Guy even had. He lives for the chase. The hunt. With me “wiped off the board,” and the Merry Men following in my wake, he’d no longer have anyone to chase.
The game would be over. And it wouldn’t be ending by his hand—which I now knew he needed more than anything.
Two guards stepped into the room and I went rigid.
“Ah, that was nice of him,” snarled one of them with mock kindness. “Throwing a cloak over your shoulders after doing his worst to you.”
Except Sir Guy hadn’t touched me.
Well. He’d kissed me. That was certainly a violation, and it sickened me, yet he could have done so much worse with me strung up like I was ready to be drawn and quartered.
Most noticeably, he did not do what Sheriff George had done to Little John. He even showed some remorse, or anger, that George had kept that despicable affair from him.
I didn’t know if I could trust anything the madman from Gisborne said, but I was still unscathed. That had to count for something, didn’t it?
The guards kept me shackled by my wrists and ankles, but unstrung me from the ceiling and the floor. They pushed me and I stumbled forward with my constraints clanking.
I didn’t recognize the guards, other than to say they wore the armor and embroidery of Nottingham soldiers. So they’re clearly in the employ of the Sheriff.
We gained the stairs and came to a room that could have belonged to any other house. A living room, with a bed in one corner and a shallow fire pit in another. It was rudimentary—more wattle-and-daub than anything—clearly a person’s dwelling.
I was right. This is a place to hide people you don’t want found. Complete with a downstairs torture chamber in the basement. How quaint.
Sunlight shone through the single window of the room. It wasn’t until I was pushed outside that the sun hit me full on and made me squint and wince.
