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From there, I peeked into the dark aperture . . .
And found three girls shivering on the other side of the room. A closed door was off to the right, and a simple bed sat to the left.
Too easy, I thought. Open window in the night? Girls left to their own devices without a guard in the room?
Then I recognized this was an uncommon situation. It wasn’t often the Sheriff of Nottingham sent a trio of servant girls to a nunnery without forewarning, which was in itself a bit alarming.
Shrugging the thought aside, I reached for a chipped part of the ledge, yanked off a tiny pebble, and tossed it into the room between the girls.
Three heads whipped up as it clattered on the wooden floor. Emma, centermost, crawled forward. Her eyes lit up when she noticed my hooded face in the window, and she opened her mouth to say something—
Which I quickly shut down with a harsh finger over my lips. I made big eyes southward, downstairs, to tell her we needed to be quiet.
The girls scurried over.
“Oh goodness, you came,” Emma hissed. “I surely thought—”
“There’s no time, Emma,” I whispered, then held my hand out. “Come on. I’m getting you out of here.”
The glow on her face dimmed, her smile faltering. She nudged her chin over her shoulder. “I can’t leave without these two, Lady Robin.”
Fuck. I should have known.
Nodding profusely, and with a heavy sigh, I reached for Emma’s hand. She was in a nightgown, having apparently changed out of her filthy clothes from when she’d first arrived.
I didn’t want to think about how she’d gotten the nightgown or who gave it to her or who was present when she changed.
Blocking out the dark thoughts, I helped Emma to the small ledge beside me. She immediately teetered, eyes widening as she stared down at the black ground below and saw an ocean about to swallow her up.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “We have a friend.”
As if on cue, Alan’s beautiful face showed out of the shadows. He smiled up at us and reached his hands high, pantomiming how Emma should get down from the ledge and into his arms.
After Emma nodded her understanding, she held my arm like a vise and turned around to face the girls in the window, then gingerly set her hands on the lip while lowering herself over it.
Before she had even dropped and landed in Alan’s waiting arms, I was helping the next girl out of the window and putting her through the same motions. She went down without hesitation or confusion, dropping into Alan’s tight embrace.
I reached for the third girl—
And candlelight flooded the room as the door cracked open.
A man stepped inside, eyes bulging as his attention swiveled in our direction.
We’d found the third guard.
With a gasp, I hugged the girl in the window and heaved her through it, onto the ledge outside
“They’re up here!” the guard shouted, sounding the alarm. “In the window!”
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
We were vulnerable on the ledge. Boots pounded on the floorboards, the guard rushing toward us.
I took one look at the girl.
“Alan!” I called down, throwing caution to the wind now that our cover was blown.
He glanced up, fear on his face, eyes moving from me to the girl. I darted a look at the girl, telling him to catch her and not me.
