The Archer (The Blood Realm Series Book 3) (10 page)

And then he was gone.

Vanished, disappeared into thin air. Nothing to prove he’d ever been there but the pleasant buzzing sensation on her lips, the lingering taste of something wild and untamed.

Her fist smashed into the door of her wardrobe, pain erupting in her skin as her knuckles split. Blood decorated the wood like tiny rose blossoms as the door flew back, wrenching its hinges and tilting madly to the side. Marian dragged in a deep breath, her temper a hot fury inside her, hands clenching into fists, nails digging in to her palms.

When the string of curses finally trailed off in her mind, she shoved a hand through her hair and paced back and forth the length of the room.

He’s attracted to me and now he thinks I’m attracted to him. It’s Guy all over again. I can’t afford another murder. I haven’t paid for the first one!

Well, not quite Guy
, a voice in her head taunted her.

She couldn’t handle him the way she’d handled Guy—avoidance followed by murder. The first part wouldn’t work, and the second would likely bring about her own death when his kin learned of his demise.

There has to be some way to get rid of him.

“What do I know about him?” she asked herself. She held her lip between her teeth, reviewing what few memories she had of him, what she knew.

Slowly, an idea blossomed. Robin Hood was a rogue, neatly avoiding responsibility and living life with no goal beyond avoiding boredom. Telling him to go away, insisting she wasn’t attracted to him, was only feeding the challenge, making her more interesting to him.

A smile spread over her lips, a wicked delight chasing her temper back into its cave. She hurried to the door and opened it as silently as she could. She popped her head out, looking up and down the hallway. Robin was nowhere to be seen. A maid came out of one of the rooms down the hall, a tall brunette with rosy cheeks and warm brown eyes. Marian waved frantically, catching her attention.

Puzzlement creased the skin between the maid’s eyebrows, but she came as summoned. As she stood before Marian and the open door, she folded her hands neatly in front of her, patiently waiting for instructions.

“Fetch Ermentrude’s sister for me, the one who fancies herself a lady’s maid.” Marian looked up and down the hallway again, repressing the thought that with his gift for glamour, Robin could very well be hiding in plain sight. “Send her to me immediately.”

The maid’s eyebrows rose, but she bobbed her acquiescence and hurried off down the hall. Marian slipped back into her room and strode back to her damaged wardrobe. A headache started in her temples at the thought of what was coming, but she steeled herself against it. Ermentrude’s sister was the biggest gossip in the county, and could prattle on for hours about the most tedious aspects of fashion until Marian wanted to tear out her own hair just to avoid a tangent about hairstyles.

She was exactly what Marian needed.

Chapter Seven

“You won’t believe this, but I heard rumors that Marian’s parents were part fey.”

Robin petted one of the velvety leaves of the flower he was pretending to admire as he examined the gardener’s face out of the corner of his eye. The plump woman—Ermentrude, she’d said her name was—arched a dirt-crusted eyebrow as she yanked at a weed trying to choke some towering purple blooms. Clumps of mud rained from  the weed’s twisted roots and Robin neatly side-stepped the shower, dirt spraying across  one of the garden path’s smooth white stones.

“Bugger,” she muttered.

She hauled herself to her feet, lifted her skirts, and stepped over the row of violets onto the path. Robin glanced behind him at the manor house rising like a grey behemoth over the gently sloping lawn.
Damn you, woman, start talking. The redheaded fury will be here any moment!

“I laughed of course.” He gestured at the squares of earth blanketed with white flowers, neatly hemmed in by verdant bushes trimmed to perfection and the rows of purple flowers lining the stone pathways that wound between them. “Though I must say, seeing these beautiful gardens, I can see how the rumors started.”

Ermentrude huffed out a breath and jabbed at his leg with her spade until he backed up a step, letting her get at the rest of the mud she’d flung onto the stones with the hem of her skirt. “I’ve heard no such rumors.” She sat back on her haunches and looked up at Robin, brown eyes squinting in the light. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Robin Hood, at your service.” He bowed low, putting a little extra flourish into the gesture for good measure. He regretted it immediately as the position put his face too close to the iron spade Ermentrude still brandished in one hand. A slight wave of nausea washed over him, sucking at his energy like a tide pulling grains of sand from the beach.

“Robin Hood, eh? And you’re here because…?” A tinge of suspicion crept into her tone as she tapped her spade against her generous thigh, gobbets of mud clinging with glee to the coarse fabric of her green skirt and falling onto the stones she’d just so diligently brushed clean.

Nosy wench.
He took a step back from the offending iron and pinned a smile to his face to cover his growing annoyance. “I’m here for Lady Marian. I’m to escort her to—”

“Oh, of course you are! Well that’s a fine thing then, isn’t it?”

Robin’s eyebrows shot up as the gardener surged to her feet and stomped back to her place in the dirt on the other side of the row of blossoms, nearly crushing the plants she was trying to nurture. Her lips pursed until they turned white and sparks fairly flew from her eyes.

“What’s she about now then? What’s so much more important than her own land?”

Robin opened his mouth.

“Not enough that half the time she’s wandering about the woods like a bloody sprite. Can’t deign to make a meeting that
she
scheduled.”

This is more promising.
“Nothing like her parents,” he added helpfully.

Ermentrude jabbed the spade in his direction, her brows dipping into a low vee on her brow. “I should say not. They were always in the garden or in the fields, always elbow deep in the land. There was a man and woman who knew what it meant to have land, to
deserve
it.”

“Not like their daughter.” Robin poured a little scorn into his voice, and crossed his arms. “Lady Marian is most definitely more a hunter than a gatherer.”

“You’ve got that right.” Ermentrude grasped another weed, crushing its stem in her fist. “Woman’s not happy if she’s not shooting something. Makes the most awful face if you so much as suggest she pick up a spade or a hoe.” She relaxed her hold on the limp weed and glared at Robin. “Last time I spoke with her I was holding a few bulbs of garlic I’d just harvested. Do you know what she said to me? ‘Ermentrude, are our crops dying?’ I says to her ‘No, they’re not dying, this is garlic, it’s
supposed
to look like that.’”

“Too bad she didn’t inherit her parents’ green thumb.” Robin kept his voice very casual, anchoring his gaze to the flowers in front of him. The gardener was getting close to revealing something important, he could feel it in his bones.

“Wasn’t their fault.” She pulled the weed free, this time with more care so the mud didn’t go sailing over the flowers. “They did what they could for her, but some things are passed on in the blood, so my mum always told me. Who knows what Lady Marian’s birth parents were like. Maybe they were hunters and she comes by it honestly.” She rubbed a dirt coated hand over her forehead, the sweat on her brow turning it to a streak of fresh mud. “I suppose I shouldn’t be so hard on her. Maybe I just miss her elders. They were such kind-hearted folks, and their passing was a great loss to all of us.”

Robin’s arms fell to his sides. “Marian is adopted?”

Ermentrude bobbed her head absentmindedly. “As a babe, yes. Didn’t you know?” She paused, body tensing as if she’d just realized she may have spoken out of turn. Her attention zeroed in on Robin, her gaze a physical weight heavier than Little John after a four-course meal.

“I’m sure I did.” Robin dropped to his haunches and began brushing the remaining bits of dirt back from the pale stones into the flower bed, carefully hiding his face from the suddenly suspicious woman. “But it’s so easy to forget. As you said, her elders were
such
kind-hearted people. They were so good to her, and they had her from such a young age…”

“That they did.” She pointed at him with her free hand. “And don’t think it was easy for them. They were no spring chickens when they found her. Taking in a babe that small is a great deal of work.” She sat back, hands falling to her lap, her eyes looking at something far away. “They always said the gods themselves had given her into their care. Imagine, finding a babe that small in the woods—alive. And in the middle of the night, no less. Why, they never would have found her if it hadn’t been for the—”

“Ermentrude!”

Marian’s shout had all the lilting melody of a cat stuck in a wagon wheel. Robin and Ermentrude both flinched as it lashed against them, tearing their conversation to shreds.

Drat
.

Robin tried to catch Ermentrude’s eye, make some sort of connection that would pave the way for his return for the rest of her information. Surprisingly, she showed no sign of remorse or dismay at having been caught. Quite the contrary, she fumbled to cross her arms like a warrior suiting up for battle, bumping the spade so it tumbled from her grip. Intrigued, he angled his body to watch both Marian’s approach and the gardener’s facial expression.

As soon as his eyes landed on Marian, he realized what had taken her so long to come and find him. His lips parted, his full attention now commanded by the vision hurtling toward him.

Her hair had been combed into waves of red silk, most of it falling in a waterfall down her back. The rest had been pulled into thin braids that hung in crescent moons from her temples to the back of her head. There they were gathered together and intertwined so they followed her spine in a crimson helix, the tails brushing against the tempting curve of her bottom. A few stray curls had been left loose to lick at cheeks that had been dusted with the faintest layer of powder and pinched until they held a rosy bloom.

Her gown was fine velvet the shade of crushed emeralds left in shadow. The sleeves hugged her arms, revealing toned muscles before falling into gold-trimmed bells at her wrists. The velvet was held together at the bust by black laces that emphasized the swell of her flesh and held the velvet together over the silk brocade of the second layer of the gown. The silk was a shade of green-tinted silver, etched with some sort of flower—lilies, perhaps. The cloak hanging behind her, fastened at her neck with an emerald brooch, was a perfect match for the velvet of her dress, blending seamlessly so it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

“My fair Marian, truly you are a vision, and well worth the wait,” he teased. “But tell me, what has put that look in your eye?”

Marian crashed to a halt so suddenly it seemed she’d hit an invisible wall. Her brows furrowed, but she jutted her chin out with the determination of someone dedicated to getting an unpleasant task over with. “What do you mean?”

“You seem angry with me. And I thought we parted on such good terms.” A memory of the kiss drifted through his mind, dragging his voice down a little deeper into his chest. “
Very
good terms. I had hoped we might continue on our new, friendlier path.”

Her eyes remained hard as precious stones, glittering with an emotion completely incongruous with the smile she twisted her lips into. “Don’t be silly, I’m not angry with you. I was just…
concerned
. When you weren’t waiting for me in the foyer, I worried I might have scared you off.”

Robin started to laugh at the idea she’d be sorry to scare him off, but the sound died when she took his arm and clutched it to her body, practically flattening herself against him. The position gave him a perfect view of the creamy skin offered up by the snug bodice of her dress and he had to blink through the sudden heat wave that washed over him, tightening his lower body into a semi-painful knot. Such delicate black laces. So easily torn…

“If you wanted a tour of the gardens, you only had to ask. There’s no reason for you to bother poor Ermentrude.”

Her voice was almost a purr now. Soft, seductive…completely unlike Marian. Warning bells went off in his head. This was not the Marian he knew. This fancy gown, this sultry voice. His Marian would have tried to leave without him.

“Robin, are you ignoring me?”

The purr was gone, vanished as quickly as it had arrived. A ready smile sprang to his lips. She was playing a game with him, but that was perfectly all right. He liked games. His attention slid down their bodies to where her breasts were still pressed against him.
Oh, yes, let’s play.

He banded an arm around her waist, hauling her closer, studying her face to gauge her reaction. “I would never ignore you, my beautiful Lady Marian.” He eyed her dress again. “Especially when you’ve obviously gone to such lengths to be worthy of my
full
attention.”

A flash of anger like heat lightning lit her eyes. The smile turned brittle, threatening to crack. “So kind of you to notice.”

“My lady?” Ermentrude’s mouth was hanging open so wide it was a wonder birds weren’t flocking to nest inside it. Her arms hung limply at her sides, the spade lying in the dirt next to her fingers.

“Ermentrude, surely you could be so kind as to point out an area of the gardens that would be…suitable for me to entertain Robin after we return?” She leaned closer to Ermentrude, but didn’t break free of Robin’s grip, so he could still hear her whisper. “Nothing
too
conspicuous of course. I wouldn’t want my name to suffer the way Maureen O’Brien’s has since she was caught with Sean.” She winked.

She. Winked.

Oh, dear gods, she’s acting. And she’s
awful
. Next she’ll be batting her eye—yes, there it is. Looks like a pair of spiny butterflies have got stuck on her face.
He held very still, concentrating on not giving in to the urge to shake his head.
This is what happens when you don’t give lying the same attention and practice as any other skill. Honest people. What can you do?