The Archer (The Blood Realm Series Book 3) (29 page)

Three days.

Chapter Nineteen

“So who is she really?”

Mrs. Thornton’s voice danced around Robin’s ears, barely registering over the caterwauling of her seven children. The small cottage did its best to absorb the sound. The white stucco walls were covered with shelves and shelves of bits of clay shaped by tiny hands, framed drawings and paintings that may or may not have been the result of accidental paint spills, and a host of delicate knickknacks the homeowners were optimistically hoping to keep out of reach. Unfortunately, seven children produced a level of sound that would no doubt be heard through the bedrock of Scythia itself.

Robin opened his mouth to answer her only to be distracted by a pinch at the top of his thigh. He glanced down to where the youngest, Matthew, was climbing up his leg, little face screwed up in concentration. Red curls of downy baby hair stuck out at wild angles from his head, and one chubby hand groped higher, searching for a handhold. He brushed the bottom of Robin’s bow and Mrs. Thornton scooped him up before he could close his fist around it.

“Robin,” she prompted, holding the frantically squirming two year old in one arm braced on her hip. “Who is she?”

Against his will, Robin’s gaze was dragged back to the woman who had held it for the majority of the evening. The glamour he’d conjured for her hid her red hair under a black cascade of straight, silken locks and masked her green eyes with a deep chocolate brown. Her high cheekbones were sharper, her muscled arms more slender and delicate. The soft curves of her hips, visible only when she turned suddenly and the green cloak flared behind her, swelled out an inch or so more. And she was more than half a foot shorter.

But his glamour didn’t hide her joy. It didn’t hide the huge smile that hadn’t left her lips since Mrs. Thornton’s oldest, a girl of twenty, had attached herself to Marian’s side, fascinated with her recurve bow and the feathered arrows in the quiver at her back. Since the six-year-old twins had engaged in a battle for her attention by seeing who could sing the loudest—a rather bawdy drinking song they’d learned from their uncle no less.

“She is only a friend, love,” he murmured. “Just a friend.”
Just a friend. Just. A. Friend.

“Aye, and you’ll want to be keeping it that way.”

A solid hand on his arm broke the huntress’ spell. Robin blinked the rose-colored haze from his eyes and turned to look at the speaker, finding Mr. Thornton himself standing at his side with a serious look etched into his weathered face. His severe black shirt was open at the collar, revealing a nest of grey chest hair, and the small eyeglasses on the end of his nose were smudged with tiny fingerprints.

“Shut up, Alan,” Mrs. Thornton warned. She put down the child she’d pulled from Robin so she could cross her arms over her thin chest. Her pale blue eyes narrowed at her husband, pinching the soft white skin of her face like the petals of a daisy. “You’ve no business poking your nose into Robin’s affairs.”

Her husband waved her off, shaking his foot absent-mindedly as the two year old she’d just released attempted to latch on to his leg for a climb. “It’s true, I tell you. That woman would bring you nothing but grey hair.” He jabbed Robin in the chest, gesturing at his own grey hair with the other hand. “I see that quiver of hers. She’s an archer, yes? Like you?”

“She is.”

“And I’ll bet she tries to show you up with it, doesn’t she?”

Robin opened his mouth, then closed it. “Actually, she tends to threaten me with it.”

“And well I— Wait a minute.” The old man grasped the edge of his glasses, pushed them up his nose as he narrowed his eyes. “Why is she threatening you with it? You’ve not been making unwanted advances on the lass, have you? That won’t stand, young man, it won’t—”

“Her honor is safe with me,” Robin broke in. He shrugged off the flicker of annoyance that the thought to the contrary would even cross the man’s mind. “I’m not a man to go where I’m not wanted.”

Mr. Thornton dropped his glasses, letting them slide down his nose again as he wagged his finger with undue enthusiasm. “Exactly! Haven’t done a thing wrong and already she’s giving you the pointy end of her arrow.” The two year old reached his hip and Mr. Thornton groped for the child, trying to get a good enough grip to pry him off. “And I’ll bet she argues with you all the time?”

Now it was Robin’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “She does at that. You speak as though you know her.”

“I do,” Mr. Thornton muttered, eyeing his wife out of his peripheral vision.

Mrs. Thornton, who had abandoned the men in favor of her kitchen, held up a battered, flour-coated rolling pin and waved it at her husband, the sparkle in her eye belying the threat of the gesture. The corner of Mr. Thornton’s mouth quirked up, the laugh lines around his eyes deepening. Then he shook himself like a wet dog drying its fur and faced Robin with a renewed expression of determination.

“I’m warning you, a woman like that will give you no peace at all. A constant battle, that’s what waits for you in those pretty arms of hers, and make no mistake.”

Across the room, a sob broke out, followed by a wail befitting a banshee. Mr. Thornton was off like a shot, two year old bobbing in the crook of his arm as he leapt over a pile of bedraggled dolls and used his free arm to scoop up the five year old who’d just tumbled off the arm of the couch, thumping a head full of red curls on the hard wood floor. Robin’s heart warmed as he watched the stern old man cuddle his injured child, cooing and pressing kisses to the sniffling girl’s head.

The oldest girl glanced over at her crying sibling, then back at Marian. With obvious reluctance, she handed Marian’s battered leather quiver back to her, one finger giving the grey and black striped feathers a final caress. She settled her grey shawl more firmly over her shoulders, covering the cream and red plaid shirt she wore, and went to her father’s side to take the two year old. The child immediately snuggled against the soft wool of her shawl, little face tucked into the crook of her neck.

Marian’s gaze lingered on them for a long moment, the ghost of a smile still holding her lips. The twins, distracted by the commotion with their sibling, had forgotten their song and abandoned Marian in favor of fighting for their father’s attention. She waved at them, a faint fanning of her fingers, then drifted across the room to stand at Robin’s side.

She leaned against the wall next to him, head pressed against one of the few bare spots on the wall. “They are quite a family.”

“That they are.” Robin rubbed a hand over his jaw, turning Mr. Thornton’s words over in his mind. For all the old man’s insistence that Robin avoid pursuing Marian and her…spirited…ways, he couldn’t help but notice that the man seemed quite happy. And Mrs. Thornton had paused in the middle of rolling out her bread dough to watch her husband comfort their child with a look of utter bliss in her eyes.

“You’ve seemed a little different since I agreed to stay.”

Marian’s voice echoed in his head. Her little offhand observation caught him off guard, but after reflecting on it, he realized she was right. He did feel more at ease since she’d agreed to stay. Like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, freeing him to continue the pursuits he’d dedicated himself to. And fleecing the Heaths had been enjoyable on a level he hadn’t felt in some time. A few days ago, the whole episode would have bored him. But somehow, seeing Marian participate, seeing her throw herself into the endeavor with all that passion…

“It seems like the gold we’ve given them won’t last a fortnight. All those mouths to feed.”

Robin snapped out of his reverie, Marian’s tone setting off warning bells in his head. He took her warm hands in his, forced her to face him fully. “Listen to me, and let me save you the heartache that plagued me in the first days of my little band of thieves. Do not pity these people. Do not worry, do not fear.”

Marian’s eyes danced over the cottage, taking in the crowded conditions and the furniture that had seen better days. She looked to the kitchen and he knew she was assessing the food stores, realizing how far every ounce of food had to stretch.

“Look at me, Marian.” He tugged at her hands, then let go to grasp her shoulders, shake her until she finally met his eyes. “They are poor, but you’ll not find anyone more resilient. You look at them and you think of how you would feel in their situation, but you were raised with wealth, with certain…expectations. These people were not. Look at them, really look at them. Do they look unhappy?”

She did as he asked, though there was obvious doubt in the slant of her eyebrows as she watched the father now bouncing a giggling child in his arms, the mother and eldest daughter standing side by side with matching smiles as they watched the rest of the brood writhe around on the floor.

“They look…happy.”

“Exactly. The gold we gave them will help them, make no mistake. The kids will get birthday presents this year—clothes, likely, but still presents. And they may get more meat—”

“They need more meat.” Marian stiffened, then grabbed his shoulders so they held each other now.

Robin blinked, his concentration nearly severed by the solid weight of her hands, the excitement threatening to break through the glamour he laid over her. “Meat? Oh, yes. Yes, of course, they always need more meat. The fields require a lot of work, there’s little time for hunt—”

“But I could help with that,” Marian interrupted again. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. “I could hunt for them, bring them the meat.” Her eyes lost their focus, staring into the future. “I could help a lot of families. Even those who have the time to hunt, if I were to provide that meat for them, it would free up some time, wouldn’t it? Time they could well use for other things.”

“Indeed.” There was an excitement in her now that crackled like a hint of lightning over her skin. Robin let his hands slide from her shoulder down to her waist. A moment of conflict held him immobile for a moment, torn between the desire to pull her closer, and the fear of ruining this perfect moment, of making her think he wanted something more out of this moment than to share it, to bask in the happiness painted across her cheeks.

Marian’s eyes met his. Was it his imagination, or did she lean in a little? His heart skipped a beat. He pressed his fingers into her waist, feeling her true curves beneath the glamour. For a second he cursed his own talent, cursed it for hiding her face from him. He wanted to see those green eyes, wanted to see her. This woman in his arms now was happy, radiant with passion, with a realization that she had the potential to affect lives for the better. It was glorious and he’d never wanted to kiss her as badly as he did in that moment.

Gradually, Robin became aware that the house had grown quiet. He reluctantly broke his gaze from Marian to find the twins had ceased their demands for attention and were sitting on the floor, leaning against one another and rubbing their eyes. The child in Mr. Thornton’s arms had laid her head on his shoulder, her thumb wedged firmly in her mouth. Mrs. Thornton and the oldest daughter were each holding another child, swaying back and forth as the young ones succumbed to the call of sleep.

“We’d best get going,” he said quietly. “Bedtime approaches.”

Marian nodded, false brown eyes still locked on him. For a moment, neither of them moved. Robin stood there with his hands on her waist, memorizing the curve of her hips. Her hand moved, her fingers toying with a lock of his hair. His breath caught in his throat. The gesture, small that it was, felt immeasurably intimate.

He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to kiss her more than he wanted his next breath. But now wasn’t the time. Not here, not standing in front of the Thorntons and their seven children. Taking his hands off her waist was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do, the need to keep her in his arms, to protect the delicate moment they were sharing, holding his palms to her as if he would never let go. When he dropped his arms to his sides, they itched with the need to hold her again, felt cold without the warmth of her body. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he saw the same regret in her eyes, the same longing to draw this moment out.

They shared the knowledge that it would be gone as soon as they stepped apart.

They said their goodbyes to the Thorntons, the knowing look on the married couple’s faces chasing them out into the night. Little John and Will had gone back to the sanctuary long ago, so it was just him and Marian now. Alone.

As he’d feared, the easy closeness they’d shared so briefly was gone, cooled by the night air and the space between them. They walked along in silence, each lost to their own thoughts. The need to say something bubbled inside him, demanding he speak even though he didn’t know what to say. He groped for some snippet of conversation he might offer, something that would close this damned distance growing wider between them. When they were five minutes from the camp, his desperation peaked and he blurted out the first thing that came to his mind.

“The first of your three nights will end shortly.”
Oh, yes, do let’s talk about that happy time limit.
He studied Marian out of the corner of his eye, committed to finishing the thought no matter what unpleasant end it might lead to. “Was it as horrible as you expected?”

Marian plucked a leaf from a low hanging branch, turning the oblong greenery over in her fingers. “It was very different from what I expected.”

Robin nudged her with his shoulder. “You thought perhaps I was going to have you run skyclad over the fields, getting drunk on magic and mayhem?”

She pursed her lips, smothering the smile he’d caught twitching at the corner of her mouth. Encouraged, he was about to nudge her again, try to start a back and forth of physical contact, but he held back when she shook her head.

“You are so sure you know me, aren’t you? Just because you spied on me.”

Her voice wasn’t angry, but there was a…sadness? Something in her voice that he didn’t want to be there, something that didn’t belong in the tone of the woman who’d been so happy not an hour ago. She trailed a fingernail over the thick vein that ran down the middle of her leaf.