Men of Sherwood (A Rogue's Tale Book 1)

by Sarah Luddington

  TEN DAYS LATER THE snow eased enough for me to return to Nottingham. Ten more days without Guy and I ached just to lay eyes on him. I slipped into the city, having given the false name I’d used before at the gate, and found a calmer place with the snow and our lack of attacks. I returned to the Rising Sun and worked the day away with Bess and Malcom. Food had become scarcer and the ale Malcom brewed filled empty bellies but purses were thin as well. The snow held Nottingham in its grip and the forest under a quiet blanket. I think we were eating better than the city because at least we could hunt.

  When darkness fell I opted to play and sing, but rather than the rowdy ballads I usually gave the patrons of the inn, I opted for soft and soothing. A melody to draw the mind towards the spring and the rise of sap, the flourishing of life and the rebirth of love. I became lost in the world I created and when a pale hand, with long fingers, drifted over my shoulder where I sat near the fire, I closed my eyes and almost sobbed in relief.

  I earned few coins when I stopped and most were just coppers but many smiled their thanks and I knew why pickings were thin. I gathered up the coin and gave them to Malcom. “Buy those who can’t afford it some food with this,” I whispered.

  He squeezed my hand. “You’re a good man, Will.”

  “You taught me how to be the best,” I said.

  I left the bar and joined a shadowed, hooded figure in the corner of the inn under the stairs.

  “I’ve never heard you sing before, it is...” he hesitated, “...you are quite beautiful.”

  I could just make out the sharp edges and hard planes of his face, and the moon mist colour of his eyes. “How are you?” I asked.

  “What are you doing here, Will? You know it’s dangerous.”

  I reached across the table but he withdrew his hands before I could touch them. “How are you?” I asked again, pushing as much concern into my voice as I could.

  He didn’t look at me, but I heard the sadness. “What are you doing here?”

  “Robin needed to give you a message and I’m the best person to deliver it, but I came for reasons other than that.” Oh, my heart beat so hard I feared for my ribs.

  His eyes flickered to mine at last. “Then I ask again –”

  “You don’t have to, I plan on telling you before you bolt on me again, Guy,” I rushed in where devils fear to tread and angels would avoid admitting such a place even existed.

  His eyes narrowed and turned stormy.

  “Don’t look at me like that, you ran. You ran from me and you ran from Robin. It hurt me. Robin understands why and he’s tried to explain – repeatedly – but I don’t get it and I want to hear it from you.”

  Guy became so still I thought he’d vanished into another realm and I remained sitting with his ghost.

  “Are you going to kill me?” I asked after a disturbing quantity of heartbeats vanished forever.

  “I’m considering it,” he said, those grey eyes unyielding slate grey.

  I swallowed hard.

  “Is this how you won Robin? Sheer bloody minded stubborn faerie magic?” he asked.

  “Probably.”

  He breathed heavily, his entire body rising and falling with the effort. “You are a creature of the forest, Will Scarlett. A creature who will be my undoing.”

  “I’d like to think I might hold your hand while we walk into the light together,” I muttered.

  A tickle of fingers graced my hand under the table and I reached back. His hand laced with mine and I smiled.

  “I don’t know if I deserve the light, Will, but I have missed you trying to show me the way,” Guy said with soft care as if the words were so foreign to him they were learned from a language unknown before we met.

  “I think we all deserve it and I am no more worthy of it than you but I am determined to reach for it anyway.”

  “There isn’t anything I can give you, Will. I am a wretched man and Robin certainly doesn’t need me. I am a trained knight, don’t you understand what that means?”

  “I understand, Guy,” I said but he looked away from me as if ashamed of his thoughts and words, of his existence.

  “I don’t think you do. I am good at one thing, only one, I am a weapon. It’s all anyone has ever wanted me for.” Guy’s rage as he snarled this at me belied the pain I could see in his eyes and care with which he held my hand. “The one thing, the only thing, I found for myself, that could love me was Robin and he didn’t want me, didn’t love me because I’m broken. I wasn’t Ghaalib. Robin couldn’t love me in all his imperfection, what on this wide Earth makes you think I believe I am good enough for you?”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I think he needs you very much.” I stayed away from his comments about me, about not being good enough. The twisting complexity of Guy made my heart ache for him but I needed to be careful, delicate, and snare him with love not blind desire. I had no doubt I was falling in love with him, it arced through me even as Robin dominated my life.

  Guy released a disbelieving grunt and changed the subject, bringing me back to the present. “What mad scheme does he have planned? I assume that’s why you’re here?” Practical, he could do practical because emotions tore too deep.

  I opted to work with him. “You’re not going to like it.”

  “That’s hardly a surprise, Will. Out with it.”

  I glanced over my shoulder but the only people in the inn were a few merchants and tradesmen. “Robin wants to make a bold strike as Lord Huntingdon.”

  Guy’s eyes widened. “That’s – but he’s a criminal.”

  “Yes, but less of a criminal in the shire than he is as Robin Hood.”

  Guy frowned hard. “I suppose so. What’s the plan?”

  “We arrive in Nottingham, with Marion, who found her brother in the French court. With relations being so bad between King Philip and King John the sheriff isn’t going to know the truth of it, so it should give us the time we need.”

  “Time to do what exactly? They know the hooded man has a scar on his face, Robin can’t hide that to become Robert once again.” Guy’s fingers began stroking mine and playing with the sensitive area under my wrist, it made it hard to concentrate.

  “We’re going to make the scarring worse,” I said. “Marion and Tuck are working on different ways to make it look like someone almost cut his face off completely and we’re designing a leather mask so the makeup doesn’t have to remain on his face for very long.”

  “His face was cut off,” Guy muttered, his hand tightening on mine as memories made themselves known.

  I opened my mouth and snapped it closed. “You need to tell him what you did to save his life that day, Guy.”

  “You didn’t tell him?”

  “Not my story to tell.”

  Guy studied me with a new respect in his eyes. “Thank you. I didn’t expect you to keep it to yourself.”

  “I respect you, Guy, I would like us to be friends and lovers,” I admitted, keeping my voice quiet.

  My fingers reached for the pulse in Guy’s wrist, it fluttered with an intensity that made mine jolt harder.

  “Lovers? You and Robin with me more than once?” he asked. The question was so breathless I had to chuckle.

  “Yes, more than once, a lot more than once. Did you really think what we shared in the forest couldn’t happen again for us if we gave it time to happen?”

  “You’re not just using me to help you?” A whisper of surprise.

  I stilled. “No, I – no, Guy. That was never my intention. I saw an opportunity in you when I realised you needed Robin but that opportunity has given way to so much more. I want so much more.”

  “The last time I cared for someone enough to give myself to them it hurt me more deeply than any other betrayal I’ve endured before or since,” Guy said. The sense of desperation and fear laced into his gentle confession burned through me. The desire to protect him made every bone in my body yearn to hold him close.

  “He told me some of what happene
d between you…”

  “Nicely humiliating.”

  “He thinks of it as tragic. A wasted opportunity. He brutalised you rather than love you.”

  Guy looked up at me and I gasped, a single tear tracked down his face. “I loved him so much, Will. He broke me in a way no one else came close to managing. I never came back from it, I’m still lost out there in the fucking desert, trying to come home.”

  The fire in the inn had dimmed, the lamps were low, the candles mostly gone. Darkness filled the place and I slipped from my stool into Guy’s lap. His arms came around me and he looked up at my face in surprise. “I want to bring you back,” I whispered, kissing the tears as they fell.

  Guy drew me close and nestled into my chest. I folded my arms around his shoulders and hooded head as he trembled against me. “He is very sorry and regrets everything. I don’t know if he loves me, I don’t know if he can love you, but he does now at least understand.”

  “Help me, Will.” The man trembled in my arms.

  “Always.”

  I heard bustling behind me. “Will, we need to lock up,” Bess said.

  I looked down at my companion. “Give me a moment,” I said and he let me leave his arms.

  I approached Bess and Malcom expecting an argument of epic proportions. Malcom grasped my shoulder. “Be careful, Will. I don’t understand what’s going on or who he is and I don’t want to know, but you have our support.”

  I opened my mouth and stared at Bess. She smiled. “You’ve always been the more complicated out of the two of you. I love Tuck but you’ve always been the fighter. Just be careful, my sweet boy.” She stroked my cheek and I felt a wave of love come through me from them that left me gasping.

  “Thank you, both of you, for everything. For being my family.” We shared a hug that gave me more strength than either of them could ever understand and I watched them go to their room, hand in hand.

  “Help me to close up the bar and we can talk more,” I said to Guy.

  He nodded and flicked back his hood at last. The flames in the room turned his white hair golden and a thousand licks of red. I felt drawn to him as I had Robin so many weeks before. With no hesitation, I crossed the room, Guy watching me with hunger and a need so desperate it bordered on insanity.

  His hands found my hips the moment we were in touching distance and he drew me in, I rose onto my toes and brushed my lips over his while watching his eyes darken to a grey only seen in purest pewter.

  A hand came up to cup the back of my head and hold me closer so Guy could kiss me in return. Now my eyes slid closed as this wild cat of tormented emotions engulfed me even as he explored all I could offer. I melted in his strong arms. The kiss felt firm, controlled, and somewhat calculated to offer maximum pleasure.

  Not what I wanted.

  I wanted wild and hungry.

  My hands gripped his face, turning it just a little so I could gain control, and once I had it I bit his lip. Guy shuddered. I nipped again, moved away from his mouth and nipped hard at his jaw, his ear, his throat. The throat tipped him over the edge. He grunted, pressed into me harder and I walked backwards until I felt the bar against my spine. His hands slipped down to my thighs and I lifted one leg. He took the hint and I rose up his body so our cocks were aligned and my legs wrapped around his hips.

  Guy groaned with wanton abandon as I sucked hard enough to leave marks on his throat. He reclaimed my mouth for his plaything and now I felt the hunger unleashed. He sat me on the bar and he rocked hard into my body, it felt so good. He might not be as broad as Robin but he seemed even stronger.

  He knew nothing of my past and it made him less cautious than Robin tended to be and we began pulling at clothing. When he left my mouth for my neck I found the breath I needed. “We need to close up.”

  “I need you,” he murmured against my throat.

  “And I need you but work first or we’ll be in trouble.”

  “I’m Guy of Gisborne, scourge of Nottingham, I don’t think I have anything to worry about.”

  I snorted as I tried to control his hands. “You haven’t seen Bess on the war path.”

  “I’ve seen Saladin on the war path,” he muttered.

  “Trust me, in Nottingham, she is the scary one.”

  Guy smirked, trying not to laugh but he released me and I watched as he rearranged his hardened cock. “You’re a bewitching faerie, minstrel.”

  I gave him a peck of a kiss. “But you’re falling for me anyway.” I slipped off the bar and grinned at him.

  His eyes grew cautious again. “Yes, I am.”

  I gasped. “Guy…”

  “Just close up the bar and talk, Will. I cannot lay myself open to you all night.”

  30

  WE WERE SILENT AS I locked the door, barred the windows, and lifted the stools off the floor. Old habits made it easy to brush up the day’s dirt from the wooden floor and I gave it a cold wash with the mop and bucket. Guy helped where he could but most of the time he watched because, let’s face it, his noble Norman blood didn’t wash floors very often.

  When I finished, I poured two tankards of Malcom’s best ale and returned to the fireplace. Guy joined me and we stared at the flames in silence for a while.

  “How is Robert Loxley, Lord of Huntingdon, going to help you destroy the sheriff?” Guy asked.

  “Robin will return, as a lord who is to take his brother-in-law to task for hurting his sister. He will also demand the Huntingdon estates be returned to him. Alan is faking documents from the king at the moment declaring Robin’s rights over them. It’ll take days, probably weeks, before Marc can confirm whether Robin’s telling the truth, especially if the king is in France again.”

  Guy sniffed. “He is, he’s managed to gather enough support, even from the Pope no less, to return to France. He doesn’t have a hope, Philip is too good. He’s a tactician and John is too arrogant to be that patient.”

  “I thought you liked King John?”

  My companion blinked and frowned. “I don’t have to like someone to follow orders. I am a soldier it is my job to do as commanded.”

  I opened my mouth to point out all kinds of things that were wrong with that statement but gave up and continued with the plan we’d been stoking for days. “Marc will be furious. Everyone thought Robert Loxley was dead so the stories of his dishonour in the Holy Land haven’t reached us as general gossip. Marion didn’t know about them.”

  “Those who returned from the Crusade are few and far between these days. Many of us died on the battlefields in France with Richard and John,” Guy mused. “Word spread initially, but now? Now few remember Robert Loxley.”

  “Exactly. We are going to convince Marc that Robin is first reclaiming Huntingdon from Marion, marrying a true noble as she hasn’t born a son to Marc, and Robin’s applying for Nottingham’s sheriff to be his man, not Marc because Philip Marc is failing in his duties.”

  Guy’s black eyebrows rose. “You really want to piss him off don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  I grinned. “We want to make it a game.”

  “What?”

  “We want him riled enough that when Robin suggests we have a competition to see who will win Nottingham, Marc agrees. He needs to be so annoyed that he chooses you as his champion and you lose.”

  Guy snorted.

  “Yes, I said that would be a flaw in the plan.”

  The rueful smile he gave me made parts of my belly tighten while my heart fluttered. “Anyway,” I pressed on, “we offer this as a way of stepping back and not petitioning the king to have Marc removed. He’s going to see it as a way of keeping his job and his title, also keeping Marion I expect, without raising the ire of the king by seeming weak.”

  “And when Robin wins this challenge?” Guy asked.

  “Marc leaves.”

  “He won’t leave without a fight. A real fight, not one stage managed by Robin.” Guy warmed his booted feet by the fire and I won
dered what it would be like to see those long legs naked.

  “Maybe not, but it might be sufficient to dislodge him long enough to find an alternative the king will sanction to hold the line against the barons of the north if it comes to a rebellion,” I said.

  “The barons want the king to sign a document curtailing his rights as overlord, monarch, and figurehead of God’s will on Earth,” Guy said.

  “That sounds… impossible.”

  Guy shrugged one elegant shoulder. “Nothing in this world is impossible if enough men want it to happen.”

  “What do you think of the plan? Robin wanted me to lay it out for you because he’s going to need your help selling it and keeping it under control.”

  “I can see that.”

  I twisted in the settle we shared, lifting a knee to press against Guy’s hot flank. He looked at me not the fire. “Will you help? What flaws can you see that we can’t?”

  “I suppose this is your way of making sure the three of us can ride into the sunset together and live forever in peace?” he asked, looping an arm around my knee.

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re a romantic.”

  “I’m a minstrel, it’s my job.” I delivered the words in a flat monotone making him laugh.

  His hand lifted and caught a curl of my dark hair, which he watched as he played with it, and I sat patient and still while he thought. “The chance of a future,” he murmured. His intense gaze hit me full square. “With you? With Robin?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “It’ll likely lead to all our deaths.” His fingers trailed over my jaw and my lips.

  I spoke as he touched them, “I expect so but it would be worth trying.” I licked the tips of his fingers.

  “Alright, we’ll try it and if I end up dead or an outlaw, so be it. For you,” he tapped my lip, “for you it would be worth it.”

  “Not for Robin?”

  “No.”

  I didn’t know what to make of that. My heart raced, pounded as though I were being hunted through a woodland I didn’t know. However, I didn’t want to run, not from Guy. I had tried to speak to Robin about how I should behave with Guy if we were alone. I had wanted to gain permission from him to take Guy to my bed but he would not speak of it, Guy’s presence in my life confused Robin too much. A part of Robin hungered for Guy, I saw it, felt it, but a larger part feared Guy’s desire for me and me for the complex warrior. He never became angry, never blamed me, just couldn’t speak to me about the need he saw burning under my skin.