by Sue Wilson
"Although, Thea," he asked, lips curling with sarcasm, "how comfortable can you be, protected by a vow made by a man you believe to be a liar? If my word is worth so little, if I am so lacking in honor, there is no reason why I cannot be about bedding you. Here. At long last."
She caught the change in his voice, of control restored, words bandied about carelessly. A game after all. She played her part, in turn. "No reason save decency, a regard for my virtue."
"The virtue of a woman who has shared her bed once with me already? Of the wanton who was so ready to be taken by the brook, who even now spouts denial while her legs are splayed in welcome?"
His laughter infuriated her, deep-throated chuckles that pierced her with the truth. She slapped his hand away from the intimate progress it made against her thigh and kicked out at him. Her foot connected solidly with his knee.
With a rush of satisfaction, she saw him wince, saw his hand move instinctively toward the injured part. A pity her aim could not have been truer.
Thea struggled to her knees, legs drawn up beneath her, skirts tucked safely around her ankles, and huddled as far back into the corner of the hut as the cramped space would allow.
"Your promise still holds, Sheriff," she dared remind him, "for you said you would wait until I desired you, and, by faith, I desire you no more now than I did then."
"And no less, I'd wager."
"Damn you! You have planned this whole disastrous day just to lure me and seduce me and make me think I wanted you so you could play me for a witless fool. If you agreed to stop for the night simply because you thought you could have me, here, on your terms, we can be on our way!"
"Through the dark, impenetrable mists of Sherwood on a moonless night?"
"A far safer prospect for me than sharing this hut with a man who can think of naught but into which unwilling victim he should next sink his sword."
The Sheriff's brows shot up, whether in surprise at her crude words or in appreciation of them she did not know. He seemed to be struggling to contain another paroxysm of laughter, seemed to be failing.
"Ah, woman," he said, "but that your spirit were as weak as your flesh, for you need bedding, desperately and repeatedly, and by someone with more than rudimentary skill."
"And you, my lord, are that someone?"
He tried to stand, favoring his hurt knee, and brushed the debris of the leaf pile from his hair and clothes and the lengths of his leather-clad thighs. "If your memory does not serve, then an end to your recent chastity is long overdue. Damn, but it's cold. Where did I put the swineherd's flint stone?"
No accounting for the workings of his mind. He abandoned his persistence without explanation, without even a backward glance as he hobbled out of the hut. "I thought your mantle a good cover for the leaves. Mine we could use as a blanket, but I daresay we'll find frost on our backsides tomorrow morn without more heat." He shrugged out of his wet tunic and jerkin and tossed them over a bush to dry.
For all his nonchalance, she was left sitting in the leaves, weak knees mocking her attempts to stand, and a single thought in her mind: that if he followed his tunic with the rest of his clothes and they slept skin-to-skin, he would have no need of a fire, and even less of that inconvenient oath he had made.
No accounting for the workings of her own mind! That vow was all that protected her-not just from him, but from herself as well. And that was where the real danger lay.
He gathered wood while she busied herself plumping the leaves into a wider berth. She took off her cloak and spread it over the piles. Then, because there was nothing left to do, she waited for him, staying the trembling of her hands in the fur pelt of his mantle she had drawn over her lap.
He struck sparks from flint and coaxed the sparks into flame, then checked Chimera a final time.
Neither of them spoke. He was preoccupied, she guessed. He wore that same expression that told her his thoughts were elsewhere-brows knit low over an intently focused stare, vertical crease marring the smoothness of his high forehead. She remained silent, not trusting her voice to pretend well at indifference.
The bed faced the fire, and when he made no move to join her, Thea stretched out along her side, watching the shadows of the flames crawl up among the trees.
The Sheriff patrolled the little square of light the small fire provided, stared into the darkness of the woods, started at the animals' night sounds until his ear was accustomed to what was natural around them. Either he was very, very careful or, despite his bluster, he was avoiding the time when they would lie side by side beneath the shelter of the hut.
Useless to puzzle over the contradictions in the Sheriff's nature; there were as many in her own. She should hate him. She should know for a certainty he was evil and underhanded and had her country's ruin at heart. She should feel only revulsion at the sight of him, and the sound of his voice should set her every fear on edge.
But none of that was true. Not now. Even here in Sherwood, where belief had taken root and conviction flowered-even here, what Thea knew to be truth was shaken. Somehow, in this crude bower, safety and the security of knowing her own mind had vanished.
John, Robin, Will Scathlocke, Brand, even Much, in his own way, all faulted the Sheriff-this one man who stood, arms clasped behind his back, staring into the dance of the campfire, brooding over his powerlessness.
Thea watched the golden light flicker over the muscles of Nottingham's back, highlighting the mysterious streaks of scarred skin. Something fragile lay behind his facade of control. Something vulnerable he would not let the world see spoke in the lines of torn, badly healed flesh.
She wished she knew him well enough to know what riddle kept him dark and unknowable. But she was no seeress, no oracle, and of late, all too human.
She closed her eyes, and much later he eased himself into the place behind her, giving her the best warmth of the fire. She felt him draw the heavy fur of his mantle over them both and snuggle into the curve of her back.
He thought her asleep, probably had waited until he was certain of it before coming to bed. She did nothing to tell him otherwise, even when he slid his arm beneath her head to pillow it.
She should sleep. Let dreamless oblivion blot away the confusion of her thoughts and the surety of sensation that plagued her still. But that blessed nothingness escaped her.
In the close darkness of their hut, the male scent of him mingled with the pungency of the forest and burning oak. Nottingham draped his arm across her hip, and his fingertips brushed distractedly across the flat plane of her stomach. No, she could not sleep; she could hardly breathe.
Thea felt his breath fan the loose hairs of her braid, warm and rhythmic, felt his lips press against her shoulder.
"Thea, sweet?" he murmured, his words a drowsy slur against the nape of her neck.
She did not answer, could not destroy the illusion that she slept.
"I am naught but a besotted fool," he whispered. "Even Millie said so."
Silence.
"I think all I wanted was to see you in sunlight, hear you laugh, find a moment of peace where I could be with you...without him."
Tears sprang to her eyes, hot like the knot in her throat. She longed to tell him how needless it was, that he was never Robin's rival save in his own mind, but somehow the pretense had grown bigger than either of them. Every truth she did not tell him, every secret she kept-
"I deceived you, of course. It was all I knew-all I know-to get you here. Planned every detail-how you would be in the stable with Simeon, and how I would whisk you away-"
Her own deceit would best his any day.
"Planned it all, except for wanting you so madly."
His honesty humbled her, added to the burden of passion already assaulting her senses.
"So blame me, if you must, Thea. By Christ, I am guilty."
He curled around her protectively, as if wanting to comfort himself in the warmth their bodies made. Tears scalded her cheeks, and she bit the inside of he
r lip to keep her shoulders from shaking.
Oh, God, how she longed to turn in his arms, stretch out against the length of him until she touched him everywhere, imprint the texture of his skin upon hers. If she could capture the taste and heat of his mouth, trap forever the smoky resonance of his voice. If she could tell him she was not his enemy, but a woman, wanting that strong-fragile part of him that was man, not Sheriff, where Sherwood and enmity staked no claim.
If-
Oh, God, too late-too late for all of that. For they were enemies. John had said so. Robin proclaimed it. The villagers believed it. Even Much knew it with simple, child-like faith. Who was she to doubt them all?
And yet she did. For how could John's Sheriff, who plotted and schemed so unerringly for ill gain, be the same man who nestled beside her? How could Robin's Sheriff, whose relentless evil scourged the shire like a deadly plague, be the same man who, close to the edges of sleep, murmured such unlikely confession of his feelings for her?
Did they know him at all? Did she?
Thea shivered in his arms. Such dangerous questions-dangerous to Robin and his noble plan, to John with his earnest conviction of right and wrong, to Brand's memory, most of all.
And answers? In her months with Nottingham, had she found anything sure and certain save her desire for him?
The Sheriff's breathing deepened, and the wary tension melted from the shoulder where she rested her head. His fingers uncurled, lay limp against her belly. He slept, giving up no answers of his own.
So much of the man was an unsolved mystery she longed to untangle. Beneath every fault John and Robin saw, beneath the armor that guarded his heart, the Sheriff hid an army of truths. Tenderness lay beneath the anger, honesty beneath the self-serving deceit. And deeper still was an emptiness he'd filled with evil only because there had never been anyone to fill it with love. That was the Sheriff of Nottingham she wanted to believe in-the strange, sweet, besotted fool.
Yet this man, if she let him, would be her undoing. She felt it as surely as she felt the warmth of his body anchored around her. The cruel Lord Nottingham she could despise, but she had no defense against the man lying next to her. This man was making her forget every loyalty she had ever had, every purpose around which she'd built her life since Brand died. Given time, he would make her forget herself.
Thea stirred restlessly in the Sheriff's embrace. She could not let that happen! God, with half a chance he would turn her heart and she would betray everything she believed in. All Robin and John had worked for. Their last hope for England. She must stop this before she became a threat to everything she loved.
Brand...John...Robin...Sherwood...She must remember! The answers she sought were not to be found in the Sheriff of Nottingham, not in a man any unlearned peasant knew was Satan incarnate.
The answers were here, in the greenwood.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
She did not know how long she lay awake before the decision came to her. The fire had died down to a bed of vermilion coals glowing in the darkness, and a pale sliver of moon had risen above the branches of the trees. For hours it seemed, Thea had lain awake, sleep just out of reach, heart drumming out a slow lament inside her chest. The idea crept in slowly, wedging between the beats of her pulse, making it pound with terror at the very thought, pushing sleep farther and farther away until it eluded her altogether.
She must leave. It was the only way. Not once since the Sheriff took her from her cottage months ago had she been this close to freedom. If she waited until morning, he would only take her back to Nottingham and life would resume, an impossible life. More impossible now that her feelings for him had broken every conviction she'd ever held.
She stared wide-eyed into the darkness, tears dried, eyes aching all the same. She did not love the man. She knew that. She knew that with absolute certainty. She did not want to love him. But somewhere between Edwinstowe and Nottingham Castle, she had lost the will to resist him, and that frightened her more than any of the tales of reputed horror she had heard about the evil Sheriff.
What use was she to John or any of the scores of people who had suffered under Nottingham's injustice if she were so perilously close to succumbing to the beast?
And if, by the grace of God, her resolve were stronger-what then? She could not sit back and watch him destroy himself with his misguided fealty to Prince John, or wait as his obsession with the Sherwood bandits grew more and more unreasonable. Nor could she live with him, casting all her hopes on the fragile glimmer of the gentler man she had seen today.
And surely, above all, she could not love him, knowing in the end he would be undone, knowing she would be an instrument of that undoing.
He called her witch, but in truth she had no power equal to his. He had lured her with the dark, piercing stare of his sorcerer's eyes and charmed her with the devil's own wit. The soft, seductive drone of his voice was like an incantation murmured in her ear.
Even now, the haunting memory of his love play invaded her mind, forcing her to relive the afternoon by the stream over and over until she was mad with wanting him. He had held her and touched her, and for a while she was part of his power, the woman-twin to everything male and potent about him.
The feeling intoxicated her. It filled her mind with thoughts of him, called to her in dreams where she beguiled him with equal fervor. Who was this woman in her dreams if not the woman he had made her, passionate, rebellious of spirit, awakened to her own strength, who dared believe she was a match for him?
Madness, true. But the Sheriff of Nottingham wove madness around everyone he touched. There was only one escape.
She would go to John, confess to him that she had failed and could not continue with her fruitless scheme, pray he did not see the changes the Sheriff had wrought in her. And then she would return home, back to her cottage where life was ordered and safe.
She would spare Nottingham more of the tortured indecision that plagued him, make for both of them the decision he seemed unable to make. And if it was lonelier-
Thea steeled her wavering sense of purpose. She had been lonely before and countered it with her work, and she would do so again. Real work, not the mockery of it the Sheriff allowed her. The honest endeavor of tending to the ill and infirm, of delivering babes and comforting the dying.
One day, sometime in a future she could not foretell, she would find that she did not think of him, or if she did, he would be a pale, half-remembered image that time had blurred in her mind. The tearing pain she felt in her heart at leaving him would fade into a dull, hollow ache.
She waited, measuring minutes and hours in her mind until his breathing slowed with the rhythm of deep sleep. Lip caught between her teeth, she drew a noiseless breath, held it, and edged away from him. He did not stir at her movement or the rustle of leaves beneath him, even as she lifted his arm away and slipped from his embrace.
Without the fur of his mantle and the radiant warmth of his body, the frigid night air shivered through her. Wind gusted through the trees, rattled bare branches, and whipped up swirls of fallen leaves. She shivered and hugged her arms around the thin, woolen sleeves of her kirtle.
She would have to sacrifice her cloak. It would be foolish to try to retrieve it, more foolish to risk easing the Sheriff's sword away from his curled fingers, loosened by sleep. She told herself she would get used to the cold, and as for the sword-Nottingham had far more need of it in Sherwood than she.
She took a hesitant backward step, then another, wincing as leaves and fallen twigs cracked beneath her feet. He moaned slightly, and a stifled gasp froze in her throat as he rolled onto his back. Watery moonlight illumined his face, and Thea watched in horror as discontent and discomfort threatened to wake him. He thrashed about, wrestling the mantle into a rope of wool and fur around his legs before he stilled and settled deeper into the pallet of leaves.
The breath she held grew hot, threatening to explode in her lungs. Minutes passed and her muscles cramped as she force
d them to remain motionless.
Thea had no sense of the time she waited there, not breathing, expecting discovery with each passing second. It seemed hours-a lifetime-before she dared believe the steady rise and fall of his chest signaled sleep. Stretching one leg out behind her, she felt for the ground with a foot grown numb from cold and tension. Amazed that her shaking knees did not buckle, she stepped away from the hut. She waited until she reached Chimera's side before the breath rasped from her throat.
"Steady, Chimera," she whispered, letting the stallion snuffle at her palm. "You remember me, don't you? How many times in the past weeks did Simeon and your master force our reluctant acquaintance? And now it has come to this."
Her fingers groped in the darkness for the knotted reins, untied them, held them close to the bit as she had seen Simeon do.
"I need your help. Just for the night. Come, Chimera. Easy. Easy."
At least the animal did not startle at her scent or protest as she tugged on the reins and led him toward the narrow swine track that cut away from the encampment.
Vines and limbs closed over the trail, and she pushed them back, warding off branches with an out-thrust arm. Carefully, she skirted between low boughs and waded through dense, shoulder-high fern, praying the fallen leaves and howling wind would deaden her footsteps and the clop of Chimera's hooves.
Occasionally, Thea stopped to judge her progress by the shrinking glow of the campfire she'd left behind. When she could see it no longer, she knew she was safe.
Bending her head low, she pushed ahead with renewed effort, unmindful of the briars that tore at her hair and reached out like greedy fingers to dig into her skirts. Vines, hidden in the darkness, lashed her face, and her hands stung with the whipcord bite of thorns; yet she felt nothing as sharp as the desperation that hurried her on.
She had to leave him. She must. There was no other choice. "Don't turn back. Just a bit farther." The words became a refrain, filling her mind. She hardly realized she'd spoken them aloud.