by Sue Wilson
Thea loosened the reins and urged Chimera forward. When they reached the croft, she dismounted and led the horse to the shelter at the back of her house-not nearly so adequate a stable as he was accustomed to, but shelter nonetheless, with a trough for water and enough grass for grazing.
She had never thought much past this point. What would she do with the horse now that she was home and had no further need of him? Could she pay one of the villagers to take the animal back to Nottingham? Surely the Sheriff would give a handsome reward for the return of his stallion.
Legs weak from her ride, she untacked Chimera and gave the horse a final pat. "You're a smart animal," she conceded, "but don't be thinking you can find your way back to him from this distance. Stay put. It will make both our lives so much simpler!"
The horse made no move to wander, apparently content to tear and munch at a nearby clump of clover. Thea nodded, satisfied she could wait until the morrow before going to the village. At the moment, she wanted nothing more than to be inside her cottage alone, where perhaps she could hear herself think. Or make herself stop thinking.
She pushed the door open and a rush of cool air bathed her face. Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply, filling her lungs with the scent of home. After all this time, she could still smell the redolence of drying herbs and the telltale fragrance of lavender. She let her weight sag against the door and heard it shut behind her.
"Sweet saints," she murmured, "safe at last."
Slowly she opened her eyes, lids heavy with fatigue and the relieved exhaustion of her flight. The darkness stared back at her.
"Give you good eve, Thea."
A voice cut through the stillness, soft and melodic. Mocking.
The scrape of steel striking flint broke the silence, and a small flame leapt to life in the blackness, sputtered in mid-air, then settled onto the wick of a single candle. She gasped, one hand at her throat, the other fumbling behind her for the latch of the door.
"You make remarkably poor time...considering you stole my best horse."
Nottingham sat facing her, his back rigid against the wooden chair. His words hung on the air like the lingering scent of her herbs. The pale golden halo of candle wavered, half obscuring an expressionless face. One hand rested on the table's surface. He drummed his fingers once against the wooden planks, then clenched his hand into a fist.
"Where were you? There? With him?"
No need to ask him who he meant or what he intended. His meaning and purpose were clear in his tense, regal posture and the calculated smoothness of his questions. He had come for a confession.
She said nothing, merely unknotted the scrap of wool John had given her as a makeshift cape and draped it loosely on her shoulders. His eyes narrowed, as though noting the borrowed remnant of coarse cloth with suspicion.
She was weary, both from her journey and his single-minded pursuit of her guilt. For once, she felt no urge to lie, to evade him with half-truths and vague denials. Confession? She wanted it nearly as much as he.
Thea stepped aside and removed John's length of wool, fingering its frayed edges before looping it over a peg on the wall. Her hand lingered there, lightly caressing the fabric, and then she turned to face him.
"Yes," she said, the single word strong, clear, without regret. "I was there."
For all his weeks of questioning, plying her with endless innuendo, taunting her with subtle insinuations, he clearly did not expect admission would come so easily. Shock transformed his face. The rigid jaw grew slack; lips that had pressed, bloodless, against each other parted in astonishment.
She saw in an instant what she had failed to recognize in months: that behind his every challenge, behind every accusation, was the hope that he was wrong.
Now, in a brief moment of despair, she had crushed that hope, and with it, John's safety, the fate of all the outlaws. God in His mercy, what had she done?
Her heart hammered in her chest, and her mind, for all its pitiable racing to devise explanation, refused to form any coherent thought.
"Then what Gisborne says is true." Not even a question.
Her mouth had gone dry. She could only shake her head mutely, denying him in the same charade they had played out since they first met, here, in this very room.
"Answer me, woman! Tell me the truth-that you wooed me with lies and left me in the wood to be butchered!"
"No-"
"Christ, if you knew the times I protested your innocence to Gisborne, swore to myself in the dark of night that you were harmless to me, dismissed in my mind every evidence of guilt against you because I-"
He stopped and swallowed hard, preventing any confession of his own. Thea watched him battle the rage that threatened to overtake him. He shot to his feet and stormed to the far side of the room.
"Good saints, she has taken me," he muttered, as if to himself. "A mere woman. I have been played for a weakling idiot in some passion's game."
Suddenly he whirled to face her, cloak hissing around him like a black tornado.
"Pray, Thea. Tell me now. What has this been between us but a web of deception and false feeling? You love him, do you not? Your Locksley? Did you let me continue in my misguided affections because it was worth it to him somehow? Did you spy? Did you learn of some secret treachery in my castle, something to carry to him in the night? Tell me! Spare me a word of truth, woman!"
Thea pressed her lips together, trying to hear reason amid the tumult of feelings battering away inside her. She had made so many mistakes with this man. For months, she had danced around his allegations, vehemently denying the worst of them, letting him believe others, supplying falsehood with an ease that confounded her.
Now it was over. Her poor attempt to spy, to play his game and Robin's at the same time. All that remained was the chaos she had made of her feelings. And his.
The longer she hesitated, the darker, the more wrath-filled, his features became.
"Truth, yes," she said carefully. "I remember. You said once, before, that you would not have me know you through the tales people told about you. The hearsay. The exaggerations. The lies."
He said nothing, but stared at her with blackening eyes, waiting. In that moment, she knew there was no going back, that despite the risk, she had to tell him everything.
"I would ask the same of you, Lord Nottingham." She met his eyes as if she felt none of the fear coursing through her chilled veins. "That you know me by truth. I am not his woman. I do not belong to Robin of Locksley. I know him, yes. Have seen him before, several times, have treated him once. Stitched his chin when John bloodied it with his quarterstaff. A game. No matter."
She shook her head as if to clear it. She had set herself an impossible task; already she was babbling like a silly goose of a girl. He did nothing to help, offering only silence and a grim expression.
"So, yes, I know him," she began again. "A rather arrogant sort once, and still cocksure, but changed somehow. A youth grown old too quickly on Crusade, and angry in that odd way that makes people closed off from the world, as you are yourself much of the time. Industrious. Inventive. Ambitious. Again, my lord, not unlike yourself."
He grimaced, obviously displeased with the comparison.
"But I am not his woman, as you accuse me, nor his whore. I have not lain with him or touched him in a familiar way, nor he I. And he would not. Such is the honor of the man."
"'The honor of the man'? Of an outlaw?"
"He knows me, what has passed in my life. He would not press me for affection, even were he so inclined, which I promise you he is not. Out of respect, you see," she said simply, her eyes downcast, her voice hushed and strained, "for my husband-"
Lifting her head, she met the myriad questions forming on Nottingham's lips, in his eyes. And finished.
"-Who is dead."
~*~
The Sheriff felt the blood drain from him, as if her words had severed some artery, leaving him stunned, unable to speak or move.
"Yes,"
she said. "I see you remember. All your foolish charges. Your blustering about the man's shirt Gisborne found among my belongings. Not Robin's. Brand's. My husband's. About the bow, which Robin crafted, true, but which he gave to Brand. He was a carpenter, you see, but better with other things. The table there. My cupboard. The rafters above."
She looked up, nodding toward the beams from which clusters of herbs hung to dry. "Ash," she explained. "He said it would last forever."
Her voice broke. He saw the slight tremor in her chin, the way she bit into her lower lip to stop the tears that gathered in her eyes.
"Not Robin of Locksley, Sheriff. Never him, except in your own fevered delusions. But Brand. My husband for a twelvemonth. Before he was taken from me."
"God-God in heaven," he stammered. "How could I not have known?"
"How indeed, since Gisborne saw fit to dredge up every other piece of my life for you-"
"Thea, don't. If I had but known-"
"You would have...what? Given him back to me?"
"Did I take him from you?"
She did not respond at first, but that in itself was answer enough. She struggled to stop the tears, indignation failing her. A slender trickle of wetness coursed down one cheek, and she turned away, wrapping her arms around herself as if, by force, she could stop her shoulders from shaking.
It struck him then. He had seen her mad, frightened, striking out at him with the bravado of a peregrine on hunt. He had never seen her cry.
Slowly he walked to where she stood, reached out, and touched the tangled mass of curls that spiraled down her back.
"He was killed in the forest," she went on, rushing through the words as if, any moment, she might regret them. "An arrow felled him. No. Two. He was pierced twice. Some say he was poaching."
"And was he?"
Thea turned toward him, her face somber, streaked with the path of silent tears. "I don't know. It was winter. We were hungry. We had been hungry for a long time. But it wasn't like Brand to break the law. Besides, John swore to me they'd done no wrong. John...John Little," she explained, as if she knew already that he would ask.
She let out a ragged sigh and looked away. "It was John, you see, who brought Brand home to me, and stayed by my side until the time had come to close Brand's eyes and pull the linen over his face."
"Mortal wounds?"
"Or an unseasoned surgeon," she admitted quietly. "I was but sixteen, and very much in love. I tried, but-John said it was fated, said he'd never seen a man live with wounds like that. He meant it as comfort, holding me through the night, comforting me again as I cried. Only later did my grief allow me to know at what expense he'd come to me, or the risks he'd taken to stay. He was outlawed, even then.
"So I hurried him home, or to the place in Sherwood where he hid with others like himself. And when I saw him two days later, a quiet bear of a man, face hidden beneath his tattered hood, watching Brand's funeral procession pass, I knew I was beholden to him for something money could never repay."
Thea fidgeted with the sleeve of her gown, a nervous gesture that softened the Sheriff's heart at a time he should care only for her confession.
"I tried," she said, glancing back at him. "I put a penny to his taxes for every remedy I sold, hoping to relieve him of his crime the only way I knew how. Check with your ledgers. God willing, the accounts are right, though it was never enough to satisfy the whole of his debt. And still, in my mind, I had not done enough."
"And so you did...more."
She nodded. "But nothing more than you already guessed. When one of their men was hurt, John sent word to me, and I came. Not once. Several times. Many times over. I came and gave what help I could, though it meant sedition at the very least. Aye, I helped them. And I would again."
It was the connection Nottingham had always sought to discover, the one he had long suspected, yet none of the circumstances of her treason were as he imagined.
A husband. Gisborne had failed him on that, and while he demanded to know why, would know why before the morrow passed, his cousin's omission of this truth was hardly what concerned him most.
The death of a husband, whom Thea loved-merciful Christ! Had he done that to her?
She looked away, and all he could see was the profile of her face, limned with glistening tears. He longed to take her in his arms, to tell her he knew something of loss, but in truth he knew nothing of comforting or consoling. Awkward, inept, useless-he felt all of it. And far worse than that. Dread had settled thick in the pit of his stomach.
Had he somehow been responsible? He had only to look at her grief-stricken face to know she believed so.
"How long ago did this happen?" he whispered, staring into the blackness.
"Four years ago, come January, it was. Four years ago, come Twelfthtide, we buried him."
The darkness closed in on him, choking the breath from his lungs, her words resounding in his ears.
Four years ago...in Sherwood...
He remembered.
The cold...the crystal-clear silence...the puffs of his breath hanging like clouds in the air...the crunch of snow underfoot...
Four years ago she had lost him, her dear Brand, who crafted tables and beams of ash and was fool enough-or desperate enough-to take a bow to the king's deer...and he, four years ago, come January, in Sherwood, as well-
An ache crept across his back, the pulling of old scars badly healed; he told himself it was the cold of her cottage. Her pain was far worse, not remembered in blurry snatches, but real, alive, and with her still.
He reached out, fingertips wiping her wet cheek, then drew her into his arms. Her body felt small and stiff with pent-up sorrow. He held her lightly, as if she were a fragile piece of glass that would shatter at his touch. Beneath his arms, her muscles grew rigid and taut as she struggled to hold back the sadness. Her shoulders shook.
"Thea," he murmured, pressing his lips to the top of her head as she muffled the sound of her weeping against his chest. "I am not here to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you. If I could go back, undo something-anything-I did-"
She sobbed then, once, a ragged sound of anguish. Another came. And another. Until the sadness battered through her wall of resistance and the sounds of long-buried hurt came pouring out. Her hands groped blindly, clutching his jerkin and tunic in tight, urgent fistfuls, and her body sank against his, limp with exhaustion, with desolation, with surrender to all the feelings she had tried to forget for so long.
Nottingham gathered her up in his arms, carried her to the straw-stuffed bed and sat there, cradling her, rocking her in his lap to the rhythm of her cries. He shared some part of her mourning, felt it, fresh and sharp, when he laid his cheek against hers and tasted the salty wash of her tears. Gently he brushed his lips across the corner of her eye, her forehead, and caught her hands, her palms, her fingers against the warm solace of his mouth, and all the while he whispered her name, breathed it out like a comforting chant against her skin.
In time, Thea's weeping turned to uneven breaths and finally to silence. The Sheriff pressed his lips against hers, grazing lightly, lingering, until her trembling stopped.
He thought her asleep and moved to lay her on the bed beside him, but she started, fingers twisting in the fabric of his tunic. Tears had stained her eyes the blackest blue of a midnight sky.
"Will you arrest me now?" she asked, looking up at him.
No fear in her question. Certainly no panic. Not even a plea for clemency formed on her swollen lips.
He separated himself from her, settling her on the bed. As he gazed over her, his heart and body filled with a thousand responses that could have answered her. Instead he merely shook his head.
"I've heard of nothing criminal this night. Nothing."
He touched her lips again, and when he drew away from her, her eyes had closed. She slept.
He did not move at first, overwhelmed by all she had told him, and the tempest of feelings and doubts her words had stirred. He wanted
her. Still. Despite her confession. Or maybe because of it. He wanted to lie with her, inside her, drive away her pain, make her forget, bring her to life again.
The irony of it all! He had thought her tied to Locksley, had imagined them together over and over a thousand times until the images tore at his mind. But while the outlaw was a formidable enemy, he was nothing compared to the memory of a lost husband.
All this time, without even knowing, Nottingham had been battling a ghost, trying to win Thea's love from a man dead and buried years ago. A man who no sword-thrust could touch, no lance or crossbow kill. A far more invincible rival than Robin of the Hood ever thought to be.
In time, the Sheriff eased himself away from Thea, the cold demanding he build a fire for comfort. He left the cottage briefly to gather wood and check on Chimera, then hurried back inside.
The wind had whipped to a howling fury; he could barely wait as the bits of dried moss and twigs in the firepit caught flame. He fed the tinder several scraps of wood, then a split log.
When the heat spread throughout the room, he stripped off his boots and tunic. Taking care not to waken her, he removed Thea's slippers and slid the snagged woolen hose from her knees down the lengths of her calves.
Blisters covered her feet, briars had clawed her arms, and a raised welt ran along the upward cant of her cheekbone-all evidence of her hasty, frightened flight. Had she been that desperate to leave him?
Tenderly, he brushed his finger along each bruise, each scrape, his body growing restive each time he touched her skin and felt its warmth beneath his flesh. By nature, he was not a gentle man. Or a patient one. And no woman had dared demand it of him. Before.
How could he give Thea anything of softness or benevolent touches, when passion smoldered so hotly in the depths of his vitals?
He untied the laces of her kirtle with fingers grown thick and clumsy with his efforts, and pulled her gown off her shoulders and arms and down her legs, leaving her clad only in a soft linen shift. She would give him the bitter side of her venomous tongue on the morrow for undressing her-if tonight had not altered everything that passed between them.