Everything I Do: a Robin Hood romance (Rosa Fitzwalter Book 1)

by M. C. Frank

  “Go on,” he said.

  “I didn’t even fear that you would laugh at me, as you did, or that you would entirely doubt me, after all the trouble I had gone to.”

  “I have regretted…” he started saying in a strangled voice.

  “My greatest fear,” Rosa interrupted him, “was that you would remember the girl who had taken the dagger into her heart instead of you. That you would find out I was that girl, and that you would hate me for it. That was what made me nearly turn back when I started.”

  “I don’t hate you,” he said and buried his hand in his hair.

  “Or then react in an extremely immature way, as you do now,” Rosa amended.

  “Don’t you realize,” he began and turned to face her at last, “my dear girl, don’t you- Good God! You are completely drenched.”

  He stopped, shocked, as if he was taking in her appearance for the first time. She realized that she was shaking uncontrollably, and maybe he was too.

  “Come, my mermaid,” Robin said, taking her by the arm, “you will catch cold.”

  “What were you going to say?” she insisted through chattering teeth, “What don’t I realize?”

  He didn’t answer, only lifted her swiftly on her horse, and went to untie his own.

  She tried to settle on her slippery seat, the rain blinding her vision like tears, and found that her fingers were so chilled that she couldn’t hold on to the reins.

  She tried to stop the trembling, but her horse shuddered and she knew she was going to fall from her unsteady perch in a minute.

  “Robin…” she whispered.

  Immediately strong arms were lifting her from the saddle, and then she was cradled in Robin’s arms, seated atop his own mount.

  “I must take you out of this water,” he spoke softly into her hair, “or you will bewitch me further with the rubies in your dripping locks and the diamond raindrops on your lips.”

  She felt a brush against the top of her head, as if he had placed a kiss there, and then, placing a strong arm around her waist, he commanded his horse to move.

  He left her outside her cabin, but knocked again the minute she was in.

  “I though I had better build you a fire,” he explained.

  Her teeth were chattering so badly now that she couldn’t answer him, so she merely nodded, shakily. He had the fire roaring in a minute, and then turned to see that she hadn’t moved from her place in the corner, huddled and dripping in a growing pool of rainwater that had drained from her clothes.

  “I’ll leave you to get out of your wet clothes,” he said but saw that she couldn’t move. “Can… could I help?” he asked finally.

  He knelt next to her and tried to pry her frozen fingers away from her waterlogged cloak. She wasn’t trembling any more, and her lips were blue, her eyelids drifting closed.

  “No,” he commanded, “stay awake. Rosa, stay with me. I’ll have you warm in a minute.”

  He got up and opened the door, shielding its entrance from the cold, blocking it with his body.

  “John! Paul! I need you,” he shouted in the direction of the shelter-hut where the men were sleeping a few steps away. In a minute her heard the trap door creak open and knew they had heard him. They came splashing in the rain.

  They covered her in furs and Robin undressed her gently underneath them. He skin felt cold and clammy, but still his fingers burned every time they came in contact with its velvety texture. He felt as though fire was cursing through his veins, his breath coming short, his skin afire and he told himself sharply to stop it.

  He glanced at her white face every now and then, and once he caught her large eyes looking at him in wonder.

  “You are safe, my brave mermaid,” he whispered softly, placing his warm palm against her chilly forehead and brushing away a wet curl, “you can sleep in a minute.”

  She closed her eyes once, as if to say that she had heard him.

  “I didn’t mean to distress you,” Robin went on. “I see that’s what I did, and I am deeply sorry.”

  She tried to smile, and although her lips were still too frozen to move, he understood she forgave him, and smiled back.

  “Thank you,” he said, finding that his eyes were suddenly wet. A fat raindrop dropped from his wet hair onto her cheek, and he brushed it away with his thumb.

  “I did not yet thank you for saving my life,” he whispered. “I think my behavior was rather ungrateful. I find-” he hesitated. “I find that I have dreamed of thanking that brave, precious girl who saved me at such a price, her own life, for a very long time. And now that I have her before me, and she is very much alive, and a princess no less, I have no words to tell you…”

  Her eyelids drooped.

  “I am tiring you,” he said quickly. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  Paul gave her a potion to drink, which quickly brought some color to her cheeks and Little John unearthed a pair of clean, thick woolen undergarments that Robin dressed her in to keep her warm.

  He went to look in on her a couple of times during the night, but she slept serenely. He checked her forehead and his fears of a fever subsided once he was certain than it was cool. He too had changed into clean clothes, and his men did their best to leave him the largest space available in the shelter-hut, but sleep eluded him completely.

  The next day, Sir Hugh was gone before Rosa was awake.

  The world seemed new, washed out of its dust and sadness, little pools of rainwater concealed amid the thick, shining tufts of grass.

  “Watch out for snakes,” Little John said.

  Rosa was careful where she stepped, but found that she had more important matters on her mind. Julian passed her as she was walking to the camp and turned his face the other way. A million questions regarding her discovery plagued her mind, but she pushed them resolutely away. I can’t think about this now, she told herself.

  She felt she had left her conversation with Robin unfinished, somehow, although she couldn’t remember the events of last night with complete clarity. Their ride from the cliff back to the camp was all in a daze.

  When she went to talk to him, she found him hard and remote, and talking of her departure with a sullen-looking -for once- Father Tuck.

  “I find I am unable to keep my former promise to you, Rosa,” Robin said and her name sounded harsh on his lips. “We find you no longer necessary here in the forest, the men and I, and we think that you could do more good in the care of the Duke of-”

  “Not this again,” Rosa cried, exasperated, “master, we talked about this yesterday…”

  “My mind is made up,” he said and there was something in the way he spoke, a grim determination, a sadness, a stubbornness, that told her it was true this time, she was indeed leaving.

  She felt the color leaving her cheeks and leaned against a nearby tree for support.

  “I hope you didn’t catch cold yesterday,” Robin said and there was a trace in his voice of kindness, “because that would set back our journey by a few days. We are to leave the day after tomorrow. John will come with us, I’ll take no chances. Your vengeful friend may be out there waiting for you.”

  She heard the rest of his words in a daze. There was no point arguing with him now, he wouldn’t listen to her. The rest of the day passed without her realizing it. She wanted to say goodbye to everyone, even to the large oak tree, she wanted to ask for one last lesson in archery, she wanted to do a million little last things. But she couldn’t even speak. All she felt was numb.

  The day was gone before she had time to blink once, it seemed. The night came and the men settled down to sleep on damp grass.

  Robin had the strange impulse to bang his head against a sharp rock, but he kept himself together by repeating again and again that this was the right thing to do.

  When he woke the next day, the day of Rosa’s departure, she was nowhere to be found. Her pallet hadn’t been slept in, and nothing was taken except the bow Little John had made for her. No arrows were missin
g, however, which was strange.

  No horse was missing either, and Robin was confident that they would find her soon, since she had apparently left on foot.

  They searched for a fortnight and found nothing, except for her bow, which lay at the foot of a tree near the northern fringe of the forest. After that, they kept on looking for her body, but a month passed and they had combed the forest from one end to another. They even came close to being discovered by the Sheriff’s men once or twice, so desperate and determined was Robin in his search that he was entirely careless of his safety, and was becoming even more reckless with every day that passed.

  But still they found nothing.

  On the last day of the month, Robin knelt on the cold, hard ground and wept.

  He vowed then and there to search every little village and town, and not to stop until he found her. There was little hope -if any- that he’d find her alive, but he would not admit defeat until he was absolutely certain of it.

  And if she was indeed dead, he would avenge her.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE CASTLE

  Rosa Fitzwalter, homeless and on the run, was alive. But barely.

  She had been nearly spent when she finally made her way out of the forest. A kind woman, whose husband owned a tavern in the nearby village, happened to pass by and see her, lying there at the edge of the road, shivering with fever and trembling with exhaustion and hunger. Though she herself was a poor mother of six, the woman took pity on the dying girl and took her home, whereupon after nursing her for nearly a week, she let her work in the tavern as a serving maid, in exchange for board and food.

  The patrons’ dirty, grabbing hands and foul looks, however, soon became too much for Rosa to bear, and in scarcely more than two weeks’ time, she decided she was well enough to try and put some more distance between herself and the northern border of Sherwood Forest.

  “I feel for you, Maggie,” the woman told Rosa, addressing her by that name, for it was the one she had given her upon waking up, “I feel for you as for my own daughter. I can't bear to see you go.”

  “Don't fret, mother," Rosa told her, “I'll manage.”

  She was dressed in a simple brown dress in the manner of every country-maid, her boyish clothes clean and mended after her ordeal, concealed in a basket under her elbow. The dress the good tavern-keeper’s wife had generously given her was several sizes too big for her, still she was grateful for its warmth and its disguise, which she had completed by parting her hair neatly in the middle of her forehead and plaiting it in two long braids.

  The luxury of a warm bed and clean water had moved her to tears in the first days after her rescue, and indeed it would take a long time to forget the long days and nights she had spent in hiding, feverish and hungry.

  “I've been too much of a burden to you already,” she said to the woman kindly. “I will beg of you one thing, however.”

  The woman opened her eyes wide and listened with interest. She was no fool, no matter how poor and uneducated she might be, and she had seen with a glance that this was no ordinary peasant girl whom some misfortune had chased from her home. She asked no questions, yet looked upon ‘Maggie’ with some amount of awe.

  “If you hear of Robin Hood passing through these parts…” Rosa began, but was immediately interrupted.

  “Robin Hood, the outlaw,” the woman said, her voice lowering in awe, “he was at my door not a fortnight hence.”

  Rosa went white.

  “And that wasn’t the only time I saw him recently, let me tell you,” the woman went on. “He’d come before that, two days after you came to live with us, I think it was. I didn’t believe him at first, for he was so gaunt-looking and pale, he didn’t look like no robber, but more of a beggar. But then he ordered a blond-haired youth to come into my home, and he spread on my table a basket filled with bread and cheese and meat, can you believe it? It was out of this bounty that I fed you, girl, for I had scarcely food enough for my own boys back then. Anyway, he asked me if I had seen a girl, or a slender lad, or anyone lost and wanderin’ around here. I said to him, nay.”

  “Why… why did you say that, mother?” Rosa asked, her lips trembling.

  The old woman shrugged.

  “I reckoned you didn’t want anyone findin’ you, even if it was the prince of the poor,” she answered. “Did I do wrong?”

  Rosa bent down and hugged her fiercely.

  “You did right, and thank you,” she said, her eyes tearing up. “But now that I’m leaving, if… if he happens to grace your doorstep with his presence again,” Rosa went on, “you are to tell him you did a kindness to one of his men once for which you haven't been reimbursed in full. Say you never learned his true name, for he was in hiding, but that you saved his life. He'll give you your reward as I cannot.”

  With these words, Rosa embraced her again, wiped her cheeks and left, the woman, speechless, watching her as she made her way on foot to the next village.

  When the bow Little John had helped her build had grown too heavy for her weary hands, back in the forest, she had hid it at her root of a tree, hoping Robin would find it and know she had reached this point alive and well.

  Now, however, she wasn’t in so much of a hurry. She took her time and picked a large village run through by a small, narrow river, where she felt she would be better hidden among the many who lived there. She asked for work at the large country manor, where they hired her as a scullery maid, after a somewhat nerve-wracking cross-examination. It was well into the new year when she at last settled into the life of a servant, considering herself safe at last.

  Candlemas was fast approaching and they were preparing a grand feast in the manor for the entire village to attend. Rosa kept busy, working her fingers to the bone and sleeping little, her heart still bleeding inside her, for she couldn’t forget Robin Hood’s brilliant eyes no matter what she did.

  Then one day she began to notice that she had attracted the attention of the eldest son of the family, a stocky man approaching twenty years of age, with oily hair and dirty fingernails. She tried to escape his leery smiles and cunning schemes to pull her in the stables as best she could, but she began to fear that her new-found stability would be short-lived after all.

  It turned out, however, that the opulent feast, when it finally took place, and with great success too, was followed by the announcement of that same eldest son’s betrothal, which Rosa hoped meant a respite from his advances, and which resulted in his marriage to a sweet country girl a few days hence.

  The day after the wedding, Rosa started from the kitchen with two empty buckets. She had a spring in her step as she walked to the well, merrily swinging her hands, for, although she did not relish the thought of walking all the way back with two heavy buckets full of water across her neck, this was the first day in a long time that she felt free. No hands were waiting to grope her in every corner, no crude lips to be pressed against hers in spite of her struggling, no dirty fingers to slide in the top of her dress. Master James was now in a home of his own, with a woman who was his wife to grope to his heart's contend.

  Rosa reached the well and laid down her buckets. She had just began to unwind the thick cord, when she became suddenly and painfully aware that her arms were full of bruises from his pinches and his powerful grip while she had been struggling to escape his embraces minutes before his wedding. The cord swung abruptly from her fingers and she gasped in pain as she gripped the edge of the well fighting against a sudden faintness brought on by the pain.

  In an instant, she felt a gentle, strong hand on her back, supporting her, and the cord was being lifted from her limp hands. She turned around, surprised, and was met with a pair of silver-blue eyes, looking into hers with kindness and concern. She took a step back. The stranger, a tall, athletic man not above five and forty years of age, with greying temples, dressed in elegant, expensive-looking attire, took his hands away, as though he was afraid he had taken too much of a liberty.

  “Fo
rgive me,” he said, in a deep, cultured voice. He had a slender face and a strong jaw, and his lips were pressed together in a thin line. “I thought you were in need of assistance.”

  “Thank you,” Rosa replied regaining her composure.

  She realized now why he had seemed slightly familiar at first. She had seen him before, at this exact spot, standing across from the well atop his chestnut horse, his long hair caught in a ponytail, billowing in the strong winter wind. He didn't live in the village, but was almost daily there on business. It was whispered that he was incandescently rich and something of a recluse, even though up close he appeared to be a bit less formidable than he looked from afar. She didn’t know anything else about him, neither his name nor where he lived, but she had never before felt the need to.

  His icy gaze had somewhat unsettled Rosa, as she passed by him on her way to and from the well, his stare boring into her back as she filled her buckets with water. Now, however, looking into his eyes from a mere five inches away, she was struck by their beauty. They appeared haunted by some secret grief and it seemed to her they shone with anger and bitterness.

  She turned back to her task, wincing as her sore muscles sent a sharp pain at the abrupt movement, but he raised a slender hand to stop her.

  “Please, allow me,” he said kindly, as though he knew he was addressing a lady and was afraid he might offend her.

  His white fingers seemed only to be accustomed to writing poetry and playing the lyre, but he attached the first bucket to the cord and filled it with water to the top with exceptional ease, and then the second.

  Then he picked them up in one fluid movement and simply stood there, watching her, waiting to be told in which direction he was to take them. Rosa couldn't believe her eyes. She moved to take the buckets from him, but he simply started walking away, in the wrong direction, and there was nothing she could do but point him in the other way and walk behind him in silence.