Read Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] for Free Online

was proprietary, intent, and more than a trifle selfish. He did not ask, he told. But then, Marian decided in fairness, he is the son of an earl.
    Through the throng he took her, very nearly dragging her, but the throng made way for him, noting who he was, then noting who she was. In wry amusement she reflected, The sheriff will be dismayed.
    But it faded quickly, overruled by an acknowledgment that what she did—rather, what he did to her—was the sort of thing others would note, consider, remark upon, within the context of their natures. Even now, eyebrows arched. Skirts were pulled aside. Mouths murmured comments into attentive ears.
    Her face flamed and her breasts prickled. She did not think again of the sheriff or of his unmarried daughter. She thought instead of herself, and of the man who led her so unerringly through the hall to an adjoining antechamber. They passed even the minstrel, watching over his lute. Blue eyes were brightly knowing; his smile was meant for her.
    Inside the chamber Locksley boomed shut the door behind her. Marian looked past him, noting chairs, candle racks, tapestried walls. At least, she thought wryly, it does not have a bed. That much he will spare me.
    He swung back, stopped short, and nearly tripped her as she moved from the door. His tone was laced with bitter defensiveness. “Do you know what it is like coming home a stranger, and finding everything changed?”
    She was not certain he wanted an answer. He was not looking at her.
    And then, as abruptly, he was. “ Do you?”
    She folded hands into kirtle skirts, seeking the proper demeanor, the words he might want to hear. “When I have been away, I have a ritual. I reacquaint myself, to see if things have altered. Room by room. Hall by hall.” She shrugged defensively, unsettled by the unrelenting stare. “Perhaps you might do the same.”
    “A ritual,” he echoed. “Such as a knight riding into battle, seeking victory, honor, and glory ... and the approval of a king?”
    It was not meant for her, she knew. Perhaps for himself. “I don’t know, my lord. I have never gone to war.”
    Her forthright tone and words startled him out of whatever privacy he might have wished to retain. She saw it plainly: the sharpening of his gaze, the hardening of his mouth. “No. They do not send women to war.”
    She did not hesitate. “Only into marriage.”
    Beneath pale hair, brows arched. She could see only their movement, not their color, though she remembered it. “Is that why you came?” he asked. “To cast the lure for the lost falcon at last returned to its mews?”
    The bitter vehemence startled her. She had come for no such thing, not even contemplating it in a brief, fleeting daydream. She had been consumed with her father, determined to learn what she could, and only that. She did not blame Locksley for his assumption. Not one bit. It struck the mark cleanly. But she was not the arrow, loosed to catch a man. She was not Eleanor deLacey.
    Marian smiled. Her teeth were good; she showed them. “Better to ask the sheriff. Better to ask the others, trailing chains of bright-clad daughters.”
    The flesh by his eyes creased. She thought at first it might be amusement, but the mouth did not smile. “What of you, then?”
    “What of me?” she countered. “ You brought me here.”
    He sighed and turned away, scrubbing one hand through his mane of blond hair. She saw how the breadth of his shoulders stretched the fabric of his samite tunic, checkered green-and-gold. The belt clasping lean hips shone with worked gold and the meat-knife at his right hip.
    He swung back. “I brought you here,” he agreed. And then, yet again, he frowned. “We have met before.”
    Marian managed to nod. “At Ravenskeep, my lord. One Christmas Eve”—it was harder than she’d expected—“you and your lord father rode home from London, but a storm brought you up short. You came instead to my father’s manor and spent the night with us.”