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work and get away out of this reek.”
    Linnet resisted the urge to hurl the bucket at her sister. She turned her shoulder. “Run and bring me more bandaging, will you? I did not bring enough.”
    Lark flicked her gaze over the supplies, and did not unprop herself from the doorway. “It looks sufficient.”
    “Just go.” Difficult enough to tend her patient without the added burden of Lark’s discerning gaze. Linnet felt as if the walls of the tiny place closed in on her. She shot Lark another look and added more gently, “Please.”
    Lark went. Gareth de Vavasour stretched his long limbs in the limited space allowed. Linnet, focusing on the wound at his thigh, told herself he might be anyone: the smith with yet another nasty burn, a child with a skinned knee, not this man with his beautiful body. But her unsteady hands proved she did not believe it.
    “This will hurt,” she said again, and pulled off the dressing.
    The wound looked angrier than the one at his shoulder and showed red and swollen in the torch light. She spoke a small prayer under her breath for guidance and felt his eyes return to her face. The muscles of his thigh quivered under her hands.
    Did he feel what she felt? Was he, too, touched by this wild, unaccountable attraction? Or was she just a peasant to him, a Saxon and beneath his notice?
    She had once seen a troop of Norman knights ride over a flock of Saxon children who did not move out of their way quickly enough, scattering and crushing them like leaves, and with as little regard. Of course this man, a Norman champion, held no regard for her. Why should he?
    Yet her thoughts leaped like flames as she cleaned and dressed this wound, her fingers working at the rent in his leggings, the back of her hand actually brushing up against his manhood at one point. He caught his breath then and she told herself it was against the pain. But when the dressing had been placed, they were both breathing hard.
    Lark was taking an unaccountably long time fetching that bandaging. Linnet found herself glad. She slid up beside Gareth de Vavasour’s shoulder and touched his cheek with one finger.
    “Who did this to you?”
    “Does it matter?” His voice sounded hoarse. She must have hurt him much, even though she had tried to be gentle.
    She said nothing, merely poured more unguent onto a pad and pressed it to his face. The motion brought her close above where he lay. They might almost be lovers, she thought, he sprawled upon a cot and she bending in to bestow a long and luxuriant kiss. How she would delight in the chance to taste him, trace those lips with her tongue and test the flavor of his skin.
    By the Green Man’s horns! She never entertained such thoughts. Anyway, there was no bed, only this filthy dirt floor, and his pain.
    His free hand, untethered, came up and caught her wrist. It made the first time he had touched her voluntarily, and the impact of it made her eyes fly to his.
    Did he mean to harm her? But no, for his touch was gentle, and rather than fear she felt— Best not put a name to that surge of emotion.
    “What did she mean,” he whispered, “the woman with the fierce eyes? What, when she said you need not make a mystery out of healing me? And you—who is this ‘one’ you say gives healing to your hands?”
    Linnet gazed into his eyes and answered simply, “The giver of all life, the power, the magic that dwells in Sherwood. The Green Man.”
    “I do not understand.”
    “She speaks of the living being that is Sherwood itself,” said Lark’s voice from the doorway, “that we guard so well from your ruinous kind. Now leave go of my sister, if you would live to breathe another day.”

Chapter Seven
    “Haul him out here into the daylight. There is someone who wishes to take a look at him.”
    Hard hands seized Gareth de Vavasour from where he leaned against the wattle wall. A blade cut his tether and he was dragged, for the first time since his capture, from the foul-smelling