And we are made different. On the instant. What we know, what we were, is banished by that instant, razed like a castle under siege, and nothing is recognizable is left. The world is unmade.
Jennifer RobersonIt's difficult admitting you're wrong. Even more difficult admitting it when you have scoffed and otherwise ridiculed the truth with blind, unremitting determination, so blithely confident in your own infallibility. But then one day -- or one night -- the truth is put into your hands, and you realize those stories and songs and legends told by Northern strangers are truths after all, and that no one has lied to you.
Jennifer RobersonPain, Rhuan decided, did not simply hurt. Pain also exhausted a person, sapped his soul, thinned his spirit. Worse, pain was tedious.
Jennifer RobersonShe drew in a huge breath and let it out all at once. "I never thought anyone would want me."
Such plain, simple words, and so eloquent a declaration. In that moment he shared all the pain, all the insecurities of an awkward lass made to believe she was worthless to any man but a feckless father who preferred whisky and wagers to pride in himself and his daughter.
He reached out and caught her hand, fingered it gently, then carried her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm. "I want you," he said.
This time when she cried he knew it was for joy.
Now she knew, and spoke it, answering him in kind with cool self-possession, fully cognizant of what the admission could mean. “The fleshly sword, yes. But he also taught me what you cannot: what it is to love a man.” Dull color stained his face. Her thrust had gone home cleanly, and more deeply than she had hoped.
Her matter-of-fact confirmation of his crude insinuation turned the blade back on him. His eyes glittered in flame. “Do you know what I see?”
She knew very well what he saw. She named it before he could. “Robin Hood’s whore,” she answered. “And grateful for the honor.
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.
Jennifer RobersonA horse broke through beside her, nearly knocking the mare over. At first Marian thought the horse unmounted, possibly Gisbourne’s, running from the boar, because she saw no rider—and then she did see him and realized he was clad in the colors of the forest, nearly invisible, almost indistinguishable against the emerald, olive, and jade. It was the shock of white-blond hair that betrayed his identity, and the grimness of his features.
Jennifer RobersonHe was weary. Used up. He had been weary for months, for more than a year. In that weariness, in the exhaustion of his spirit, lay the seed of what he was; of what he had become. Of what they had made him, Saladin’s men, and all the others as well. Even his own kind. She had cried out for him to beware, when his horse had been hurt, and fallen. And again when he’d stabbed into the boar’s throat. He recalled it clearly: “Be careful!” she had cried. “Oh my lord, take care!” But nothing else, past that. Because with the cries of his horse in his head, and the stench of blood in his nostrils, what he killed was no longer a boar. What he was, was no longer a man, but a body, mind, and spirit remade on the anvil of war, remixed in the terrible crucible of a holy insanity.
Jennifer RobersonLocksley? It was. The fall of pale hair, the set of wide shoulders, the posture of his body. Unmistakable. She knew him instantly. And knew, without knowing why, that she would always know him.
Jennifer RobersonSaying nothing, she went to the bed he had devised and lay down upon it stiffly, settling a hip carefully as she turned onto her side. Leaves compressed. Twigs crackled. She lay very still, eyes squinched closed, jaws clenched, trying to breathe normally and hoping shadow shielded her face. Silence. “Well?” he asked at last. “It would be better with a cloak thrown over it, but we have none. I left it with the horse.” She smelled dampness, sap, and earth. She would not tell him the truth: even a cloak over the bedding would offer her little comfort.
“It will do,” she said quietly, tucking a leaf down from her mouth.
He nodded. “Get up.”
“But I only just—”
“Please.” She got up, as requested, picking leaves and twigs from her hair and kirtle.
Mutely she watched as he lay down in her place, testing the bed. He was silent. Then, with infinite irony, “You are polite.
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