Page 46 of Robin and Marian
“Wait! Where is he?”
“Larping probably.” Tuck came back out and opened Robin’s door. Marian thought it was to show her he wasn’t there, but he only came out with a new shirt on. “The other one was dirty,” he explained before going back to his room, shutting the door on her.
Larping? The big archery competition was tomorrow. Did that mean he was practicing? How he thought he could beat Guy with only one hand was anyone’s guess. She went out the side door to search aimlessly through the gardens before she spied Midge skipping into an opening in the woods with a bow slung across his shoulder. She followed him, watchful for any stray arrows. “Midge?” she called. “Robin?”
She found a footpath through the canopy of trees, and she followed that until she came through a clearing and saw a line of targets mounted on heavy bales of hay. Robin sat on a log to the side of them. He’d brought a pile of recurve bows with him. He messed one-handed with the string of the biggest bow, tying some sort of strap onto it. His hair was messy from the struggle.
“Do you need an extra hand?” she asked.
He broke into a self-conscious smile. “Yes, I’ll take yours. That would be perfect.”
She came closer. Like her, he’d freshly showered. He smelled like his citrus shampoo combined with a woodsy scent. He’d discarded the muddy white shirt for a khaki green one, unintentionally looking like his namesake, the outlaw of Nottingham. He was only lacking the hood. She inspected the string, seeing he was making a type of mouth tab so he could release the bow that way. It was genius. “It was the best I could do with the time we’ve got,” Robin said with a laugh. “I found the book I bought on it. Guy never threw it out. Of course, this is more of a compound bow thing. Only one Paralympic archer’s done it with a recurve bow…”
There were a lot of knots. She sat down on a log next to him and tried to follow the directions in the book, all the while framing ways to tell Robin what she’d found out. Both tasks were harder than she had thought. “Where’s Midge?” she asked.
“Not here.” His mouth quirked up at the sides as it suddenly occurred to them both that they were alone. “Now, where’s that hand, Marian?”
Not able to resist playing into his little games, she held up her hand and he took possession of it, sliding her across the log to join him. It also gave him easier access to her. “Hey, look,” he said, tugging at the material of her shirt. “We match. We can both be hunters together.”
He was so cute, and, feeling overcome from the emotion of the day, she kissed him for it. His mouth pressed against hers in soft adoration. She felt his fingers run down the length of her hair until he reached the last of it at her waist, then he held her in place with another kiss.
There was something about Robin that made her feel so feminine, not because he was so much bigger—well, he was… when he had her in his arms, she felt like she got lost somewhere in there against his chest and behind his broad shoulders—but mostly she felt protected from the world in his strong embrace.
Now who would protect him?
“Robin?” she murmured. He should know everything, even if she was afraid of what it would do to him. “Scarlett didn’t do it,” she said.
He brushed her cheek with his fingertips, his expression clouding with confusion as his attention swerved from her mouth to her eyes. “What did you say?”
“Scarlett didn’t embezzle the money.” There was no gentle way to break it to him. “We talked and we think it was Guy.”
His eyes narrowed, and she cringed at the pain she saw run through them. “Scarlett didn’t do it? She said that?”
“I’m so sorry. I thought she already knew because she was… guilty, so I talked to her. Are you mad?”
“Not at you!” He pulled from her and, with shaking fingers, managed to do the last of the knots on his bow. What was he doing? She’d already been worried, but he was scaring her. He was acting like he might lose it at any second.
He stood with his bow and adjusted the arrow against the knots and nocking point. With the determination of a landlocked Viking, he pulled the string back with his back teeth and let it go. The arrow went off into the weeds somewhere.
And then he was talking, not necessarily to her. “I did four years,” he said. “Four years!” His voice echoed through the trees. He tried the bow again with the same results. “I don’t even know how I can prove him guilty. I don’t know what to do!” He nocked another arrow and it hit a tree, but it went in hard. “Guy invited every investor to the party that he’d cheated so I could face them.”
“He’s trying to get rid of you,” Marian said.
A vein pulsed on his forehead. “I’ll get rid ofhim. I don’t want you involved in this anymore. I don’t want you hurt.”
Marian was on her feet, terrified. This was why she didn’t want to tell him. His passion might take a dangerous turn. “Don’t do something stupid!”
“Oh, you mean like I’ve been doing?” His voice rose to a shout. “For four years! For what? For that…!” She cringed. Seeing her face, he turned from her. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to…” He couldn’t finish; he was so enraged. Of course he was. He’d thought that he’d gone through every heartbreak, every indignity for his sister, but he’d done it for his scheming cousin. He took another shot and it hit the ground in front of them. The end snapped off at the impact, and he chucked his bow. It bounced a few feet off the ground before resting near the target.
“What are you going to do?” she asked in the impending silence. He didn’t answer, but he looked like he might murder Guy with his one good hand. “I don’t want you to end up in prison again!”
“Prison?” He snorted. “I’ll die before I spend another minute in there forhim. I’ll make Guy pay for every second that I wasted in there.”
How? She didn’t want Robin hurt. Whatever he was planning could destroy him, too. He wouldn’t be able to see past the pain. She had to be the voice of reason. They could get at Guy a different way. “How good is he at archery?” Marian asked.
He snorted, turning his back on the untouched targets. “Better than that.”
“Teach me,” Marian came to him then, her hands beseeching. “Teach me what you know and I’ll beat him. It’ll just be the first step in getting him out of this town. Think about it—Guy got beat by a girl!” The man was so sexist he’d never handle it.
