“Because it’s not your fight, Scar!” he yelled. “You can’t fight this for me. And I can’t fight this with you.”
His eyes stared at me, wide and lost, and I felt like every rope tied between us were snapping. I felt bloodless, like I hadn’t anything inside me but bones and air.
Rob’s eyes dashed away from me. “John, you’ll take her to Tuck’s.”
“I won’t come back here, Rob,” he told him. “Not for a few nights at the least. I can’t even look at you right now.”
My eyes dropped to the floor like my gaze were weighted with stone. There were nothing between us all but quiet.
“Much, go with them,” Rob said.
Much swallowed, but he nodded.
John’s big feet shuffled close to me, and he let me lean on him. “Come on,” he told me. “We’re going now. Much, can you gather everything up?”
Much nodded. “I’ll meet you there.”
I wanted to yell—to scream that I would stay, that I wouldn’t leave him, that I didn’t much care if it killed me.
But I didn’t. I let John herd me out, and I didn’t say a thing more, my voice tiny and trapped inside me.
John led me outside like I were a child, and he walked slow beside me, watching me.
“I’m fine, you big lug,” I murmured.
“You’re not. He beat you,” he said, and it turned into a snarl. “Christ, I want to kill him.”
“He weren’t himself.”
“I know that. I don’t care about that.” His fist went tight. “And I wasn’t there to help. And I’m furious that somehow this is my responsibility, to be there when everyone is damn well sleeping so that the man you love won’t beat you. This isn’t fair, Scarlet. It is awful to somehow be part of you and Rob. To protect you from him. And I can’t do that anymore. I can’t.” He threw a punch at nothing, batting away the cold. “I loved you, do you know that?”
He looked at me, but I fixed on the ground. “You never loved me,” I told him soft. “You fancied me, but it weren’t the same.”
“No, Scar. I loved you, but it wasn’t enough. Love isn’t enough. There has to be other things there, like choice, and duty. I keep thinking these things, Scar—I think about having a family. What it would be like, to be a father. I want that more than anything. That role—it’s more important than everything mashed up together.”
I dared look up at him. “You’d be an uncommon good father, John,” I told him.
His shoulders lifted a bit. “Do you think?” he asked, his voice awful quiet.
“I just said so, didn’t I?”
“Bess is with child,” he said soft. “My child—”
“John!” I yelled, and winced at the pain that shot through my face. “Ow.”
He smirked. “Easy. I asked her to marry me—to make a right family of it all—and she hasn’t said yes yet. And waiting for her answer, Scar, it burns. Every second burns. Because maybe she won’t. Maybe all my sins have piled up so high I’m beyond saving, and I’m not supposed to have a family.” I started to protest—of all the damn things!—but he shook his head. “And my point is that maybe if you have the chance to annul your marriage, you should take it. Rob’s crazier than a bag full of cats right now, but he loves you. And it has to be killing him that he can’t be to you what he wants to be, because love isn’t enough. You have to choose that person. You have to choose them every damn day. I made my choice—you have to make yours.”
That were it, the thing that had been rolling round my mind like a loose marble. “You think I should take Gisbourne’s offer.” Shivers ran through me as I thought of that day in the castle, when he had me by the throat, squeezing, and his growled words: I want to see you die. I want to see the light tamp out of those devil’s eyes.
“No,” he said, kicking a branch out of his path. “No. I don’t think you should go to Gisbourne. I don’t think you should go back to Rob. I don’t think you’re getting anything done by staying at Tuck’s. There isn’t a right way here, Scar, but if I were Rob … I’d want that annulment more than anything.” He looked at me. “The monks said you were asking about how to get out of a marriage. Seems you want this annulment too.”
“I do,” I admitted. “And sometimes I think, there ain’t nothing what I can’t take, thinking on all we’ve already been through. What could Gisbourne possibly do that I couldn’t take?”
“Kill you,” he said quiet.
“He wants something. It’s such a strange offer, he wouldn’t make it just to kill me.”
“He well might, Scarlet. But say he is telling the truth. There are other ways he could hurt you.”
I remembered listening to the things my sister had to do in London, the way men touched her. It pushed blood into my cheeks and made me shiver. “Not if he wants an annulment.”
“You want the annulment. What if he doesn’t really want an annulment?”
My shoulders shrugged up, but I didn’t answer him.
“You’re already married, Scar. If he can’t—or won’t—swear before a priest that you’re still a virgin, there is no annulment. That’s all it takes. He outweighs you by more than a hundred pounds, at least. If he comes after you in close quarters, there isn’t much you and your knives can do about it.”
I were starting to sway, my head dizzying round.
“I know I’m scaring you, Scar, even if you can’t admit it. You should be scared. You have a lot of fight ahead of you no matter which way you go.”
Rubbing my arms didn’t do nothing for the cold, for the hot swirl in my head. “I’m tired of fighting, John.”
“We’ve all been fighting more than our fair share, Scar. Maybe both of us should start fighting for our happy ending.”
My eyes shut and my eyeballs felt like ice behind them, like little bits of my eye had gone to frost. “What if there ain’t an end, and it ain’t happy besides?” I asked him. “How could it be, after all this?”
“I don’t know, Scar.”
“Can we stop?” I said. My stomach were overtight and rolling and twisting. “I think … ugh,” I whined, bending over, ready to cast up anything that remained in my belly. Nothing came up, but the pain didn’t ease and the world were sliding round me.