I looked back at de Clare, who had just bare found his feet. “Who or what were you rescuing me from?”
“A treacherous walk back to the dais, clearly. And myself, from boredom. I did so enjoy seeing de Clare flat on his back. Your friend has excellent aim.”
“You have no idea,” I told him. “It is fair strange that I’ve found myself unable to do my own defending.”
“You have a broken hand,” he told me. “And yet I’m sure, without so many men eager to prove themselves around you, that knife you have along the small of your back would have been marvelously well employed. Your seat, my lady.”
We had reached the dais and my empty chair. He held my hand until I were settled into it, and I stared up at him, fair shocked.
He bowed over my hand. “My lady. Your Highness,” he said, and I turned.
Eleanor inclined her regal head to him. “Winchester.”
Winchester left, and I drew a breath. I didn’t much know what to say to a queen.
“You have many friends,” she noted. “It seems they are a more common equivalent of my loyal knights.”
Looking at Isabel’s seat, I sighed. “I reckon I have more enemies than would-be knights.”
“You know,” the queen said, her voice thoughtful and quiet. I went fair still, listening. “When I was made Louis’ wife and queen of France at fifteen, my husband’s court thought me … wild,” she said slow. “I spoke my mind, and I loved to dance more than they thought entirely appropriate. They called me such names.” Her cool, austere face curved with a regal smile. “I won them over, in time. They shouted my name and threw roses at my feet.”
I stared at her. “I always heard you were unhappy in France.”
She nodded, not looking at me. “Yes. Well, becoming an English queen after being a French one does call for some revision in history, doesn’t it? And in the end, Louis’ betrayal was perhaps the worst I have suffered.” She lifted her shoulder. “But it led me here, to England, to my children.” She chuckled. “Louis and I never fought quite so viciously as Henry and I did, though. Marriage is complicated.”
I looked out over the field at Gisbourne’s black-clad form. “Quite.” I looked at her. “Is it true you fought in the first Crusade?”
She laughed and stared out over the field with a glow like a moonbeam. “A queen cannot reveal all her secrets, my dear.” She tapped her lip with her finger, then continued to watch the jousts without saying another word.
My husband tilted in that round and won after a series of broken lances. His next contest were against de Clare, and he rode again, slamming a blow to the middle of de Clare’s chest and unseating him with the first ride. When de Clare’s helmet rolled loose, Gisbourne scooped it up with his lance and brought it to me on the platform like a trophy.
I took it. I stared at it, wondering if, without Thoresby in the race, Gisbourne had just won the whole of Nottinghamshire and didn’t much know it yet.
Chapter Twelve
I stayed out on the grounds till all the other ladies had long gone to fires, and my bones were ice even ’neath the furs and the softness. Gisbourne did well, but my eyes weren’t for him. I’d seen John and Much, Godfrey and even Tuck, but never once Rob.
I wanted to see him, to touch him again, to tell him my heart were near to bursting for him having slept a night. Even if it had to be without me, I wanted him well. A thousand times I started, seeing his height or his shape or his sand-fair hair, but it weren’t never him, and by the end of the day my heartstrings were plucked as raw as the rest of me stood cold.
Even making my slow way back to the keep, I waited for the crunch of snow, the flash of dark against the white. He weren’t there. He weren’t with me. And hoping for it each moment were fair awful.
Though it weren’t nothing close to hot, inside the walls of the castle were warm and heavy, like the truth of things cast about my shoulders thicker than a cloak. Outside, it were a glimmer of hope to see Rob, but I wouldn’t never catch him inside the walls. Least, not without him being in trouble.
Sneaking about weren’t as easy in noble’s things, but I still managed, hanging about enough servants’ quarters to hear them speak of Lord Thoresby, his arm broken three times over. He wouldn’t never hold a sword again, and never ever could he fight for the role of sheriff.
I wanted to go to Lady Thoresby, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t face her.
I went back to the chambers slow, dragging my slippered toes along the stone. I’d wanted boots, but all the ladies wore the flimsy things, made sillier still by the servants dropping carpets over the snow to keep the ladies’ toes dry. I’d muddied mine up a bit and the things were ruined, the whole of my feet ice-cold.
The chambers were empty, until my being there signaled my lady’s maid to come in. I waved her off, dragging one of the furs from the bed to the fire, sitting on the hot stone by the hearth. I pulled my soaked, foolish stockings off and pressed my feet to the brick as close to the fire as I dared. I leaned against the stone, half inside the fireplace itself, trying to curl tight into the fire.
My eyes shut, and a vision of last Christmas, spent huddled in Tuck’s with his girls and my boys and a roaring fire. There’d been dancing—I never danced, even when John asked me, even when Rob stood and looked at me for a long breath. It had burned me then, thinking he looked at me and saw me and wouldn’t choose me, but I knew better now. I knew he hadn’t asked me for the same reason I hadn’t asked him.
The door opened—in the chambers, in the castle, though for a breath I didn’t know where I were—and my eyes dragged opened with it. Gisbourne walked in with his chamberlain clucking behind him, and he looked at me and I looked at him. His shirt were off, and his skin were red and raw like it were holding all the cold in Nottinghamshire. There were patches of darker red too, and I wondered, for the first time, if he’d been hurt during the joust.
“The snow prevents swelling,” he said, and his eyes broke from mine.
I lifted a shoulder, looking back into the fire. “Cold is fair good for you, I reckon.”
He grunted. I weren’t sure if that were meant to be an agreement or not, but I didn’t look over to decide. I shut my eyes, wishing for the dream again, but it didn’t rise in the dark of my eyelids.
“Come along, Marian,” he said after a while. “Supper is soon.”