“Eleanor called me a princess,” I told him quiet. “She said it’s my duty not just to protect Nottingham, but all of England.”
“That’s because she wants you with her,” he said. “She’s very clever like that.”
“It doesn’t mean it’s a lie.”
“No. But it also doesn’t mean you have to do it. Or even that you can.”
I sighed. “I don’t want to be noble at all. I just want to be Scarlet.”
His breath was in my hair. “Even Scarlet was noble, she just didn’t tell anyone. And you protected people even then. You have a very fierce heart, I hope you realize. I can only imagine if we have a baby, you’ll be an absolute terror.”
I curled up tighter, my heart broken clear and through. I knew I should tell him, say the words, but I couldn’t. “Do we have to have babies, Rob?” I asked quiet.
He twisted a little, trying to look at me, but I kept my face away. “No, of course not, not if you don’t want to. You don’t want to?”
“I can’t even imagine it. I’m frightened every time I see babies in the town—that they’ll fall or cut themselves or fall sick or something. If it were mine I don’t think I’d let the thing move, much less grow up. I’d be scared every moment.”
He laughed, harder than my pride liked, and I hit him with my good hand. He groaned, but kept laughing. I twisted and hit him again, and he caught my shoulders and twisted me in the bed, falling on top of me, careful of my arm. I went still, and he shifted, lifting some of his weight off. He brushed my hair back. “You can’t tell me you don’t want to have a baby because you’d love it too much.”
I scowled. “I can. I don’t like being scared.”
He kissed my cheek, settling in beside me so we faced each other. “Let’s leave it up to God, then. If he wants us to have a child, he’ll let us know.”
I touched his face. “What will your first action as sheriff be?”
“Besides marrying my only love?” he asked. “Reorganizing taxes.”
“Not abolishing?”
“Taxes are necessary; they just don’t need to cripple a county,” he said. “Protecting the people doesn’t mean giving them what they think they want. It means doing what’s right for everyone, and not just for a few.”
I pushed him back a little to lay on his chest, keeping my injured hand high by his heart. I wondered if his heart could heal my hand the way I always imagined my hands could heal his skin. “Promise me,” I whispered to him. “Every night we’re married, we’ll talk just like this. About anything.”
“About everything,” he whispered back, putting two fingers light around my wrist. He kissed my hair, and I pressed my lips to his chest. “My heart. My only love.”
“I love you too, Robin.”
I shut my eyes. No matter what happened in the morning, if my marriage weren’t annulled, if Gisbourne hurt me, Rob would come for me. Rob would forsake his position as sheriff, his newfound freedom, even his life for me. And I couldn’t let him do it.
My head touched his and I thought, I love you, Robin. And I’ll fight for you.
I had hours left to think, and I had this heart, this man, and that made me stronger.
Gisbourne thought he knew what it were to not give up. He didn’t know the first thing.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I woke feeling warm and borderless, like my pulse had flooded the surface of the skin, dissolving it, meeting Rob’s and melting us together. Blankets were tucked round us, and his heart were beating beneath my ear, taking my heartbeat and echoing it back.
Blinking, I looked up at him. I hadn’t slept long; only when I thought of the beginnings of a plan and Rob were snoring quiet did I drift off in his arms. It weren’t yet full light out, but the sky were starting to glow and he were sleeping. Still. He’d fallen asleep before me and hadn’t woken. I’d have known if he’d woken.
He slept the night through.
I looked at Rob, tempted to slide back into the bed with him, warm on warm, skin on skin. He stirred, and stretched, and looked at me where I stood with his sleepy eyes looking half drunk as he looked at me. It made heat rush over my skin, and I sat on the edge of the bed.
He half rolled over, his arm catching my waist as he beckoned me down to kiss him. I did, shy and soft.
After a moment that felt like a slow, dizzy whirl against his mouth, he broke the kiss, stroking my cheek. “Go get annulled,” he told me. “Do you want me to come with you?”
I frowned, tempted. “No. I imagine he wouldn’t take to that well.”
“Well, by all means, let’s keep him happy and kick him out after,” he said. He smiled then, like something just came to mind. “I love you,” he told me.
I smiled, desperate to keep tears out of my eyes. “I love you too.”
“Good. Get on with it; let’s make you an honest woman for once.” He rolled back in the bed, grinning at me.
I stood, smiling at him over my shoulder. “I ain’t never going to be honest, Robin Hood.”
He laughed out loud. “Have I ever told you you’re a terrible liar? Truly. You’re awful. Thief I’ll never argue with, but liar?”
I were shocked. “I kept enough secrets from you, didn’t I?”
He shrugged. “Not saying things and lying about them are very different.”
Shaking my head, I couldn’t help but laugh. “That weren’t what you said when you first found out.”
“Get on,” he told me, smiling.
“Yes, Sheriff,” I told him with a curtsy. He laughed at me as he lay in the bed, and I stood in the door a moment, remembering him. Every bit of him. Committing it all to memory where it wouldn’t never be taken from me, wouldn’t never tarnish or fade.
I went quick to the chapel. The castle priest were there, the very man what wed me, preparing for the morning mass, and he stopped. “My lady Leaford?” he questioned.
Genuflecting before the altar, I crossed myself and looked up at him. “Father, will you counsel me?”
“Of course, child.”
He came from the altar down to the pews, seating me in one and sitting beside me. I sucked in a deep breath, and he covered my hands. I nodded once, but the words didn’t come.
“What troubles you, child?”
“My marriage,” I told him. “My husband.”