Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] Read Online Free PDF

felt the grip of his fingers. “It was to you I sent the letter. I trust you received it.”
    She turned slightly, twisting her wrist to free it. He released it at once, but made no apology. He was too intent on her answer. “I received no letter, my lord.”
    Clearly it was not what he expected. He frowned. Beneath a shock of white-blond hair his brows knitted together over a good, even nose without the prominence of his father’s. “I sent it,” he declared, leaving no room for doubt. “Months ago. I thought you should know how your father died.”
    The bluntness took her breath away. How can he know that was my question? Jerkily she shook her head. “I received no letter—”
    “Robert.” It was the earl himself, briskly cutting off her words. “Robert, others are waiting. ”If you must speak with this girl, perhaps another time—?”
    Blankly, she said, “It must have gone astray—” And then a servant was at her side, urging her away. Her time with the earl was done. His son’s attention was needed elsewhere.
    She acquiesced to the servant, too distracted to delay. It had not occurred to her that Locksley would readily recall her or her father. It had not occurred to her he might have met her father on Crusade. It had never occurred to her that Robert of Locksley might really know the details of her father’s death. She had merely meant to ask him out of a childish need to ask, not really expecting an answer, expecting nothing of what he’d implied.
    If he knows—if he knows. Abruptly she stopped and swung back, meaning to force her way to the dais. As abruptly, she halted. Locksley’s attention was elsewhere. His face, and his eyes, were empty of all emotion save an abiding, helpless impatience.
     
    Faces, with moving mouths. Locksley heard almost none of them. He hadn’t heard the woman, either, until she said her name. The first part hadn’t touched him. But the second, FitzWalter, had exploded in his ears like a wall besieged by sappers.
    Marian of Ravenskeep. Hugh FitzWalter’s daughter. What would my father say, were I sick all over the dais? Marian of Ravenskeep. The dead knight’s daughter.
    She had vanished into the crowd. With her had gone forbearance. “How many more?” he asked, as yet another guest left the dais.
    His father’s smile was for the hall. “As many as are here.”
    It was a tone from his childhood, cloaked in quiet courtesy, framed upon cold steel. He had spent too many years under its sway to withstand it easily even now, or to protest its need.
    He looked out again at the hall. What he saw was a Saracen battlefield, and dead men dying. Among them Hugh FitzWalter.
     
    Eventually, when food and tables were cleared away, there was dancing. Marian would have preferred to remain inconspicious, but this was prevented by William deLacey, who insisted she partner him. Her year of mourning was done, he reminded her, and her father would not require such rigorous devotion when there was dancing to be done.
    And so she danced, if circumspectly, with deLacey and a handful of others, and eventually Sir Guy of Gisbourne, who presented himself to her in good Norman French, betraying his origins. She knew little about him save he was deLacey’s man and had been spared from the Crusade by the sheriff himself, who paid the shield-tax in order to keep his office effective in the administration of the shire.
    Gisbourne was an intense, dark, compact man, short of limb and, she thought, imagination, to judge by his conversation. He danced a trifle stiffly, obviously ill at ease even in simple patterns, but undoubtedly he was more fluid in the activities of his service. He said very little of consequence, being more disposed to stare, which she found unsettling. She did her best to avoid his eyes as she glided through the pattern.
    As a knight, Gisbourne was entitled to some honor. She was a knight’s daughter and understood that very well. But Gisbourne was of an entirely