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

unprepossessing merchant family who had bought him the rank, and was too young to have legitimately earned any lands in royal service. He therefore had no property, no manor, and had taken service with the sheriff of Nottingham two years prior to Richard’s latest Crusade, because the sheriff required a steward to supervise his household. In time Gisbourne might earn his own holdings, but for now he was dependent upon the largesse of Nottinghamshire.
    His expression was ferocious, low of brow and hairline. The features were strong and blunt, lacking refinement, and his posture was blocky. He wore good wool dyed black. “Lady,” Gisbourne rasped. “Methinks you forget the pattern.”
    She had forgotten. In her reverie, she had turned the wrong way. It brought them close, too close; she fell back a step, hot-faced, and saw the glint in his eyes. Boar’s eyes, she thought. Too small, too black, too bright.
    “Lady,” he repeated. “Do you wish to stop?”
    There was nothing in his words save a self-conscious courtesy she did not expect from a man with the eyes of a boar. Marian felt ashamed, conscious of heat in her face.
    She managed a casual tone. “I think we had better stop. I am a trifle overwarm—perhaps a cup of cool wine ... ?” She asked it deliberately, knowing he would go and she could make her escape.
    It seemed Gisbourne knew it also, by the glitter in his eyes. He bowed his departure stiffly. Marian watched him go, then turned to hide herself in the revelers. She had wanted nothing to do with the dancing from the beginning, and less to do with conversation. It was rude to desert a knight who ostensibly did her bidding, but at that moment Marian wanted nothing more than to find a quiet corner.
    In the distance she heard a lute and the clear voice of the minstrel soaring over the muddy music of too many people talking. She could go to him, she knew, and linger to listen. But he had gathered a loyal knot of women and girls, and joining them did not appeal to her. Perhaps her best choice would be to go find her old nurse, Matilda, and sit quietly with the woman.
    She halted, brought up short by a tall man just before her, and opened her mouth to beg pardon. Then she shut it; it was Locksley. His hazel eyes were oddly intense.
    “Come with me,” he said. “This is not the place to talk.” No, it was not, but she had not expected to. “This way,” he declared, and closed her right wrist in his hand.
     
    Gisbourne knew it the moment he returned to the place he had left her: she was gone. And of her own choice, seeking to escape him.
    It burned within his belly. He clung to both goblets, smelling the stink of strong wine, and hated himself. He was a false man, jumped up via a corrupt preferment system, and the woman knew it.
    Everyone knew it.
    He gulped down the contents of one goblet, then gave it away to a servant. He clung to the other, nursing the wine, flagellating himself with the knowledge of his lack. He knew very well that had he been taken into the household of a man other than William deLacey, it would not be so painful to name himself what he was: a landless knight with few prospects for advancement.
    Things had changed since old Henry had died. Richard the Lionheart, had handed out knighthoods like a hengirl throwing grain. The rank once attainable only through feats of skill no longer meant quite so much. The sheriff of Nottingham, requiring an able steward, had further sealed Gisbourne’s fate by buying him out of battle; therefore his only claim to knighthood was a feat of passing the purse.
    He bit into his lip. Sir Guy; no less. But no more, either. He sincerely doubted serving William deLacey would ever result in anything more than what he had, with no land in the offing.
    Sir Guy of Gisbourne.
    He gritted teeth. He wasn’t like the sheriff. He didn’t want or need nobility. He merely desired land of his own, a manor, a name—and a woman to bear him sons.
     
    Locksley’s manner