Chapter Nineteen

“We cannot leave those who were seized to stand trial,” Falcon Scarlet said heavily. “We will need to mount a rescue.”

Curlew turned his head and looked into his uncle’s face. Since his return from his parents’ hermitage at midmorning, he seemed able to sense the emotions of those around him far too clearly. Indeed, they came at him like arrows shot fast and hard, broke upon him and heightened his own feelings of distress.

He had hated leaving his father and mother alone in the forest, for he could taste his father’s despair and feared what he might do. Curlew could not, he simply could not endure losing both of them.

Yet Gareth had sent him off without reservation. “You have a task to perform, son, new duties to take up. You can help her best by doing them well.”

Now he sat with his aunt, his uncle, and Heron, sharing information and a mug of Aunt Lark’s vile bark tea. She had taken one look at him and thrust it into his hands.

“Drink, lad. You look shattered.”

Aye, and he felt it. He drank the bitter stuff and sat quietly while the others talked over the matter of rescuing the four headmen hauled away from the surrounding villages for poaching. All, if found guilty, would lose their hands or their lives.

And how could they fail to be found guilty? De Asselacton would not have begun this campaign did he not mean to prove ruthless in it.

Lark waved a hand. “They are as good as lost.” She turned sharp eyes on Heron. “And what is this nonsense you spout about the forester’s daughter? You said to wait and speak with Curlew. Well, he is here.”

Heron seared Curlew with a single glance and looked away. “’Twas he who brought her here. ’Tis he who knows.”

“Nay.” Curlew spoke quickly before he lost the will. “I know nothing.”

Because he remained so attuned to others’ emotions, he felt Heron’s immediate protest. Heron rarely grew angry, but when he did he burned with righteous heat, and surely his anger built now.

But Falcon spoke kindly, before Heron could. “Curlew, lad, Heron has said something remarkable of this lass—that she is the woman you have sought this long while, the missing guardian.”

Curlew shook his head and did not look at Heron.

“Then,” Lark demanded, “Why has he said so?”

Curlew shifted uncomfortably. He did not wish to discuss this with his aunt and uncle. At this point he did not even want to think about what he and Anwyn had done in Sherwood. Yet the images would not be gone from his mind. And, of all people, these two guardians needed to know. For everyone hung from threads of uncertainty until the third of their number was found.

“The manner of our meeting,” he admitted, “was passing strange.”

“What was the manner of your meeting?”

Curlew raised his gaze to Falcon’s. “I went into Sherwood to await the arrival of the Lady. This lass came to me instead.”

Falcon’s lips parted in surprise.

Lark spoke, “So you met with the wench in the forest—sheer chance and much nonsense. How could she be your third, she of foreign blood and not even Sherwood born?”

“You always doubt, wife. You doubted our Gareth when first he came. Does he—does Curlew—not carry Norman blood?”

Lark made a face as if she tasted something unpleasant. “Aye, well, and Gareth eventually proved himself. Besides, he never held a part in the sacred trust of guardianship. Always has that gone to one of us.”

“You are wrong, Ma.” Heron said it softly, but Curlew could still feel the anger coming off him. “What of Marian?”

“Eh?” Lark looked startled. “That was long ago.”

“How long does not matter, for in one way or another we all carry her blood. Was she not a Norman ward when she ran away to Sherwood for the love of Robin?”

Marian. The memory of Curlew’s vision slammed through him once more. Tears splashing hot on his face, terror in amber eyes. My love, my love, my love.

“Curlew?” He realized Lark had spoken to him; he had not heard.

“I am sorry, Aunt?”

“It is clear Heron, with his mad notions, would have the chit stay. Will you not give us your opinion?”

Truthfully, Curlew said, “My feelings are so tangled right now I am not sure what I think. Change comes quickly.” And change, for him, always came hard.

“Well, I do have an opinion,” Lark stated roundly. No surprise, there. She usually did. “Citing Marian—my grandmother or not—is no good recommendation. For there was no strength in Marian; she crumbled when Robin died, and abandoned their child. She failed in her role as guardian. The last thing we need is another such miss, and one who is likely to bring Montfort sniffing round is even less welcome.”

With deceptive mildness Heron asked, “Would Marian’s circle not have failed, regardless, once Robin died?”

“Aye, perhaps.” Blindly, Lark’s fingers reached for her husband’s and clasped them tight. “But what kind of woman is it who does not fight for her child, the child of the man she loves? I would battle to the death for the sake of any of my children.”

No question of that.

“She went mad with grief,” Falcon said gently. “I am not sure, love, I could go on without you, either.”

For an instant pure, blazing adoration shone in Lark’s eyes. Wholly mollified, she murmured, “Aye, I know. Poor Marian—and poor Gareth! But that has naught to do with the forester’s lass.”

Dryly, Heron said, “Should we not give her a chance before denouncing her, even as you have our beloved ancestress?”

All three of them looked at Curlew. “You brought her here, lad,” Falcon said at last. “You had best speak to her.”

****

A cold wind snaked through the village, promising rain and hinting of winter. Curlew found the forester’s lass outside Diera’s hut, sorting turnips. She glanced up when he approached and then leaped to her feet, light flaring in her eyes.

And just like that Curlew felt the emotions leap up inside him—desire and something he understood far less well. Aye, and he had known this encounter would not prove easy. A more cowardly man might turn and run.

She looked nothing like the well-tended young woman he had watched ride past him on the forest road. Her clothing mussed and tattered, with dirt on her slender hands, she might have been born in Oakham. Curlew tried to ignore his memories of those hands moving over his naked flesh and found he could not.

She took a step toward him and her eyes reached for his. “Master Champion.”

“Mistress Montfort.”

A smile curled her lips. “Are we not unaccountably formal, considering—” She did not complete the thought, did not need to.

Hastily he gestured to the vegetables tumbled at her feet. “What is all this?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I am trying to be useful. Diera bade me sort out those that might be stored for winter and those to be used at once, but I confess I cannot tell the difference.”

“No doubt you are happier at needlework.”

“By heaven, no! That is torture. I always long to plunge the needle into my eye.”

“Then for what are you suited, Mistress Montfort?”

Immediately he regretted asking, for the heat leaped into her eyes. He felt it all again—the way she had moved beneath him and fitted her body to his in glorious passion.

He cleared his throat. “I hoped we might speak together.”

“So did I.”

“Come then. Walk with me.”

He led her away down one of the paths that wound away into Sherwood. He felt always steadier in the forest. He would need all his wits about him now.

“I hope you have been comfortable whilst I was away.”

“Diera has been most kind, as has her grandmother. How is your mother, Master Curlew? Diera said you had gone to see her because she was sore ill.”

“Aye, she lies very ill indeed, stricken. I do not know if she will recover.”

“I am that sorry.” She reached for his hand. Curlew’s fingers moved of their own volition to accept hers; their fingers interlaced without intention. “I know what it is to lose a mother.”

“Aye, so you said when—back in the forest. How long did you say she has been gone?”

“Three years. It seemed no more than a winter fever. But it burned her up to nothing and stole her from us.”

“I am sorry,” he told her in turn.

“My father has not been the same since,” Anwyn admitted. “He is changed. I know I try him sorely, yet he has hardened himself somehow. He never would have forced me into an unwelcome marriage before we came here.”

“Indeed, and I fear for my father also,” Curlew confessed. “’Tis difficult to imagine him going on without her.” Difficult to imagine Gareth so much as drawing breath without his Linnet—the memory of his devotion lit all the days of Curlew’s childhood.

For a moment Anwyn was silent. Then she spoke with a quaver in her voice. “Is love not a perilous thing? So many go to their marriages without the benefit of it. I have always envied those who do manage to find it, like my parents—and yours, so it seems. Yet it comes at a steep price.”

“Aye. Much is given; much is also taken.”

She glanced at him in surprise. “Of what did you wish to speak, Master Champion? Surely, ’tis not the pain of love.”

He stopped walking and turned to face her. Their hands, still linked, made a bridge between them, and above their heads the brown oak leaves clattered in the wind.

“I wondered if you had changed your mind about going home.”

She drew a quick breath. A new emotion flooded her eyes. “You do not want me here.”

Curlew had spent the day convincing himself and everyone around him that was true. Now, facing her, he began to doubt. He wanted her near him; that much he could not deny. “I do not think it wise for you to remain here, despite the promise I made when we lay together.” He added very gently, “I did not know who you were, then.”

“Does it matter so much that I am the daughter of Lord Simon’s head forester?”

“Your presence is a danger. He will soon come searching for you.”

“But he has no reason to seek me here, of all places.”

“He will search everywhere, in due course, as any good father must. Mistress Montfort, you see how we are set.”

“What said Heron’s parents? Did they insist you bid me go?”

Not wishing to lie to her, Curlew said, “That remains in question.”

“Did Master Heron speak for me?”

“Aye.”

Light kindled again in her eyes: gratitude. “I knew he would.”

Corresponding jealousy leaped in Curlew’s heart. Had she feelings for Heron? Aye, and would that be so difficult to believe? He spoke quickly, before he could change his mind, “Go home, Mistress Montfort, and set your father’s heart to rest.”

As soon as the words left him it began to rain, cold drops striking down like knives, slicing through the leaf canopy to beat upon the ground. Anwyn ignored them, her gaze fused with Curlew’s, and her fingers tightened on his painfully.

“I pray, Curlew Champion, whatever else, do not ask that of me.”