He rolled over, caught around his stout middle by a pair of shapely female legs. She slapped him square between the shoulder blades. “Quiet! I am abed.”
“Aye, that you are.” Tuck grabbed a handful of her fleshy bottom and squeezed. She squealed. “And stay abed, Agnes love. I’ll see who disturbs our slumber.”
“Bring me an ale when you return.” Drowsiness covered her voice just as a haze of disheveled hair covered her oval face.
The pounding intensified, a spade to cleave his brain. He spat at the trembling door. “By my bugles, I’ll chaste the daw who wakens me!”
“Open, Tuck.”
“Robin? Merciful Christ, hold the order of ye.”
He snagged his cope, yanking the voluminous brown robe over his head. From a cask as large as his forearm, he swigged a last mouthful of ale and wiped his lips. A rosary around his neck and a dagger at his hip set him armed.
Tuck pulled the door wide. The moon graced a tall masculine form, silhouetting his features. On his back rested a quiver. “On God’s half, Robin! I thought you to be in France yet.”
The man stepped into the cabin. A weak tallow candle shone brighter than the waning moon, lighting his face in an orange glow.
“For shame, Tuck, mistaking me for my uncle,” said Will Scarlet. “He would be long to forgive such a grand insult.”
He laughed to mask his surprise. “As will you, I hazard. And wearing a quiver no less. You suss my blunder, lad.”
Will shrugged, a casual gesture at odds with the intensity of his stare. He caught sight of Agnes where she draped half nude across the pallet. He raised his brows but offered no other reaction. “I apologize for the lateness of the hour.”
“You did not make the hour late, but you did choose to blight my bigging at this inhospitable time.”
“Your pardon, Tuck. I have come to beg a boon.”
“And what could you want of me? I’ll not be party to skulking under Robin’s nose.”
Will frowned, hands behind his back. “Your loyalty to my uncle is hard earned and well deserved, but I mean no mischief.”
Tuck squatted on a low stool. His long clothes draped between knees spread wide. He stared at Robin’s only nephew, disquieted by the likeness. The soul of an impetuous youth had once shared place with a brigand’s brain in a warrior’s body. Yet there he stood, a man matured. He spoke with an authority Tuck had only heard from Loxley’s absent lord, an authority that persuaded wayward souls toward obedience.
But from young Scarlet? He crossed himself, per case of the Devil’s trickery.
“Have out with it, then. What boon do you seek?”
The lad flashed a hard smile, some manner of private jest. “I ask that you preside over my wedding. Tonight.”
“Wedding? To whom?”
“Meg.”
Tuck stared at the entry and rubbed the scant hair ringing the back of his head. He stopped, scowled, then crossed himself again.
Looking like an angel and a witch, both, a blind woman tapped a hushed path through the door. She wore a dark brown gown with a woad kirtle beneath. Her hair draped loose about her shoulders, unadorned and uncovered. Not even the tallow flame’s golden flicker much altered the fair hue of her features, blemished by a sickening bruise.
Will took to her side, offering his arm and settling her on a bench. Only then did Tuck notice the mass of bandages at the lad’s wrists. Spots of dried blood marred the sallow linen. Another dressing wrapped his forearm.
“Tuck, this is Meg. Meg, meet Friar Tuck.”
Her eyes focused on nothing distinct, but she mimicked the angle of Will’s face. “How do you do, friar?”
“Well, gramercy.” He stood and backed a step. “Excuse us please, miss? I wish to speak with the fellow.”
“Of course.”
Tuck shuffled to the pallet and draped a blanket over Agnes’s body. She roused briefly. “Who goes, friar?”
“Pay you no mind. Sleep now.”
Amenable girl, she shrugged and rolled over, eyes drifting closed. Tuck turned to his guests in time to see Robin’s nephew rise from where he knelt, kiss his woman on the forehead, and whisper in her ear. She smiled and nodded.
Will crossed to the near side of the fire pit. “We’d be better served to step outside if you wish her to remain ignorant of our words.”
“I’ll not go with you into a night woods,” Tuck said. “As ever I ate bread, you’re a slippery knape.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Set me to rights. What goes here?”
“The details should be of no importance. You only expect the worst of me.” The lad’s fixed stare dared Tuck to disagree. “See me safely married and you can rest assured I’ll not bother Marian again.”
“I’ll grant no such certainty.” In plain sight, he gripped the hilt of his dagger.
“You know me capable of desiring another man’s wife,” Will said. “The jump is not wide to believe I could betray a wife of my own. But I shall not.” He tossed a quick glance to the rosary hanging over Tuck’s fat belly. “If you’re any holier than the rest of us, tell that to God.”
“You love her.”
The lad nodded, rubbing an unsteady hand over his eyes, his mouth. Shadows and candlelight marked the contrast between pale linen and murky blood at his wrists.
“What troubles have you endured, my boy?”
“Much,” he said. “Will you do this, Tuck?”
“Aye. I am curious to gather how your ballad concludes.”
“Ah, yes—because I yearn to hear more foolery bearing my name.”
He slapped his young caller on the back and chuckled. “No ballad of yours will bear your name. Whether for masteries or misdeeds, I hear the first line now: Brave Robin Hood’s dear nephew did traverse the merry wood.”
Will shook his head and matched a rueful grin. “You’re not mistaken.”
“Let’s have done with this, Master Will,” he said, sidling his eyes over Agnes’s lush curves. “I have the Lord’s work to attend.”
“And you toil at it happily.”
Married. He was married.
They
were married, although his new wife had recited her vows with closed eyes and fingers gripped into tight fists. The words she dutifully repeated at Tuck’s command had been a far cry from the vows Will had meant.
He pressed his hand into the hollow of her lower back, nervously tracing her valleys and hills. Even touching, touching, he could not convince himself of her presence, so thoroughly had she withdrawn into her dark world. He wanted the mania of his affections returned. He wanted some acknowledgment of all he surrendered, all for her. Yet he wanted more than she might ever decide to give. She infected him with reckless, insane compulsions—something like love, he suspected, and something like obsession.
But he hated her home. The wind shivered around him.
United, no longer enemies, they crossed the threshold to embrace a new dreamlike life, if not each other. A different manner of nervousness overcame him suddenly, as he stood alone with his bride. His tongue swelled. He swallowed, eager but anxious. “Here we are.”
Meg only nodded, walking deeper into the tiny cabin and standing before her worktable. She stood cast in halves of shadow and light. Splaying both hands against the chafed surface of the table, she leaned into her palms and tucked her chin to her breastbone. Weariness, and maybe a nervousness to match his, shaped the awkward bent of her shoulders.
“Tell me—are we by candlelight? Moonlight? In darkness?”
He inhaled and closed his own eyes. Imagining only the sinister specter of the forest at night, he censored those descriptions. And while ballads and poetry did not rush to his tongue, he found details. He found the world she could not see and offered it to her. A marriage gift.
“The moon is at half, but low. It hides in the branches. Here, the corners are masked by darkness, and Ada’s flowers cast long shadows. We have only this torch from the friar. The flames make the room move.”
She smiled. No chastisement. No sarcasm. She simply raised her slanting dimples for him to see, blessing him with those crooked, smiling lips. He would have studied ballads and poetry through his remaining days had she promised, for all time, to offer that smile in exchange for mere words.
“I always loved how, when illuminated by flames, even the most ordinary things appear fascinating.”
Another shudder twitched his limbs. He wished she would open that tightly guarded inner refuge, but what she revealed often startled him. “After what we endured at the castle, I have no fondness for fire.”
She raised her eyebrows like a shrug. “We cannot help who or what we love.”
“Even still? That nightmare did not cure you of your fascination?”
She crossed to her pallet and sat with less grace than a falling tree branch. He joined her.
“My father once asked if fire was alive. At first, I thought
no
. Of course not.” Her fingers danced intricate steps, plaiting her hair and unwinding it again. “But fire is born. It consumes and grows. It gives heat like a body. It moves, reproduces, and dies. I said, yes—yes, it is alive.”
“And? What did he say?”
“He said it is energy, nothing more. Miraculous and valuable, but it does not live.”
Will shook his head. Fire was fire—useful, dangerous, and commonplace. That he might find love or even affection from a woman whose perspective differed so greatly from his own seemed laughably naïve. “How old were you?”
“Five or six,” she said. “No more.”
He grinned. “You were strange even then.”
“Earlier than that and stranger than you know.”
He searched her familiar face, reading the pull of muscles beneath her skin and the slope of her neck. Her eyes told him nothing, but every clue to Meg was there to read, near enough to touch, to embrace, if only he found the patience to learn her language. “You didn’t believe him, did you?”
“I accepted his explanation, but I thought he must be wrong. It
is
alive.”
She leaned back on her elbows. Hair like a waterfall swept back from her face. A pair of dark crescents beneath her eyes revealed her fatigue.
“When I was ill, I dreamt of fire. I cannot recall the last thing I saw because the illness overcame me suddenly. Perhaps I saw my father, my sister, the ceiling—I know not. But for six months, I dreamt of fire. It kept me warm and intrigued with life. It pulled me back from death. And it spared me at the castle.”
Will chuckled. “I had a hand in that, I believe.”
“Yes, my brave champion,” she said like a breeze, touching his face. “I never expected to be shy around you.”
He shuddered and closed his eyes, savoring the tease of her fingers. She ventured to the cap of his good shoulder, kneading tense muscles. His own fingers clenched and released in a pattern of restrained need. “Why are you shy?”
“We’re married!” Shadows and flames did nothing to disguise the rose red blush on her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. “This…this is awkward.”
He wanted to ask if she would regret their hasty union, but the question skittered away from his tongue. Will had no faith that he would appreciate the answer. Instead, he traced the catlike curve of her mouth. “Have I told you how much I adore your lips?”
“No.”
“When they are not set in a frown, they curl up here, at the corners.” He dipped the pad of his forefinger into a dimple before kissing her there. “Even when you aren’t, you look like you are smiling at me.”
She kissed him in return, the touch of a feather. “I’ve had reason to frown at you.”
“No more,” he said, his voice sounding deep and unfamiliar. “No more, Meg.”
He turned into her body and wrapped an arm around her waist. Despite taut resistance, the firm set of her back, he pushed her onto the pallet. She smelled of smoke from the cook fire, the scent of night terrors and tragic endings. The urge to protect bore down on him like a tempest, ripping his past to tatters. To protect her from harm was to protect his own heart, the place where they had united.
But Will’s body reacted with another sort of instinct, pressed against her, molding to her. His mind demanded that he protect his woman; his body demanded possession. He held her closer, shifting to settle into the promising basin of her hips. He filled his arms with curves and filled hollows with his hands.
He kissed her. Only a moment passed, the span of three nervous heartbeats, before she joined him in earnest exploration. Hard urges fought with tenderness until only the rushing heat of mouths and tongues remained. He relished her flavor, an exotic wine, dark and deep. Currents of need blended time and taste, weaving their limbs into an unending embrace.
Breathing became as difficult as flying. He pulled from the kiss. Dizziness and pure passion blurred. He rested his forehead on hers to regain his equilibrium, uncertain of ever regaining it—not when she claimed the power to tilt him sideways with a word.
“Do not dare, Scarlet.” She yanked him against her body, fighting with his tunic until she stripped him bare. “I married you, and I expect no more of your clever delays.”
He took hold of her backside, kneading the full, yielding flesh. “Making an honest offer of marriage was a delay?”
She untied his breeches. Hot fingers stroked his rod, stealing his mind.
“Yes, yes,” she breathed. “You are a chivalrous man. Now make good on what you started tonight.”
Will had learned her body once before, and memory of that heated encounter twisted into the present. They had endured much together in the dreadful days since, and rediscovering her nearly surpassed the joy of their initial exploration. The thrill of having her hot and eager beneath him, so very vital, spun his brain like a miller’s wheel. He wanted more. More kisses. More skin.
“I want to see you,” he rasped.
She came to her knees and worked to remove her clothes, untying the laces at the bodice. Will pulled thick handfuls of wool past her hips, over her head. After tossing the gown to the floor, he threw the kirtle atop it. His breeches followed.
She lay prone on the pallet, the sight of her nude body ripping loose a shuddering breath from him. Skin like a pale moon covered graceful limbs, a taut belly, and gently curving breasts that rose and fell with every quick breath. A rapid pulse fluttered at her throat. Her hair spread into a dark pool around her face.
“Will?”
“I’m here,” he said thickly, sliding a forefinger between her breasts and down. Her belly quivered. “Just looking.”
“I want to look too.”
“My pleasure.”
Slender hands circled his neck and pulled him near. She dug deep into the muscles of his upper back. Taunting nails tested his skin. At times petting, at times scratching, her fingers rolled over his body like a storm. She found his hard length again, squeezed, stroked, robbing him of control. He hissed and gasped, groaning her name.
“Touch me, Will.” She spread her knees, welcoming.
“Sorry, my love,” he said against her mouth. Between their bodies, he found her sensitive nub and began to pattern rhythmic circles. “I have but two hands. And one of them is in shambles.”
She moaned. “You have a mouth.”
“Yes.” He bit delicately at her lower lip. “Right here.”
“Lower.”
“Where?”
“Where your fingers are.”
He chuckled, a low and throaty sound born of her surprising demands. The cadence of his fingers sped, intense. “Greedy wench.”
“Please, before I have to push your stubborn head down there.”
He kissed her deeply, drawing her tongue into his mouth. Sucking. Biting. He intended the kiss to be a brief good-bye before complying with her demand, but she stiffened beneath his vigorous, rhythmic assault. Release rocked her. She thrashed and cried out.
Patience shattered. Will snatched his hand from between her legs. With a sure movement, he plunged into her shuddering body. He dragged one of her thighs higher and jerked his hips. She whispered his name, a panting hymn.
Carried by the sound of her voice, possessed by the blaze in his blood, enveloped by her slick warmth, he gave himself to paradise. Mindless, questing, every thrust took him closer to fulfillment. Nothing remained but the white heat of his climax. He shook, groaned, then collapsed.