“You’re supposed to be the Earl of Whitstowe’s son. Get us clear of this.”
“Enough, both of you,” said their leader, the man named Hugo. “You there, bring that log around.”
David Fuller, an ally from outlaw days with Robin, helped angle a substantial log to rest under a bare birch tree. Betrayal pinched at Will’s temples, bringing a ferocious headache. “Fuller! You’re helping him do this? I’ve done nothing wrong!”
The short, thickset farmer shook his head against Will’s outrage. “It matters not. Nottingham’s soldiers have been searching the forest for you, bullying and making arrests. We’ll not go back to the days when the sheriff can toss apart our homes, when Robin isn’t here to stand for us.”
His pride shriveled like an apple left in the sun. Shortcomings dogged his every step, especially when faced with men who yet compared him to Robin. He needed no such reminders.
“And we know of your work for the sheriff, arresting simple folk in the markets,” said Hugo. “Most of us have been itching to get a rope around your neck for weeks.”
He yanked hard. Will lunged forward and caught his balance, coughing as the noose bit into his windpipe. Bright stars flashed across his line of sight.
“But I have done nothing,” said the captive swordsman. “I am Geoffrey Dryden, heir to the Earl of Whitstowe. I demand you release me at once.”
Some in the glade exchanged worried glances, and although it did him little good, Will relished their hesitation. He saw reflected in their expressions the same uncertainty he had known at the roadside, faced with the prospect of doing murder. But Hugo persisted, stringing both ropes over a low-hanging branch. A sword at Will’s back urged him to step onto the log. Dryden joined him.
“We don’t know you, milord.” Hugo’s oily voice and patronizing smile spoiled his dashing looks. “Nor do we trust you. A shame we found you in this one’s company.”
“I was fighting him!”
“You should’ve let me win,” said Will, grinning. “Though beaten and humiliated, you would’ve been safe from my taint.”
“Quiet, you!”
“Or what, Hugo? You’ll hang him?”
Heads turned toward the far edge of the glade, searching for the robust woman who dared mock the proceedings and Hugo in particular. Meg stood holding a walking stick and the arm of a young man with black hair. At his feet sat a massive dog, restrained only by a cord of braided leather that did not appear up to its task.
The sarcastic grin he offered Dryden stretched wider across Will’s face. Never had he been on the receiving end of such a strange and fortuitous distraction. But his initial reaction was quickly supplanted by conflicting torments: She had healed him, seduced him, poisoned him. Although he had not been prepared to die by hanging, he craved his freedom all the more, if only to confront Meg and wring from her an explanation.
She released the young man’s arm and walked into the clearing. The foremost folk backed away in concert with her steps, once, and again, while behind his back, Will worked to loosen the length of hide at his wrists. He concentrated on Hugo’s distracted smirk to judge the remaining moments of opportunity.
A wind blustered through the trees, sending a scatter of autumn gold into the assembly. Bowing her head, Meg tipped an ear to the ground and angled the other to the thinning canopy of leaves lining the sky. Listening, perhaps. Divining the wind.
From that odd pose, she addressed the group. “I seek Hugo.”
A ripple of tense murmurs crossed the peasantry. From here, from there, whispers moved over the glade.
Mad Meg. Mad Meg.
Will’s heart shuddered, skipping its usual rhythm in favor of one that loped and hesitated. He flinched when Dryden’s hands joined his, back to back and tugging the rawhide bindings. He glanced over his shoulder and raised a questioning eyebrow.
“I’ve no intention of dying here,” Dryden whispered.
Beneath the haze of overcast clouds and dancing tree limbs, the man’s face shone unnaturally red, either from anger or a lack of air. He appeared unusually young without his helmet. Not even his dark, closely trimmed beard added clout to his smooth features. Across his brow, sweat collected like dew on grass. Lacking armaments, in the midst of a situation he could not control, Dryden appeared…
frightened.
“I’m waiting, Hugo.” Meg raised her hands, a witch casting a spell, and confronted the gathering with an utterly blank gaze. Those who had not yet receded stepped back. Two women crossed themselves.
Parting the sea of anticipating faces, Hugo strode forth. His swagger spoke of authority, and on his face he wore an expression of loathing. Although Will did not savor finding anything in common with the man who would be his executioner, he shared that antagonism toward Meg.
“How good to—well, to
see
you, Meg.”
She lifted her eyes, almost where she would have met his gaze. “Release them.”
“You always did have a curious sense of humor.”
“With you, I have none. Let them go.”
Will flexed his freed hands, urging sensation into deadened fingertips. At last, a slow trickle of warmth banished the numbness. He eased from the left foot to the right, minutely, in a cadence with his mounting anxiety. He held his body ready atop the log, unsure of what to do. No. Surrounded, without weapons, he was simply out of choices. Whatever game Meg set in motion, he had no choice but to let her play.
She closed the distance separating her from Hugo, smacking him on the shin. He kicked the walking stick away, but she shifted her weight and pulled it near. Her poise never faltered. They moved in a dance, as if they had rehearsed the meeting long before. Whatever their connection, they shared a long history—that much was clear. The entire glade held its breath.
“You defend Will Scarlet?”
Her answering hesitation revealed the smallest flicker of emotion. “’Tis Dryden I want. When he claimed to be the Earl of Whitstowe’s son, he spoke truthfully.”
“They are ours to do with as we please. What would please me is a pair of hangings, and one fewer witch in our midst.”
“Are you ready to challenge me on this?”
Energy and expectation crackled between them. Hugo traced the length of her jaw with a forefinger, from ear to chin and around to the other ear. The caress was intimate, like that of a lover, but she remained a statue. Will looked for any indication that she even felt the man’s touch, but he found only resolve, as unmoving as rock.
“I dare,” Hugo said.
She stepped back and snapped the walking stick across her knee. The wood split into ragged halves. She flung the fractured pieces toward the hanging birch. The gigantic mastiff at the young man’s feet sprang in pursuit, barking, bounding with long, powerful strides.
A tremendous crack threw the peasants into confusion. Grizzled faces and wide eyes whipped back to Meg. Among a haze of smoke, she flung a handful of tiny white bundles at a nearby boulder, birthing another jagged crash of sound. Screams and terrified prayers climbed through the trees as the woodsmen and their families shrank away, abandoning their leader.
Will jumped off the log and snatched a man’s short sword. Dryden joined him, brandishing a makeshift club. They turned to face the charging dog, but the animal only sought the broken stick. It poked from either side of slobbery jowls. A great, shaggy tail wagged in apparent contentment.
But its master was far more dangerous. The youth who had guided Meg out of the copse leveled a crossbow at Hugo and strode to her side. He casually angled a hand within easy distance of a dagger at his belt. Will liked the fellow already.
The smoke surrounding Meg in a devilish cloud began to thin. “Release the prisoners,” she said.
Her cold voice lifted the hairs on his arms. That she could sound and appear so altered from the previous night made him wonder what manner of woman he had bedded—or had bedded him. Could she really be the same woman who had scored his chest with her teeth?
Then again, her bite had been none too gentle.
But for the moment, he was content. A gratifying fear rippled across Hugo’s lean face. The worrying numbness had dispersed. And for the first time in hours, no one stood ready to do him harm.
Dryden ran fingers through close-cropped hair. “We’re free.”
“Good.” She smiled with all the sweetness of newly-sharpened daggers. “Hugo, you will permit us to stay in these woods unmolested.”
“If you can pay.”
She frowned. “Pay with what?”
“The emeralds.”
“Still pining after a few worthless rocks?”
“They’re not useless to me,” the woodsman said. “I know you can make more.”
She made the emeralds?
Meg tensed. Her face blanched as white as almond milk, silently confirming the truth.
The headache at Will’s temples spread across his scalp, festering at the base of his skull. He had arrested Ada because she tried to sell replicas. Knowing the sheriff sought an alchemist, thinking Ada might reveal her source, he relinquished her to Finch.
The lye, the smoke, the tiny exploding bundles—proof of Meg’s understanding of alchemy lined up like stalls at a market. She created the emeralds, and she had survived the ambush on the earl. Little wonder the sheriff’s men pursued her with such dogged mania.
And if he learned the extent of Meg’s value, Hugo would not settle for counterfeit gems.
Dryden slid Will a frowning glance. The nobleman, it seemed, had pushed the same pieces into place. He positioned himself between Meg and her smooth adversary. “You’ll do well to remember who I am,” he said. “Permit us refuge and I shall disregard your transgressions.”
Hugo flicked a quick, animal gaze across the glade, recognizing his loss of support. But he did not cower. Eschewing the chance to beg Dryden’s forgiveness, he turned to Will with a nasty sneer. “Maybe a hanging was not the best choice for you. We should’ve simply left you to the fine company of this witch and her Jew boy.”
Will gripped the short sword, not at all surprised by the intensity of his dislike. “I should run you through.”
Meg rolled her blank eyes heavenward. “Do not ruin this, Scarlet.”
“Why, are these his woods?”
“There are no laws here, hardly even noble titles.” The faint lines between her nose and mouth pinched into deep grooves. “Hugo has many allies whereas you have none, no matter that he is a thief and a churl.”
If anyone knew the unwritten laws that governed outlaw assemblies, Will did. He had lived by the edicts of the forest, the foremost of which designated the man with the ablest skill and the readiest followers as the leader. Robin had been such a man, unswervingly in command no matter the moniker of outlaw.
But he also knew that no interloper, no newcomer to Sherwood, would have been able to wrest power from his uncle. With whatever magic she wielded, Meg had stolen Hugo’s authority, leaving only foul words and a tetchy temper in its place.
He swiveled the stiff muscles of his shoulder and glared at her. Thinking well of Meg and Robin could not become habit. He had to get her to Nottingham. Soon.
Even Dryden would not let her be. “My thanks, Meg.”
“Yes, milord.”
“Your arrival was most timely.”
She nodded. “You should know I acted in hopes of receiving a favor in return.”
“Of course. I haven’t forgotten your sister,” he said. “My father made a promise to you, and I renew his pledge. We shall find her.”
Despite his claim, Dryden’s intonations were flat and passive. His voice suggested a dark sort of regret, although she could only guess at its origins. Grief? Shame for having survived the ambush while his father lay dead, or for having run away?
No matter. She would do well with the nobleman as an ally.
“I’m grateful, sire. How did you come to be paired with Scarlet?”
“We clashed by the river. I mistook him for an enemy.”
“Your pardon, but you make a mistake when you assume him anything else.”
Scarlet’s words laced between them. “Meg would have preferred rescuing you but leaving me to hang.”
She flinched, feeling him as intimately as if his mouth had brushed hers. His low voice sounded impossibly close, confirmed by the sudden touch of heat from his body.
Damn you.
He had returned to her like a guilty thought. Consequences clung to him like honey, sticky and sweet and dangerous. She licked her lips, half expecting to taste him. The salty tang of his skin stayed with her, remembering him as accurately, as painfully as the yellow brilliance of sunshine.
Damn us both.
“Sometimes the bad comes with good,” she said.
Scarlet chuckled. “I’ve recent experience with that, yes.”
“You fared better today than you deserve.”
“Recompense for a very poor morning.”
“Meg, you would have let him hang?” Dryden sounded surprisingly eager, like a half-grown boy enjoying tales of a hunt.
“Of course not. I never give Hugo what he wants, not purposely.”
“Who is he?” Scarlet asked.
She rubbed the hollow below the right side of her jaw. Grinding her teeth left the tendons sore. “A thief and a liar. Nothing more.”
“Too bad about the noose, then. We could have been friends. Are you going to tell us what you used to scare these peasants half witless?”
“Witches use magic.”
“But you use potions,” he said with quiet menace. “I know firsthand.”
Meg suppressed a weary sigh. For a few moments, she had been proud of herself. She had trampled painful memories of her desire for Hugo, able to challenge him in the face of his loyal followers. But braving him had been a slight victory compared to the grit she needed to endure Scarlet’s anger. She would not retreat, could not, unless she wanted him to know how terribly their encounter continued to afflict her.
Instead, she lifted her eyes, eyes many people found dreadful—anything to guard against the palpable waves of his ire. “I used niter, sulfur, charcoal, sugar, and a little friction,” she said. “The tricks of my trade.”
“A blind alchemist.” He snorted. “And a woman.”
She could have spit. She would have, had she been sure of splattering it between his eyes. “My blindness and my sex do not limit my pursuits.”
“Enough, please,” said Dryden. “Tell me what happened on the roadside. I care to know your perspective, Scarlet.”
“If you mislike my answer, must we fight again?”
“Only if you killed my father.”
“That I did not do.”
Meg commanded her eyes to miraculously resume their usefulness. She wanted to see their expressions, any clue as to how these men might be maneuvered. But the blackness remained. She found herself lulled by the rasping cadence of Scarlet’s words as he described the roadside ambush. She shuddered, recalling that cold wash of fear. Helplessness and disorientation threatened to overcome her once again, and renewed gratitude left her flustered. She did not enjoy being beholden to this man.
“We fled into the woods to evade their pursuit,” he said.
Holding her breath, clutching the new walking stick Jacob had provided, she waited for what Scarlet might say about their night together. But Dryden interjected, his grief-stricken tone as raw as an open sore. “Forgive me, please. I should have been the man to protect you.”
The details of Scarlet’s face—smooth skin and rough stubble, hollows and lines and firm lips—made her fingertips itch.
Yes
, y
ou should have been there. Maybe then I wouldn’t be feeling such a fool.