Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] Read Free

ambitions—
    And the Lionheart’s lusty laughter, no more inhibited by decorum than his appetites by rank.
     
    For the thousandth time, Marian let her fingers examine the seating of narrow silver fillet over the linen coif and sheer veil covering her head and hair, and the double-tied embroidered girdle binding her waist and hips. Huntington’s great hall was filled with a significant portion of England’s nobility, men and women of great Saxon houses, and those of the newer Norman regime who had replaced the English tongue with French, so that the earl’s hall was replete with bilinguality. Marian, too, spoke both languages, as one was required; the other, older language, shaped by Norse invaders, was considered impolitic where business was conducted. Peasants spoke it primarily, while those desiring to rise resorted to English only among themselves, or when ordering villeins about.
    Even the lute-player sang in French, though Marian supposed it was required. French was the language of legend and love, according to the Dowager Queen Eleanor’s dictates, and troubadours who reveled in the traditions of the storied Courts of Love inevitably sang of both, relegating the more ordinary day-to-day concerns to the reality they attempted to obscure.
    She was distantly aware of the music, but was no more interested in it than she was in the conversation between four old beldams clustered before her. They spoke of nothing but the earl’s wealth, his influence, his unflagging support of King Richard, who would doubtless reward such loyalty, once his release from Henry was procured, and thereby render the earl yet more powerful and wealthy. Marian found such talk tedious; she was interested in the earl’s son, not in the earl himself. She disliked even more her own consciousness that the heir to one of England’s most preeminent barons would most likely find her question disrespectful and impudent.
    He will brush it off like a passing impertinence, then have me dismissed before the nobility of England. Marian shut her eyes, hearing lute-song and conversation. Give me the courage to ask. It isn’t so very much.
     
    Locksley twitched as someone called out his name. Blind eyes snapped open. He fought his way to the surface, groping for comprehension. Surely the voice was one he knew ... But the latch, quickly lifted, became the sound of a trebuchet crank as they readied to loft the stone—
    — hurtling through the dry, dust-swathed air, crashing into the wall, pulping the flesh caught beneath—
    Wood boomed on stone: a door against a wall. Wood, not stone on stone, or flesh, or bone, nor men to die from its force.
    The voice: inflections of impatience, awkwardness, austere authority wary of preemption by concerns that could not be known, and dared not be questioned. “Robert—” More quietly now, but with no less pointed query, “will you keep my guests waiting all night?”
    With effort Locksley roused and recalled himself from Holy Crusade to the war of wills now fought more subtly within the halls of his father’s castle. He rose, aware of deep-seated fatigue, and back-palmed the dampness on his brow beneath a shock of pale hair. Physically he was sound. The journey home had allowed him time to recover most of his former vigor, as well as the weight he’d lost. But what his father desired was nothing he wanted to do. Better to stop it now, to refuse quietly and politely, before the travesty went forward.
    He turned, summoning courtesy, intending to say it plainly, so as to offer no room for misinterpretation. His father stood poised before the door. Beyond it milled the multitudes of English nobility, of whom Richard I, called Lionheart, was sovereign.
    Self-control slipped into place, schooled to expected courtesy. “Forgive me.” He kept his tone very civil. “Had you asked, I would have told you not to bother. With— that. ” A hand gestured briefly, eloquently, indicating the world beyond the door. “I