Bluebeard and the Outlaw by Tara Grayce

Chapter 12

And now we come to it. The explanation of everything. I know it is a long stretch of lots of talking, and I consider it the boring part. But I suppose it is rather important. You might find it interesting, if nothing else.

* * *

We stood around the crackling pyre as it consumed Reinhault’s body. We might have looked like a solemn group of mourners, if not for my brothers gleefully tossing more wood on the fire to make sure it burned hot and bright and devouring.

The acrid smoke tore at my aching throat, but I remained where I was, standing between Guy and Will. I wanted to watch Reinhault’s body vanish into smoke and ash, making certain the fae was well and truly gone for good.

The rest of my brothers formed a half circle around the pyre, leaving a wide space on the other side of Guy from me. I might have vouched for him, but my brothers weren’t about to welcome him to the pack with back slaps and brother hugs just yet.

Not that I blamed them. I wasn’t sure where I stood with the duke yet either. He’d emerged from the physician’s ministrations with a bandage over his wound, his arm in a sling, and a hollow, worn look to his eyes. Even now, he stared at the fire with unblinking focus, his face blank.

The physician had given me a balm for my neck, but I had refused the bandage. I wasn’t ready to endure something so constricting around my throat just yet.

Besides, let everyone see the bruises and torn skin. Let them see that I was the wife who survived.

The castle’s servants and soldiers gathered in a larger ring around our small group, also solemn and perhaps a bit confused. Duke Guy had said very little to them about how and why Sheriff Reinhault was now dead and getting burned rather than buried. The only explanation I had given for my bruised and torn neck was that Reinhault did it.

Nor had anyone directly asked about the sudden state of the castle. In moments it had gone from the picture of luxury to a run-down thing badly in need of repairs. Its interior was now decorated with shabby carpets and brass fixtures where there once had been gold.

When the fire finally burned low and the stars were high and bright in the nighttime sky overhead, the duke shook off his ruminations and turned to me, though he didn’t hold out his arm. “Would you walk with me, my lady?”

Was it a good sign or a bad one that he was still calling me his lady?

As I fell into step with the duke, I shot a glance over my shoulder to give my brothers a warning glare to stay put and not follow.

Alan rolled his eyes, but they remained quiet and where they were.

The duke strode in the direction of the outer wall, the soldiers parting before us with slight bows before they hurried away into the darkness.

When we had climbed the steps and found a section of the wall top that remained good and sturdy, I leaned against the battlements. “You know I’m not really a lady.”

“As long as you are married to me, you are a lady, regardless of your previous station or lack thereof.” The duke rested his elbows on the stone, staring off into the night rather than at me. “You claimed to be a lady from Loxsley. Is Robin even your real name? If you used a false name at our wedding, then our marriage isn’t legal.”

This conversation was going to be so boring if he was going to be this serious the whole time. I boosted myself onto the wall top so that I was sitting with my back to the dark countryside and facing Guy. Torches blazed along the wall top every few yards, flicking orange light across his face. I grinned down at him. “I hate to break it to you, Duke Guy, but our marriage is definitely legal. The only thing I lied about is my age. I’m really twenty-nine, not twenty-four.”

“Then I will stop feeling uncomfortable at the nearly ten-year age gap.” Guy heaved a sigh, staring at the dark blur of the forest.

I knew I had begun to like this man. His reaction to my true age just confirmed my instincts. “I might have left out a few things, but I didn’t lie about anything else. I had to make sure I legally inherited everything after I killed you, so I used only my real name Robin in both the vows and on the wedding certificate.”

He gave something like a bitter laugh, his head hanging. “I guess that answers the question of why you married me.”

“I planned to steal your riches and make off with your castle once I was forced to kill you before you killed me. It would have been a grand plan, if all your gold hadn’t been fake and your castle wasn’t infested with a fae.” I swung my feet, bracing my hands on either side of me. “The real question is why did you marry me? Did Reinhault force you to do it? Pretty sure that kind of coercion makes our wedding more than a little illegal, if you want to declare it to be so.”

Why did my aching throat constrict at that? As if I didn’t want all this to fall apart like that. But why? It wasn’t as if I had married him intending to be, well, married.

“He forced me, yes, but not the same way he forced me to do…other things.” Duke Guy gestured toward my neck, his gaze only lifting that high before he turned away once again. “Once I married, I was bound by our bargain. But until then, I was free to resist him. Thus he created the drought to force me into marriage another way. I would hold out, for a while, but in the end, he had me trapped. I either married, knowing I was condemning the poor girl to death, or I refused and watched as hundreds of people all across the kingdom starved to death.” Duke Guy hunched farther over the hands he braced against the battlements, his head hanging. “He placed the choice of who died in my hands, knowing I would bear the guilt either way.”

I waited, sensing the duke had more to say. He had held all this inside for years, and now that it was spilling out, there was no stopping the flood.

“The drought got worse every time. The first drought only affected Gysborn, and that was bad enough. I held out for three years, hoping I could weaken him by denying him the blood he needed.” Guy shook his head, his back shaking under his exhale. “In the end, I could stand the suffering of my people no longer, and he got his way. I married a local girl from the village. An orphan who had no one and had stars in her eyes at the prospect of marrying so high above her station. I told myself I could protect her.”

“But you couldn’t. He had you too tightly bound.” It was hard, keeping my voice to a gentle whisper. I wasn’t used to being soft or gentle. But Guy was too fragile for a booming laugh or witty banter right now.

“I have some fae blood in me. Just a trace, but enough that he figured out how to bind me.” The duke’s fingers dug into his beard, as if searching out the scar that was hidden beneath. “Don’t ask me how. My human blood should have protected me from such things, and yet he still bound me.”

I waited, wondering if I should leave my perch to put an arm around him. That was the action of a wife, after all.

But I wasn’t sure what I was to him. Nor what he was to me.

He curled even more in on himself, the battlements the only thing keeping him upright. “That second drought was worse. It spread to the surrounding dukedoms. The king raised the taxes to pay for the aid sent to the affected villagers, and when his assessor saw the lavish decorations and filled vaults, the levy he placed on Gysborn became far too high. Yet I couldn’t give the king the fool’s gold. Yes, it looks real enough to those without the gift to see past the glamor while it is in the confines of Gysborn. But it turns to pyrite the moment it is taken past our borders. And the bargain would not allow me to explain the truth to the king.”

And that was where I came in, robbing the tax collections he’d scraped together and giving the money back to the villagers. “Surely there was a better way than heaping more misery on your people?”

“Was there?” Duke Guy’s head shot up, and he shot me a glare, as if he just remembered that he was spilling his secrets to the Hood, not his wife. “What was I supposed to do? At first, I did fund the taxes with my own money. But that was soon exhausted, between paying the taxes and buying shipments of grain to feed the people. If I didn’t pay, the king would have swooped in and tried to take the money by force. He might have condemned me and the entire village as traitors for refusing to pay the taxes. He has certainly threatened mass hangings enough times when taking me to task about the Hood’s actions and the people’s loyalty to the outlaw.”

I winced, staring at my hands. Duke Guy had been right all along. I really had made things worse by becoming the Hood.

The duke kept talking, as if he planned to ignore the fact that I was the Hood for a little while longer. “More than that, Reinhault would have simply weaseled his way into a bargain with the new duke. Or, perhaps, he would have set his sights higher and sought a bargain with the king himself. As long as he was content toying with me and as bound to me as I was to him through our bargain, then I had him as contained as possible.”

Not a great choice. But, then again, he’d had precious few options, all of them bad.

“For three years I held out, watching the drought eat away at dukedom after dukedom. People were dying. Law and order started breaking down. In some of the neighboring villages, slavers started preying on the poorest of the people under the guise of indentured servitude. It was all I could do to keep such men out of Gysborn.” His back hunched, as if saying the words added more weight to the burden he carried.

I had hated the heavy fist he’d used in ruling this dukedom. But it seems I hadn’t understood its purpose. In the end, he’d rallied the people and kept the peace. Not by gaining their loyalty, but by earning their utter hatred so that they unified against him.

“This time, Reinhault saw my resolve to not endanger another girl. So when a nobleman and his daughter passed through Gysborn, Reinhault saw to it that I was scandalously alone with her for quite some time. Nothing happened, but it was enough to force a marriage anyway. The more I begged her father not to force the marriage, the more determined he became that everything must be set right with a marriage.” Guy’s voice dropped low. “She was dead within two months. By that point, her father had also passed away suddenly, so there was no one to protest her death to the king.”

Likely another death we could blame on Reinhault.

I tapped my heels against the stone wall as I swung my legs. “And that’s why you proposed marriage to me so quickly when I showed up on your doorstep, claiming to be a noblewoman traveling with my father in a near repeat of that history. If you didn’t, Reinhault would’ve done his best to put us in a compromising position to force a marriage.”

Never knowing that a marriage was exactly what I had been scheming for as well.

“Yes. And by this point, I knew his tendency toward escalation. I feared whatever situation he devised would involve more than merely locking us in a closet for most of the day.” Duke Guy shivered yet again, as if imagining just what horrors the fae would have forced him to do to secure a marriage. “These past two years of drought were the worst of all. The entire kingdom has been suffering from it, and it is spreading beyond our borders. All those deaths. All those suffering people. And it is all my fault.”

This was the topic he’d avoided, even as he’d talked about the deaths of his second and third wives.

And yet, this was the most important part of all. The bargain and how it had led to the death of his first wife.

“What was the bargain?” I spoke softly. The bargain couldn’t be what Reinhault had made it out to be. Maybe Guy had been a different person back then, but I couldn’t see him agreeing to a bargain as the fae had worded it back in that room.

Guy gave another one of those bitter laughs, his head hanging until his forehead nearly touched his fisted hands. “You’d think, for something that unleashed so much horror, that I would remember every word with crystal clarity. But I don’t. I was young. Foolish. I had just become the duke after my parents suffered what I had assumed was a tragic accident.”

But it hadn’t been. It had been the start of Reinhault slowly working his way into a position of power and control.

Guy sucked in a breath, and when he exhaled, his first wife’s name came out laced with tears, even if I couldn’t see them in the darkness. “Camille. We were so desperately in love, and life seemed so full, even with mourning for my parents. When this fae approached me one day and offered me the world, I took it.”

I remained silent. He had made a foolish decision, but I was in no position to judge.

“All I could think about was giving Camille better than the shabby furnishings and decrepit castle I’d inherited from my parents. Gysborn has never been the wealthiest of dukedoms, and this was my chance to change that for the sake of my beloved wife and our future dreams together.” Guy’s voice grew even more choked. “When Reinhault tied the bargain to my wife being a perfect wife, I didn’t think anything of it. She was flawed and human and all the things that made her perfect in my eyes. It wasn’t until later that I realized it wasn’t my definition of perfect that went into the bargain but Reinhault’s twisted one.”

This probably wasn’t the moment to feel a stab of something almost like jealousy along with the compassion. But it seemed my heart wasn’t listening.

“I fought so hard to save her. That was when Reinhault gave me this scar.” Guy traced a line in his beard along the side of his jaw. “It was a taunt. That all I suffered was a cut on my face while my wife lay dead at my feet.”

“I’m sorry.” It was so pitiful, compared to everything he’d told me.

Guy flattened his palms against the stone, drawing in ragged breaths. “Camille. Lucy. Allison. None of them deserved to die. It should have been me. I was the one who made the bargain. I should have suffered the consequences. Instead, I was turned into their executioner. And Camille...” He was weeping now, even as he kept talking. “She loved me. Even as I put the noose over her head. Even as I…”

He broke then, collapsing against the wall and sliding down until he huddled on his knees.

I pushed off my perch and went to him. I’d never held a man while he cried, and I wasn’t sure how to go about it. Sure, I’d seen my brothers cry plenty when they’d been boys. We’d all cried a good bit when we’d found our parents dead.

Guy was neither my brother nor a young boy. And I wasn’t the kind of woman given to affectionate hugs and soothing words.

But he was a man long-tortured and burdened by a grief he had not been free to feel until now. I had to do something, even if it didn’t feel as natural or as comfortable to me as swaggering through the forest with the bow in my hand.

Yet as I knelt in front of him, wrapped my arms around him, and cradled the back of his head with a hand buried in his hair, it didn’t feel quite so unnatural after all.

I thought of those three dead women who had also been married to this man. Allison, a woman forced into marriage by the men in her life and killed by a cruel fae. Lucy, a girl from the village who had jumped at the chance for a better life, only to die far too young.

And Camille. A wife who had deeply loved her husband, as he had loved her.

He held onto me and wept. Those deep, wracking sobs probably hurt the wound in his chest, especially as he’d ditched the sling in his turmoil of the past few minutes.

After long minutes, he drew himself together, pushing away from me to sit with his back to the stone battlements. He dragged his hands over his face, though if he looked all red-eyed and messy, I couldn’t see in the shadowed darkness. He spoke between his fingers. “I suppose this is one more shame for you to add to my account.”

I sat next to him, our shoulders not quite touching. “You and I have plenty to be ashamed of when it comes to the past few years. But those tears aren’t one of those things. Don’t you think that Camille, Lucy, and Allison deserve a few tears?”

“Yes, they do.” Guy rested his head against the wall behind him, tilting his face toward the starlit sky far above us.

I gave him a few more moments to collect himself before I asked, “Well, now what do we do? About us, I mean. You and me. Our marriage.”

“Each of us went into this believing we would have to kill the other. That is hardly the foundation for a marriage.” He scrubbed a hand over his face again, his fingers tugging at his beard.

“No, I guess it isn’t. But that piece of paper we signed is still rather legal and binding.” I toyed with the hem of my dress. It was rather ragged, after everything I had put it through that day. How I wanted my trousers, shirt, and cloak. I wanted to pull my hood over my head and feel bold and strong once again. I cleared my throbbing throat, not looking at him. “I suppose you still need an heir.”

He gave a snort, that hand over his face still obscuring his expression. “That is the least of my concerns right now. My bloodline can die out and the dukedom revert to the king for all I care.”

Well that was one worry off the table. If we made something out of this marriage, it wouldn’t be because of that cold pressure. If we got to that point, it would be because we loved each other and wanted that future.

I shifted, stretching my legs out in front of me. It wasn’t that ladylike while wearing this dress, but it was too dark for anyone to care. I lowered my voice so that any patrolling guards wouldn’t overhear, even if they had given us plenty of privacy so far. “What about the fact that I am the Hood? I know what your duty to the law demands when it comes to me. I tried my best not to, but I know I killed men during some of my robberies. I deserve to hang.”

He stiffened, his hand dropping from his face, and he tipped his face toward me, his gaze so burning I could see the glint even in the darkness. “I know it denies justice, and perhaps it makes me a weak man unfit to hold my title. But I can’t watch another wife hang.”

I could hear the rasping pain in his voice. I had fought this man for years, and I knew his sense of justice. It killed him to let the Hood go with no consequences. Yet, it would kill him more to give the order for my hanging.

I touched my neck, wincing at the scrape of my fingers against the tender, bruised skin. “I guess I did hang. I didn’t die of the hanging, but perhaps the thought of it will assuage some of your guilt in letting me go free.”

In the torchlight, I could see the way his grimace twisted his face. “I’m not sure I can ever picture that as justice. Those moments as I placed the noose around your neck…” He shuddered, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment as he drew in deep breaths that seemed to steady him. “And to think I longed to see the Hood hang, never knowing what it would cost if I did.”

I had, on my darker days, thought about what it would be like mounting the steps to the gallows, staring at a shouting crowd and seeing Guy’s cold eyes as he gave the order for them to drop the trap door.

It wasn’t a pleasant thought, and I never liked to dwell on unpleasant things for long. It had never happened, and never would now.

I traced my fingers over the bruises on my neck again. “What will you tell the king?”

The king was still hunting me. He wouldn’t so easily let the Hood go, even if Guy was prepared to do so.

“I’ll have to report all of this to the king, now that I am free to tell him Reinhault was fae. Enough of the king’s soldiers stationed here saw Reinhault’s ears. They will confirm my story.” Guy gestured down to the courtyard below where the coals of Reinhault’s pyre still glowed. “Let the guilt for the Hood’s crimes rest on his head as well. He paid far too little for his crimes in life. He might as well bear the guilt in death.”

“I guess that is for the best.” I couldn’t help the sour note in my tone. Sure, I was glad not to hang. And I probably shouldn’t be proud of what I had done as the Hood.

But it seemed wrong to have the actions of the Hood, the people’s hero, given over to that fae monster Reinhault.

Guy gave something like a low laugh. “Don’t sound so melancholy about it. I’ll only insinuate that to the king. The villagers here are free to keep believing that their hero melted back into the shadows from whence he came.”

I relaxed, resting a hand on my quiver. “Good.” I’d spent too long building the Hood into a hero to have him turned into a villain like Reinhault.

Guy glanced at me, his gaze searching my face in the low light. “The king will only believe my story if the Hood halts his crimes at the same time as Reinhault’s death.” He paused, then asked in a lower, quieter voice, “Will the Hood stop his criminal activities?”

I drew in a deep breath and stared at the stars for a long moment. I’d loved being the Hood. I loved the adventure. I loved thinking that I was helping people.

But I had never been as heroic as I had imagined. It was time for me to set aside the cloak and release the Hood to the place where myths and legends lived on in hearts and imaginations. Perhaps he would do far more good as a story than I had ever managed in real life. Maybe that was the true fitting end to the Hood.

“Yes.” My voice was just as quiet and low as his had been a moment ago. “Yes, the Hood and his merry men are done.”

Guy released a long exhale, his gaze swinging back to the stars overhead once again. “Then you and your brothers are free to go. I suppose, after justice has been so long denied for what I have done, I can spare such mercy to you and them.”

I patted my quiver and swiveled to better face him. “Reinhault was a fae. That makes him the jurisdiction of the foresters. And I have dispensed a forester’s justice on him…and on you.” When Guy sat up a little straighter and turned back to me, I gestured first to the courtyard, then at him. “For his sadistic murders, Reinhault was given an iron broadhead to the heart. For your foolishness in making a fae bargain, you suffered a practice arrow to the shoulder. As you said before, let the guilt rest on Reinhault’s head and leave it at that.”

He gave a small nod and faced the stars once again.

For a long moment we simply sat there, comfortable in the quiet peace of the night.

I sighed and sprawled my legs out in front of me again. “You never answered my question. What happens now? With us? Our marriage?”

“You have two options, Robin.” Guy’s gaze flicked toward me, but he didn’t turn his head fully. “Regardless of what you decide, I will protect you from your past as the Hood. You have my word on that.”

He was making sure I knew that he wasn’t going to coerce me in any way.

I waited for what he had to say. I knew what I wanted. Strangely, it wasn’t the option I would have chosen a month ago.

“Your first option is that you can leave, and I won’t stop you. As I said, I am fine without an heir. You are free to return to the Greenwood and build whatever life you wish.” Guy was carefully not looking at me.

We would still be married, and neither of us would be able to move on until the other died.

But he was offering me my old life back. I could return to the Greenwood and be a forester.

And yet, it wasn’t what I wanted. Not anymore. “And what is the second option?”

This time, Guy faced me, and he held his hand out in the space between us. “You stay here. With me.”

The words hung between us on the night air with an alluring kind of danger.

I wasn’t going to make it that easy on him by giving my answer right away.

“Will I have to wear dresses all the time?” I gestured at the ratty remains of the dress I was wearing. If talking with him hadn’t been so important, I would have marched back to my room and changed into my shirt and trousers long before now.

His mouth twisted into an expression that was somewhere between a wry smile and a grimace. “No, not unless you wish to do so. Or we are visiting the king’s court. I have seen you in velvet. You wear it like a queen. You don’t have to feel daunted at the prospect of facing the king and the nobles.”

I snorted. “Do you really think I’m scared of facing all those petty nobles and their fancy ways? Sure, they might scorn me for not being noble born, but just think of all those thinly veiled insults to return with banter of my own? It sounds utterly thrilling. Though, I suppose walking across the table is frowned upon when it’s the king’s table.”

Guy’s wry smile dropped into something more like a glower. “It’s always frowned upon no matter whose table it is, but more so when that table belongs to the king.”

“Thought so.” I smoothed my skirt in an exaggeratedly proper manner. “Then I will content myself with the fun there is to be had trading barbs with the ladies and lords.”

Guy groaned and leaned his head against the stone once again. “I think we will visit the king as infrequently as possible.”

I grinned. If I was going to set aside the Hood, then life as a duchess sounded like it would provide a wealth of adventure instead.

Perhaps Duke Guy and I might destroy each other. We were both leaders. Both independent. Both stubborn, even if he was stubbornly law-abiding and I was stubbornly feral. We would either make a well-matched team or we would consume each other.

Ah, but it would be such a thrill to find out which it was.

“So you don’t want to tie me down?” I smirked at him, tapping my quiver once again as if to remind him of just what a wild thing he was bringing into his life.

He met my gaze then with such a fervent light in his eyes that it stole my breath in a way I’d never experienced before. “Never, Robin. Never. I want you to soar. Within the bounds of law and order, of course.”

He’d said my name. Not just my lady, as if I was this faceless, nameless person he was holding at a distance. But he’d looked me in the eyes and said my name as if he savored it. I kept my teasing grin in place. “Law, yes. Order, no.”

He tipped his head back and barked a laugh. It was such a genuine, open sound that it was unexpected, coming from him. After a moment, his laughter faded, and he pressed a hand over his bandaged wound. He held out his other hand to me again. “Does this mean that you will stay?”

I slid my hand into his, and it felt strangely right to lace my long and calloused fingers with his even longer and stronger ones. “Yes, of course I’m staying. After all the trouble I went through to claim this castle as my own, I’m not about to give it up.”

He raised his eyebrows at me. “Even if it’s falling apart and comes with a duke who doesn’t have a coin to his name?”

“Even then.” I waved at the courtyard. By now, the embers of the pyre had burned down to just a hint of red against the black night. “This was the place of the Hood’s greatest triumph. I am not about to let that go.”

He gave a shake of his head, his beard glinting a liquid orange in the torchlight. “A part of me still can’t believe you are the Hood. I knew you were no lady from the moment I met you. Your manner of speech was wrong, and no lady would be caught dead in such a dated dress. Not to mention your brother was a very unconvincing maid.”

“I knew his lack of acting skills was going to give us away.” I muttered, earning another smile from Guy.

“It wasn’t only his acting skills.” Guy gave me a pointed look. “I knew you were playing some con, but I never guessed that you were the Hood. I had it so fixed in my mind that the Hood was a man. I hated him, and yet, in a strange way, he gave me hope. Chasing the Hood kept me sane and gave me a chance to put Reinhault’s focus onto someone else for a few hours. The Hood had the freedom to help the villagers and frustrate Reinhault, even if it wasn’t the law-abiding way to go about it.”

It seems Guy had needed the chase as much as I had. I’m not sure either of us would have known what to do, if we had ever actually caught each other back then.

With my hand still in Guy’s, I tried to read the tension in his grip. “It must be a bit galling, to find out the outlaw who outmanned you is really a woman.”

Even as I spoke, Guy shook his head emphatically. “No. If anything, it shows that I have the good sense to be married to the only person capable of besting me. You’ve been here all of two weeks, and you already managed to eliminate my greatest enemy. You truly are a legend.”

I tossed my head back and gave in to the hearty laugh filling my chest. “Most of that legendary status was good story-telling by my brother Alan. The Hood was always part me and part imagination.”

“You still split my arrow and won the archery contest. You shot Reinhault through the heart even while being hanged. Don’t sell yourself short.” Guy gave my hand a gentle squeeze as he held my gaze.

“Oh, I have too much self-confidence to ever do that.” I enjoyed another, softer laugh. I called it self-confidence. Will, when he was particularly peeved at me, called it arrogance. Perhaps it was a bit of both. I sobered and searched Guy’s face once again. “I can ask Alan to turn his story-telling skills toward crafting a new narrative for you. You can be the hero and not the villain as you have been portrayed.”

“No.” Guy’s smile twitched his beard even while his eyes remained solemn. “The people love the Hood. Frustrating as I find it, they need the hope having a hero gives them. I can’t take that away, even now. Even if you no longer reprise your role of the Hood, he needs to live on in hearts and imaginations. To do that, he needs a villain to fight. And I’m not about to give that role over to Reinhault any more than you are willing to let him be the Hood. I’d rather he remain my bumbling minion where, in story at least, I’m the one giving the orders.”

My heart gave a painful squeeze. Guy would rather remain a villain in the stories if it meant reclaiming some agency over what had happened to him.

“Besides,” Guy’s tone lowered, “I rather like my starring role in your story, even if it is as the villain.”

It was the sweetest thing he’d ever said to me, melting something inside me that had never softened before. Perhaps we would have a chance. Eventually.

He needed time to grieve. I needed time to figure out how to set aside the Hood.

Guy lifted our clasped hands, bending as if he was going to kiss the back of my knuckles. Yet, he halted short of planting that kiss, and instead he let our hands drop with a sigh. “I’m sorry. I can’t…I don’t know if…”

“I know.” I gave him a light punch to the shoulder.

As he gave me a slightly confused look, I wasn’t sure my gesture worked. Perhaps I had been living in the woods with my six brothers for too long. A punch on the arm always seemed to work for them.

Guy had been through horrible suffering in the past eight years. He had loved his past three wives, even if that love had been the love of duty and honor for two of them and true love for his first wife Camille. Of course, he needed time to grieve them before he could even think of a future with me.

Besides, I needed time just as much. I hadn’t planned for this marriage to last more than a few weeks. It would take time for me to get my heart and my head into the right place.

Neither of us was sure if he would ever love me or if I would ever love him. We didn’t know if we could build a true marriage. To be honest, neither of us even knew if we would manage to be good platonic partners.

But he needed me. He needed my help with the villagers. They hated him, but they loved me. He needed a wife who understood Reinhault’s atrocities and their cost. And, more than anything, he needed someone to badger him into living again.

And I needed him. I needed his protection from my past as the Hood and his moral compass to steer me into a more honorable future. No matter what that future looked like, I would have Guy. Fighting him had been one of the best parts of being the Hood. He’d been my antagonist for so many years that I couldn’t imagine my life without him in it.