“You can protect Nottinghamshire if you marry, Scar. You must realize that.”

I crossed my arms. “I do. Essex just offered for my hand this morning, in fact.”

“He what?”

“Yes. Said that would be the best way to protect me, and protect Nottinghamshire.”

Color crept up Rob’s face. “Essex? Winchester says he’s Isabel’s lackey. You’d marry him?”

“Who else did you have in mind? Winchester’s not married. Should I wed him? How about de Clare—he’s not an earl, but he’ll inherit an earldom,” I taunted. “If I don’t mind a cruel, twisted man for a husband, of course.”

“Scarlet!” he growled at me.

“What?” I demanded. “You want to toss me to another man like I’m some thing that can be traded for power and wealth? You think that will protect Nottingham? You think that will stop Prince John?”

“You need to think!” he snapped.

“No!” I snapped back. “You need to think. Like a thief—like a girl. Like all the people that get their power and their choices taken away from them. I won’t be one of them. I will hold the earldom as my own if I have to.”

“And I have no doubt you can. But it will be easier—”

“With a man I don’t love and don’t want and don’t care about, touching me, making me have his children, silencing me? That won’t be easier.”

“And you think I’m such a prize?” he shouted at me. “You’d take me over an earl? You think I’ll make it easier, with my nightmares, with my scars?”

I pushed forward, taking his face in my hands. “I have scars, Rob. I’m not frightened of your dreams. I love you, and you make me stronger. You make me stronger than wealth or power. And together, if you just choose to be together, we can save Nottingham.”

He were breathing hard with anger, staring at my eyes, his chest rising and bringing him close to me. With a grunted noise he pushed forward against my hands, our mouths meeting. I thought it would be some frantic thing to match the anger in his body, but it were deep, and slow, and full like everything he felt were unspoken on his tongue.

I heard a rustle and turned my head, looking out in the clearing as his mouth shifted with me, moving under my ear. He swept my hair back, tasting my skin. “Rob,” I whispered. “Stag.”

He nodded, and I grabbed his bow, putting it in one hand and an arrow in the other. He kept kissing my neck, and I felt him fumbling with the weapons behind me.

“Rob, I should—” I started.

“Stay still,” he murmured, straightening to look at my eyes. He glanced once—once—over my shoulder into the glen. “Kiss me,” he said.

Thinking it were for good luck or some such thing, I did, and his mouth captured mine, tilting and twisting and opening, dragging me away into it. I didn’t know when he let go of the arrow, but I felt the bow brush my back as his hands touched me slow and careful, wary of pressing too hard and hurting me where the bruises were.

Threading my arms round his neck, I broke the kiss. “Rob, the stag,” I reminded him.

He nodded toward the clearing.

Godfrey and David were trussing it up, but there weren’t no need to cut its throat—Rob had shot the beast through its eye.

Its eye.

I pushed him back with a grin. “Posturing braggart, show-off peacock!” I accused.

“If by that you mean I’m the best damn archer you’ve ever seen and you’d like to reward me with a kiss,” he said, drawing me back to him. “Then I accept. And yes, I will continue to give you generous lessons to achieve my epic—nay, legendary—skill.”

I kissed him.

He were, in fact, the best damn archer I’d ever seen.

Getting down the tree were worse than getting up. I thought it would be fine, but while I were searching for one of my first footholds my hand lost grip and I fell to a lower branch. Rob were there quick to catch me before I fell lower.

From there he guided me down, stepping first, holding my waist as I followed.

At the bottom, he jumped from the tree and held out his arms, and without hesitating, I jumped into them. He caught me, like I had absolute faith that he would. My match, my bandmate in all things.

He put me on the ground and I felt the breath run out from my lungs.

My match.

“You have the strangest look on your face,” he murmured to me, brushing my hair back. “What are you thinking about?”

Shy, I smiled, but I turned away from him. Godfrey and David took the animals back to Nottingham to dress and cut to give to the kitchens, and Rob and I went about gathering up arrows. I found my first—though sadly not last—stray buried deep into a tree trunk.

I tried to pull it out, and it wouldn’t budge. I twisted, pulling harder, and wedged my foot against the tree.

The arrow popped free, and I fell back, only to see the head—the hardest bit to replace—were still lodged in there.

“Damn you,” I cursed the tree. “Give that back or I’ll chop you down!” I threatened, wrapping my sleeve round the arrowhead to pull at it without cutting myself.

“I mean it!” I growled, tugging harder. “I will cut you up and sell you for firewood!”

I gasped, letting go of the tree and staring at it.

Staring at all of them.

Hundreds of trees. All in the king’s forest. “Rob!” I yelled.