“And you stole food for her.” He sighed. “What happened to her?”

“She caught sick. She kept coughing,” I said. I hugged my arms over my stomach. “I stole food, and medicine, milk and water, and some Scottish whisky—and nothing worked. She coughed blood everywhere.”

“Consumption?” he asked soft.

I curled up a shoulder. “Don’t know. Never had a name for it.”

“She died.”

I nodded. “The day after, I met you, and I let you catch me.”

He pulled back. “Let me catch you? You didn’t let me.”

I pushed water off my face, not looking.

“But that’s foolish. Why would you ever let me catch you?” He stopped moving, and I didn’t look, but I could feel his sorry stare. “Because the punishment for stealing is death, and you thought I was a high lord. You thought if you just stole from me, you would die. And you’d be with her. And you’re so pious, you’d never take your own life.”

I sniffed back tears. “Don’t think I count as pious, quite.”

“But that’s it, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “You didn’t do what you ought,” I told him. “Prison were a bit of a different matter than dying. I never want to die the way she did, diseased and slow, even if it would get me back to her.”

“Christ,” he murmured.

“I just left her in the room we rented,” I told him. It were like the dam had cracked and a geyser were shooting out, and for once all I wanted were to talk about Joanna. “She were like stone in the bed, and with blood all around. Her hair didn’t even look like hers, where it were still on her head. I didn’t—I didn’t know what to do.” Tears kept falling. “I left her there. There weren’t nowhere for her to be buried. I wrote her name in a book and left it on her bed so they might find our kin, but I never checked. I just left.”

“You lost everything you had, Scarlet. No one could judge you no matter how you reacted.”

“It were worse than letting her die. I left her alone.”

“Where did you go?”

I wiped my eyes. “Church. I sat there and cried and all the saints were fair glaring at me and it were raining something awful. A candle knocked over and a bit of the wall caught fire. I put it out, but I ran. I couldn’t do nothing but run. I figured it were a sign from God that I weren’t welcome nowhere on earth. So when I saw you, it seemed like another sign.” I shook my head, and more water ran out. “But then you didn’t let me die. You made me come with you, and you made me watch how many other people were hurting, and you make me fail every day when I can’t fix it.”

He were quiet for a long stretch. “Do you still want to die, Scar?”

I shut my eyes. “Don’t know,” I whispered. “Sometimes I don’t see much worth living for. Sometimes I think I’m a curse on everyone because I live so contrary, and give the Church stolen money, and break most of the Lord’s laws. But as long as the Lord’s giving me a chance to ’tone for what I done, I’ll take it.” I sniffed, rubbing my face on my sleeve. “You know ’bout me going to church?”

He nodded. “I saw you there.”

I looked at him. “Thought you didn’t go to Mass.”

“I don’t.” He shifted round, and his voice got quiet. “I wish I could. I followed you there once, hoping maybe if you were there I could go in. As much as I desperately want forgiveness, God’s not offering it at the moment.” He swallowed, and it pushed the bulge in his throat out. “Why do you wear a dress?”

“Can’t lie to God.”

“You’re not lying, Scar. You are who you are. God knows you in skirts or breeks.” He shook his head. “The good and the bad, unfortunately.”

I shrugged. “Always feels wrong.”

He leaned forward a little, shifting on the branch, to rub his thumb under my eyes and pull off the tears. “When did Gisbourne give you the scar?”

“Years ago. He caught me and Joanna running from our home and he pushed a knife in my face. I said he’d never use it on me, so he did.”

“Bastard. To cut a girl, and you must have been just a little one at that.”

“Thirteen,” I countered. “Two days before fourteen. I weren’t so little.”

“It’s strange. It sounds so young, but most noblewomen are betrothed at fourteen. Some even wed, though traditionally they wait till fifteen.”

I swallowed a hard lump. “Heard that.” I raised my eyes to him, my strange eyes, and for the first time, I wished that I would blaze in his mind. Truth were, I’d met Rob. Before Gisbourne cut me and before Joanna and I ran to London, I’d met Rob—just once, not for long. When I saw him in the marketplace that awful day after Joanna died, knowing he were a lord, it felt like a gift. I’d known him straight off—but in all the time then and since, he’d never remembered my long-ago self.

“So you know, Scar, I don’t want you going anywhere. And I’m sorry about the Morgans. That was cruel.”

“I don’t mean to run,” I said, ducking my head down. “Just sometimes I feel like everything will come out, like a bleeding slice, and . . .” I shrugged.

“I know. But no matter how you bleed, we’ll patch you up. Just trust us.”