Lion Heart (29 page)

When they finally let me rest, I curled up in a chair by a dying fire. There, in the slow-darkening light and quiet, I finally pulled out Rob's letter.

SCARLET, 132
.

I wish I could paint. I'm awful at it, and I'm sorry. Or even sketch. I'll try with words, pale though they are.

I left the castle early today. There was frost on the ground, hopefully our last, and the cold made my breath plume out in these big clouds. It seemed like a fairy story, or like Avalon, shrouding me in mist. Like if I just kept breathing, I could will magic into being. I could make things change for us, or I could make you appear to me.

The frost made everything glitter. It was one of those perfect frosts, where every blade of grass looks special and beautiful because of ice like lace on it. Even with the frost, the forest is green again, and this was like a crystal green, like a prism around the green.

We buried John in the graveyard of the monastery, and this morning—like many
others—I went to visit him. To talk. To tell him he was right about us all along. He knew I loved you from the first. He said I was being an ass and should just tell you, and I told him to stop meddling—which led to a rather massive fight. You'll remember it, that first winter—you and Tuck and Much had a hard time pulling us apart. John slugged Much in the face by accident and you wouldn't speak to him for a week. You two thought we were fighting about one of the tavern girls, and that started the fight—but really, we were fighting about you. And what I should do.

I never told John that I'd said you should marry him. Mostly because I thought he'd take me up on it, and once things were good between us, I never got the chance. So I confessed it to his tombstone. That it should have been him to love you, to marry you. He would have taken you away from Nottingham and gotten started on a family with you straight off.

He would have been alive; you wouldn't be hidden away, in whatever hell Prince John is keeping you in. Maybe then I could have forgotten you
.

Maybe not. You're not easy to forget, Scar
.

The point of all these sketches is that I know you're not coming back. I have faith that Prince John won't hold you captive forever; you'll find a way out of that prison. You will beat him, because you never give up hope. But you won't risk returning here and bringing his fury down on Nottingham.

And it's not just Prince John, is it? I know you won't risk hurting me. You won't risk maybe hurting yourself. Because every day, when I'm a little more certain that you won't return, part of me is furious and despondent, but part of me is so relieved, Scar.

I'm scared of the ways you hurt me. I'm scared of the ways that you make me feel things—confront things—think things—that I never wanted. When you're not here my life is only half of what it can be, and, coward that I am, I sometimes find comfort in that ease.

What do I give up? Only the good things—those moments when you look at me and I'm robbed of breath. Those moments when you touch me and my mind is taken from me. Those moments when you forgive me, heal me, and I find my heart has been utterly stolen. By you. In ways that I only hope to deserve.

So stay away, Scar. I don't blame you. I understand. I will continue to live my half life, and I'll only mourn how it might have been when I see the sunset, and I can't prevent myself remembering all the things I feel for you in that half world between light and darkness, between the end and the beginning.

Wherever you are, just remember you have my heart in your keeping, and as long as that damn sun goes up and down, I won't be able to completely lose hope that you'll return to me.

When I slept, it were only after the words were formed within my heart, and my eyes were so tired I couldn't see.

CHAPTER

The next morning, the girls woke me early, dressing me, braiding my hair round my head and sliding tiny white flowers into the twists. They took the fresh-bloomed wild roses from the forest and crushed their petals into my skin.

“Scarlet!” Missy yelped, coming into the house just past midday. She sprang away from the door. “Hide!”

“No!” I returned. “Is it Prince John? What's happening?”

She laughed, pulling me into the kitchen. “No! Rob's coming.”

Bess caught her cloak and threw it over me. “Go out the kitchen when he comes in the front,” she ordered.

I nodded, and Missy took my hand, laughing.

We started to do as she said, but I fast saw the flaw in her plan—the door out the kitchen were in sight of the front. And too quick, Rob opened it, and Missy and
I hid off the side.

“—went to the castle, Rob,” Much said.

“No,” he said hot. “She didn't. She wasn't at the castle last night or this morning, and she was meant to be. Bess, Scar is missing. Have you seen her?”

“She stayed with me last night, Rob,” Bess said in her soft way. Maryanne made a noise. “And you lot should know better than to burst in here with a baby about.”

Rob sighed. “Thank God. Where is she now?”

“Much is right. She left here and went to meet you at the castle.”

Bess, bouncing Maryanne, glanced at us in the kitchen and saw our problem. She moved to the far side of the room, and laughed. “Oh, Sheriff, the baby's watching you.”

He took the bait, and Missy and I slipped out the back door, leaving it open so he wouldn't hear it shut.

I knew we had only a few minutes, and Missy and I started to run. Rob ducked out the back door and Missy shrieked, pushing me onward while she sought to stop Robin. He darted round her, close enough that I could see him frown at me. “Scarlet, what the hell!” he yelled at me.

Ducking through narrow straits between houses, I broke into the main square and saw Winchester.

“Winchester!” I cried, smiling. “Stop him!”

He whipped his head back around and saw Rob turn
the corner behind me. Without a thought, he held his arm out and Rob ran straight into it, were knocked off his feet, and slammed onto the ground on his back, still.

I stopped with a gasp and Winchester winced, ducking down. I covered my mouth.

Winchester stood with a smile. “Still breathing!” he said.

“Good Lord, Winchester. I'm telling Margaret about that.”

He shrugged. “Go hide. We'll send him in the right direction when it's time.”

I nodded, turning and running at an easier pace.

“Anyone have any rope?” I heard Winchester ask.

I planned to go straight to the clearing, but I knew I had hours yet and my feet didn't take me there. Instead, I found the road that cut through the wood, the one we'd given a reputation to as lawless and dangerous.

Following it down, I found the arch where two trees knitted together, where we'd robbed many a traveler of their goods. Where we'd started, where we'd honed our skills.

It weren't my destination. I went onward, off the road, going on the path that were worn in by pilgrims, marked by crosses in the trees. I picked wildflowers as I
went, and by the time I arrived I had a big, messy bunch in my hands.

I didn't go into the monastery proper. Last I'd been there had been when Rob hurt me in his sleep, and those memories weren't far enough away. The pains in our love were never far below the surface, like the blood in the bruises they left.

Besides, there were enough pain to face. I turned into the graveyard, and it didn't take me long to find the new, simple stone that bore John Little's name.

Careful of my pretty dress, I knelt down, placing the flowers on his grave. “You're a father, John,” I told him. “I imagine you're watching over her already, but she's perfect. Just perfect. Even considering she looks like you, which is something.”

Drawing a slow breath, I pressed a hand to my stomach.

“I'm marrying Rob today.” I smiled. “Much is giving me away. I can only imagine that if you were here you would have insisted it be you. I hope, at least. I hope after everything we went through, you didn't really love me the way you thought you did. I hope you didn't die because you loved me like that, not when I didn't feel that way for you.” I looked down, sniffing. “Not when I kissed you when I wasn't sure if I meant it.”

A tear jumped from my eyes.

“You died because of me, John. You died because of me and I'm sorry. There's no reason, there's no getting around it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I miss you, and I will always love you.”

I brushed the water off my face, I kissed my fingers, and I pressed the fingers to his gravestone.

“Good-bye, John,” I whispered. I crossed myself, shutting my eyes.

In the dark behind my eyelids, I could see him there, standing, watching me. He sat on the gravestone, rubbing his thumb over where I'd kissed it.

Good-bye, Scar
, he whispered back.

The sky were just starting to glow with color when I made my way toward the clearing before Major Oak, and when I saw it, my eyes filled with tears.

All week long, we'd been fashioning ladders out of wood so that the townspeople—and me, to be honest—could get up into the branches of the old tree, stronger and healthier than ever after the fire last winter that were meant to destroy it. But my friends had gone further, and in the branches were draped long ribbons of cloth and garlands of flowers, making the whole tree alive with color and bits of things moving in the wind.

Missy and Ellie were running around, lighting candles
at the base of the tree. Well, sort of candles—little stubs of things that were waiting to be melted down and wouldn't burn long. But the whole thing started to light up, and they smiled at me from their work.

I covered my mouth, touched, as tears started to course down.

“You can't cry on your wedding day,” said a voice in my ear. I turned round and gasped to see Margaret, who ran to me with open arms. I caught her, hugging her tight. I saw Eleanor over her shoulder and let go of Margaret, going over to her. And losing all my words.