Gisbourne had hurt me from the first, when I were a defiant little girl and he’d cut the scar in my cheek and marked me forever. He’d hunted me down as a thief, and he hurt me as my husband. And yet before he died, he’d told me, your unassailable loyalty and unshakable belief should have been for me. Like I should have cared for him, when all he ever wanted were to hurt me. But caring for him weren’t something he could take from me against my will.

“Saer—Winchester—he told me about him. About Lord Leaford.”

“Told you,” I repeated, my blood running cold. “What did he tell you?”

She glanced around, nervous. “I don’t know. He just told me. About Nottingham, and seeing the two of you there. And—” She started and stopped.

“And?” I demanded, stepping forward.

She stepped back, scared and open now. She were blinking fast but her eyes had tears in them. “He told me Leaford was cruel to you,” she whispered.

Cruel. I remembered that night, that awful night, when Gisbourne tried to force me, the cold promise of his hands pulling at my skirt and the fear. The fear worst of all, that he could steal it out of me when no one else could.

Her arm touched mine and I jerked away. “He had no right to tell you of anything I suffered at Gisbourne’s hands.”

“It was deplorable!” Margaret continued on. “Why shouldn’t he speak of a man without honor? Why shouldn’t he decry that? And Winchester—he didn’t even know you were a princess. Did your husband?”

“What does it matter?” I yelled at her, high and empty in the quiet of the graveyard. “A princess? Does that make it worse, because when a man took a blacksmith’s daughter he had a royal ring on his hand? You don’t know these things and I’m glad that you don’t, but all men are like that, Margaret. All of them. They are rotten and dying inside and some cover it up better than others.” My mind filled with thoughts of the fishwives that were crying in cold houses now, their husbands’ blood still on my hands. “Maybe we all are. Maybe we are all rotten and dark inside.”

She shook her head. “You think you’re the first to call me silly?” she asked soft. “Or foolish, or naive, or sheltered. Protected, perhaps. I have two older brothers. I’ve heard all of it before. That they stand for me against the bad things in this world. That they swallow it so I will not know its taste. And maybe that’s so. Maybe I’m lucky in that regard. But I have spent a lifetime watching people scoop up the pain for other people. And sometimes it’s genuine, and kind, and noble. But sometimes I see them do it because they are terrified of what they might be without that pain to glorify them, Lady Marian.”

I felt her eyes on me, but I didn’t look at her.

“Sometimes it’s harder to be bright when you feel the darkness inside you. Sometimes the very hardest thing is to let the pain go.”

I shook my head, and walked past her.

Chapter 9

I went back to my room and made sure my things were gathered. I wanted to leave as soon as Eleanor’s new knights arrived. In a dress, in stone walls, with the blood of a man who were just trying to feed a family on my hands—I didn’t know myself. I needed to ride. I needed to move.

Eleanor were there, waiting for me.

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

“No,” she told me. “Your speech is abysmal, your manners are worse, and we have roughly two days to change all that so that you can charm the nobility.”

I crossed my arms. “How does any of that matter?”

Eleanor’s brows lifted, drawing her chin up with them. “Marian, John never won the nobles. They don’t like him. Some of them fear him well enough, but nothing warmer. Their memories of Richard are distant and dimming. If you can win them over, you will win your war before anything is ever fought. And since I believe you intend to head for Nottingham the moment one of the aforementioned lords appear, I will do what I can.”

I didn’t move forward.

“Forget it all, if you like. Richard certainly does when it pleases him. But you will know what I have to teach.”

Drawing a breath, I moved into the room.

It were an abbey, and there weren’t anything in the room but a bed and a kneeler, so I sat beside her on the bed.

“Good,” she said. “Now, you have a natural ability that John never had. You care about people. You listen to them. He’s spent so much of his life wondering why no one pays him more mind that he forgets to listen to others.”

“You want me to listen.”

“Yes. Which includes not interrupting me, my girl. In my life, I’ve discovered people want two things—to feel important, and to feel useful. Take my knights for example. They would give their lives for mine, and they do it because they feel they have the ability to do so, and because they know their sacrifice would save my life. Important, and useful.”

“That isn’t always true,” I told her, frowning. “People want all sorts of things. Love. Forgiveness. Hope.”

“But all things come straight down to appreciation and purpose, Marian. We want our love acknowledged, returned, and we want it to make some kind of difference. We want it to change something. We want the exact same from forgiveness and hope.”

I closed my mouth.

“Make people feel important,” she told me. “And give them a way to serve a purpose. The purpose may not be to you—I’m hardly speaking of sending someone to fetch you a cloak—but a real purpose. What is your purpose, my dear?”