Page 115

"Not of being imprisoned. I was frightened you'd come after me."

"I know. I felt it."

"Fitzwalter had thirty-one men inside that castle who didn't know your face. He'd already issued orders to have you brought to him alive, and I spent two days knowing you'd try to rescue me anyway."

"Then you've been paying attention."

I turned his hand over in mine.

"And for the record, Bisbane, I felt what happened to you at that supper. I was sitting in Sherwood when that fear came through our bond, and I knew something was terribly wrong."

His expression softened.

"I would've walked through Nottingham's front gate in broad daylight if that was the only way to reach you."

"Robin."

"So we're even."

He reached behind my neck and pulled me toward him.

The kiss was far from gentle.

I kissed him back, wrapping my arms around his shoulders until I remembered the stitches I'd just finished putting into his side.

Reluctantly, I pulled away.

"You're going to tear those again."

"Then perhaps you should stop distracting me."

I gave him a look.

"Me?"

He smiled.

I shook my head.

"Tell me the rest of it. Everything you found in those archives."

Guy told me what he'd discovered, and I sat with my back against the turf wall, listening.

Some of it I already knew.

I'd seen the figures in my father's handwriting while we were staying in the hunting cabin.

What I hadn't known was how thoroughly he'd investigated them.

Guy had found my father's working ledger among the correspondence seized from his study. He'd copied the Crown's warrants into one column, recorded the amounts actually received by the northern garrisons in another, and calculated the difference.

But he'd done more than compare figures.

At the bottom of one page, he'd recorded a visit to Mansfield, where he'd questioned the watch commander personally about how many soldiers he'd been paid to feed.

I smiled sadly.

That sounded exactly like my father.