Page 178

For a moment, we simply looked at each other.

Then I took a breath.

"Guy?"

"Yes?"

"I'm frightened of this house."

His expression softened. "I know."

I looked toward the maps.

"I've spent so long sleeping in the forest with a knife beneath my pillow. Now I've got people working for me, an assessor's list four pages long, and an eighty-one-year-old man telling me how to drain a field."

Guy listened.

"Everyone's going to call me Lady Locksley."

"Probably."

"I don't know how to be her."

I swallowed.

"I know how to be the Ghost of Sherwood. I'm very good at being the Ghost of Sherwood."

Guy smiled. "Then be her here."

I frowned. "What?"

"Nobody's asking you to become someone else."

He pulled me a little closer. "You've spent years taking supplies from Crown wagons and getting them to people who needed them."

"Yes."

"You organized thirty-one people, kept them fed, protected villages, and managed supplies through winters when half the county was starving."

I considered that. "That sounds considerably more impressive when you say it."

"Because it is."

He brushed his thumb along my waist. "You're going to be very good at running this estate."

"You sound awfully certain."

"I am."

"And what if I hate it?"

"You probably will for a while."

I laughed. "How comforting."

"But I'll be here."

He looked directly at me. "For the difficult parts too."