Scarlet

“Do you know how many girls I’ve heard you say that to?”

He grinned. “Don’t mean it’s not true.” He kissed my hand and I pulled it back. “Can I kiss you, or not?”

I put my arms round his neck. “’Spose you can, but I don’t reckon you want to.”

“I don’t?”

“You just like to shine on someone, John.”

“Yeah, and I’m looking to shine on you for a while,” he told me, mushing his nose against mine.

I shrugged. “But not forever. I’m not that sort, John. ’Sides, I think I like you better without all the courting.”

He laughed. “Really?”

I nodded, craning up to kiss his cheek and pulling out of his arms. “Let’s go, you big lug.”

We managed to fence most of the jewelry before dark and got out of the market before the gates closed in Nottingham. I wedged the purse into the back of my vest, along with some bread and dried meat wrapped in muslin that I’d swiped.

“How much did you end up getting?” John asked.

“For the jewels? You were right there!”

“I meant, how much did you steal?”

I blushed a little. “You saw me stealing?”

He chuckled. “No. But that doesn’t mean you weren’t doing it. Every now and again I’d see you someplace I didn’t expect.”

“What does that mean?”

“That you were thieving, I reckon.”

I shrugged. “Some bread. Some meat. Coin besides. Let’s stop by Edwinstowe and give it to Lena and the others. Do you know where they’re staying?”

He nodded, stepping closer, his shoulder rubbing mine. “So, what about your story?”

“My story?”

“You know about my family. What’s your story?”

“I don’t, you know. Much whispered it to me once, that they died in a fire. I don’t know the whole story.”

He looked down. “My father was a blacksmith. I was born down in Locksley, you know. I knew Rob as a boy. Well, I met him, really. But we moved a lot, wherever the trade was best. We came to Nottinghamshire not long after the sheriff took over the Huntingdon lands. The sheriff ordered a hundred swords from my father and then wouldn’t pay the price for them.

“My father wouldn’t give them over when he wouldn’t pay, and he sent me to market to fetch a price for them. It wasn’t like we could sell them in Nottingham, so I went up to Newark at the Trent. I had to stay there the night.” He shook his head. “I tumbled my first girl that night.”

I stayed quiet.

“I’d spent every day of my life with my family, Scar. I could look at my little sister and guess her thoughts in a blink. With that kind of closeness, I thought I would have felt it, had some sense that they were in trouble. That they had passed. But I didn’t feel anything. My little sister and baby brother died, crying for . . .” He trailed off, and I weren’t sure if they cried for him, for help, for their lives, or for what, but it felt terrible. He swallowed, and it looked like he were choking down his own heart. “And I was with a girl.”

I weren’t the sort for much touching, but I couldn’t help it. I put my fingertips on the inside bit of his hand. It didn’t feel so strange, so I slipped them down more. His fingers curled on mine, and without meaning to, I were holding his hand.

He stopped, tugging my hand so I were pulled against him. I looked up. He held our hands between us like a dressed duck. “I don’t tell girls that story, Scar.”

“I won’t tell.”

“I know. But Bess and Ellie and them—I don’t tell them, all right?”

I bit my teeth into my cheek a little. Were that meant to be a good thing? I didn’t like holding secrets. I had enough to hold on to. “All right.”

He tugged my hand again, and we started walking. I pulled my hand out. He didn’t need it no more, and if you weren’t careful with things like that, it could go on and on, never letting go of the hands. “So, what about your story?”

I shrugged. “Got lots of stories.”

“How’d you start thieving?”

Shrugged again. “Same way most do, I figure. Needed something I couldn’t pay for.”

“What was the first thing you stole?”

The answer to that were only a single question away from Joanna. “I don’t remember.”

“Sure you do.”

“I thought you said I wouldn’t have to answer no questions with you.”

“You never have to. I was just curious.”

“It were medicine,” I told him. “From the monks, for a cough.”

He chuckled. “You don’t go halfway, do you? Awfully brassy of you to steal first from a monastery.”

I smiled, but it were less for him naming me brassy and most because he didn’t ask who were coughing.

Lena were at the Morgans’, a farming family in Edwinstowe, and they welcomed us in as soon as they saw us darken their door.

“John Little,” Matilda Morgan greeted, wrapping him in a hug. “My dear boy, how are you?”

“Very well, Mistress Morgan. And you look lovely tonight.”

She blushed. “Little charmer.” She let him go and saw me, and her mouth went flat like a toad’s. “Will.”

I tipped my hat to her. “Hullo, Mistress Morgan.”

She looked behind her, and I saw the three curly-headed ninnies she liked to call daughters. “Keep to yourself, Will,” she told me.

I ducked my head, but I felt anger twist in me. John were the swiver, not me. Just because her daughters liked who they thought I were didn’t make it my fault. And I knew for a fact that John ain’t always been a gentleman with Aggie Morgan, her redhaired oldest.

He smiled at her, and she giggled.

I tugged my hat down and went to the hearth, where I saw Lena. I thought she were sitting with Mr. Morgan, but it were Mark Tanner.

“Will Scarlet,” Lena greeted, jumping up. She hugged me and pulled me down next to her.

Mark shook my hand. “Will,” he said.

“Mark,” I said. “Didn’t know you were staying here too.”

“Oh, I just came to call on Lena.”

My mouth opened, but just then John came over, trailing the girls behind him. I pulled a little closer to Lena, but they crowded around us.

“Did you give it to them yet?” John asked.

I flushed, but I reached round behind me to pull out the food. I passed the meat to Lena and started to hand out the rolls, but Matilda pushed past her daughter. She grabbed the meat and threw it back in my lap. “No,” she snapped.