Free Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] by Lady of the Forest Page B

so she went in an unsteady sweep of skirts as the minstrel contemplated his task. Such things were not impossible. He doubted he would find it difficult to locate an appropriate room, as certainly other men would be pursuing other women, thereby leaving someone’s chambers available for the taking.
    Alan smiled furtive anticipation. As the sheriff approached, he began another song.

Six
    The chamber was cool, quiet, dim, and untenanted save for one. Along each wall blanket-wrapped straw pallets butted their heads against stone, offering lumpy but adequate rest; even in the earl’s sprawling castle there were too many to house comfortably with proper beds and pillows. But such was often the way even of nobility, stretching hall and castle corners to offer traditional hospitality. Ravenskeep, merely a manor, could not house even a half of the throng crowding beneath the earl’s roof.
    A single lamp nearby spilled dull illumination, limning the contours of concentration in the angles of Marian’s face and robbing it of repose. She stretched limply atop a nubby woolen blanket, contemplating the shadows of thick rafter slabs looming far over her head. In seeming idleness she braided and rebraided a thick lock of black hair.
    She recalled in childhood her father hosting friends in Ravenskeep, before her brother, then mother, died, but not so many as to put out the household, or necessitate turning the main hall into a bedchamber. A host must find places for his guests to sleep; that was customary. What was not customary, was the sheer multitude here tonight: The earl had invited hundreds of people to feast his son’s return, and that many had arrived.
    She smiled briefly. In charity, she supposed not all of them had arrived; surely there were those who could not attend. And yet she supposed many of them had come less out of true good wishes than expediency. Huntington was a powerful, wealthy nobleman whose holdings stretched wide, as did his influence. He and others like him ruled England in Richard’s stead, albeit unofficially. No matter what Prince John believed.
    Inwardly she squirmed as she gripped the braided lock. It made her hot to think of John’s behavior and hotter still to recall the witnesses. Bad enough, she thought, that the sheriff had to see her treated so badly, so provocatively; worse when she knew full well he wanted to marry her, and that her father desired it.
    Had desired it. Sir Hugh of Ravenskeep was no longer in any position to desire anything.
    Marian clenched her teeth and threw aside the crimped braid, wedging her temples between two palms as she scowled at the rafters. “How could he?” she asked aloud. “How could he decide such a thing during his absence, and then send word through Huntington’s son?”
    That troubled her nearly as much. She had come of private, close-knit kin, desirous of keeping things to themselves. That her father had seen fit to send word regarding such a personal matter without consulting her beforehand was unsettling, particularly in the way he had employed, but his instrument of communication was far worse.
    Marian let both arms flop down and squinched shut her eyes. “Why did he have to do it?”
    Because he had had little choice. What else was a man to do as he labored in the name of Christ?
    It was clear, even behind tightly shut lids. Darkness hid nothing of the harsh truth. She was the sole holder of Ravenskeep, by English law, and yet the protection of that law offered a woman little. It lasted until she married, at which time her property passed to her husband. Yet if she tried to remain un married, refusing frequent and persistent suitors, she became therefore a target to the Church, which would suggest to the Crown she marry Christ, so the Church could benefit from her holdings.
    It was not at all unusual for a father to make provisions for his daughter’s future before going on Crusade. That he had said nothing to that daughter was a cause for pain,