"I'd rather you didn't do that."

Robin's pleasant, teasing voice caught Marian by surprise. She had just finished nursing their infant son Edward, and was relacing her gown. She hadn't heard her husband come home. He must have deliberately been quiet to surprise her.

"Oh, wouldn't you?" she smiled back at him, her fingers deftly tying off the laces."It's the middle of the day, I'll have you know. Why aren't you attending to your village?"

Robin edged closer and seized her around her waist, forcing a delighted gasp from her lips. He pressed his face to her neck and began kissing it. Marian wiggled and squirmed, pretending to want to break away, but she was only playing. Her smile betrayed how much she enjoyed his kisses. His whiskers scraped her skin, but his enticing mouth was irrestible.

"Because," he answered between nips, "there's nothing to attend to. No disputes, no hunger, no unhappiness of any kind."

"What, none at all?"

"None, unless you count Daniel's scraped knee or a few adolescent cases of unrequited love. And speaking of unrequited love-"

"Maybe you should raise rents, just to stir up trouble."

He laughed, knowing she was joking. In spite of King John's crippling policies, Robin and Marian worked hard and made sacrifices to ensure peace and prosperity in their village. For the time being, they had restored Locksley to its former happy state, as it had been before Sheriff Vaisey had taken over as Sheriff of Nottingham and installed Guy of Gisbourne to oversee, or more accurately, terrorize it.

Robin stood smiling lovingly down at Marian, his hands resting lightly on her hips. She embraced him around his neck, letting her fingers play with the curls at its nape.

"Robin," she said, "there's something I would like."

"Name it. You know I can't refuse you anything. And if you were a dutiful wife-"

"I want a garden. Not a kitchen garden...a real one. I'd like to grow roses and lilies and lilacs in the yard."

Robin stopped teasing her. Smiling gently, he replied, "Of course! Plant whatever you'd like! This is your home, too, Marian."

He remembered the garden at Knighton, and wondered how long Marian had been missing her flowers. He wished he'd thought of it himself.

She squeezed him in a grateful hug, her eyes sparkling with joy. Her words came tripping off her tongue as she envisioned it. "And Ellie and Grace can help me tend it, and we'll have cuttings for inside the manor, and our village brides may choose what they like, and, oh, thank you!"

She kissed him happily, then broke the embrace and asked, "Is that Allan's voice?"

"He's downstairs, entertaining the girls with one of his stories. His son's with him."

"Seth, too?"

"No. Just Allan."

Allan a Dale had recently married Annie, a former kitchen girl from Nottingham Castle, who had bourne Guy of Gisbourne a son she'd named Seth. Allan was also raising a young boy named after himself, whom he had unknowingly fathered after spending one night with Sarah, the fuller's daughter, immediately following Robin and Much's hurried departure from her father's swordpoint on their way home from war. Young Allan was a "chip off the old block," so to speak, and a great favorite of the two tiny Locksley girls.

"I hope he's keeping his story clean," Marian said, knowing how Allan's tales tended to run on the salty side.

"Why don't we go down and listen? Maybe he'll clean it up if you give him one of your reproving looks."

Marian entwined her fingers through her husband's and together, they went downstairs to greet their guests.

...

Allan a Dale was in the middle of a story he was concocting off the top of his head about Robin Hood and his gang of famous outlaws. Robin and Marian would have been wise to have joined him sooner, for they would not have approved much of what he was telling their small girls.

"So," Allan had already told them, "Crazy Vaisey plunged your da's tiger tooth up into his gums and made his way to the forest, snarling like a tiger himself, eager to catch Robin Hood. But before he could find him, out steps Little John, swinging his big stick. John didn't even need to strike! Soon as he lifts his arms above his head, boom! The sheriff drops to the ground, passed out from the stink of John's arm pits."

His son burst into laughter at that, but little Ellen and Grace listened with wide eyes, being too young and innocent to catch the joke.

"So, John hauls the sheriff to the camp," Allan continued. "Much, who wasn't a lord yet, but only a servant, is standing over the cooking fire, crying his eyes out.

" 'Stop your weepin',' Little John orders him. 'I brought the sheriff.'

" 'But, they're so cute, with their big brown eyes and big fluffy tails! I just hate killin' them,' Much snivels.

" 'Then don't, and kill us something better to eat!'

" 'But I already shot us all the bunnies,' Much cries.

"Will's too busy whittlin' to say a word. Even when Djaq goes over to him, wigglin' her hips to get his attention, he doesn't look up.

"Robin's walking around in a dazed way. He's been sneakin' off at night, romping with Marian in her bed, (hush), so he doesn't even care John's brought him the sheriff. 'Ah, Marian,' he says, all sighing and lovey dovey like, 'at last you let me squeeze your fine round arse! We'll marry soon, and you will be Queen of Sherwood!'

"Sheriff Vaisey wakes up, looks around him, and says, 'So, Hood, my fine feathered friend,' (the sheriff liked birds, you see, and often mistook Robin for one, on account of his name). 'I have found your camp, and now I'm going to catch you and string you up from a gibbet till your pretty little neck snaps and you're dead.'

" 'A clue...no.'

"That was me, using the sheriff's own words as a way to mock him. Marian was too busy making herself beautiful, so she wasn't a good spy anymore. So I went to the castle, and took over her job, freeing her up for more time to bounce on the bed whenever Robin would come to call."

Ellen shook her head gravely. "No bouncing on the beds," she said. Her younger sister Grace kept getting into trouble for doing it, but wouldn't stop, even though she had a raised bruise on her forehead from falling onto the wooden floorboards.

"This was a different sort of bouncing. (Allan, you hush.) This kind of bouncing your da approved of. Anyway, I come chargin' into the camp, and only Djaq is happy to see me. She bats her big brown eyes at me, and I tell her, 'Not now, Gorgeous, I gotta job to do, savin' you lot from the sheriff!' "

It was at this point in the story that Robin and Marian joined them.

"And they all lived happily ever after," Allan finished quickly.