Sir Guy of Gisbourne strode darkly through the busy marketplace, a veritable storm cloud brewing in the brilliant Acre sunshine, cursing Robin Hood with every step.
Everything angered Guy today...the glaring sunlight, the odor of exotic spices, the clacking talk he couldn't understand, the dark eyes staring distrustfully as he passed. "Get out of my way!" he roared, turning over a table laden with jewel-toned silks, then trodding over them, kicking them out of his way.
Small children whimpered and hid their faces in their mother's skirts. Their fear somewhat rubbed balm on Gisbourne's mood, but it would take more than frightening children to lighten his fury.
Hood was alive, having accomplished the impossible once again, cheating certain death! If one hundred of the sheriff's finest mercenaries, trapping and surrounding Hood in a Nettlestone barn, couldn't kill him, then who could? Locksley must be charmed, damn him, to survive so many attacks!
"You should have died the night I shoved this through your vitals," Guy sneered, waving his sword before him as he walked, all the better to frighten Saracens out of his path. "I left you for dead, but then...you seemed to spring back to life, bleeding from my wound in your side, to protect your King! But not this time, Hood! Not this time."
Guy still couldn't decide whether he would do what Marian had suggested, and kill the sheriff. Most of him leaned against her rash plan, believing firmly that the sheriff was his pathway to power and position. But the offer of her "willingly" giving him her hand tempted him sorely, especially now that he knew that Hood was alive.
"She will be Lady Gisbourne," he swore, picturing with relish both the challenge and despair in Hood's eyes. "I will take her to the marriage bed, and she will bear me sons."
At all costs, Gisbourne suddenly realized, Marian mustn't learn that Hood had survived!
Would it make a difference to her? Worse yet, would she retract her offer? That thought made Guy want her even more.
He had to see her, if only to make certain she knew nothing about Hood.
In spite of the heat from the noonday sun beating down upon his black leather, Guy ran the rest of the way to the sheriff's house.
...
Marian, anxious for the King's life, immediately asked Guy the moment he entered her room, "Have you thought about what I said?"
Seeing her so tightly wound like a coiled spring, Guy grew strangely calm, becoming master of himself and the situation again. His only response was to place a finger to his lips, warning her to lower her volume.
"This is your chance," she whispered, urgently. "Your last chance to be a good man."
Guy stared down at her, struck by how little she knew him.
She'd once complained to him...accused him, really, of not knowing her. "This is who I am," she'd desperately stated, propping herself up from the hard stone castle floor where he'd flung her. "The Nightwatchman...everything! You claim to love me, yet you don't know me!"
You don't know me, either, he realized, hurt by the huge gulf between them. Do you really think I care about being good?
He did not.
Sometimes, late at night, he worried over the thought of hellfire that must surely await him when he died. He'd committed sins...grave sins so momentous, no amount of prayers ordered from the Confessional would absolve him. Guy feared Death because of what he could expect in the afterlife, which, unlike the sheriff, he firmly believed existed. But he had no desire at all to change his ways, and become "good."
He did desire her, however. Seeing how beautiful she looked, with her underlying, burning passion to save the King, while knowing that Hood also desired her, Guy began thinking thoughts that were anything but "good."
Pushing those thoughts that fired his loins quickly aside, he tried to focus on others.
You will save me from my sins, he mused, not taking his eyes off her loveliness. As Lady Gisbourne, as my wife, the Holy Mother Church and Heaven will reguard us as One. You, so good, so pure, will absolve me. I will obtain Heaven by being united with you, for eternity. For where you go, there I will follow. You are mine, or God help me, I will make you mine.
He didn't answer her, but turned and climbed the stairs to meet the sheriff, fuelled by his yearnings, and knowing at last what he would do.