Robin Hood let go of Guy's shirt and he got up from the ground. He smiled shamelessly at Marian, without daring to stare into her eyes and he looked at the path that led into the woods.
"It's better if I go back to the camp, Archer might have gone to call the soldiers."
Guy gave him a homicidal look.
"Archer will not warn anyone, don't think you can get away with it, Hood."
"That's enough!" Marian said, in a icy tone that neither of them would dare to contradict. "Guy, I don't want to hear such threats and you, Robin, don't even think about leaving before you give me a satisfactory explanation for your shameful behavior!"
The girl stared at the two men and she noticed that they were both shivering with cold.
She shook her head exasperatedly and she pointed at Knighton Hall.
"Fools. Enter the manor immediately. Both of you. And I don't want to hear any objections."

Djaq was sitting by the fireplace in the main hall with Alice and Mary. The twins were asleep and the girl watched them, gently rocking the cradle.
Djaq was startled when the door opened, and she smiled when she saw Guy entering the house: he was battered and drenched, but alive, and apparently not seriously hurt. The girl had been worried when he didn't come home and she ran to hug him, relieved.
"You are all right!" She exclaimed, happy, but she immediately stepped away from him, noticing that Marian had followed him into the manor and that she was staring at them with a hostile gaze.
"Djaq!"
The young woman was amazed to hear Robin's voice and she looked at the outlaw: he too was in the same conditions as Gisborne and Djaq wondered what happened to those two.
"What are you doing here?" She and Robin both said at the same time, but neither answered that question because at that moment the children began to cry.
Robin looked at the cradle, amazed, and he smiled, understanding what Guy meant when he had talked of 'two surprises'.
"Twins?" He asked, approaching the cradle, but Alice stood in front of him with crossed arms and a bellicose demeanor.
"Don't even try to get close to the children in those conditions. And you neither, Sir Guy."
"Well said," Marian approved. "You two! Go immediately to take off those wet clothes before you get a cold."
"I'll tell Oliver and Jack to prepare a warm bath. Mary, go and call your father and your brother, then come to the kitchen and start heating the water."
Marian waited for the woman to leave before turning back to Guy and Robin.
"You should both be ashamed of yourselves: two adult men who get into a fight like unruly kids! For what, then? I thought you had at least established a truce and that you had accepted my decision, Robin."
Guy and Robin had already started up the stairs, but at the words of Marian the outlaw turned to look at her with an irritating smile.
"Don't you think you're a little presumptuous now? If Gisborne and I have a disagreement, it doesn't necessarily mean that the cause must be you."
Marian stared at him, taken aback by that answer and Robin took advantage of her amazement to hurry up the stairs before the girl could react.
Once he got upstairs, Robin noticed that Guy was holding back a laugh.
"Aren't we in enough trouble already, Hood?" He asked in a low voice.
Robin grinned.
"I have a pride too, Gisborne. She can't believe that after all this time I'm still jealous of her after she chose another. And it's the pure and simple truth."
Robin dropped his wet clothes to the ground and Guy took a blanket from the bed and tossed it to him. The outlaw wrapped himself in it and he sat in front of the fireplace with a sigh of satisfaction.
He watched as Guy took off his sodden shirt and tried to clean the coagulated blood from the wound on his shoulder.
He felt uneasy at the thought that he had hit him by mistake and even more guilty in rethinking the moment he had banged his head on the stone.
"Are you sure you're all right?"
Guy turned to look at him, a little surprised by the question, then he stopped cleaning the wound, he took a blanket and went to sit by the fire in front of Robin.
"What's up, Hood, do you worry about me? They told me often that I have a hard head and it's probably true." Guy smiled at him. "Next time you try to kill me, you'll have to put more effort in it."
"I sincerely hope that there won't be a next time. What do we say to Marian? She will not give up until she knows why we were arguing."
Gisborne watched the flames for a few seconds, reflecting.
"I think we should tell her the truth, or at least something close to the truth. Surely she will learn that you tried to kidnap Isabella..."
"I didn't kidnap her! I was helping her escape."
"But that's what they will say. Robin Hood, the evil outlaw who tries to wrest an innocent woman from the arms of her husband for who knows what reasons. You know Vaisey, he won't miss an opportunity like this to throw some mud on your name and Thornton will support him because it would be humiliating for him to let know that his wife tried to run away from him."
"So what will we say?"
"That you tried to make her escape without success and that I was mad at you because I came to know it and I thought that by doing so you had put her in danger, while you accused me of having sold her to Thornton."
"It's plausible."
"And it's the truth. Not all of it, but still the truth."
A discreet knock at the door announced Alice's entry.
The woman appeared in the doorway and she looked at the two men sitting by the fireplace. For her, the presence of Robin Hood in that house wasn't so strange. During the months when Gisborne had rebuilt Knighton Hall she had often seen the two men together, but apparently Lady Marian wasn't aware of their alliance, therefore Alice had kept her mouth shut and she had pretended to know nothing about it.
"Sir Guy, the bath is ready. I had both the tubs filled and Djaq added herbs to the water. She said they would soothe the pain of your bruises."
"Thanks, Alice." Guy said, waving Robin to follow him. "Can you prepare something to eat in the meantime?"
The woman smiled.
"No need for that, Sir Guy, Lady Marian is already taking care of it."
Guy and Robin exchanged a worried look.

Marian smiled as she looked at the baby that Djaq had put in her arms and the anger she had felt when she saw Guy and Robin fighting like street kids began to fade.
"Don't be too hard on them," Djaq said, guessing her thoughts. "Sometimes men do nonsense like that."
"They shouldn't. Not after being enemies for such a long time. I hoped that after all that happened they had found at least a truce... At your wedding they tolerated each other civilly, why can't they continue to do so? Do you think it depends on what happened at the castle when the sheriff forced Guy to whip Robin? Or is it because a few months ago Robin had injured Guy with an arrow?"
Djaq shook her head, smiling.
"Maybe they simply solved a trivial quarrel in the stupid way preferred by most men. But if you want to know, the easiest way is to ask them, they are coming," she concluded, pointing at the stairs.
Guy and Robin went down the steps in silence and the two girls smiled, amused to see them appear in the room: they both had their hair still wet, but they had stopped trembling and they had managed to wash away most of the blood and the mud. They both wore trousers and a black shirt and Robin didn't seem to like too much those clothes that were too big for him.
"I think Gisborne has the least imaginative wardrobe in Nottingham. Do you have anything that is not black?"
Guy snorted at those words.
"You should be glad I didn't leave you to shiver with cold in your sodden rags."
Robin started to answer him, but Marian's threatening gaze silenced him.
"I'm still waiting for an explanation."
Guy and Robin told her what they had decided shortly before, hoping to be credible, and in the end Marian was convinced that it had been just a quarrel in which neither of them was really right or wrong and that it wouldn't compromise the truce they had established.
She approached Guy and moved his hair from his forehead with a sort of caress, exposing the wound: Guy had washed away the dried blood, but the cut was still open and surrounded by a large bruise.
"I was worried when Archer told me you weren't at Knighton. And I was right to be worried, look here, you could have broken your head."
"I'm sorry."
"Now stay still, let me treat this." Marian said and she began to spread on the wounds the ointment contained in the bowl she held in her hands. Guy nodded and closed his eyes, smiling lightly every time Marian's fingers touched his skin.
Djaq smiled, approaching Robin with an identical bowl in her hands.
"There's something for you too, but don't expect to be pampered."
Robin gave an ironic look at Guy and Marian.
"I suppose I'll survive all the same."

Allan came back into the manor, yawning. He had spent most of the night at the tavern drinking with Will, and the rest of the time looking for Gisborne and Robin Hood. Luckily, he had met Archer near Nottingham, who had let him know that they were both safe and sound and at the mercy of Lady Marian's wrath.
Allan had burst out laughing and he had set off again for Knighton with a lighter heart. He had also warned the gang that Robin was alright and then he had spurred his horse to gallop home.
"Hey, Giz, where have you been?" He asked as if nothing had happened, sitting at the table with the others, then he looked at Robin's clothes, amused. "Were you tired of green? Or did you want to imitate Giz's style?"
"You did that first." Robin replied with a grin, nodding at the color of Allan's clothes.
Allan smiled.
"Well, is there something good to eat?"
Alice brought a tray to the table and she filled the three men's plates.
Allan threw a dubious look at the lumpy pulp he had found in his plate, trying to figure out if it was meat or what.
"What's this?" He asked cautiously, glancing at Gisborne and Robin, but the other two kept their eyes downcast with resignation.
Alice hid an amused smile behind her hand.
"Lady Marian's recipe."
Allan stood up abruptly, announcing that he had remembered an important thing he had to do and he made himself scarce in a few seconds, abandoning Guy and Robin to their fate.
Alice went back to the kitchen, and she reached Djaq and Marian, who were waiting for her behind the door. The three women burst out laughing.
They looked through the ajar door and they saw that Robin and Guy had exchanged a look of affliction and then they went back to staring gloomily at their food, without having the courage to start eating or to refuse it with the risk of offending Marian.
Djaq turned to look at Marian, with an amused smile.
"Shall we tell them now that this is actually the pig's food and that their real meal was cooked by Alice or shall we wait a little longer?"
Marian stared at the bruises that marked the two men's faces and she shook her head with a ruthless smirk.
"They behaved like idiots, let them suffer a bit more, maybe next time they will think twice before fighting each other."
Djaq and Alice giggled.
"Do you think they will have the courage to taste it?" The Saracen girl asked and all three exchanged an amused look.
"I bet on Guy." Marian said.
"Even after you've almost poisoned him? And don't forget that Robin is used to Much's cooking." Djaq hypothesized.
"In my opinion they won't have the courage." Alice commented.
"We should tell them, though..." Djaq said.
"Aren't you curious to know who of us is right?" Marian retorted.
The three women exchanged a smile and they went back to spy through the crack in the door.