Guy, not wanting to lose her, began telling Marian a story. Not clever enough to invent, he told her partial truths.

"Robin Hood is dead," he lied, trying to keep his voice from pleading. "I killed him, in self defense."

"No," Marian uttered.

"It's true I stabbed you," he continued, "but I've suffered for it! I did not know what I was doing! I was only trying to stop your words...words that were killing me!"

"So you were the victim," Marian said coldly.

"You cannot know how your words wounded me! You destroyed everything I believed in!"

Marian only rolled her eyes, then stared at him cruelly. "Tell me about Robin," she demanded.

Gisbourne couldn't help sneering. "Robin," he said, as if the name dripped poison. "First...you. You somehow survived my sword, though neither Hood nor myself knew it. I turned against the sheriff, putting the blame for your death, rightly, on him. I killed him, even without the promise of your hand."

Marian's eyes studied him, accepting his words as truth. She didn't know that Guy was convincing, because what he said was how he had truly felt at the time, though he did not act upon it.

Guy continued trying to win her. "I presented myself before King Richard and begged his pardon. Because I had killed the sheriff, the king forgave me."

"I do not believe you," Marian said, her voice beginning to tremble. "You are not brave enough, Guy of Gisbourne."

"Not brave?" he shouted. "I was willing to die with you, when Prince John's armies were threatening to burn down Nottingham!"

She remembered, and conceded the point. "Go on," she said. "What happened to Robin?"

"Hood! I'm trying to tell you what happened to you!"

"All you've done is talk about yourself."

Pacing the floor, Gisbourne stopped and spun around, pointing a finger in her face. For some reason, Marian had a dim recollection of someone very precious to her biting his finger. She tried to grasp at it, but the thought faded and was lost to her.

"You," Gisbourne seethed, "are impossible, Woman!"

"Perhaps you'd like to stab me again," Marian defiantly said.

That brought Gisbourne back to his senses. "If I could take that back, I would!" he declared. "Marian, don't you know by now all I feel for you?"

Holding the blanket more tightly around her, she stepped back, then tried to distract him by getting him to complete his story. "What happened next, Guy?" she asked, sounding somewhat kinder.

"Believing you dead, I departed for home. So did Hood. You remained in the Holy Land, and were nursed to health by Hood's Saracen and that boy from his gang."

"Djaq and Will," Marian said, blinking her eyes as her mind tried to conjure up the memory. "You ought to know his name! He was from Locksley, you know."

"A peasant," Guy told her.

"A person."

Gisbourne sneered, but let it go. "Once Hood reached England, he hunted for me, and tried to kill me, mad with vengeance. Not only did he think I had killed you, but the king awarded me Locksley."

"No," Marian said. "You are lying."

"Hood was not himself."

"That I can believe. What rings false is your saying King Richard would give Robin's village to you."

"I had kept it the past seven years. The king was planning to give Hood Winchester."

"Robin would never accept another village. Locksley is part of him. Its people are part of him!"

"Winchester is larger, and closer to London, the king's seat of power."

"That would mean nothing to Robin."

"Why must you always argue? Its lord was dead, leaving no heir."

"Because you murdered him," Marian accused.

"You are ungrateful! I killed him to save you!"

"As you killed Robin?"

"In self defense," Guy repeated. "He challenged me, we battled, I won."

"How?" Her voice sounded like a small, hurt child's.

Guy decided to mostly tell the truth, so that Marian might believe him. "I struck a blow and Hood fell, hitting his head on a boulder." Then Guy realized he needed to change his story, lest Marian despise him. "Stunned, he rose again and tried to hurl me over the cliff above Locksley, into the River Trent below. I was stronger, and threw him over instead."

Marian stood without speaking, visualizing all of it in her mind. No one, she believed, could survive that fall.

"I need to be alone," she said weakly. "Please."

"Let me comfort you," Guy pleaded, stepping toward her. "Marian!"

"Don't touch me! Leave me alone!"

Gut sighed, hurt by her rejection. He had to continue, for he hoped in time, she would come to accept his statements and allow herself to let him love her, then grow to love him as well.

"You lost Hood's baby," he told her, shocking her.

Marian could only stare at him, her face tormented. A dim memory of mourning...a grave dug for her, containing Robin's unborn son. And then the realization that Guy knew! Yet she wasn't dead. He knew, yet he hadn't tried to kill her a second time. "You knew?" she asked. And then, another realization, a horrible one. "Then, this child I carry..."

"Is mine," Guy lied to her. "You returned, and kept your promise to become my wife. That child is no bastard, but was conceived in the marriage bed. Our marriage bed."

"Then I have nothing," Marian said weakly.

"What do you mean? You have everything! You are Lady Gisbourne!"

"I still have Locksley," she realized, thinking. "I can still do good, to Robin's people." Speaking aloud, broken hearted, Marian said, "I want to go home," but she spoke it more to herself than to the man she believed was her husband.