"Oi! Watch it you bloody idiot, that's my bad arm!"
At the sound of David dulcet tones, Maria repressed the urge to roll her eyes. Over the years, she'd got to know Robin's friends fairly well; not quite as well as she knew him, but well enough. Generally, David was summed up as the brutish one, Richard the provoking one, and Henry the teasing one.
David was also the one most likely to complain and slack his work, and he'd been doing both all morning by the sounds of it. Since the forest was technically the territory of the De Noirs though, and Maria was the one intruding and gathering herbs in the same clearing the three of them were mending traps in, she didn't feel it would be wise to comment.
Richard, on the other hand, had no such concerns.
"For god's sake David, you only got a tattoo, would you shut up about it?" He exclaimed, "Anyone would think you had your arm amputated the way you've been going on about it!"
"And what would you know?" David demanded, "Your tattoos are tiny, hardly worth the ink! It took Jacques almost a full day to do mine!"
"And what a good use of his time that was…" Henry muttered in an undertone to Maria, who flashed him an amused smile as she sat down nearby with her now full basket.
"It only took him so long because you were such a wimp and he had to stop even ten minutes so out wouldn't pass out from the pain," Richard retorted.
Maria couldn't help but roll her eyes. "For Heaven's sake, they don't hurt that much," She remarked without thinking. After a moment of silence, she glanced up to find three startled pairs of eyes on her and quickly realised her mistake however.
"…Or so I've heard," She hastily amended.
"Oh no, no back tracking," Richard said, shaking his head, "Just what do you know about tattoos? You haven't-" He paused, his eyes widening slightly, "Have you…got one?"
"Of course not," Maria instantly dismissed.
"You do, don't you?" Richard exclaimed, looking nothing short of delighted, "C'mon Moon Princess, spill the beans!"
"Fine," Maria admitted, not seeing how she could deny it, especial now Richard -dog-bone-De Noir had a hold of it. Adopting a nonchalant air, she shrugged. "Yes, I do. I was bored. And a bit drunk,"
Henry whistled, "Drunk eh, Princess? You're more wild that we thought…"
Shooting him a mildly irritated look, Maria returned her attentions to her herbs. Despite her indifference though, the subject was not dropped, as she hoped it would be.
"But…how?" Richard persisted, still looking incredulous, "Where? Who gave you it?"
"The same way you got yours I should think, only in London," Maria answered dryly, disentangling some cowslip from feverfew and tying a ribbon around each bundle, "One of my friend's cousins is in the Navy. We snuck out of a dull card party to see him last year…"
"I don't believe it," David interrupted with a scowl, "She's lying, no way in hell has she got a tattoo-"
"Shut up David," Richard shot a reproachful glare at the other De Noir, clearly unwilling to entertain any notion that would spoil the revelation of the Moon Princess's scandalous secret.
"She's a woman," David insisted, "She hasn't got the imagination or the nerve for it!"
"She's got plenty of both," Henry contradicted, sending a wink in Maria's direction, "She proved that when she escaped our tower…"
Maria couldn't help but blush a little at this allusion, but Richard was quick to steer the conversation back to this latest, and lesser known, transgression of hers.
"So?" He prompted, his voice both impatient and emphatic.
"So, what?" Maria raised an eyebrow.
"Your tattoo! What is it? Where is it?"
"None of your business!"
"Come on Princess, you've got to tell us now,"
"No I do not!"
"Is it a hare? A horse? A lion?" Richard tilted his head to the side, eyes raking over her, "On your shoulder? Hip? Calf?"
"No! And stop imagining it!" Maria exclaimed in outrage, flinging a bundle of comfrey at him.
"How about you show it to us then?" He countered, lowering the arm he'd used to deflect the leaves.
"Certainly not!" Maria retorted.
"Come on, I'll show you mine if you show me yours-"
Henry snorted. "Pretty sure she'll have been warned against deals like that from De Noirs…"
Richard ignored him. "It's a fair bargain," He insisted, hand going tantalisingly to his left shirt sleeve.
"Perhaps," Maria replied, trying not to laugh as she watched him toy with it as if it were the most tempting of gestures, "If I had any interest in seeing yours that is. Unfortunately for you, I don't,"
"Why not?" Richard demanded indignantly, the hand at his arm stilling.
"Well for one, why would I need to?" Maria quipped, "The De Noir imagination is limited to skulls and knives and so it's only going to be one or the other…"
Henry had to shove his fist in his mouth to muffle his guffaw at look of outrage on David face, whose recent tattoo happened to comprise of both of these things. Since this rather confirmed the truth of Maria's comment, and scuppered his irresistible deal, Richard changed tactic lightning speed.
"Has Robin seen it?"
Maria's gaze snapped back to him. "Why would he have seen it?" She asked sharply, her eyes narrowing.
"C'mon, the pair of you are as thick as thieves," Richard answered flippantly. "And God knows he'd probably keep any secret you asked of him…"
"I am no thief," Maria declared, getting to her feet, "And anyone can keep a secret better than you Richard. I'm afraid you're just going to have to learn to live with the mystery,"
And sweeping her basket off the ground, she walked away into the trees.
Maria's tattoo, whether it truly existed and precisely what form it took, caused far more trouble than she ever imagined it would, with Richard nagging her for days about it. She continued to refuse him any further details, growing steadily more and more irritated until she eventually snapped that if he brought it up one more time, she'd put a curse on him.
Robin, having missed the original discussion but who had had it immediately repeated to him by an obsessed Richard, glowering David and amused Henry, was doubtful whether she could follow through on such a threat. However, it seemed to do the trick, as Richard dropped the subject and didn't mention her tattoo again.
Or so Robin thought.
A week or so later, he was inspecting his traps in the forest, as he usually did, when a scream cut through the muffled quiet of the trees. Dropping absolutely everything he had in his arms and launching to his feet, Robin instantly tore in the direction it had come from.
"You- absolute- cretin- Richard-De Noir-"
The shrieks were permeated by dull thuds and shouts of pain, and bursting through the treeline to a sheltered bend in the river which cut the forest in two, the first thing Robin saw was Richard, his arms thrown up over head to protect himself as Maria, knee deep in the river, flung rocks seized from its bed with furious accuracy at him.
The second thing Robin noticed was that she was wearing only her under things, her dress, skirts and corset folded neatly on a large rock on the shore. It did not take him long to add the two things together.
"It's not what it looks like," Richard shouted wildly, eyes darting from Maria to Robin and waving his arms placatingly, "I wasn't spying on her-not like that- only- I just wanted to see-"
"My- tattoo-!" Maria finished furiously for him, throwing her last rock which Richard barely managed to duck as it sailed towards his face and knocked off his hat.
"I am going to count to ten," Robin declared, swiftly striding forwards to the water's edge to plant himself between Maria and Richard and block her from his friend's view, "Make the most of it because if I catch you, I swear I'm going to beat the ever-living hell out of you,"
The deceptively mild tone of Robin's voice was at complete odds with the darkening glint in his eyes, and adding the menacing set of his shoulders into the equation, Richard certainly did not need telling twice. Spinning around so quickly he nearly tripped, he bolted into the trees, abandoning his hat and all thoughts of tattoos driven permanently from his mind.
Feeling some of his immediate rage dissipating with his friend's panicked departure, Robin exhaled and turned back around to Maria. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," She huffed, "He just surprised me is all…" Folding her arms, she raised her eyebrows at him. "While I never expected him to go quite this far, he's not exactly the first to have interrupted me here, is he?"
"This was my spot first Princess, and the difference was it was an accident when I did it," Robin reminded her, wading through the water to where she was stood, "And you've interrupted me plenty of times,"
"Well you don't comply with the system," Maria accused, pointing towards the willow tress whose branches formed a convenient curtain screening the shallower bank from view, and where Robin knew a knotted length of ribbons would be tied.
" I don't wear dresses covered in ribbons," He pointed out.
"No, but you do have a pocket full of them," Maria replied, "And I'd like them back one of these days you know. My uncle is always complaining about the amount of money he spends replenishing them and it's getting embarrassing having to ask him. You're like a magpie with them…"
"Because you leave them all over the forest and they scare away all the game. And excuse me, how am I the one getting berated right now? I'm not the one who just caught spying on you for a glimpse of you damned tattoo,"
This, Maria supposed, was true. In fact, Robin was the one who had shown the least interest since her absent-minded remark to his friends. But why should he? All the De Noirs had tattoos and she'd seen his plenty of times, since, as he'd said, she'd interrupted him here often enough. They were down his arms, across his back and his chest. Was it really so very exceptional for her to have one?
Turning her back to him, she pulled her hair over her shoulder. "Well?" She asked, pushing the shoulder of her chemise down to expose the back of her left shoulder, "Is it really as exciting as Richard seems to find it? Worth all the trouble he's gone to to glimpse?"
Stepping closer, Robin gazed intently at the delicate design inked across her pale skin. The longer he stared, the more detail he saw until it seemed to him that the full moon covering the space between her shoulder blade and arm took on a life of its own and he had no doubt that it waxed and waned, linked inextricably with its counterpart, roaming the night sky above them.
"Oh, definitely…" Robin murmured, unable to tear his eyes away and resisting the urge to trace his fingers over it.
Looking over her shoulder and meeting his darkened eyes, Maria was caught momentarily breathless. Then she flushed, suddenly aware just how inappropriate it was for her, a single young woman, to be standing in her undergarments before a man, let alone bearing her bare skin to him and inviting him to look. The smouldering look in Robin's eyes was absolutely undoing any argument that he had seen her partially undressed before and sending a swooping feeling through her core.
"Well," She said, hastily pulling her chemise back up her shoulder and turning back around to face him, "You didn't seem half as surprised as your friends were about it…"
"You're always full of surprises," Robin answered, stepping back and unbuckling the straps around his arms to shrug off his jacket, "And if there's one thing I've learnt not be surprised by, it's that,"
"I suppose I would hate too ever be too predictable," Maria mused with a smile.
"You are many things Princess," Robin informed her, wrapping his jacket around her slim shoulders, "But predictable will never be one of them…"
Here's my late entry for Day 1 of Moonacre Week! I've had the idea for this floating around my head for a long time, but it was never tied to a story, so it never went beyond that. The the tattoo prompt for day 1 of Moonacre Week gave me the perfect opportunity without needing too much development/context behind it though so here it is! Maria's tattoo perhaps isn't very original but I've always really liked the idea of her having a moon tattoo that becomes imbibed with the magic of Monacre Valley and waxing and waning, although I haven't really gone into this idea here much. Unlike how I usually write (building things up over a long time) I wrote this much more rapidly hence the lack of depth to the setting and R/M relationship. In fact, there's probably more interaction between Maria and Robin's friends than Maria and Robin, and is also why Robin isn't in the first half- I just couldn't find a way to have him there. But I told myself not to overthink (a major problem of mine!!), to keep it simple and make a contribution to Moonacre Week 2022- let's keep this fandom alive folks!!
I hope you found this fun— please let me know if you did! I'll be spending tommorrow writing a very last minute job application (because what better way is there to spend a day off on your birthday??) so it would be a lovely distraction :))