Muttering a litany of words so colorful they would have even the most leathery patrons at the local tavern raising an eyebrow or two, Regina darts up the remainder of the stairs and down two doors on the right as quickly as her trembling legs can carry her. The festive sounds of the townsfolk below, high off royal contact and drunk on mulled wine, travel through the ventilation slits and she sighs, resentful but relieved all the same that the party carries on.
The last thing she needs is for Robin to catch her lurking in his rooms, trying to set something on fire.
Shutting the door behind her, she leans against it as she gulps down a breath or two, waits for her heart rate to slow. There's a stale, dusty quality about the place, by nature of its chronically uninhabited state, devoid of any warmth or particular scent unique to its current occupant. Only the four-poster canopy of vibrant green, resting in the center of the room atop a bearskin rug, looks vaguely personalized, and even then it appears stiff from disuse.
Regina tears her eyes away from the bed. Crouching in front of the chimneypiece, she grabs the flint and steel blade from under the pile of logs. Her fingers shake as she strikes them together, showering the floor with flimsy, pathetic-looking sparks. The knife slips from her grasp and she shudders as the blunt edge slices through the skin of her palm, deep enough to draw blood.
"Damn it," she curses under her breath, tossing the sooty flint aside to examine her wound more closely. She swipes angrily at the bead of sweat that trickles down her temple, scowling when a wayward drop of blood lands on her skirts. This damn dress is the only halfway decent thing she owns—and again, the reminder of how she'd had a certain pair of bright blue eyes in mind as she dressed that morning, a giddy bounce in her step—
She can't cry. She won't cry.
She's finally managed a substantial enough spark to prod at with the brass poker when the doorknob turns with a startling rattle, and she barely has the time to glance up as the wooden panel swings wide open.
He looks just as shocked to see her there as she does him.
Regina's on her feet in an instant, the poker dangling uselessly from her fingertips. "My Lord," she mutters, dipping mechanically into the start of a curtsy, but then he's striding forward and reaching out, halting her with a gentle hand on her elbow.
"Please," he protests. "Robin."
"So that is your name, then?" she asks accusingly.
"It is," he says, head dipping down in affirmation, "Robin. Robin of Locksley." He clears his throat then. "Milady, can you…forgive me for my little masquerade yesterday?"
"It depends," Regina spits out mutinously before she can help it. Her sharp tongue is what has earned her all the scars on her back, until last night; she has only her stupidity to blame for the new ones that will form there. "Are you going to have my head if I don't?"
His lips quirk upward, but then he looks completely serious as he tells her, "I'll gladly have your head if it comes with the rest of you as well."
Regina's cheeks warm as he seems to only just realize what he said, and at least has the decency to look properly chagrined.
"I must beg your forgiveness a third time, I'm afraid. I can't say I'm terribly skilled at this."
"Oh, on the contrary," she disagrees with quiet fury as the fire beside her finally spits and crackles to life, bathing her in its warm light. "I'd say you were quite successful."
He looks confused. "What do you—"
"Because if it was your plan all along to make me feel like an absolute idiot," she continues, fuming, "then yes, congratulations, you're just as talented as your mother has always boasted you to be!"
Robin's brow draws downward and he opens his mouth, to make some lame objection or excuse, no doubt, when she catches sight of her appearance in the looking glass propped up against the wall behind him, and the rather fetching combination of soot, sweat and blood she sees glaring back at her only serves to heighten her indignation.
Well. If he'd had any doubts about whether or not to prolong the charade from yesterday, this will surely have set his head his straight.
"So now that you've had your bit of fun," Regina begins coldly, faltering only the slightest when she detects a glint of—is that anger?—flashing in his eyes, "if you'll excuse me, My Lord, I'll be on my way." She makes to storm out, forgetting momentarily that she has yet to let go of the fire poker, when he steps in to block her path.
"Wait—" He appears genuinely flustered now. "Is that what you think this was all about? Me having my fun?"
Honestly, Regina seethes, nettled by the absolute earnestness, the pleading, in his eyes; none of this is making any sense to her. "Well if that's not what this is about, then what is it?"
Robin shrugs helplessly. "I haven't been able to stop thinking about you since the first moment I saw you."
"Oh, right, perfect," she scoffs in disbelief, "So you thought you'd go and dress up as a servant? To stoop to my level? To make you, what, more relatable to me?" If that isn't the most egocentric—patronizing—arrogant thing of all things he could possibly do—
"Well," Robin attempts to reason, holding out a placating hand as though this is somehow her fault, as though she's picked an argument about something as perfectly mundane as the weather, "would you have given me the time of day if I had gone as…this?" And he gestures to the restrictive elegance of his attire, the vest already unfastened and tossed carelessly over his shoulder. He drags it off, drops it to the floor now as he steps cautiously toward her.
Perhaps he has a point, but, "I never should have given you the time of anything," Regina states heatedly, refusing to budge on principle, and then she's regretting it instantly as he advances to a stop mere inches from her face. Her free hand scrambles backward, palm flattening against the heated stone setting of the chimneypiece to anchor herself in place. Now would be a terrible time to lose her nerve, or her balance, although he's making it that much harder not to as he continues to close what little distance is left between them, and in an attempt to prevent her chest from pressing into his, she finds herself with her back pressed flush against the wall instead.
Robin is regarding her now with that same mesmerized look as before as his hand lifts tentatively up, and when he starts to rub the soot off her cheek with the pad of his thumb, she nearly stops breathing.
"I'm disgusting," she mumbles, his touch so tender against her filthy, ashen skin that it physically pains her, produces an ache inside her chest where her heart has been hammering for a way out.
"On the contrary," he throws her words gently back at her, tilting her chin up with his other hand until her eyes are forced to meet his, blue and electrifying, "you look as stunning as ever."
"What is wrong with you?" she bursts out in a huff of air, exasperated, thrilled and utterly petrified.
"The only thing wrong with me," he replies calmly, "is that I have yet to do what I've been meaning to do since the day we met."
"And what's that," she starts to grouch, but Robin cuts her firmly off as he lowers his lips to hers. Her gasp of surprise is muffled against his mouth, warm and impossibly soft, pressing kiss after kiss into her clumsy, shell-shocked lips as his thumbs caress her cheeks. When she finally parts them with a sigh he lets out a strangled groan, as though it has taken him a considerable amount of effort to hold back until now, and hauls her body flush up to his chest, tongue sliding into her mouth and finding hers, deepening the kiss. The poker slips, clatters to the floor as her hand fists into the fabric of his shirtsleeve, and she feels his fingers do the same at the base of her neck, tugging gently at her hair so he can angle his mouth, move it against hers with a growing sense of desperation.
The sudden recollection of her bleeding hand tears through the foggy euphoria in her mind. She pulls away from him to assess the damage through unfocused eyes, noting the fresh bloodstains on his tunic.
"I'm sorry," she says, aghast, but he couldn't possibly care less about his ruined clothes, is grabbing for her hand instead.
"Why are you bleeding?" he asks, voice rasping slightly, still looking somewhat dazed from their kisses. She manages to stammer something about the fire not starting properly, and her dropping the steel blade, before the words trail off into nothing but air; and then she can only stare in fascination as he brings her hand up to his face, planting a soft kiss into her wounded palm.
She wonders how this man can possibly be real.
"You'd best leave that sort of thing up to me from now on," he tells her gravely, and she's about to retort that that would be the last thing she'd ever do, especially given the unprecedented amount of grief she'd been subjected to after doing so yesterday, when he proceeds to kiss the scowl off her lips, warm hand cupping her face, fingers splaying around her neck, and she melts into him despite her best intentions to stay cold, unmoving.
The fire crackles pleasantly as Robin snakes an arm around her waist, pulling her close. His mouth drags across hers languidly, tugging her bottom lip in between his teeth with a gentle bite, then a soothing swipe of his tongue. She luxuriates in his kisses, in the heat that's coming from all sides her, from the hard lines of his chest beneath her fingertips to the flames licking at the logs behind where she stands, spreading through to every nerve ending in her body. Toes curling at the sensation, she feels herself free-falling even as she stands, a heady state of weightlessness and bliss, and his hand travels up the small of her back, supporting her, keeping her upright—
Regina cries out and wrenches away.
"What is it?" Robin gasps, starting forward, but she puts a hand out to stop him. Her back is burning fiercely, she can feel the gashes reopening at the edges where he had unwittingly gripped with too much force.
"I'm sorry," it is his turn to say, completely distraught, "have—have I hurt you?" He looks ill at the very prospect of it.
"I'm—I'm fine," she tells him hurriedly, though he doesn't seem the least bit convinced. "I just—" and she racks her brain for something, anything, to distract him from how she can't stop grimacing, holding her back at an awkward angle, and then she finds it, latches on to the rage she'd felt earlier with more bite than she feels now.
"My Lord," she starts, chin setting stubbornly, and he winces at the term, and at the iciness coating her voice, "I'm not going to be your…your…your token scullery mistress!"
Robin rears back, looking positively stunned. "That's what you think this is? Still?"
"What else am I supposed to think?" she hisses, flinching again when a needle-like pain prickles up and down her back.
He mistakes her discomfort for something else, rubbing his face between his hands in abject frustration. "I can only speak to the fact that ever since I—"
"Yes, you keep saying that," she mutters angrily, trying to hold her spine ramrod straight. "How lucky for me to have captured and retained your attention for more than twenty-four hours." She refuses to be the unwitting damsel to his fickle, besotted, lovesick Romeo.
Robin shakes his head furiously. "Regina—" But he realizes his slip-up the same time she does.
Her wide eyes snap up to his guilty ones, the throbbing pangs in her back temporarily forgotten. "You—what did you just call me?" He'd never asked for her name.
His answering smile is exceptionally sheepish. "You don't remember me, do you?"
"What," she splutters, thinking he's resorted to speaking nonsense. "Should I?"
"Perhaps this shall jog your memory." She frowns as he steps close to her again, wondering what on earth he's going on about, when he lifts the lock of hair that's fallen across his forehead, and she sees it, near the corner of his eye, traveling up into his brow—it's faint, thin as a paper's edge, but it's there—a scar.
A young boy darts across her mind, emitting peels of laughter as she chases him down on spindly legs that she has yet to grow in to, catches the idiot by surprise with her remarkably deadly aim. She can't recall the details of his face, though she hadn't needed to in order to ensure her apple hit its mark; but then, there are a lot of things about that dark period in her life she'd prefer to abandon from her memory—the same way her mother had abandoned her—had she a choice in the matter.
"You," Regina breathes finally. "You're the thief!"
"Guilty." He grins crookedly at her. "You wouldn't give me the time of day, even back then."
"You idiot," is the only thing she can manage to say as her breathing struggles to return to normal. "You stole my apples." All this time…all those years…
And it turns out she was the one who never knew he existed.
She can't decide whether to be proud, or mortified, or both.
"Well, in my defense," Robin is saying innocently now, "you wouldn't have paid me any attention otherwise." He pauses. "My mother was quite beside herself that day when I couldn't explain to her why my face was bleeding so profusely." He then takes Regina's injured hand into his, trailing a finger alongside the cut that will surely scar. "However, it was worth every moment."
She harrumphs at that. "Really. You think stealing ended up doing you any favors?"
He smiles impishly, eyes full of blue and mischief. "I'd dare say it has now."
Regina would be furious at the audacity of his remark if she didn't secretly agree. When he tentatively draws her to him again, hands falling gently to either side of her hips this time, she lets him, lips parting to welcome his kiss, and maybe she will learn to regret this later, but not now, never now.
.
.
.
Over the course of the next several days, the castle entertains an endless circulation of esteemed guests who have come to pay their respects to Robin of Locksley. Regina finds she has very little time to do much else than cook, clean and cook some more; nothing demonstrates hospitality quite like a constant supply of handpicked fruits, or a pot of freshly brewed tea and a jarful of honey, procured just that morning, to be served at any moment's notice throughout the afternoon.
And yet, somehow, he still devises a way to carve out some of that time to claim as his own, whisking her off mid-sweep into a dark corner where he can kiss her soundly until she shoves him off with a palm to his chest, griping that she still has the entire west wing to clean if he expects her to be able to meet him at the stables later that evening. When she discovers that the chandeliers have been miraculously polished to a blinding gold finish, all the hearths are roaring with a strong fire, and the aroma of maplewood and cinnamon permeates every room, she strongly suspects he has had something to do with it—accuses him of just as much that night as Shadowfax takes them deep into Sherwood Forest, but he only shrugs, silencing her with a smirk and another kiss.
Whenever Regina encounters him during the day, at mealtimes while his mother fusses over and smothers him with loud, adoring comments, or in the castle corridors while he's busy engaging with distant relatives and the like, she says nothing; but he nods, smiles, politely addressing her, "Milady," and the intensity of his gaze follows her all the way down the hall and out of sight, burning through her just as much as it had the first day they—at least officially—met.
On occasion, when she's resting with her back snuggled into his chest, half-asleep on the chaise in his room after hours of conversation trading stories of their childhoods (and the few times they've intersected, though she has no recollection of them, and he can recall the sting of her rejection as vividly as if it were yesterday), she considers telling him the truth about the marks there. They've been healing up quite nicely over the last few weeks, though, and she thinks, well, really, he's better off not knowing anyway. No good can come of it.
.
.
.
"Don't you look pleased as a summertime peach," Mrs. Lucas declares brassily as Regina returns to the kitchens balancing a large pot of vegetable and rabbit stew she's just distributed into all the bowls at the dinner table.
"I don't know what you mean," Regina responds tartly as she sets the pot down, but she can't get rid of the damn smile that's betrayed her to Mrs. Lucas, and the older woman raises a disapproving eyebrow.
"You keep your heart close to where you can see it at all times, you hear?" the housekeeper demands, and Regina's smile finally falters.
"That's what I thought," grumbles Mrs. Lucas, brandishing the rag she's been using to scratch at some food crusted to a plate and then tossing it aside with uncharacteristic vehemence. "You're being careless, child. People have started to talk. Not any people who matter, mind you, but you never—never—want people to talk. Nothing good can come of it."
Regina is in the process of heaving a roast duck out of the hot stone pit when the warning made clear in Mrs. Lucas' words fully registers—words she had herself thought, then dismissed, and now she sees what an incredible fool she has been to think she could live in this fairy tale for as long as she has.
"You do know why he's back, don't you?"
Regina can't trust herself to speak, can only shake her head in a silent 'no.'
"The marchioness means to find her son a wife."
Her hand slips, landing on a wayward ember. She jerks away, but not quickly enough; it's too late, the burn has already marked her skin, the pain nearly unbearable, and she bites her tongue to keep from crying.
.
.
.
The Duke of Nottingham, the marchioness' younger brother, comes to visit his beloved nephew the following day. Robin is regaling his uncle with recounts of his travels, and their laughter reverberates throughout the dining hall as Regina comes in with fresh-cut melon, cheese and eggs on a silver tray.
"Well aren't you a darling little thing," the Duke winks at her as she sets it down before him. "Tell me, something, Robin," and he claps him on the back in an excessive show of fraternal pride, "when do you plan on finding yourself a pretty pet such as this one to settle down with?"
Regina's hand trembles as she refills the Duke's goblet, the amber liquid sloshing over the sides and staining the tablecloth. Murmuring an apology, she's lifting her apron to soak up what she can when the marchioness waves her impatiently off the way one might a housefly.
"I've been wondering the same, dear brother," flutters the woman, suddenly in great spirits, "and I think I know just the thing!"
"Do tell, dear sister," the Duke chuckles boisterously as he spears a bit of cantaloupe and tosses it into his mouth, giving it a vigorous chew. Robin, meanwhile, has grown silent.
"A series of balls," the marchioness is practically beaming as Regina forces herself to turn back in the direction of the kitchens, her feet graceless and heavy as though her bones have been replaced by lead; she's careful not to meet Robin's eye as she passes, though she detects the sudden tension that lines his shoulders as his mother trills on, "to host all the—eligible—pretty young things throughout the kingdom. I've already spoken with Lady Fitzwalter, and she's most thrilled—her daughter, Marian, let me assure you, is of a beauty simply unparalleled—"
Their voices grow thinner, tinier with the distance Regina puts between them, until the Duke inquires as to something along the lines of when to anticipate such a joyous occasion, to which the marchioness answers, loudly, "Tonight! The first one shall be held tonight!"
.
.
.
Robin finds her in his bedchambers that afternoon as she's laying out the regalia his mother had fairly demanded she procure for him from the marquis' own private wardrobe, a vintage ensemble of sartorial splendor. ("Sure to catch and hold every young lady's eye tonight," she had boasted, and Regina knows this to be true, her heart positively aching at the thought.)
Ignoring her protests, he convinces her to stay a while, all right, but only for a moment, she tells him in a tone that leaves no room for him to argue, and he reluctantly agrees.
"What have you done to your hand this time?" he murmurs, caressing the heat blister that has formed on her palm. It lies adjacent to the well-healed scar from the blade that currently rests in his chimneypiece, across from where they sit on the bearskin rug.
"Just a burn," she says, then, as he's lifting her hand to his lips to brush a kiss there, she pulls away. "I should go. You need to get ready."
Robin stands as she does, and her eyes only burn more and more the longer she is unable to look at him. He reaches for her elbow but she twists out of his grasp, ducking her head to hide her tears as she heads for the door.
"Regina," she hears him start behind her, but she's gone.
.
.
.
The sun recedes into the horizon and night descends, black as the vice around her heart. Mrs. Lucas takes pity on her, gives her the evening off—the woman's way of saying "I told you so," Regina thinks darkly, but she expresses her gratitude and retreats to her quarters, thumbing blindly through her books by the remaining light of her candle. She pauses every time she hears a carriage jingle its way up through the castle gates, carrying with it yet another family of suitable nobility, yet another daughter whose delighted laughter upon being greeted at the door by the marquis and his wife tinkles through the crisp night air, filters through Regina's open window.
When she's read the same sentence over and over until her candle finally burns out, Regina hesitates for a moment as she comes to her decision, then tiptoes out of her room. The music that trickles quietly through the corridors grows louder with every step, swelling in its grandeur as she reaches the door and slips inside. She sneaks her way across the upper tier of the balcony overlooking the vast ballroom floor until she's plastered behind a large marble column, drawing one of the velvet curtains over her frame for good measure so only her eyes peek out from behind them.
It's a spectacle of color, blurred in constant motion, as scores of gentlemen proffer their elbows for a dance or two, attempting to occupy the ladies' attentions though they're clearly drawn elsewhere; every woman, each somehow even more beautiful than the next, is craning her neck to locate the son of the marquis, this dashing, young and adventurous Robin of Locksley.
Regina does the same now as she scans the crowd, her heart taking a leap when she sees him standing off to the side by a banquet table, but then it plummets almost instantly. He looks to be in quiet conversation with someone—a stunning creature in an elegant white dress, transcendent in its simplicity, with loose brown curls that frame an exotic face and fall onto slender shoulders of smooth olive skin.
She has no way of knowing for sure, but she's certain all the same, that the woman who smiles dazzlingly at Robin now—with a hand on his forearm as they join the sea of couples and the music slows to a waltz—is her, Marian, and the marchioness was right; she is unparalleled in her beauty, and utterly incapable of looking away from him.
That night, it rains.
.
.
.
"Do be a dear," says the marchioness the following morning, sounding bored as Regina lowers the woman's feet into a basin of steaming hot water, "and run some extra blankets up to Robin's bedchambers. He'll catch a dreadful cold with this change in weather."
Regina takes the steps up two at a time, tripping inelegantly over the folds of cloth that come unraveled in her haste to see him, to know that he will still look at her today the same way he always has, that last night hasn't changed a thing. She reasons that he probably stopped by her room, as he does every night, after the ball concluded, but she must have cried herself into such a deep sleep that she wouldn't have known.
She tells herself she wouldn't have known.
She slows her pace when she reaches the top of the stairs, attempts to brush out the tangled knots of her hair before declaring it a lost cause. Robin's always told her how he rather prefers it that way, wild and free for him to bury his fingers in, but that was before he had swarms of other women all too willing to offer him the same—and then her—
No. She can't let her mind wander there and drag her heart along with it. Trying to banish all further thoughts of Marian, she has her knuckles poised to knock on the wooden panel of his door when she hears a cry issuing from within, almost as though someone's in pain. But then the sound takes on an entirely different tenor, melting into a low moan now, one of unmistakable ecstasy.
The blankets tumble to the ground from her arms as she cups her palms over her mouth, stifling her gasp of surprise.
"Mmm," comes a throaty voice, "oh, yes…yes! Robin—don't stop—"
Regina shakes her head as though to rid it of the sound, clearly she's hallucinating, there's no other explanation—but no, it must be real, because she can feel it lance straight through her heart as sharp as an arrow. The woman is shouting his name now, punctuated by the enthusiastic creak of the bed board, and then his husky, answering groan—Regina whips around, struggling to breathe as she stumbles blindly back the way she came. With one hand still clamped over her mouth, she drags the other pitifully across the wall, and the grief intoxicates her senses, suffocating her as she stumbles around the corner.
She barrels into something hard, nearly knocking her off her feet.
He reaches out gentle hands to steady her at the shoulders, and then he's murmuring, "Well this is a pleasant surprise," his fingers already tucking a stray curl behind her ear, lingering there, and she feels his lips brush against her forehead. Robin. Her eyes flutter shut, breathing still erratic, while her hands curl into his chest, and despite the heat that emanates there, the thump-thump of his heartbeat into her palms, she's half-convinced she's still hallucinating. How is this possible? How is he here?
"To what do I owe the—" but he cuts off when his thumb catches a tear as it slides treacherously out of the corner of one eye. "Regina? Are you all right? You're trembling."
She shakes her head. No. No, I'm not all right.
"About yesterday," he starts, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry—I shouldn't have let you walk away—"
When she still doesn't respond, he grasps her chin in his hand, tender yet firm. "Regina, what is it?"
But he hears the sounds soon enough, guesses immediately the dark place where her mind has gone, and as his eyes finally register the pile of blankets outside his door, his lips tighten into a thin line and he asks her, voice dangerously low, "Did my mother put you up to this?"
Oh, God.
"She knows," Regina finally speaks, horror in her heart. "Your mother knows."