A Place to Call Home Chapter 4, a robin hood bbc fanfic

Title: A Place to Call Home, Chapter Four (5/?)

Rating: This chapter: PG

Characters: Guy/Marian

Summary: "I do not love you," she cried in frustration. "Why do you want me?"

A/N: I've set this story immediately after the events of the first season finale. However, I have included information derived from subsequent episodes, in particular from season three's "Bad Blood" used here for my purposes as source material and plot motives for the characters.

As a further note, I personally found the character of Isabella to be a tired and terrible plot contrivance, so for my purposes, she never existed. Guy was raised an only child.

Chapter Four

It started with a kiss.

Encouraged by Marian's more welcoming behavior, Guy made the decision to change the course of his marriage.

Thus far, he had been willing – if not content – to allow her to set the pace. He took it as a good omen that she was working toward making the manor her home. But it was her willingness to take his tastes and comforts into consideration which spurred him to push forward. For all that she was willing to assume the role of lady of the manor; he knew that she was far from willing to assume the role of wife. At night she continued to cling to her side of the mattress, her body tense and wary, until she relaxed into sleep. Lying beside her, unable to touch, was a torture. That he knew she was pining for Hood only added to his suffering.

Seeing the other man walking across the field toward the forest in those first days after their marriage, Guy had raced out of the house, intent on ending things once and for all. His first reaction had been the familiar burning rage he always felt upon laying eyes on Robin of Locksley. But when he saw Marian, something changed.

It galled him to know that Marian had been alone in the stable with Hood and he was tormented by the knowledge that the outlaw had her love. Her tear-streaked face as she had walked toward him brought to life the fierce jealousy which always simmered below the surface. But it was the very fact that she was walking toward him which prevented Guy from chasing down the other man. The fact that this time she had not ridden off with Hood, but had instead returned to the manor of her own will. Her slumped posture, but determined stride spoke of her intent to stay, and in that moment, Guy made the decision to let Hood go free.

He did not do it selflessly, or out of love. But rather, his decision was made out of a sense of fair play – something he had long thought dead within him. He made it out of a sense of owing something to her in acknowledgment of the choice she had made. That he recognized there would be no forgiveness from her if he had killed Hood had also kept him firmly rooted in place.

And now it felt as if something important between them had changed. Her gentle teasing over the morning meal, and the fact that her reaction to his kiss was one of being more startled than dismayed, encouraged him.

It was time, he thought, to give her a little push.

It started with a kiss.

Guy's obvious exasperation with her chatter during those first two shared meals had amused Marian, especially because she knew that he thought he had kept his frustration hidden. He had accepted her gentle jibes with an unexpectedly good nature and she had seen an easing of his usually grim features.

The soft brush of his lips across her forehead seemed a friendly punctuation to the first truly civil exchange between them. So, when he pressed his lips against her cheek before they retired for the evening a few days later, or dropped a seemingly absentminded kiss on the tip of her nose when leaving for Nottingham one morning, she accepted it in the same manner.

So she was unsurprised another day when he lowered his head to hers as they arose from the breakfast table. But instead of a simple peck on the cheek, his lips had fallen in a whisper-soft caress at the corner of her mouth and she felt her heart slam against her breastbone in response. She thought she heard him wishing her a good day through the sudden roaring in her ears and she shook her head to clear it. She watched him walk toward his waiting mount, seemingly unfazed by something that had left her momentarily shaken.

And on the next day – and the day after that – it was the same. An almost kiss, glancing off the corner of her mouth, first one side and then the other. Or, somehow just as unnerving, nothing more than the simple scrape of his roughened jaw against her smooth cheek.

And each time, the same disturbing reaction on her part – breath catching in her throat, heartbeat racing out of control.

She was off-balance. Out of her element. Somehow, something had shifted between them and she found herself ill-prepared to deal with it.

She rationalized that her accelerated heartbeat and inability to breathe properly were simple signs of her anxiety over his sudden attentions. And she viciously squashed the tiny voice that whispered for more. So when two and then three days passed without his attempting to kiss her again, she assured herself that she was relieved.

"I am going to retire for the evening." Marian set aside her mending and rose from her seat near the hearth. Guy glanced up from reading his steward's reports.

"Tomorrow is the day you visit your father, is it not?"

"Yes. He misses me and I want to make sure that he is being well taken care of now that I –"

"You do not have to explain, Marian. I know you enjoy these visits with your father." Guy stood and gestured for her to precede him up the stairs. "I would speak with you on another matter."

He pushed open the door to their chamber and stepped aside so that she could enter. He followed her into the room and closed the door behind him. Leaning against it, he stared at her for a long moment.

Growing uncomfortable under his steady regard, Marian let out a light laugh to cover her nervousness.

"You wished to speak with me, my lord?"

He blinked and shook his head as if to clear it.

"Yes. Marian, you may have noticed that I have done my best to keep you from the castle and away from the Sheriff."

"I have," she nodded cautiously.

"The Sheriff is easily distracted," he sighed, "and often with him out-of-sight means out-of-mind. That is what I hoped to accomplish by keeping you and your father away from Nottingham."

Again she nodded. "I understand."

"But the Sheriff is having guests –"

"Who?"

"The Lord of Wykeham and his wife."

"Why? What does the Sheriff want of them?" she demanded.

"The reason is unimportant," Guy said sharply. "The fact that the Sheriff commands your presence is."

"When?" Marian's face wrinkled in disgust.

"Two nights hence." He reached for her hand and drew her close. "Wear something subdued," he urged. "And do nothing which will draw his attention. He enjoys baiting you."

"But why?" she cried.

"Because you respond so fiercely." He squeezed her hand. "He sees you as an adversary and he likes nothing better than to try to humiliate and break anyone who stands in his path. He will do anything; use anyone against his opponent if he thinks it will force them to heel. Do not give him the opportunity."

"How can you work for such an odious man?" she cried.

He drew himself to his full height. "I have my reasons," he told her stiffly. "And I am sure you would find none of them to be acceptable." He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

"Let us just try to get through the evening without giving him cause to humble you."

Marian opened her mouth as if to argue, but something in his eyes – a look of worry, or weariness – caused her to subside.

"Is my father expected to –"

"No. I have arranged it so that your father's presence is not required."

She let out a sigh of relief. "Thank you." She tightened her fingers around his and offered him a hesitant smile.

Guy's lips quirked upward in response and the tension between them eased. "I need to go back down and finish reviewing those reports," he told her as he idly toyed with her fingers. "I shall likely be gone before you awaken tomorrow. Please give my regards to your father."

He lowered his head to hers and brushed his lips against the corner of her mouth in a lingering caress. She turned her head (away she would vow to herself later) so that when he moved to press his mouth against the other corner of hers, their lips met.

Marian trembled and was dimly aware of an identical shudder passing through his frame as he cupped her face in his hands. His mouth moved against hers, gently at first, nibbling on the soft fullness of her lower lip and then roving over the curved bow of the upper. She wrapped her fingers around his wrists and was unsure whether her intent was to pull his hands away or to keep him close. She lost all track of time and place – her whole world was narrowed onto the joining of their lips.

"Marian." He groaned her name and wrapping his arms around her, turned until she was trapped between the heavy weight of his body and the thick wood of the door at her back. He lifted his mouth briefly, long enough only for them both to drag air into their lungs before returning to her mouth.

"Again," he said and deepened the kiss – a slow, wet exploration of her mouth, muffling the moan which slipped from her. He tore his mouth from hers and slid his lips along the column of her throat and laved his tongue over the place where her pulse madly fluttered. Her head fell back against the door and it was the slight pain of that contact which brought her back to her senses.

"My lord." She arched her back in an attempt to put some distance between them and instead brushed even more intimately against him. "Stop. Please."

"Marian." Again, her name escaped him on a long groan and he leaned his forehead against the door, so close that she could feel the moist heat of his ragged breath against her cheek as he fought to bring himself under control. At length his hands fell from her body and he straightened his back. Marian fixed her gaze on the center of his chest and waited for him to step away.

"Guy," she whispered. "The hour grows late and I am tired."

"If you wish me to go, you need only release me."

A hot flush of embarrassment and arousal stained her cheeks as she yanked back her arms which had at some point wound themselves around his neck and lowered her heels to the floor. She knotted her fingers into the fabric of her skirt and stepped away from him.

"It is late," she repeated, her gaze fixed on the floor. "I am tired."

Guy reached behind her and wrapped his hand around the handle of the door and pulled. The inward swing of the door, forced her to take a step toward him and once again their bodies brushed.

"Sleep well, my lady," he murmured against her hot cheek.

And stepping into the hall, he could not help but smile, content to know that her sleep would be as disturbed as his own that night.

TBC