The supposed sighting of Robin Hood in the streets of Nottingham postponed the Council of Nobles, while the sheriff waited eagerly for triumphant news of the outlaw's capture. But Vaisey waited in vain. Once again, Robin Hood evaded those who would seize him, casting Gisbourne into the blackest of moods, and Vaisey into a screaming fit of temper.
When the Council finally did convene, Vaisey could not concentrate on business. Instead, he baited Gisbourne before the nobles, openly mocking and belittling his Master-at Arms' incompetence and ineptitude.
"You overgrown baby!" he shrieked, slamming his fist on the table separating him from Gisbourne, then whining as he cradled it in pain. Wheeling his body around to face the assembled nobility, Vaisey snarled, "My lords, milady, take a look at this man. Notice how he towers above us all. View the broad expanse of his shoulders and his chest, and feast your eyes on how the muscles on his arms bulge through his black leather. A fine speciman, wouldn't you agree, hmm? A clue...NO! For this man...THIS man, for all his mighty brawn, lacks the one muscle necessary, it would seem, to catch Hood! This so called man lacks a BRAIN!"
No one spoke, though one or two better educated than the rest would have liked to correct the sheriff and inform him that the brain was not actually a muscle. But none dared speak. Many trembled in fear, lest the sheriff turn his wild, bulging eyes and viperous tongue on them.
"Council dismissed," Vaisey whined at last, sounding drained and defeated. "Meet back here tomorrow, at today's appointed time. Perhaps, by then, Gisbourne will have done something to earn his keep again, hmm?"
With one final snarl at his Master-at-Arms, Vaisey strutted up the stairs and away from the Great Hall. Everyone, Gisbourne included, breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Marian leaned over her father's chair to ask whether he meant to travel immediately home, or stay to enact further business. They had journeyed sepatately to Nottingham, he, feeling frail, in the carriage, though insisting his daughter enjoy her preferred method of travel on horseback.
From his place across the chamber, Gisbourne watched her every move. His public humiliation unraveled every nerve in his body, exposing them raw, and making him long for someone to blame and belittle.
He exhaled slowly, a long, drawn out breath of heated passion. She was beautiful and desirable. He wanted her, but he was also critical of her today. Her gown was plain and unflattering. Her hair, no matter how well she tried to twist and pin it up, had been chopped short to mark her disgrace. She had rejected his generous offer of a cap to hide her hair, just as she continued to reject him.
Worse than that, one of his soldiers had told him he had spied her in Nottingham, kissing Aylesbury. Those plump rosebud lips that ought to be his alone to kiss, had been kissing that fool! Gisbourne was determined to make her pay.
Striding towards her, Gisbourne first grabbed Martin of Aylesbury by the scruff of his neck and dragged the quaking man across the room, then released him with such force that Aylesbury fell, cracking his jawbone on the stone floor.
"Sir Guy!" Marian's father cried, alarmed.
Marian had been feeling rather sorry for Guy due to the sheriff's abuse, but all sympathy vanished in the face of his brutality. "Are you alright, Martin?" she asked, dropping to her knees beside Aylesbury.
"Better than he'll ever be again," Gisbourne sneered. "I hear that adulterers are stoned in the Holy Land. The sheriff's always looking for new and clever ways to punish the wicked."
Marian immediately understood the source of Gisbourne's jealous anger, and she regretted having involved innocent Martin of Aylesbury, even though it had saved Robin.
"Pardon me, my lord," Aylesbury whimpered nervously. "But there must be some mistake! I am no adulterer!"
"What accusation can you make against this honest husband?" Marian boldly asked.
Gisbourne's nostrils snorted distastefully. "Don't insult me. You paid my soldier two pounds for his silence."
Marian noticed her father begin to grow faint. Her own anger rose up to meet Gisbourne's, yet she did not let it get the better of her. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said, openly meeting Gisbourne's cold, cruel glare with her own steady gaze.
"You are a liar!" Gisbourne sneered. With a swipe of his hand, he reached out and pulled out Marian's hairpins. Her hair, that she had worked so hard to put up, dropped, barely brushing her shoulders.
"Today, in Batley Street, while I was hunting for Hood, you were busy playing whore to this adulterer!"
"How dare you?" Marian demanded.
"No! No!" Martin cried, relieved that he could now clear his name. "I was here, all the time, waiting for the Council to begin! You can ask anyone! Sir Edward, you were here! Wasn't I here, in this very room, the entire morning?"
"He was, Sir Guy," Sir Edward agreed.
For several moments, Gisbourne stared back and forth between the two men. Convinced at last by their innocent faces, he turned to Marian and asked, in a deathly cold tone, "Then who exactly were you kissing?"