She nodded, taking it in, then stared him full in the face. “At some point you are going to have to explain to me how you are alive when you should be dead. You know that.”
He held out his hands in petition. “I always intended to explain everything, but once you were engaged, my explanations seemed unimportant.”
“It never felt unimportant.” She heard the pain in her own voice, but she didn’t explain. She feared that if she did, she would open wounds that could never close.
“At some point I will explain everything—I promise—but not tonight. We are tired and hungry, and that makes us both short-tempered and unforgiving.” Adjusting his pack, he pointed her through the forest.
Eventually they reached a section overgrown and impenetrable even in winter, where a thick veil of brambles blocked their path.
“This way.” He pointed into the brambles.
“Through that? You haven’t any way to cut through it, unless that pack happens to contain a machete,” she objected. “Luckily, the ruins are in that direction.” She pointed farther into the forest, away from the brambles before them.
“I didn’t say ruin. I said folly.” He motioned for her to step to the side of a large tree, where the brambles grew up against its trunk. “Follow me?”
“Lovely.” She stared into the thicket. “I’ve recruited Robin Hood to help me escape.”
“I’ve always wanted to be Robin Hood. A gallant outlaw who defends the defenseless. And will you be my Maid Marian, mavourneen?”
She said nothing, just followed him behind the tree. There, at a break in the brambles, he stepped several feet forward, then turned to the side, and disappeared entirely from sight.
She waited a few moments, then called out. “It’s a maze?”
“Nothing so elaborate as that, merely a thick hedge of brambles through which I cut a path at angles. Can you follow me?”
She stepped into the space he’d left, then turned to the side just as he had. She came face-to-face with another hedge of brambles. Bess growled low in her throat and crouched low, as if the brambles were a human adversary.
“Turn back right. Then take two more steps.”
She followed his directions and stepped into a small clearing. Bess, behind her, sniffed the ground. Across from her stood a folly, surrounded by tall trees and the thickets that grew below them.
Em turned around, surveying the area with wonder. “It’s a perfect smuggler’s lair.”
“I was afraid it might become one, if anyone found it. It was one reason I conscripted it myself.”
“Who else knows this is here?”
“Your great-grandfather kept it as a secret hideaway.”
“But who told you?”
“An old man in the village. Your grandfather left him a pension to keep the place up, which he did until shortly before his death. When he learned I was a friend of yours, he gave me directions on how to find my way in and how to trim the thicket to obscure the entrance. After that it was easy. The folly is quite well built.”
“So, let me understand this. My grandfather kept up my great-grandfather’s folly, but never told me about it.”
“He never told your father either. According to his gardener, he wanted a place of peace and calm.”
“Why would his gardener tell you? A stranger, and not me or one of my men.”
“You never offered the right incentive.”
“Which was what?” She rubbed Bess’s ears, the big dog’s head coming roughly to her hip.
“Ah, my lady Marian, would Robin Hood reveal the secrets of those who helped him?”
She rolled her eyes and followed him to the cottage.
After the bramble, their path was easy. The cottage—for it was more a cottage than a ruin—was charming. Built into the side of the hill, the roof was covered with moss and leaves. In the spring, when the grass was full, one could likely stand on the hill-roof and look down into the clearing and never realize there was a lodging below.
The door was heavy, with wide slats nailed together on an angle. The door stuck a bit, but gave way, creaking, when Adam pushed against it with his shoulder.
He stepped back to let her in. “It’s dry enough, and there’s an ingenious fire pit in the wall, allowing you to have a fire without it making too much smoke and revealing your lodging.”
The room was lightly furnished. A heavy wooden table, two open-back chairs, a pot on a spit. In the far corner near the back of the room was a cot. Bess circled the room, inspecting every corner, diligently looking for any hazards.
“I can’t imagine that Robin of Locksley would find this a suitable lodging.”
“Why?” Adam looked around the room, clearly disappointed that she didn’t find it as perfect as he did.
“There’s no escape route.” Em took her seat at the small table. “If the sheriff were to arrive with his men, Robin would be trapped.”
“That is a flaw in the design.” He studied their surroundings, as if he hadn’t seen them before. “But I’m not sure your great-grandfather anticipated this as anything other than a whimsical retreat.”
“I feel neither whimsical nor in the mood for a retreat.” She rested her head on her arms. Bess, unhappy that she couldn’t see Em’s face, stuck her nose inside the bend of Em’s elbow and watched her with one eye.
“We needn’t stay longer than tonight. As soon as the wedding guests have dispersed tomorrow, I can retrieve the carriage and your goods in it.”
“And some other clothes,” she said without thinking, meeting his eyes without raising her head.
His eyes grazed her body, leaving a trail of heat and a melting sensation in her belly. She’d never blushed under Colin’s gaze, but then Colin had never looked at her with Adam’s open hunger. If she’d never known Adam, she wouldn’t have known how much more could exist in a single caress. Or how a single glance would warm her so quickly. She didn’t look away, but instead, gave him her own assessing gaze.
He was handsome as ever, though in a rakish, criminal sort of way. Dark hair curled around his ears and neck, while his eyes—an impenetrable green—seemed to hold all her secrets. His face, though, was thinner, as was his torso. Lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes spoke of pain.
“You’ve been ill. No, not ill. Hurt.” Silently rebuking herself, she wondered how she hadn’t noticed before.
“It’s a hazard of my work. The crimes I investigate often take me to the rookeries and the hells. Death often haunts the places I must go.” His face changed, as if he’d just heard the words he had spoken and wished he could take them back.
“Work. Crimes. Investigate.” She repeated the words, almost to herself, evidence of something she hadn’t seen, but probably should have. She felt her eyes widen as the final piece fell into place. “Which one are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Those names from that silly old book Colin used to name his colleagues in the Home Office.”
“You know about his work for the Home Office?” He watched her face.
“I’ve known Colin Somerville almost my whole life.” She couldn’t keep her voice from sounding annoyed. “I’ve seen him grow from a child into a man. I kissed him goodbye when he went to the wars and woke him from nightmares when he returned. There isn’t a single secret that Colin hasn’t at one time or another shared