Page 109 of Peregrine's Call
“Robin ordered me not to. She said she didn’t want Geoffrey’s death on her conscience.”
Considering that a combat between Alric and a petty lordling could end only one way, Robin had a point. And Tav didn’t want her to suffer anymore, either.
“How is she?”
Alric rolled one shoulder. “I’ve never been able to read Robin very well. She’s defiant one moment, and then sweet the next. As it turns out, she didn’t actually care for Geoffrey Ballard at all, so that’s a relief. But she hasn’t been the same since she got back. Perhaps you could spend some time with her. She’s always loved seeing you.”
“I would do that in an instant, believe me. But…” He gestured to the table where Drugo, Luc, Rainald, and Rafe were all arguing hotly about some minutia of military planning.
“Go,” Alric said. “If we absolutely need your opinion on how much feed seven hundred horses require, I’ll send word.”
Tav asked every person he saw where Robin was, and eventually learned from one maid that she’d last seen Robin heading outside the manor house. He found his cloak and went after her, a part of him convinced she was running away again.
He looked for her in the dwindling light of the day. The gardens of Cleobury were prepared for winter, with straw laid out over the soil as mulch to keep the frost from killing the bulbs and seeds below. But she wasn’t there.
He walked into the church where candles burned on the altar and everything else was wrapped in velvet shadows of twilight. But she wasn’t there.
Then he looked up and saw a familiar outline on the battlements near the gatehouse. Robin. He took the stairs through the gatehouse to get to the top.
“Robin,” he said, as breathless as if he’d climbed thirty flights of stairs instead of three.
She turned at Octavian’s voice. “Yes?”
“Can we talk?”
After a second’s hesitation, she nodded.
Unfortunately, all words flew out of Tav’s brain then. He struggled to think how to begin. “I heard about…the marriage. I’m sorry you had to go through that. Pierce hurt you just because he could. I thought I was the frog. But you were.”
Robin was perplexed, and rightly so. “The frog?What?”
“Never mind. I’ll explain later.” He knew that wasn’t the right thing to say. Of course it wasn’t. It was inane.
“Anyway. I’m well rid of him,” she responded at last. “Ballard, that is. He wasn’t what I wanted at all.”
“What do you want?”
She caught her lower lip in her teeth for a moment, which caused his body to react in a completely inappropriate way. Then she said, “It seems like such a simple question, doesn’t it? And yet I can’t quite answer it.” She stared out over the trees, unwilling to look at him. A breeze swept up from the stone wall, and she shivered.
Tav moved next to her and wrapped half of his own cloak around her shoulders, drawing her into his warmth. He touched her chin with one finger, trying to turn her face to his. He needed to ask her forgiveness and he couldn’t do that if she wouldn’t look at him.
She resisted, but then suddenly turned toward him and wrapped her arms around his middle, pressing her head to his chest. He inhaled the scent of her hair, which was clean and sharp and green with herbs, and thought he’d never get enough of that smell.
“Tav, I’m so, so sorry.” Her voice was muffled, but he heard the ache in it. “I’ve been so awful. Right from the beginning, I put you in a terrible position, and then when everything became more complicated between us, I kept hounding you for more because I was selfish and curious and I didn’t think what it would mean to you. And then I just fled from the whole thing as if it were something I could outrun, which is madness because how can I outrun myself? And I’m sorry—”
He put a finger on her mouth to hush her. “Robin. I came to apologize to you. Why are you apologizing to me?”
Her eyes widened at his touch. He couldn’t resist running his finger along the softness of her lip, and her lids dropped in a way that made him want to take her somewhere private, preferably that instant.
Robin leaned away a fraction. He dropped his hand, angry that he couldn’t resist touching her even when he was apologizing for touching her.
“May I ask you something?” Robin began.
“Anything.”
“At Martenkeep,” she said, inhaling nervously, “I overheard you speaking to Pierce, and you told him…you told him I could take care of myself. What did you mean by that?”
“Did I say that?” he asked, not remembering the conversation.
