Page 1 of Rogue of the Greenwood
Prologue
July 1804
Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, England
A bird darted frantically about in the branches above, its chirps and chatter an obvious warning to anyone nearby. Marianne Maidland frowned at the noisy creature, hoping its antics would not distract her unwary prey and frighten him off. Papa would have told her to shoot the bird before it could alert the more valuable target, but she didn’t want to shoot the little robin—not this one, at any rate. She had another mark in sight. Ignoring the bird, she pulled her bow taut and waited.
But a voice hissed from a neighboring perch. "Marianne! You cannot shoot him!"
This was not a bird. This was her meddlesome cousin, Meg, awkwardly clinging to the tree she had never wanted to climb in the first place. Marianne frowned at her, too, but kept her eye on the quarry below.
"Indeed I can,” Marianne assured her. “Just watch me!"
“But he’s aperson,” Meg chided.
Marianne shrugged. “He’s just that Locksley boy. Uncle Prinley says the whole Locksley family has nothing but worthless troublemakers.”
“They are stillpeople, Marianne. You cannot shoot him! Besides, I think Robert Locksley fancies you. I noticed him staring at the May festival.”
Marianne had noticed that, too, but herinterpretation had been much different from Meg’s. “He was staring because I ate the last strawberry tart and he had wanted it for himself. Besides, I wouldn’t want Robert Locksley staring at me. We all know he’s slow and thick-headed.”
To prove her point, Marianne let her arrow fly. The bow sang and the nearby bird fluttered away as Marianne’s shaft whooshed by it and arced downward. Her aim was true, and the arrow drove straight into the heavy leather bag that Robert had just dropped on the earth beside him. Marianne assumed it contained his lunch. He whirled, grabbing up his bag and scanning the area for an attacker. Meg gasped in horror.
Marianne merely smiled. Robert Locksley was three years her senior. At nearly sixteen, he seemed almost an old man. Perhaps he was as handsome as the other girls said, but that made no difference to Marianne. She had no intention of becoming one of the simpering little dolls who had no purpose in life but to sit about in flounces and lace, hoping to attract a boy. Especially not the disappointing Robert of Locksley.
“I say! What the ruddy devil do you think you’re doing up there?” he called when his eyes caught sight of her.
“She’s sorry! It was an accident!” Meg said, scurrying down from the tree in the most ungainly tumble of muslin and legs.
Robert looked at his skewered bag then back up at Marianne. “I don’t think it was.”
Slinging her bow onto her back and hiking her skirts, Marianne swung down from the tree, hoisting herself from one branch to the next until finallydropping the last eight or nine feet to land directly in front of Robert.
“It wasn’t,” she confirmed.
“You could have killed me!” he declared.
“I could have,” she said with a shrug. “But I didn’t. What are you going to do about it?”
“I ought to tell your father what a hoyden you are.”
“My father already knows me, and he is perfectly fine with my behavior.”
Robert glared at her. “Well, I am not. You cannot go about shooting at people like this!”
“I wasn’t shooting at you. If I had been, I would have hit you.”
Her words seemed to merely make him angrier. “As if you are some sort of expert marksman!”
“You’re just jealous because you can’t shoot at all!” She laughed at him as his face went red with fury.
“Oh, yes I can.”
Exactly the response she wanted. Before he had time to blink, Marianne whipped her bow around and held it out to him.
“Show me.”
They stood there, bodies tense, eyes locked in silent conflict. She held the bow steady, mere inches from the taller boy’s face. His gaze narrowed as he finally reached his hand upward.
