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"I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU, GRIFFYN RENAUD.'
"I did not say you were afraid of me." A darkened spiral of hair had sprung forward over her forehead and he
brushed it aside with a breath of a kiss. "You are afraid of this," he whispered, trailing the caress to her temple and
down to the curl of her ear. "And this." He bent his head and she felt the black silk of his hair on her cheek. His lips
were on her throat, in the crook of her neck, and she closed her eyes, her breath coming even hotter and faster than
before. Her heart beat with a wildness that frightened her, and she felt as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff,
the hypnotic lure of danger pulling her forward and the safe sanctuary of solid ground calling her back.
"How ... can you expect me to believe you?" she gasped. "After everything that has happened ... the lies, the dis-
honesty, the cruel games"
"That night we spent together at Gaillard was no game."
With her tears spilling faster than she could blink them free, she watched the dark outline of his face bend toward
her.
"Tell me," he rasped, "you do not believe this...."
HIGH PRAISE FOR MARSHA CANHAM, WINNER OF THE ROMANTIC TIMES LIFETIME
ACHIEVEMENT AWARD, AND HER PREVIOUS NOVELS:
ACROSS A MOONLIT SEA
"CANHAM AT HER BEST ... No one tells a swash-buckling tale like she does. The pages snap with witty dialogue
and rich, detailed description."Affaire de Coeur
"[A] TEMPESTUOUS, ADVENTUROUS AND RIP-ROARING HIGH SEAS ADVENTURE ... Marsha Canham
ensures herself a place as queen of romantic adventure."Romantic Times
"A RIVETING ROMANCE ... pulse-pounding action and swashbuckling adventure."Romance Forever
"A FIRESTORM OF DANGER AND DESIRE." Romantic Reader
STRAIGHT FOR THE HEART
STRAIGHT FOR THE HEART GOES STRAIGHT TO THE READER'S HEART with its winning combination of
an absorbing romance and fascinating characters. Marsha Canham has another winner with this dazzling novel that
readers will savor."-Romantic Times
"CANHAM DEALS OUT PLENTY OF SURPRISING TWISTS."Booklist
IN THE SHADOW OF MIDNIGHT
"DEFINITELY ONE OF THE BEST NOVELS OF THE YEAR . . . Marsha Canham has written a fast-paced,
action-packed medieval romance."Affaire de Coeur
"Ms. Canham skillfully blends a great deal of historical detail into this scintillating tale of brave men fighting for
justice and the women who share their dreams." Romantic Times
"DRAMATIC AND SENSUOUS ... MARVELOUS ... OUTSTANDING ... A tale of grand proportions... Top-notch
from start to finish!"Rendezvous
Dell Books by Marsha Canham
PALE MOON RIDER THE BLOOD OF ROSES THE PRIDE OF LIONS ACROSS A MOONLIGHT SEA IN
THE SHADOW OF MIDNIGHT THROUGH A DARK MIST UNDER THE DESERT MOON THE LAST
ARROW MIDNIGHT HONOR
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Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Random House, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as
"unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this
"stripped book."
Copyright © 1997 by Marsha Canham
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the
written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
ISBN: 0-440-22257-5
Printed in the United States of America
Published simultaneously in Canada
May 1997
10 9 8 7
OPM
About eight centuries ago, an unknown bard sat under a tree in the vast expanse of Sherwood Forest and composed a
ballad about a hooded outlaw who robbed from the rich to give to the poor. How could he know he was creating a
legend? This book is dedicated to him, and to all the writers before and since who have made history an exciting and
romantic visit in our imaginations.
Marienne FitzWilliam had blossomed into a beautiful young woman. Because she had not taken any vow of seclu-
sion, she was often sent to the market in Nottingham to trade the linens woven by the nuns of Kirklees. It happened
one day, she was caught in a circle of sunlight, frowning in concentration over a selection of needles and spindles,
when the bored and lecherous eyes of a town official came to settle on the abundance of glossy chestnut curls. His
name was Reginald de Braose and he was in the service of the Sheriff of Nottingham, Guy de Gisbourne.
An ugly man, short of height, overbulked in stature, de Braose's face was ravaged with the scars of a childhood
disease. One eye was coated in a milky-white film, red-rimmed, and leaked fluids that more often than not were left
to dry to a yellow crust in the corners. His hair, brown as dung, lay in greasy spikes against his neck and poked out
from beneath the battered iron dome of his helm. His armor was not the finest. He wore no coif to protect his neck
not that any common man would be fool enough to attack him. His mail hauberk bore definite signs of combat and
was ill repaired in the sleeves and hem; a sorry chain of broken links hung like a frayed iron thread down his thigh.
The surcoat he wore was dull blue with more patches stained from food and drink than were clean. His hose bagged
at the knee. The blade of his sword was pitted and chipped and betrayed no gleam, not even in the bright midday
sun. He looked to the left and to the right, casually nodding to the half-dozen soldiers who lurked in the shadows.
Only one was too preoccupied to nod back. He had a hand down the front of a blowsy wench and was too busy
fondling and pinching to notice his captain's glare.
De Braose and his men had been at the market since dawn. It was the fourth Saturday they had been up before the
crowing of the rooster, turned out of warm beds with empty bellies and foul tempers; this day, like most others, they
had positioned themselves at various vantage points in the market square watching for strangers, following them,
hoping one might lead them to rich rewards. This was not the first time de Braose had seen the little dark-haired
maid. She lived and worked for the nuns at Kirklees Abbey, but she was the most interesting morsel to come into
view so far since the villagers had taken to hiding most of their wives and daughterseven the ugly ones
whenever there were soldiers around.
Yeomen and peasants had started taking to the forests as well, especially those likely to be picked up by the soldiers
and dragged off to the castle for work details. Overtaxed and half starving, they hid what little of value they had; it
was up to the king's men to find it and pry it out of them by whatever methods they deemed necessary. Men forced
to work in the castle could pay a fine and free themselves. Women forced to whore could pay a fineafter their use-
fulness was fully exhaustedand return to their mud-and-wattle homes. Those who thought to struggle or resist
found themselves missing ears or fingers, toes or tongues by way of example to others. It was the same everywhere
in England. The king's treasury was empty and he demanded it be filled. Whether he had to steal taxes from the rich
or bleed it from the poor, it mattered not so long as his stores of jewels and gold were replenished.
In the eleven years since he had taken the throne, John Plantagenet had emptied the treasury many times over. He
had lost the hereditary Angevin lands in Normandy and Brittany to his ineffectual leadership, and turned most of the
English barons against him by using cruelty, repression,
And murder as a means of ruling. Anyone who possessed anything of value found himself robbed of it, or fined for
having it. The king's men scoured the land, inventing new tortures, confiscating properties, ravaging women, and
more and more nobles were questioning their wisdom all those years ago in having supported John's claim to the
throne when they might have had the young and malleable Arthur of Brittany.
Their self-doubts only raised more rumbles of dissent. Where was Prince Arthur? What had happened to him? What
had happened to his sister Eleanor? They were the offspring of John's older brother Geoffrey, and, by right of
succession, Arthur should have inherited the throne upon King Richard's death. Instead, John had snatched the
crown for himself and had thrown Arthur and his sister in prison. Neither had been seen since. There had been
rumors and speculation, of course. A body had been found floating in the River Seine not six months after Arthur's
disappearance. Badly decomposed, it could not be readily identified, but it had bright golden hair and the scraps of
clothing it wore were of the finest, richest quality. Then and now there were murmured convictions that John had
had his nephew murdered, even that he had committed the abhorrent crime himself in one of his fits of rage.
As to the sister Eleanor, she had simply vanished off the face of the earth. There was one whispered tale of her con-
finement in Corfe Castle, of a daring rescue staged by unknown knights, but the whispers faded when it came to the
end of the tale. If she had been rescued, where had she been taken? Who could have possibly kept her hidden for so
many years, and why, why, when England was embroiled in civil unrest, would she not have been brought forth out
of obscurity to lay her rightful claim to the throne?
The king was well aware of the resentment and hostility brewing around him. He had tried, and failed, to gather an
army this past spring to cross the Channel and reclaim his lost territories in Normandy from King Philip of France.
Less than a third of his barons had answered his call to arms, and to repay them for the insult, he had sent them
home in disgrace and hired mercenaries in their stead at a great cost to England's treasury. Defeated by indifference
before he began, he had suffered an abysmal loss in Flanders, at the Battle of Bouvines, and had once again been
sent scurrying back to England, his tail firmly tucked between his legs.
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His rage was then focused on his barons, namely those who had refused to join the ill-fated venture. He was the
king! All of his subjectsnobles, clergy, knights, and peasants alikewere at his mercy, and he was determined to
prove it, even if it meant fining every noble, burning every castle in England, and placing their inhabitants in prison!
To that end, he put vicious, brutal men in positions of power, giving them free rein to rape, steal, murder at whim.
Guy de Gisbourne was one such tyrant who laid no claim to the possession of either a conscience or a willingness to
show mercy. One of his first tasks, upon taking command of Nottingham Castle, had been to fill the donjons with
men and women who owed a tax or were suspected of hoarding profits. His was a garrison of misfits and brutes, his
authority was fire and sword, and few who defied him by word or deed lived to see another dawn. Those meager few
swelled the ranks of the outlaws who had begun to live in the surrounding forests. Gisbourne had put high prices on
their heads, and when they were caught, he had their bodies drawn and quartered, their various parts hung in the
village square until the flesh turned black and fell off the bones.
Only last week Reginald de Braose and his men had caught an outlaw trying to visit his blind sister in the village of
Edwinstow. They had taken both the outlaw and the sister to the sheriffs court, where one had been sentenced to
hang, the other to service the men of the garrison by way of an example to those relatives who might think to offer
succor to their fugitive kinsmen.
* * *
Reginald de Braose watched the maid, Marienne, move away from the milliner's stall and signaled his men. She
would not waste time returning to the abbey now that her linens were sold and her purchases made. Kirklees was a
two-hour walk from the village, most of it through forest thick enough to tint the air green, dense enough to muffle
the loudest screams from unyielding virgins.
A friar was waiting at the edge of the village to escort her back to the abbey, but de Braose was not concerned; most
of the graycloaks flew away like startled moths at the first glint of a sword blade. His men were another matter, for
none of the soldiers in Nottingham liked to venture too deep into Sherwood. The trees seemed taller here, thicker,
denser than anywhere else in England. It was said they were filled with ghostly sentries who whispered alarms and
brought forth demons to slit the throats and spill the entrails of all those who came uninvited into the greenwood.
De Braose did not believe in ghosts or demons. He believed the woods were filled with outlaws and misfits, and he
believed strongly in the reward of a thousand marks Gisbourne was offering for the capture of their leader. No one
had ever seen him without the trademark hood that concealed his features, nor, in truth, could they tell one outlaw
from another, for they all moved like silent, shapeless shadows through the trees. They dressed in drab greens and
browns to blend with the undergrowth, their soft leather jerkins and linsey woolsey making them seem to be appari-
tions, moving from one glade to another like mist. The only warning of their presence was the faint hiss that came
before their arrows struck.
Still, it was a warm day and the thought of sinking himself into such a tender morsel as this dark-haired novitiate
was too sweet to resist. He pushed away from the airless patch of shade that had harbored him, signaling his men to
follow.
"You seem distracted today, Friar," Marienne remarked as she adjusted the weight of the package under her arm.
The monk turned and held her eyes a moment before responding with a self-conscious smile. "You were longer in
the market than you should have been."
"I had a difficult time finding everything on the abbess's list," she said, indicating the two bulky parcels he was
carrying for her. "The sisters were short of many things needles, spices, seed and such. And the tailor haggled
longer than usual over the price he was willing to pay for the linens."
"Everyone is suffering for the king's greed these days. Coins are scarce, generosity a thing of the past. Did you get
the herbs you needed for Sister Bertal?"
She nodded. "Thankfully, yes."
He cast another veiled glance over his shoulder, and this time Marienne joined him in looking back at the tree-lined
road. She could see nothing but the quiet stillness of the greenwood, the majesty of the tall oaks that stretched their
leafy boughs high into the blue vault of the sky. So thick were the branches overhead that not much of the blue could
be seen. Here and there, mottled patches allowed bright streamers of sunlight to slash through the latticework of
branches and leaves, but by the time it reached the earth so far below, the light was diffused to a soft, blurry haze.
And there were so many shades of green! The apple of young saplings, the emerald of ferns, the staunch vert of the
firs, the varying jades, mosses, and olives of the towering oaks, ash, and yew. The air itself seemed shaded, lush
with dew, shimmering like a jewel where the light touched upon it.
So many feared the unearthly silence, the cool shadows, the pungent scent of isolation, but Marienne loved it. She
loved the long walk to Nottingham from Kirklees, and she had hoped this day, like many others, her companion
might be cajoled into veering off the road and taking her deeper into the living heart of Sherwood.
One look at the worried frown on his face that morning had dispelled her hopes. He had tried his best to talk her out
of going to Nottingham at all, claiming the sheriffs spies were everywhere, thick as fleas in an old man's beard. Any
other time the abbess might have agreed with his prudence, but several of the sisters had broken out in a high fever
and painful rash, and their limited supplies of medicine had run perilously low.
The friar had capitulated, but not gracefully, for his feet had moved so quickly on the road Marienne's shorter strides
had been hard pressed to keep his pace. She looked over at him and once more marveled to herself how unlike a friar
he appeared. Over the past decade he had never once dropped his guard or taken any manner of precaution for
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