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“Robin.”

“Six years I have kept myself alive by assuming the worst of everyone wearing the Crown’s colors. You’re asking me to set that down.”

“I’m not asking you to set anything down.” I waited until she looked at me. “You’re right to be careful. I served the men who killed your father. I didn’t know, and that’s an explanation rather than an excuse. Because I had the whole weight of the shrievalty in my hands and I never once thought to look at his trial until a woman in a forest made me ashamed of myself.”

She was very still.

“So I’ll tell you what I can promise… and, you may measure me against it for as long as you like. Whatever happens between us, I’ll never use it against you. Not as leverage, not as a claim, not as a debt you owe me. If you walk out that door tomorrow and never speak to me again, the evidence about your father still goes before the King, because that is owed to him and not to you.”

“They’d ruin you.” Her voice had gone thin. “Guy, if you take Fitzwalter’s name to the council with no document in your hand, you lose the office, the commission, the house, every year you spent earning any of it.”

“Yes.”

“And you’d do it anyway.”

“I’ve spent twenty years earning a position I was certain would make me a better man.”

“And?”

“And I am beginning to understand that being a better man may cost me the position.”

She moved then, up onto her knees in front of me, close enough that the fire went out of my sight entirely.

“You’re making this very difficult.”

“What?”

“Hating you.”

“Then stop.”

She kissed me, then.

It didn’t stay gentle for long. Yesterday there had been a question inside every part of it, and today there was none. When she took my face in both hands and opened her mouth against mine I stopped pretending I had any intention of being careful with my own composure. Her scent poured off her in waves, slick, heavy, desperate.

I could smell how wet she already was.

She pulled back just far enough to speak, and her breath was unsteady.

“I’m tired of pretending I don’t want this.”

“How long?” I asked.

“How long what?”

“How long have you wanted it? I’d like to know how much of a fool I’ve been by myself.”

Her laugh came out low and shaken. “Blackwater. I sat on that bank with an arrow in me and watched you choose not to use the ford, and I spent the whole ride home furious about it. And I’ve been furious about it ever since.” She brushed her thumb along my jaw. “And you?”

“Longer than I’d admit in daylight.”

She stood up, and she held her hand down to me, and I understood what was being offered with perfect clarity.

I took it.

She brought me to the bed under the eaves and stopped there, which I had not expected and which told me a great deal about her.

“Your side,” she said.