With her husband’s death only six months past, she acquired a portion of his estates. Thus, at the age of twenty, Marian had become a wealthy woman whose marriage could be used for political alliance. Five months ago, the king had ordered her to the queen’s holdings in Aquitaine to await the queen’s imminent return from the Holy Land . . . and a decision about a future husband.

Now that Eleanor had been back in Aquitaine for some months and renewed her friendship with Marian, she’d had her own purposes for sending Marian on to her younger son’s court: to spy on her son in advance of the queen’s own arrival.

Marian had heard rumors of what John Lackland’s court was like, and they had left her wondering whether she had more to fear in the forest or at her destination.

No sooner had she those thoughts than the wagon lurched to a halt.

“What ho!” came a shout from Bruse, her master-at-arms.

Marian sat up, ignoring the stifled shriek of her maid, who’d done nothing but hold her prayer beads and move her lips soundlessly during the entire journey. Her heart pounding, she looked out the window again just as a loud thump came on the roof above her, followed by a second and third. Ethelberga, the maid, gave a full-blooded shriek and dived to the floor, screeching in English about how they would all be dead in mere moments.

Marian forbore to point out that it was unlikely anyone would be killed, even as she pulled the dagger from her sheath. The thieves would merely want to relieve her of her valuables, and, in the very worst-case scenario, take Marian off for ransom. She hadn’t heard of this Robin Hood killing anyone, and in any case a thief wouldn’t be foolish enough to harm a gentle-born woman. Although, she thought, looking wryly at Ethelberga, mayhap they might be induced to put the lady’s maid out of her misery if she didn’t stop wailing.