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“They have Robynne!”
I stared. “What?”
“Wait — they have Marian too?” Willa cried.
A moment of chaos ensued, and even then, I did a double take.
“Wait. What are you doing here?” I asked Willa and John.
“Long story,” she muttered darkly. “You first.”
Speaking so quickly I stumbled over my own words, I explained what had happened in Winthrop.
“Damn the king’s scheming brother,” John — the bear shifter, not the prince — growled.
“What about you two?” I asked. “What happened at the abbey?”
“The plan worked as far as the monks not realizing it was me, not Marian, in the library,” Willa said. “But then a cohort of soldiers arrived to escort Marian to Nottingham.”
“On whose orders?” I growled.
“Who else?” John muttered.
I bared my teeth. “Lady Thornton?”
Willa nodded glumly. “We had no choice but to fight our way out of there. They followed us into the woods, but once we shifted into bear form, they changed their minds — quickly.” She flashed a little smile.
At least there was that — Willa and John were safe. But what about Robynne?
Then Willa’s smile faded. “It never occurred to us what Lady Thornton would do next.”
I shuddered to think what it might be. There was no limit to the ugly things that woman’s mind was capable of.
Willa looked at John, then me. “Lady Thornton took Bess and her children as hostages. She threatened to kill one child every hour until Marian turned herself in.”
The blood drained from my cheeks. Bess? The children?
Then I gulped. Had I unwittingly given Lady Thornton the idea?
They promised not to hurt anyone else if I cooperated… I’d told her that day she’d interrogated me in Nottingham.
Not a bad strategy, she’d mused.
I felt sick.
Of course, Marian would have surrendered herself immediately, even if it meant her own life. But seeing as Marian hadn’t known…
Robert’s voice cracked when he filled in the rest. “Robynne decided to turn herself in instead.”
“She should have let me go in her place,” John growled.
Willa touched his arm. “Her plan made sense. But now…”
When she trailed off, a deathly silence fell over the camp. Now, everything had gone wrong.
I cursed. “Why would Robynne turn herself in? She knows Lady Thornton can’t be trusted.”
“We worked out a plan.” Willa pointed to a scratched map in the ground. “A solid one, with the sheriff as backup.”
