“Yes.” That gave Marion a chuckle. “I suppose he thought he could prove a point. Thought he was too prominent to be evicted.”

“It sounds as if he only made things worse.”

“Worse?” She had to bite her lip. Robin didn’t know he was insulting her as well.

“These people he helped,” he pointed loosely up at Arthur, “have now been chased into the forest. Living as outlaws, stealing to survive. They have no land, they won’t survive the winter. Are they better off now, dying in the cold, than if they’d simply paid their taxes?”

“Simply paid their taxes?” Marion repeated back at him. “You think they chose this?”

“I know they chose this! I spent the day with them. They came here because they knew my father would pay for them. Isn’t that right?” This too he threw up to Arthur, who clenched his jaw and walked away. Robin relished his tiny victory and turned back to her. “Exactly. Why wouldn’t someone choose that?”

“Nobody was here to take advantage of your father,” Marion tried to explain. “Landowners started abandoning their own people so they couldn’t be taxed on them. The wording of Richard’s decree was sloppy and inexact. The Sheriff has done his best to make sense of it, but when armed men and tax collectors pound on your door, you run. If they hadn’t run here, they would have died.”

“They’ll still die. Just later, and colder, and poorer. That’s my father’s legacy.”

“Your father fought for them,” Marion said sharply.

“He died hiding in a stable, throwing horseshoes at tax collectors!” Robin’s voice echoed in the dining hall. The rats under the table scurried out to stare at him, and back again. “This is a great hero? What was he fighting for?”

Marion was seething, but wouldn’t let him see it. “It’s easy to fight for yourself. Your father chose to fight for someone else, people who couldn’t fight for themselves. That’s a hero.”

“He should have known better.”

Several emotions lunged forward, but she bit them off one by one and swallowed them down again. Robin’s eyes were in the fire, the same untouchable silence that had defined their relationship for decades.

Marion could not remember the first time she met him, he was simply a permanent connection in her life, like a family member. The same was true with Locksley Castle—it was a place that had always been. As a young lady, her family split their year between Essex and Sheffield, which was only a stonesthrow away. Nobility were always excited to pair young people of comparable age together, and her parents had been no different. And so, Marion and Vivian were frequently paired off with Robin and Edmond.