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"You will be warmer soon, love, and then you may slap ainst the top of her head "I shall even let you arrest ain Think of howa barrister appointed to represent ate ht the blue color was beginning to fade from her lips He knew her teht stop her heart, but it see

How useless his talent was now He could persuade a fortune out of a skinflint, but he could not do anything to help the woman he loved

"I do love you," he whispered to her "I shall tell you again as soon as you wake"

Nottingham came in a few minutes later, his face and hands ith Kyn blood "Does she improve?"

"She is not as blue around the ham came over and knelt on the other side of Chris When Robin sahat he was about, he shoved hiain?"

"I fed on the second guard before I ripped out his spine My body is warmer than yours, and I shall not useher into Robin When Robin didn’t move, he added, "Do you wish her to live or not?"

Robin set his jaw and moved closer to Chris "Keep your hands where I can see theham’s body as war the heat with his body, Chris’s body slowly began to warm He watched her lips and cheeks pinken, and then flush He only wanted her to open her eyes again, and speak to him, and remove the invisible copper fist that had seized his heart

"She is young and strong," Nottingham said unexpectedly "She will recover"

"No thanks to you" Robin regretted the words as soon as they left his tongue, but the answering sneer on his cousin’s face kept hi them back "We will have to travel quickly to intercept Salva before she reaches Richard and the others in London I have a jet at the airport in Rome"

"What plans did you have for Beatrice’s tears?" his cousin asked

Robin frowned "I plan to toss them into the nearest furnace If I’d known they were concealed in the manuscript, I’d have not rested until it was in my possession"

"You did not know they were hidden in the book" Nottingham made a contemptuous sound "Of course you did not"

"No one knew but the contessa" Robin uttered a curt laugh "My God, Guy I may be a thief, but I am not a halfwitted monster" He narrowed his eyes "Did you know?"

"No" Nottinghae For Marian For Sherwood"

Robin felt an ugly surge of fury rise inside hiet it, you stupid bastard Perhaps you will live long enough to bury the rest of us All for your precious betrothal"

Nottinghas "She was ave your name and Sherwood to your bloody half brother, and cowered in hiding"

"As soon as you took Marian, my mother seized control of the keep andin France; no one had laid eyes on me since I was a child She had intended to killday and one, she had eon and sent my half brother after you I spent ten years in that hole while he played lord above"

Robin didn’t want to believe him, but what he’d claimed had happened at last explained the events that had led to the fall of Sherwood "Why did she keep you alive?"

"She didn’t She sent a wench sick with plague down to me and locked her in my cell so that my death could never be called a murder She left us down there for a week, and then ca out the bodies" His ht it soic, and decided to keep me alive For the next ten years she fed her peasants and her ene to learn the secret of my resurrection"

Robin almost felt sorry for hiham nodded "By the time she came to me, I had learned that I could turn hureat hulk of a fool, Rainer, but he was too much of a siot to his feet "She is ware he had carried inside him for six hundred years slowly died "I left a boat docked outside the palazzo There is a phone on the console Use it to call London and warn theham nodded and rose

Robin watched his cousin stalk out of the roohtly too alert for so have you been awake?"