The Force of Destiny - Ch. 12
Title: The Force of Destiny, Chapter 12
Author: railise
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/characters: Guy/Meg, Lady Francine of Leicester (OC)
Word count: 2419
Spoilers: While this alters the end of S2, there are still minor spoilers for the whole run of the show, including S3.
Summary: Meg's former mother-in-law does not get the result she sought.
Disclaimer: The show Robin Hood and the characters portrayed within are property of the BBC and Tiger Aspect. I have no rights to anything associated with any of them and make no profits from this venture; no infringement intended.
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-12-
The next several days were a blur of misery, of praying for death with a renewed fervor.
Meg had forbidden anyone from providing Guy with a drop of alcohol, and the traitorous servants of Locksley obeyed her. Not that he was in a particular state to upbraid them; he was hardly aware of what was going on around him, only of his own suffering. In one of his lucid moments, he asked Meg if she was aware that in supposedly trying to save his life, she was actually killing him.
“That could happen,” she acknowledged. “If I had never done this before. But I’ll see to it that you survive, whether you want to, or not.”
Somehow, she was right. By the next week, he was seated beside her at supper, his hand not shaking much anymore as he lifted the spoonful of soup to his mouth. He was weak as a kitten, but feeling better by the day. If he let himself admit it, even his soul felt partially renewed; Lady Margaret of Leicester was a force of nature, but one containing great amounts of sunshine amongst the whirlwinds.
Bah. What rubbish. Vaizey would never let him live it down if he knew Guy was having thoughts like that.
But, in fact, it appeared that even the sheriff was impressed by her-- at least, as impressed as he could be with any woman. He had stopped in two days earlier, and appeared glad to witness Guy’s recovery. Then, he had dashed away any pleasant feelings Guy had about that when he complained, “All of your replacements keep failing and scuttling away like the rodents they are. At least you stick around, even when you’ve bollocksed everything up.”
Despite that, the nasty little man had nodded at Meg before leaving, giving her as sincere a “Thank you” as he could produce.
Now, with her sitting beside him at table, smiling as she recounted a memory from her last visit to Knighton, Guy found himself reluctant to return to the castle, and Vaizey’s cruelty. His days on this earth might be numbered, but they would be far more pleasantly spent sharing stories with Meg, than plotting and executing evil deeds with the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Something of his musings must have reflected on his face, because she paused, mid-sentence, and asked, “What are you thinking?”
He glanced down at his bowl. “Nothing of consequence.”
She opened her mouth to question him further, when there was the sound of horses approaching, followed by a knock at the door. Thornton appeared from the back and quickly answered it.
“Lady Margaret is here, I assume?” a female voice demanded imperiously.
Meg’s face drained of color, and she got slowly to her feet as a rotund, middle-aged woman, draped in furs despite the warmth of the day, barged in. “There you are. Thought you could run away, did you?” She looked down her nose at Guy. “And this must be your weasel of a lover. Of course, he wouldn’t think to rise in the presence of a lady, would he? You never did have any taste.”
Guy stood unsteadily, resisting the urge to lean on the table for support. He looked to Meg, who softly said, “Sir Guy, this is my mother-in-law, Lady Francine of Leicester. Lady Francine, Sir Guy of Gisborne. Sir Guy did not stand immediately because he has been ill, which is also why he will take his seat now.” This last was said more to him, but he ignored it.
Lady Francine harrumphed as she strode over to the table, examining their simple meal with distaste. “He may not be able to stand, but he could offer me a repast. A glass of wine, at the least.”
Meg looked ready to spit, gone from shock to fury, and Guy quickly spoke up. “My apologies; my mind is still recovering, as well. Please, join us.” He gestured at an empty chair, which the woman took with as much enthusiasm as she would if sitting on a pile of refuse.
“That’s better,” she declared, as the other two resumed their seats. “Now, as to your flight, Margaret--”
“I did not run away,” Meg said, through clenched teeth.
Lady Francine raised both eyebrows at her. “I offered you a place in my home, but no sooner was my son cold and in the ground as you were off for... wherever we are.”
Nostrils flared, Meg replied, “We are in Locksley, near Nottingham, as you well know. And the only reason you invited me to live with you was so that you could do away with me and steal the money Lester left me with.”
Francine's upset was too feigned, Guy reflected, instantly believing Meg’s claim based on the other woman’s theatrical reaction. “How dare you! To even suggest--”
“How many husbands have you gone through now? Three? Four?” Meg was a bit calmer in the face of the forced denial.
Puffing up for another defense, Lady Francine suddenly switched tactics. Clearing her throat and sipping from the goblet Thornton had set beside her, she said, “Well, it hardly matters. Once I have presented the evidence of your betrayal of my dear, departed son to the authorities, you’ll be stripped of any gains gotten from him.”
Meg’s jaw dropped. “What on earth are you about?”
Goblet in hand, the lady motioned to Guy. “Your lover, of course. An unfaithful wife does not deserve her husband’s charity, be he alive or dead.”
“How dare you? For one thing, I have never--”
Seeing that she was about to fly into a rage, likely saying things that could only harm her case, Guy decided to intervene. “You misunderstand Lady Margaret’s presence here.”
“I do nothing of the kind. By all accounts, she has been closeted with you in your bedchamber for a week. That is hardly the action of an unprecedented relationship.”
“Obviously, you have never had an affair,” he muttered, unable to stop himself. Catching a fuming glare from Meg, he immediately became serious again. “But, as it happens, that is not the case. Lady Margaret stopped by in search of her cousin, to whom I was once engaged, thinking to find her as my wife. Instead, she discovered that I was ill, and has been nursing me to health.”
Lady Francine snorted. “A likely tale. And one you cannot substantiate.”
“You cannot substantiate yours, either,” Meg ground out.
“People will always believe the more sordid possible truth,” her mother-in-law remarked.
She was right; Meg was sunk. “You did not let me finish,” said Guy. “As we realized that the situation would not reflect well upon her ladyship, that wicked people with nothing better to do would gossip” --he did not know if the barb hit its mark, but Meg caught it and smiled at him,-- “we agreed that the best course of action was to become engaged.” Meg's smile vanished as her jaw dropped.
“What?” both women exclaimed.
He hoped he was doing the right thing; it was difficult to tell by Meg’s expression whether she appreciated his help, or was going to calmly strangle him once they were alone again. “We are both adults, of a similar station, who find ourselves in need of a helpmeet. It was an obvious conclusion.”
An engagement would set things aright; no authority would look down upon a young lady tending to her ill fiancé. There might be raised eyebrows at the speed with which she gained a new husband, but it was hardly unprecedented.
“This... this is preposterous!” Lady Francine cried.
Still gaping at Guy, Meg murmured, “No congratulations?”
Sputtering, the matron shoved her chair back so quickly it toppled over, and she marched for the door, screaming, “Order my coach!” to no one in particular. At the door, she whirled about. “Do not think you’ve heard the last of me, missy.”
Guy stood, more steadily than he had expected. “Do not threaten my bride.”
“I beg your pardon? Are you threatening me?”
“If you wish to see it that way, yes. You will have no further contact with Lady Margaret. You will leave her-- us-- in peace, or you will have the full weight of Nottingham to deal with.” Vaizey probably would back him, if need be, if only to protect his own interest. “Are we understood?”
With a wordless noise of outrage, Lady Francine spun to leave once more.
Quietly, Guy repeated, “I asked, are we understood?” His voice was nearly back to normal now, and the silky danger he had had no use for recently found its way easily to the fore.
“Understood,” she snapped, before flinging the door open and marching outside.
Guy and Meg remained where they were until they heard the horses drawing the coach clatter away. And then, they remained there a moment longer; he was waiting for the coming explosion, but did not wish to detonate it a minute sooner than necessary.
When she had not said anything and the silence grew interminable, he turned to her, finding her still staring at him. “I’m sorry; I should not have done that. You can tell her I lied.”
Finally, she blinked. “Are you joking? I only wish you did that five years ago.”
They had conversed a bit over the last week, in his better moments, but he had not remembered to ask what she meant by that. He did so now, as he sat back down.
Her cheeks flushed becomingly, and she toyed with her spoon. “I suppose there’s no harm now. You’d recently begun calling on Marian when I came to stay with her, and she was quite distressed. Angry as she was at Robin for leaving and calling off their betrothal, a part of her still loved him, and she did not know what to make of your attentions.”
He had known that Marian was less than enthusiastic about his courtship early on, but hearing it from one of her confidantes was not pleasant, nor was the reminder that she had always been thinking of Robin. Dragging his mind back to the present, he remarked, “So, you thought to steal me from her?”
“No! Well, not at first. Not really.”
“That’s a clear answer.”
She laughed. “Well, from what she first told me, I expected some gross, old man.”
“Excuse me?”
Realizing her words had come out quite offensively, she waved her hands to backtrack. “No, no, no! She never said that; it was my interpretation of what she told me.”
He chewed on his lip while she spoke, then asked curiously, “What did she say?”
Squinting at him to judge whether or not he was going to get angry, she replied, “That you were older, and wore a lot of black leather.”
Well, that was not too bad. “How did you get ‘gross’ out of ‘black leather’?”
With a shrug, she said, “Have you ever smelt anybody who ran around in dark leather in the summer sun?”
He had smelled himself, and never thought it a problem, unless he had been riding or fighting-- and in that case, he bathed. “You have, I take it?”
Wrinkling her nose in a manner which would have been irritating on most women, but which he somehow found flattering on her, she nodded. “One of my mother’s suitors wore the same leather trousers and jacket every day, and almost never washed. Also, he was a pig. In the winter, he didn’t stink too badly, but once summer rolled round...” She shuddered.
“So, you assumed I would be a...” He searched for the right words to sum it up.
“Smelly, gross, old pig.”
That summed it up. “What changed your mind?”
Her smile came out again, and he was suddenly very aware of the curve of her lips. “I saw you ride up to the house.”
That triggered a vague memory, of something she had said awhile ago. “A dark horse?”
Meg started. “You recall that?”
“But that was not it.”
“'The dark man on his dark horse.’ Those were the words that came to mind when I saw you. And then, when I found out you were Marian’s Sir Guy, and spoke with you... well, that night, I told her she was ridiculous for giving Robin a second thought, when she had you ready to step up. I listed off all of your qualities that I had noted that evening. I thought she would listen to the advice of an older girl. And after she was asleep, I stared at the ceiling and wished you would ride up for me, and save me from marrying a man named Lester of Leicester.”
Guy watched her face as she recounted her fantasies, musing over what he could remember of this past week. This woman had been nearly a stranger, but had shut herself up with a mess of a man because she fancied him once. She had been patient and caring when he needed her, and had not hesitated to tell him off when necessary. She had challenged him and supported him, and he never had the sense she was being anything but honest with him.
He spoke his thought without considering it first. “I should have.”
Surprise lit her face yet again. “What?”
“I should have looked to you; it would have saved us both years of frustration. Or boredom, in your case.”
“So, you really want to go through with this? I’m only going to give you so much time to take it back.” She made it sound like she was teasing, but he could easily envision her making his life a living hell if he backed out too much later on.
Somehow, he suspected that he would not want to. “Yes, let’s go through with it.”
She gave him a mock-haughty look. “Don’t I get a proposal?”
Normally, he would never let someone get away with manipulating him, even just in a teasing fashion, but the irritation he expected did not surface. Instead, he chuckled. “I will consider it.”
“Then, I’ll consider saying yes.”
She stood and strutted toward the stairs, pausing when she was halfway up and looking back over her shoulder at him. “Coming?”
His brain went blank. Surely, she could not mean... “What?”
“If everyone’s saying we are enjoying ourselves, we may as well.” There was that smile again. It was going to drive him insane, and he was glad for it.
next chapter
master list of chapter links
Author: railise
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/characters: Guy/Meg, Lady Francine of Leicester (OC)
Word count: 2419
Spoilers: While this alters the end of S2, there are still minor spoilers for the whole run of the show, including S3.
Summary: Meg's former mother-in-law does not get the result she sought.
Disclaimer: The show Robin Hood and the characters portrayed within are property of the BBC and Tiger Aspect. I have no rights to anything associated with any of them and make no profits from this venture; no infringement intended.
master list of chapter links
previous chapter
-12-
The next several days were a blur of misery, of praying for death with a renewed fervor.
Meg had forbidden anyone from providing Guy with a drop of alcohol, and the traitorous servants of Locksley obeyed her. Not that he was in a particular state to upbraid them; he was hardly aware of what was going on around him, only of his own suffering. In one of his lucid moments, he asked Meg if she was aware that in supposedly trying to save his life, she was actually killing him.
“That could happen,” she acknowledged. “If I had never done this before. But I’ll see to it that you survive, whether you want to, or not.”
Somehow, she was right. By the next week, he was seated beside her at supper, his hand not shaking much anymore as he lifted the spoonful of soup to his mouth. He was weak as a kitten, but feeling better by the day. If he let himself admit it, even his soul felt partially renewed; Lady Margaret of Leicester was a force of nature, but one containing great amounts of sunshine amongst the whirlwinds.
Bah. What rubbish. Vaizey would never let him live it down if he knew Guy was having thoughts like that.
But, in fact, it appeared that even the sheriff was impressed by her-- at least, as impressed as he could be with any woman. He had stopped in two days earlier, and appeared glad to witness Guy’s recovery. Then, he had dashed away any pleasant feelings Guy had about that when he complained, “All of your replacements keep failing and scuttling away like the rodents they are. At least you stick around, even when you’ve bollocksed everything up.”
Despite that, the nasty little man had nodded at Meg before leaving, giving her as sincere a “Thank you” as he could produce.
Now, with her sitting beside him at table, smiling as she recounted a memory from her last visit to Knighton, Guy found himself reluctant to return to the castle, and Vaizey’s cruelty. His days on this earth might be numbered, but they would be far more pleasantly spent sharing stories with Meg, than plotting and executing evil deeds with the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Something of his musings must have reflected on his face, because she paused, mid-sentence, and asked, “What are you thinking?”
He glanced down at his bowl. “Nothing of consequence.”
She opened her mouth to question him further, when there was the sound of horses approaching, followed by a knock at the door. Thornton appeared from the back and quickly answered it.
“Lady Margaret is here, I assume?” a female voice demanded imperiously.
Meg’s face drained of color, and she got slowly to her feet as a rotund, middle-aged woman, draped in furs despite the warmth of the day, barged in. “There you are. Thought you could run away, did you?” She looked down her nose at Guy. “And this must be your weasel of a lover. Of course, he wouldn’t think to rise in the presence of a lady, would he? You never did have any taste.”
Guy stood unsteadily, resisting the urge to lean on the table for support. He looked to Meg, who softly said, “Sir Guy, this is my mother-in-law, Lady Francine of Leicester. Lady Francine, Sir Guy of Gisborne. Sir Guy did not stand immediately because he has been ill, which is also why he will take his seat now.” This last was said more to him, but he ignored it.
Lady Francine harrumphed as she strode over to the table, examining their simple meal with distaste. “He may not be able to stand, but he could offer me a repast. A glass of wine, at the least.”
Meg looked ready to spit, gone from shock to fury, and Guy quickly spoke up. “My apologies; my mind is still recovering, as well. Please, join us.” He gestured at an empty chair, which the woman took with as much enthusiasm as she would if sitting on a pile of refuse.
“That’s better,” she declared, as the other two resumed their seats. “Now, as to your flight, Margaret--”
“I did not run away,” Meg said, through clenched teeth.
Lady Francine raised both eyebrows at her. “I offered you a place in my home, but no sooner was my son cold and in the ground as you were off for... wherever we are.”
Nostrils flared, Meg replied, “We are in Locksley, near Nottingham, as you well know. And the only reason you invited me to live with you was so that you could do away with me and steal the money Lester left me with.”
Francine's upset was too feigned, Guy reflected, instantly believing Meg’s claim based on the other woman’s theatrical reaction. “How dare you! To even suggest--”
“How many husbands have you gone through now? Three? Four?” Meg was a bit calmer in the face of the forced denial.
Puffing up for another defense, Lady Francine suddenly switched tactics. Clearing her throat and sipping from the goblet Thornton had set beside her, she said, “Well, it hardly matters. Once I have presented the evidence of your betrayal of my dear, departed son to the authorities, you’ll be stripped of any gains gotten from him.”
Meg’s jaw dropped. “What on earth are you about?”
Goblet in hand, the lady motioned to Guy. “Your lover, of course. An unfaithful wife does not deserve her husband’s charity, be he alive or dead.”
“How dare you? For one thing, I have never--”
Seeing that she was about to fly into a rage, likely saying things that could only harm her case, Guy decided to intervene. “You misunderstand Lady Margaret’s presence here.”
“I do nothing of the kind. By all accounts, she has been closeted with you in your bedchamber for a week. That is hardly the action of an unprecedented relationship.”
“Obviously, you have never had an affair,” he muttered, unable to stop himself. Catching a fuming glare from Meg, he immediately became serious again. “But, as it happens, that is not the case. Lady Margaret stopped by in search of her cousin, to whom I was once engaged, thinking to find her as my wife. Instead, she discovered that I was ill, and has been nursing me to health.”
Lady Francine snorted. “A likely tale. And one you cannot substantiate.”
“You cannot substantiate yours, either,” Meg ground out.
“People will always believe the more sordid possible truth,” her mother-in-law remarked.
She was right; Meg was sunk. “You did not let me finish,” said Guy. “As we realized that the situation would not reflect well upon her ladyship, that wicked people with nothing better to do would gossip” --he did not know if the barb hit its mark, but Meg caught it and smiled at him,-- “we agreed that the best course of action was to become engaged.” Meg's smile vanished as her jaw dropped.
“What?” both women exclaimed.
He hoped he was doing the right thing; it was difficult to tell by Meg’s expression whether she appreciated his help, or was going to calmly strangle him once they were alone again. “We are both adults, of a similar station, who find ourselves in need of a helpmeet. It was an obvious conclusion.”
An engagement would set things aright; no authority would look down upon a young lady tending to her ill fiancé. There might be raised eyebrows at the speed with which she gained a new husband, but it was hardly unprecedented.
“This... this is preposterous!” Lady Francine cried.
Still gaping at Guy, Meg murmured, “No congratulations?”
Sputtering, the matron shoved her chair back so quickly it toppled over, and she marched for the door, screaming, “Order my coach!” to no one in particular. At the door, she whirled about. “Do not think you’ve heard the last of me, missy.”
Guy stood, more steadily than he had expected. “Do not threaten my bride.”
“I beg your pardon? Are you threatening me?”
“If you wish to see it that way, yes. You will have no further contact with Lady Margaret. You will leave her-- us-- in peace, or you will have the full weight of Nottingham to deal with.” Vaizey probably would back him, if need be, if only to protect his own interest. “Are we understood?”
With a wordless noise of outrage, Lady Francine spun to leave once more.
Quietly, Guy repeated, “I asked, are we understood?” His voice was nearly back to normal now, and the silky danger he had had no use for recently found its way easily to the fore.
“Understood,” she snapped, before flinging the door open and marching outside.
Guy and Meg remained where they were until they heard the horses drawing the coach clatter away. And then, they remained there a moment longer; he was waiting for the coming explosion, but did not wish to detonate it a minute sooner than necessary.
When she had not said anything and the silence grew interminable, he turned to her, finding her still staring at him. “I’m sorry; I should not have done that. You can tell her I lied.”
Finally, she blinked. “Are you joking? I only wish you did that five years ago.”
They had conversed a bit over the last week, in his better moments, but he had not remembered to ask what she meant by that. He did so now, as he sat back down.
Her cheeks flushed becomingly, and she toyed with her spoon. “I suppose there’s no harm now. You’d recently begun calling on Marian when I came to stay with her, and she was quite distressed. Angry as she was at Robin for leaving and calling off their betrothal, a part of her still loved him, and she did not know what to make of your attentions.”
He had known that Marian was less than enthusiastic about his courtship early on, but hearing it from one of her confidantes was not pleasant, nor was the reminder that she had always been thinking of Robin. Dragging his mind back to the present, he remarked, “So, you thought to steal me from her?”
“No! Well, not at first. Not really.”
“That’s a clear answer.”
She laughed. “Well, from what she first told me, I expected some gross, old man.”
“Excuse me?”
Realizing her words had come out quite offensively, she waved her hands to backtrack. “No, no, no! She never said that; it was my interpretation of what she told me.”
He chewed on his lip while she spoke, then asked curiously, “What did she say?”
Squinting at him to judge whether or not he was going to get angry, she replied, “That you were older, and wore a lot of black leather.”
Well, that was not too bad. “How did you get ‘gross’ out of ‘black leather’?”
With a shrug, she said, “Have you ever smelt anybody who ran around in dark leather in the summer sun?”
He had smelled himself, and never thought it a problem, unless he had been riding or fighting-- and in that case, he bathed. “You have, I take it?”
Wrinkling her nose in a manner which would have been irritating on most women, but which he somehow found flattering on her, she nodded. “One of my mother’s suitors wore the same leather trousers and jacket every day, and almost never washed. Also, he was a pig. In the winter, he didn’t stink too badly, but once summer rolled round...” She shuddered.
“So, you assumed I would be a...” He searched for the right words to sum it up.
“Smelly, gross, old pig.”
That summed it up. “What changed your mind?”
Her smile came out again, and he was suddenly very aware of the curve of her lips. “I saw you ride up to the house.”
That triggered a vague memory, of something she had said awhile ago. “A dark horse?”
Meg started. “You recall that?”
“But that was not it.”
“'The dark man on his dark horse.’ Those were the words that came to mind when I saw you. And then, when I found out you were Marian’s Sir Guy, and spoke with you... well, that night, I told her she was ridiculous for giving Robin a second thought, when she had you ready to step up. I listed off all of your qualities that I had noted that evening. I thought she would listen to the advice of an older girl. And after she was asleep, I stared at the ceiling and wished you would ride up for me, and save me from marrying a man named Lester of Leicester.”
Guy watched her face as she recounted her fantasies, musing over what he could remember of this past week. This woman had been nearly a stranger, but had shut herself up with a mess of a man because she fancied him once. She had been patient and caring when he needed her, and had not hesitated to tell him off when necessary. She had challenged him and supported him, and he never had the sense she was being anything but honest with him.
He spoke his thought without considering it first. “I should have.”
Surprise lit her face yet again. “What?”
“I should have looked to you; it would have saved us both years of frustration. Or boredom, in your case.”
“So, you really want to go through with this? I’m only going to give you so much time to take it back.” She made it sound like she was teasing, but he could easily envision her making his life a living hell if he backed out too much later on.
Somehow, he suspected that he would not want to. “Yes, let’s go through with it.”
She gave him a mock-haughty look. “Don’t I get a proposal?”
Normally, he would never let someone get away with manipulating him, even just in a teasing fashion, but the irritation he expected did not surface. Instead, he chuckled. “I will consider it.”
“Then, I’ll consider saying yes.”
She stood and strutted toward the stairs, pausing when she was halfway up and looking back over her shoulder at him. “Coming?”
His brain went blank. Surely, she could not mean... “What?”
“If everyone’s saying we are enjoying ourselves, we may as well.” There was that smile again. It was going to drive him insane, and he was glad for it.
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