“Draw your sword, sir!” I menaced Robin with a spoon, and he snatched up a long loaf of bread to defend himself.

“En garde, my lady!”

“Children, children…” Friar Tuck’s ever-patient voice called from inside the cave, where he was checking Much’s leg. Hopefully, the young miller’s son would be up and about soon.

I laughed and snatched the loaf away from Robin and took a large bite out of it. “Mm,” I mumbled around the bite. “Widow Della is amazing.” It came out more like “Wih-oh ‘Ewwa ih ama’in’.”

Rob tugged the bread back away from me and laid it on the table, then pounced on me and tickled my ribs until tears ran from my eyes.

“Stop it, stop it!” I shouted, squirming away from him. He let me up, and grinned. “Widow Della may be amazing,” he said, “But she doesn’t hold a candle to a certain arrow girl I know.”

I felt heat rise from my face and looked down. “Thanks for rescuing me, Rob,” I said softly.

He just smiled, and took my paw to help me up. We walked from the sunny clearing into the green shadows of the woods, clasping paws and listening to the birdsong. My heart felt full—even if my head was still racing. There was still such a mess to clean up after Duke Chantille’s death. The explanation we had carefully spread around town was that the Duke had attacked me and Rob had saved me from his clutches. Most people seemed to buy it—the Duke wasn’t exactly popular—though his butler had vanished and no one knew where to. Robin suspected he had gone back to Prince John’s court—but there was no way to prove that.

Father had already forgotten about the Duke entirely. It almost made me glad for his forgetfulness, though I still worried about him. Robin had ordered young Richard to help me with managing the household, at least for a while.

We hoped, of course, that King Richard would return soon. When he did, Robin could be pardoned from the charges that the Sheriff and Prince John had trumped up, and then we could be married—we didn’t talk about it, but it was in the way Robin looked at me sometimes, so sad and yet happy too. And it was in the ring he gave me—nothing fancy, just a small iron band that slipped onto my claw and nearly hid itself in the fur of my paw.

“It’s an arrowhead,” he had said when he gave it to me. "I beat it into a ring myself." It may have looked like a ring, but what it really was was a promise. A promise that, no matter where I went, Rob would protect me.

Someday, we would be together. Someday, King Richard would return and life would grow right again. Rob and I would be married, his band of outlaws would be pardoned and could return to their families, and we would live happily ever after. That would not come until a long way in the future, I knew.

But I had no doubt that it would come. Someday.