The Outlaws of Sherwood by Robin McKinley

Little John would ever be lost in a crowd, for they stood head and shoulders above most men; but there continued to be just the faintest air about Will, however dark and worn his clothing.
    â€œVanity,” said Marian with a chuckle. “He used to tell us that clothes are a serious business,” she said privately to Robin. “The rest of us would be climbing trees and so on, and he always took his tunic and shirt off first—later, of course, he did it to impress us girls with his chest muscles, which are impressive, you know. But if you want to know the real, awful truth about Will, he used to wash his own shirts because the laundresses never got them white enough to suit him. He said that laundresses didn’t care about clothes; they were just paid for a job.”
    Her smile faded. “I’ve found out little enough about what goes forward at Norwell, though. There’s some mystery there, and I haven’t been able to ferret it out; and I must be careful about asking too many questions.” She frowned, and Robin saw the cloud in her face that gathered there whenever she thought of her own father’s household.
    But then as the pale spring greens darkened into summer, till even the shadows of Sherwood were as green as leaves, Robin Hood’s aristocratic outlaw fell into a desolate mood. Robin’s first thought was that Will was reverting to type after all; despite Marian’s faith in him, he had begun to miss his soft bed and a plenty—and variety—of food on his table, as well as the table itself and a hall to put it in. Robin was cross for permitting himself to expect otherwise; and crosser still for feeling so disappointed. He put off speaking to Will for a day, a sennight, wondering if he should offer to let him go and get it over with, or whether he should force Will to come to him.
    But it was nothing to do with Greentree that had changed Will’s mood.
    Marian had discovered that Will’s sister had not married her Norman betrothed after all; on her wedding day her maids found her door locked from the inside, and she refused to open it. She had been stormed at and threatened—through the door—but there was no graceful way to come at her, as her room was at the top of a bay, and her windows overlooked the old trench from the manor house’s days as a fortress.
    â€œAnd, in the last bitter end of things,” said Marian, “she cannot be forced by physical means to say vows she will not say. She’d only moved to this new chamber the beginning of this year, and Will has realised that she must have planned rebellion from the first. I don’t know what all he’s thinking, but I can guess that he has thought of it that she did not come to him for help.… She said at the time to the family that she wanted to be a little apart from the household she was soon to leave, to consider her new life before she entered it. She put this over with a great show of maidenly modesty,” Marian said, with a grin of appreciation, despite the precariousness of her friend’s situation. “Her father bought it, and he’s an old so-and-so, but he was stupid with delight at catching a Norman. And Will, who should have had better sense, only saw this as the proof that Sess’s spirit had been broken by the prospect of marrying one of the enemy.” She paused. “I thought it was a little strange at the time myself, but I don’t see Sess as often as I was used, in our early tree-climbing days—she’s several years younger than Will and me—because her father has kept her mewed up increasingly as she was increasingly inclined to kick against his rule. It was at least possible that he had broken her at last. I thought he must have done, when I heard of the Norman suitor. Sess always had a great deal of character, but quite the wrong kind.”
    â€œAnd Will feels now he’s failed her by running out,” said