She clutched the back of her hair and opened her mouth to tell him that she was but he might not be in a moment, but apparently there was no need. He turned to meet her brother who had rushed forward, his sword bare in his hands and a look of madness on his face.
She found herself behind Ewan and Peter, with Derrick standing a pace or two in front of them. She peeked over Ewan’s shoulder and glared at her brother.
“If you hurt him, I’ll kill you!” she shouted.
Derrick shot her a smile. “Ewan, give her an earbud at least so she can hear Oliver muttering under his breath as he fights. It’s very entertaining.”
Mairead thought it might be anything but, but she found herself immediately outfitted in Future Spygear, as Ewan called it.
“Don’t slay him,” she managed into the little stick Ewan had fastened to her cheek.
“How alive should I leave him?”
“Only barely?”
She had a brief smile from her husband over his shoulder before he turned back to his business. She decided that perhaps it was best to just let him see to his affairs and prepare to heap compliments on his head after the fact. After all, her brother had made her life a misery. A bit of encouragement not to do that to anyone else in the future could only be a good thing.
Oliver rid her brother of his sword immediately by spinning around and kicking it from his hands. And then he simply stood there, which she almost shouted at him for but Ewan put his hand on her shoulder.
“He’s not going to hit him first.”
She looked at him in astonishment. “Why not?”
Ewan shrugged. “It’s his code of honor. But if your brother is stupid enough to strike him, he’ll regret it.”
She turned back to the skirmish and tried to watch it dispassionately. Tasgall did indeed strike Oliver first, a feeble, glancing blow on the face that did him no credit at all. Then again, he generally hit women so perhaps he feared to truly commit to striking a man who was taller and more finely fashioned than he was.
“Are you afraid of me?” Tasgall blustered.
Oliver simply put the back of his hand to his mouth, glanced at the blood from his cut lip, then looked at him. “Don’t hit any more women,” he said quietly.
“Who are you to tell—”
Mairead supposed all those fights Oliver had gotten into in his youth had served him well, along with all those many hours learning various forms of martial—
She took a deep breath, let the memories come, then let them go. She forced herself to watch her love repay her brother for things he had done and inspire him not to do them any longer, though she suspected Oliver did far less damage to him than he could have.
He finally caught her brother neatly under the chin, sending his head snapping back. Tasgall’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the ground like a drunkard after far too much ale. Mairead watched him for a moment or two to make certain he wasn’t going to be leaping to his feet and swinging at the nearest person he could find, then she pushed past Derrick to at least make certain Oliver’s mouth hadn’t been overly damaged.
Only instead of finding her love in front of her, she came face-to-face with her sister-in-law. She was very relieved to find that Deirdre didn’t have a knife in her hand.
She did, however, have half a book.
Mairead looked at Oliver to find him watching with absolutely no expression on his face. Either he was on the verge of laughing or he feared that things might go very badly indeed. She suspected she might agree with him on both points, so she prepared herself for the worst as she turned back to face her brother’s wife.
“That’s an interesting treasure you have there,” she said carefully.
“I had the entire thing,” Deirdre spat.
“Did you?” Mairead asked, trying to be pleasant. “How clever of you to have found something so valuable.”
Deirdre pointed back toward the forest with a hand that was not at all steady. “I went to the witch’s croft a year ago to dare the faeries and sprites to vex me—”
“Your first mistake,” Kenneth howled.
Deirdre shot him a look of loathing, then turned back to her. “The house was bolted against me, but I looked in the windows and saw it was full of demon’s belongings.”
Mairead didn’t dare look at Oliver, though she could imagine well enough what he was thinking. Perhaps her uncle’s tales of MacLeods disappearing into the witch’s forest weren’t so fantastical after all, for ‘twas obvious Deirdre had gone through the faery ring in the meadow. She was grateful she’d had such a generous helping of good sense come to her from her father which had allowed her to investigate things without descending into madness. Her brother’s wife obviously did not have that same skill.
