“Sayswho?”
“Me!”
She put her hands on her hips and scowled. “No one will listen to you!”
“Is that so?”
“’Tis!”
Maksim made a threatening move in their direction and they screamed and scattered. That had all of the young men they’dbeen secretly spying on looking over to see what the fuss was. Maksim was waving his hands, herding the well-dressed young women toward the tables, but Mattie had run off in another direction. There was a big yew tree near the entry to the boxlike keep of Hensingham, and she’d rushed over to collect a switch from one of the branches. Weapon in hand, she charged back toward the tables where Maksim was forcing the young women to sit and be still.
Mattie came up behind him and whacked him across the buttocks.
The young men at the tables thought it was great fun to watch Mattie chase her brother around. Maksim tried to get away from her at first, but soon enough, he took a stand and faced her, reaching out to grab the switch when she came close. He was easily able to disarm her and she cried in pain as he yanked the wood through her hands. She had a splinter, so she said, and as she inspected it, Maksim felt bad enough that he went to see what he’d done. As soon as he lowered his head, looking at her hand, she rammed two fingers right up both nostrils.
Maksim howled in pain and the laughter exploded.
Mattie had her switch back now and she lashed her brother on the backside as he tried to recover from nearly having his brains punctured through his sinus cavity. But just as she ran past one of the tables, pursuing Maksim, one of the older boys sitting alone stuck out a foot and tripped her.
Down she went, onto her face.
Percy de Vries had been that lad. He’d been stalking Mattie all afternoon, watching her, waiting for his chance to exact his revenge. When she started running recklessly after her brother, he saw his opportunity. He smiled smugly as Mattie pushed herself up and realized she had a bloodied nose. She put her hand to her face, in obvious pain, as Percy stood up.
“Now you’re not so pretty, are you?” he said. “No one will want you now, you little snipe. I hope you stay ugly forever!”
A shadow fell across Percy’s path. Startled, he looked up to see the three very big de Wolfe brothers glaring at him, flanked by their equally big and mean-looking cousins. One of the cousins reached down to help Mattie to her feet as Cassius, Titus, Ronan, and Magnus de Wolfe ganged up on the unfortunate Percy.
“So you like to hurt girls, do you?” Cassius said. At nearly seventeen, he was a man grown and very nearly a fully fledged knight, making him positively terrifying. “Why don’t you bully someone your own size, Percy? Here—I’ll make it easy for you. Knock me off my feet if you can.”
Percy was a few years younger than Cassius and not nearly as big and muscular. He looked at Titus, younger than Cassius but taller, and then Magnus, who was shorter than his brothers but built like a bull. They were around fifteen years of age and thirteen years of age, respectively, but they were absolutely enormous for their ages. Beside them, their cousin, Ronan, was a little younger than Magnus, and hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet, but the young man had his fists balled.
He was ready to brawl.
As Percy began to realize that he’d something very wrong by picking on a girl, Maksim came out of nowhere and slugged him squarely in the face. As he went down, the de Wolfe brothers gathered around, and Percy was in a world of hurt as Maksim pounced. The fists were flying, and Percy was wailing, but over at another table, Mattie wasn’t paying any attention to it.
She was paying attention to something else entirely.
Gar de Wolfe had been the young man who had picked her up out of the dirt and chivalrously helped her to sit down at one of the tables. She was bleeding down the front of her lovely silk garment and Gar had ripped the sleeve of his tunic to comeup with soft wool to stem the blood. He was being quite kind and gentle with her, a youth who had probably seen somewhere between fourteen and fifteen years, but he had a sweet, deep voice already and his big hands were quite careful. He held the wool to her nose, encouraging her to tilt her head back to stop the blood flow, as her anxious friends gathered around.
“You’ll heal,” he told her kindly. “I’ve seen this kind of thing before and it will heal quickly. You’ll be chasing your brother again in no time at all.”
Head tilted back, tears streaming on to her temples, Mattie was trying desperately not to sob. “Who is that boy?” she said. “Why was he so mean to me?”
Gar looked over his shoulder at the young man who was becoming a battered mess thanks to Maksim and the de Wolfe brothers.
“I do not know,” he said. “But I heard what he said. Do not listen to him. You are not ugly.”
That seemed to stop Mattie’s tears like magic and she lowered her chin a little, just so she could look at this sweet young man.
“You… you do not think my nose is broken, do you?” she said as she touched the bridge of her nose.
He shook his head, daring to take the cloth away to see if her nose was still bleeding. “It is not broken,” he said. “But you took a good fall. You should find your mother and tell her what happened. She can make a compress for you to keep the swelling down.”
Mattie smiled at him, feeling better with his kindness. The fact that he was easy on the eyes seemed to be the best medicine of all. He was a big lad with nearly black hair, rather ruddy skin, as if he spent most of his days in the sun, and eyes of the palest green she’d ever seen. They only time she’d ever seen a color that bright was when lightning bolted across the sky or the flamein the hearth was blinding. There was something mesmerizing about his eyes.
Kind eyes, she thought.
He was kind.
