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Her eyes widened.
“No, I mean no. They’re all mine. They’re my Guard, they–”
“My lord.” Mattias had moved across the room unnoticed and stood beside them now. “It appears you’ve become agitated,” he said, firmly. “Perhaps you’d like to step outside a moment?”
“I…”
Brigida giggled.
Náli rounded on her with a glare. “What are you laughing at?”
“My lord.” Mattias gripped his arm and deftly took his cup before it spilled. “You’re alarming the ladies.”
“Oh ho, don’t go alarming the ladies, Náli,” Brigida said, laughing outright, now.
“I – ack.” Mattias hauled him ungently to his feet and fairly dragged him from the room.
“Náli!” Serafina called out, shrill and unhappy.
Mattias kept going. When they passed through the open doors, he spun Náli around like a doll and gripped both his shoulders so he could march him down the corridor.
“What are you doing?”
“You were causing a scene,” Mattias hissed, his captain act from inside the salon abandoned. “Is it your goal today to let everyone in the whole Keep know that something untoward is going on between us?”
“Untoward?” Náli protested, shocked by the sharp sting of the word.
Mattias pushed him along to the juncture of the next hall and finally allowed him to turn, hands going to his hips. “Be reasonable.”
“Oh, so now I’m unreasonable? Now I can’t have a bloody conversation without–”
“You were on the verge of hysterics.”
Hurrying footfalls signaled the approach of the rest of the Guard, but Náli didn’t care.
“If you dare compare me to my mother–”
“Well, she is your mother after all.”
“You–”
“Náli!”
They both froze. Mattias’s eyes popped comically wide and Náli would have laughed in another situation. If Brigida hadn’t come jogging down the hall toward them, skirts lifted out of the way as she moved around his Guard, still laughing, a smile splitting her face.
Einrih made a grab for her as she passed him. “My lady!”
But she was lithe as a yearling and avoided him; arrived, breathless and pink-cheeked, in front of Náli.
“What was that?” she asked, dropping and smoothing her skirts, smile wide and eyes glittering with mirth. “I was only teasing, but I must have guessed right, eh?” Her gaze shifted from him, to Mattias, and back again. She looked nearly smug.
Mattias, pale faced and big-eyed, as openly panicked as he’d ever looked, said, “My lady–”
Náli snatched her wrist – “What?!” – and then it was his turn to be the one dragging someone along.
“Náli, what?” But she came along willingly enough, her long legs keeping pace with his own as they turned the corner and started down the next hall.
“Náli,” Mattias barked as he followed, so rattled he’d left off the my lord, even in front of a lady.
