Page 91 of Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay

“Yep,” said Bridget.

Lily looked confused. “But you didn’t die.”

“No.”

“That’s good. Oh, oh, Sir Bridget, my stick has mud on it and now my hand is dirty.” She held her hand up as if expecting Bridget to wipe it for her. Bridget just walked away, to tell one of the tall twins at the other end of the line to stop trying to garotte the other with a length of string.

At the end of their impromptu training session, Adah suggested that she and Bridget demonstrate a duel with real swords. Even the boys came outside to watch, and by the end were cheering on whichever knight they had decided deserved the win, which seemed to be about an even split.

Without discussion, they decided on an equal fight, taking it in turns to land blows. Bridget had lost track of time completely when she realized that Gwen, Gabriel, Sir Hurst, and the guards had come to watch, obviously done with their tour and ready to depart. Bridget’s gaze flicked over to Gwen’s face for just a second; she was watching very closely.

It was really Adah’s turn to win, but suddenly Bridget had something to prove; she hit her hard, their swords clashing at a right angle that slid into a cross formation, and then drove her into the ground until she was on her knees.

“Jesus, Leclair,” Adah grunted. “I yield, you maniac.”

Shouts of joy and groans of disappointment rose from their spectators, and then Bridget offered Adah an arm and pulled her to her feet.

They said their farewells to the girls, who instantly fell into despondency and begged them not to go. Adah told them to keep up their practice, and then, when they were still bereft,gathered them to her and whispered the secrets of obtaining knighthood—to train, to be a cupbearer first, then a squire—and the girls all listened seriously, and nodded, and swore they would follow her instruction, except for Lily, who said she was going to be a unicorn.

Some of the storm raging inside Bridget had stilled, but on the way back through the village, a group of teenaged boys sitting on the top of a wall started jeering.

“Freaks,” one of them shouted, and the others laughed in triumph.

“Ignore them,” Adah muttered, and Bridget did try, but as their general insults devolved into something far nastier and more specific, the hand clenched on her belt only closed tighter. As Bridget and Adah passed, one of the young men hopped down.

“You’ll get what’s coming to you,” he hissed, before spitting on the ground at their feet.

He was too close—mere feet away from Gwen and Gabriel—and Bridget’s knife was at his throat before he’d had time to lick his lips.

“Sorry, sorry, it was just a joke!” he squeaked, his face paling, and Bridget let go of him and shoved him away, rejoining her party before most of them knew what had happened.

Gwen was watching though, having turned and only caught the end of it. When Bridget met her eye, she sighed, and turned away.

Thirty-Six

They almost lost a member of the round table the next day.

Agnes, who had stayed by her new husband’s side just long enough to see how unpleasant it was to travel with a large encampment in inclement autumn weather, left in the morning, and Sidney was so devastated waving her off that when she disappeared around the corner, he almost mounted his horse and rode after her.

“What if she’s robbed on the road?” he said, staring unseeing into his small ale when they all went back into the inn to eat. “What if she falls over and can’t get back up?”

“She’s with her cousins,” Arthur pointed out. “And she’s not as conspicuous as, say… the king, traveling with a company of thirty.”

It was still a novelty for Gabriel to sit opposite him at the table; to be allowed to look at him, talk to him, touch his hand.

“Stop holding hands,” Sidney said immediately. “I am distraught.”

He wasn’t the only one. Gwen had been in the most dreadful mood for days. Gabriel had tried to understand exactly what was going on between her and Bridget, but the conclusion he’d come to, based on the little she was willing to share, was simply that Bridget had hurt his sister,again, and was therefore firmly in his bad books.

“You are a pot,” Arthur said, when Gabriel mentioned this, “and you are beholding a kettle, and you are about to make such an observation, the likes of which the world has never seen.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that perhaps you might have realized by now that when people are struggling, their loved ones are collateral damage,” Arthur said. “And seeing as I was the one you hurt, I get to say whether we’re angry with Leclair, and I say no. I’mworriedabout Leclair.”

“Have you tried talking to her?”

“No,” Arthur said breezily. “Because she looks furious, and I think she’s in a foul enough mood to wrestle me properly, this time.”