“A good job,” he said, nodding.
“He nicked me.”
“It happens,” Patrick said. He looked at Nathaniel, then shifted a bit farther away from him. “Sorry, lad, but you smell. I’ll take care of the refuse and leave you free to bathe. What shall I see to first?”
Nathaniel nodded gingerly toward where Gerald was now sitting up and looking around for his sword. “That.”
“Done.” Patrick walked over, hauled Gerald to his feet, then said something that had him very silent very quickly.
“Wonder what that was?” Nathaniel murmured. “I wish I’d known it several years ago.”
Emma watched Gerald walk over to them with Patrick at his side. She felt Nathaniel tense, which she couldn’t blame him for. If she pulled her knife free of her boot, well, who could blame her? She liked to be prepared.
“What shall we do with him?” Patrick asked politely.
“Do?” Gerald spat. “Who are y—” He squeaked and fell silent.
Emma supposed it might be impolite to look too closely at Patrick’s thumb on a pressure point in his new friend’s neck. Patrick pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Nathaniel.
“A text from my brother,” he said with a shrug. “It says,I’ve closed your cousin’s gate.” He looked at Nathaniel blandly. “I wonder what that means.”
“You sent it to yourself,” Gerald scoffed.
“No, I don’t think so,” Nathaniel said slowly. “The text is from James MacLeod.”
“Who?”
Nathaniel sighed. “If you don’t know, I’m not going to help you.” He leveled a look at his cousin. “You can do what you want to, of course, but don’t come to me for help when you’re trapped where you don’t want to be.”
“You’re bluffing,” Gerald snarled. “I can still get back there!”
“You might,” Nathaniel agreed, “but I’d be more worried if I were you about getting backhere.” He took a ragged breath. “I have to go sit down. Do what you like, Gerald.”
“I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen what you’ve been doing!”
“No one will believe you,” Nathaniel said wearily.
“Then I’ll make a name for myself in antiquities. I’ve already sold one sword to a guy in Scotland for plenty of money.”
Emma suspected Gerald didn’t have the patience or the social skills for that sort of thing, but she didn’t bother to say as much. He had launched into a diatribe full of slurs first in English, then in Gaelic. She wondered how so much unhappiness could find itself in one person. She had the feeling no amount of money could possibly fix that for him.
She looked over Nathaniel’s shoulder to find his grandfather and her father coming outside, highball glasses in their hands. Poindexter offered Nathaniel what he was holding, but Nathaniel shook his head.
“Another time, Grandfather, thank you.”
Emma took what her father held out, tossed it back, then wished she hadn’t. She wasn’t about to show any weakness in that crowd, though, so she blinked rapidly and tried not to vomit her drink back up on Nathaniel, not that he would have noticed in his current state.
Poindexter looked at Gerald and his eyebrows went up so far, they almost touched his perfectly coiffed white pompadour.
“Gerald,” he said crisply, “what in the hell are you playing at?”
Gerald was silent. Emma suspected that was because Patrick seemed to have grown suddenly weary, which required him to lean on his thumb pressing against Gerald’s neck.
“Nathaniel, what is this madness here?”
Nathaniel looked at his grandfather. “A bit of reenactmentbusiness, Grandfather,” he managed. “Sharpens the senses for battle in other arenas. I suggested it to Gerald a year or two ago and he took to it like a duck to water.”
Emma supposed that was as good a cover story as any. If Nathaniel shot his granddaddy a look that said Gerald had taken to it a bittoowell, she wasn’t about to correct the record.
