back into fighting stance. Edward grabbed his broom out of the grass. He wiped sweat off his brow and smiled.
“Take that, you beef-witted varlet!” He made an honest try at hitting her this time. She dodged easily, almost skipped out of his way. Edward had the sudden suspicion that up to now she’d been going easy on him.
“Who are you calling beef-witted?” she laughed at him. “Your mother was a hamster, and your father stank of elderberries!” And away they went, whirling and stabbing with their brooms, almost dancing as they moved about the field.
She was good. Really good.
“Where did you learn to fight like this?” he panted as she nearly disarmed him again. Not for the first time it occurred to him that in spite of the hours he’d spent in Gracie’s company, he still knew next to nothing about her.
She tossed her hair out of her face, then brought her broom down hard against his. He only just managed to push her off.
“It was just something I picked up along the way,” she answered, as slippery as ever when it came to this type of question. “I prefer knives, though. Nothing beats a sharp knife in your boot.”
“Along your way to where?” he pressed. “Why are you in England?”
“Mind your own business!” She jabbed at him with her broom, but he parried. “You beetle-headed, flap-ear’d knave!”
A laugh burst from him. “You cankerblossom!” he cried, aiming a blow that made her duck. “But seriously, Gracie. Don’t you think it’s about time you told me something about yourself?”
“What you see is what you get, Sire.” She gave him a quick bow, then swung at him again. “You poisonous bunch-backed toad!”
Sire, again. He might have preferred toad.
“Enough.” He sighed, then suddenly threw his broomstick to the ground. “I don’t want to play games anymore.”
Gracie lowered her own broomstick uncertainly. “Sire?”
“Perhaps you’d better be on your way, Gracie. I appreciate all you’ve done for me, but I’m sure you have better things to do than play at swords. You said you would see me to my grandmother, and you did. You don’t have to stay.”
His heart was beating fast again. He was taking a gamble, he knew. Calling her bluff.
Her eyebrows came together. “You don’t trust me? After everything?”
“I want to trust you, really I do, but I don’t know you,” he said. “I’m grateful for what you’ve done to help me, but I don’t understand your reasons for doing so. You could be a spy for Mary Queen of Scots, for all I know.” He shuddered at the thought.
Gracie stared at him for a few tense heartbeats, her brow still furrowed, and then she let the broomstick drop to the ground.
“Fine,” she said irritably. “Come on.”
She walked to the edge of the grounds where the forest began, away from the ruins of the castle and out of earshot of anyone who might hear them. He followed. She spent a few minutes picking up pieces of wood from the forest floor and then throwing them down again, as if she was searching for something. (He hoped that she hadn’t at long last decided that he wasn’t worth all this aggravation, and was choosing a branch to club him with.) Finally, she seemed to find one she liked. She sat down against an elm tree. Edward lowered himself to the ground a few feet away. He waited for her to speak.
“You asked me once when it was that I knew I was a fox.” She drew her knife out of her boot and started stripping down the piece of wood in her hand. “I was seven.”
She was going to tell him a sad story; he could tell by the way the light had gone out of her remarkable eyes. He was tempted to stop her, because he hated sad stories, and he had no right to demand something so personal from her, but then again, there was truth to what he’d just told her. He needed to know who she was.
Gracie was deftly shaping the wood with her knife, her gaze fixed on her work so she didn’t have to look at him as she talked. “That night I woke to our cottage burning. We were all inside, my ma and da and brothers—I had two brothers—and they’d blocked the door from the outside, boarded the windows, too.”
“The English,” he said, and she didn’t answer, but if it’d been anyone else, he knew she would have corrected him.