The Courting of Bryn - Ch 6
"I don't know what you're doing all this for," Sinbad said, sitting down next to his big brother at the dinner table.
Doubar sat hunched over some lengths of rope tied in intricate knots and pieces of paper on which he painstakingly drew directions on how to tie the various knots.
"Bryn wanted to learn more about sailing, I thought knots would be a good start," Doubar supplied, not looking up from his work.
Sinbad picked up one of the finished pages, letting his eyes wander over the instructions as he said: "I mean, this whole production, I think she's gotten the message by now."
"She got the message before any of this. I told her I liked her," Doubar said, still concentrating on his work.
"So… What exactly are you getting out of this? She knows you like her, she's making your jump through hoops trying to prove it and you get nothing," Sinbad said.
"She's not making me do anything, I asked her permission to woo her and she granted it," Doubar said, getting a little annoyed at his little brother.
"Yeah but why? You've only got one tiny little kiss after you orchestrated an entire town to ply her with roses, I got a better one out of her without even trying!" Sinbad said, apparently suffering from foot-in-mouth disease.
Doubar dropped his pen, closed his eyes and counted to ten while taking deep breaths. "Sinbad," he finally said, once he'd regained his calm and opened his eyes, "you're the type of guy who likes to kiss a hundred girls a single time. I'm the kind of guy that likes to kiss a single girl a hundred times."
Sinbad was about to make a smart-ass remark but refrained, figuring Doubar probably wouldn't appreciate it right now.
"Bryn's special, alright? But she's lost, alone, afraid… Just think about it, she doesn't know who she is, the first year of her stay with us every time you looked at her you wanted her to be someone else- someone she couldn't be… I want to let her know that I like her for her, that I know her even without knowing her past, that she belongs here and that I'll always be here for her. So that's what this whole production is about. I don't care what I get out of it right now, I am playing for keeps," Doubar said, looking his little brother in the eye.
Though he felt chastened Sinbad didn't let it show for more than a few seconds, he jumped off the bench and clapped his big brother on the back. "Well my brother, I approve. Bryn's a lucky girl to have you looking out for her," he said.
Doubar was about to respond when Maeve wandered in, nibbling on hard-tack. "Oh, you're teaching her about knots? That's so romantic!" She exclaimed. "Can I help?"
"Romantic? Practical, sure, but romantic?" Sinbad said, clearly confused.
Maeve sighed, rolled her eyes t'wards the heavens and pulled a long-suffering face. "Besides teaching her more about a shared activity, namely sailing, he is also giving a statement of intent."
"What intent?" Sinbad asked, still confused.
"To tie the knot you dolt!"
Bryn, finished with her task of sorting various nuts in the storeroom took this moment to slip back to the deck unseen. She'd heard everything Sinbad and Doubar had been talking about and she'd liked what she'd heard.