Maeve squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and ignited the fire in her eyes. With little fanfare she shoved the herbs she was carrying into Bryn's arms, not even looking if the woman had taken hold of them before stomping away.
"Sinbad!" She said loudly, aware that she was performing so injecting a little more dramatic flair into the whole thing than was strictly necessary. "You don't owe me anything, you haven't made me any promises! But you let the people of this village believe we were married and then you sneak off in the middle of the night with one of their women! It makes me look like a fool!" She put her best frowny face on while trying not to laugh at his surprised look.
"But… I didn't…" Sinbad stammered, trying to figure out what she was talking about.
"I thought I meant more to you than that! And don't try to deny it, Firouz saw you sneaking off with her!" Maeve shouted.
"I wish Firouz and Rongar were here to see this," Doubar said, out of the side of his mouth, to Bryn.
"Dermott's gone to get them," Bryn said, just as quietly.
Sinbad finally seemed to have cottoned on to what he was being accused of. "Well you know," he said, in his most placating tone of voice. "It was a hard night last night. I'd been locked up by a crazy warlock, I couldn't hear anything, so I couldn't dance or have a conversation with anyone… That lead to drinking too much and you know…"
"No, I don't know, what exactly does drinking too much lead to?" Maeve asked, hands on her hips and eyes flaring.
"I was lonely! What was I supposed to do? You've made it perfectly clear you're not going to put out until you've killed Rumina!" Sinbad said, but from the narrowing of her eyes and the real glare she was now sending his way he learned that that was the wrong thing to say.
"You have got to be kidding me! So you're saying that until I submit myself to be a slave to your urges you will go around getting satisfaction wherever you feel like?" She asked, the anger in her voice now real.
Sinbad didn't know what to do, on the one hand he needed to tell her, to remind her in fact, that there hadn't been another woman on the other hand he needed to convince Doubar and Bryn that there had been. He struggled to calm down, sort his thoughts before answering her. "Maeve, you know me, you know that I am a man of my word and that when I have made a commitment to someone I will go to the ends of the earth to honour that commitment but," now he tried to point to Doubar and Bryn with just his eyes so that the twosome couldn't see. "But I haven't made such a commitment to you, so you really don't have anything to be angry with me about."
Maeve visibly calmed down until she remembered to keep up the act. "Except that these people here think we're married! Which was YOUR doing! You could at least afford me the respect of keeping it in your pants for just this one island!"
"Woah! Who said anything about pants?" Sinbad said, not wanting anyone to think he was back to his old ways.
"So you didn't get into her pants?" Maeve asked, her eyes narrowing as she faked trying to make out if he was lying.
"I was just getting my hearing back, we just talked," Sinbad said, omitting the kissing that had been going on last night because he knew that had happened, and Maeve knew that had happened, but Bryn and Doubar did not need to think that had happened with some stranger. "And I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings." He said, looking her straight in the eye to show her that he meant it.
Maeve melted a little as she heard the sincerity in his voice. She smiled at him, shaking her head a little. Leave it to them to have an honest conversation while in the middle of a pretend fight. "Thank you, that means a lot. I'm sorry that I yelled at you."
"Yeah well, next time I would appreciate it if you came to talk to me instead of just yelling accusations," Sinbad said.
"Come to think of it, it was Bryn making the accusations…" Maeve said.
As one Maeve and Sinbad wheeled around to face the brunette… At the same moment Rongar and Firouz came rushing up to them.
"What did we miss?" Firouz asked excitedly, looking from one pair to the other, apparently not a master of subterfuge.