by Mimi Riser
“I agree.”
“You…” Her eyes widened. Was that a smile she saw tugging the corners of his mouth? “Then why on earth were you going to marry her? Did the thought of her money mean so much to you?”
The smile vanished. “Now, who’s being insulting?” He gave a short laugh, but there was no humor in it. “Gabrina’s family has little money, anyway. Didn’t she tell you that?”
“No.” But his words were beginning to paint a much clearer picture for her than the one Gabrina had presented. Tradition and family honor, my Aunt Fanny. It had been nothing but a business deal. Though, naturally, Lady Gabrina wouldn’t have cared to admit that. Tabitha hardly needed the rest of Alan’s explanation.
“Money is the reason Gabrina’s people wanted her to marry me. ’Tis this branch of the clan with the wealth…for all the good it does us.”
The bitterness of his tone surprised her. This man carried some grudge against his own family, it seemed. Because of the marriage they’d arranged for him? What had been their purpose for that?
“If they weren’t interested in more money, what were the Texas MacAllisters supposed to gain from the alliance?” She stared at his shadowed face. The moon suddenly streamed out from behind a cloud, illuminating his features. Her throat constricted at the anger she saw.
“They were hoping for a proper, civilized wife, I expect. To help tame their savage son.”
“And what did the son hope to gain?” She tried not to wince as his hand tightened like a vise on her arm. There was evidently more to this story than he cared to tell, but she had to know the truth. If she could understand the motives at work here, she might be able to mold them into a bargaining point for her own release. “Why did you agree to the marriage?”
“I didn’t! ’Twas all Angus’s doing.” Abruptly, the grip on her arm opened, and he angled away, his expression lost in the shadows again. “I’d no intention of wedding Gabrina. That’s why I rode out the day she was to arrive. I didn’t even want to see her.”
Could this be the opening she’d been looking for? If she offered sympathy and support now, would he respond in kind?
“It must have been so horribly frustrating for you. Your uncle is a very difficult man, I’m afraid. Do you know he had me tied to the wagon seat when I tried to jump out on the way here?”
She quivered at the memory. Then quivered more at the warm touch of Alan’s fingers brushing her cheek when he turned back to her. His hand cradled her chin, tipping her face up to meet his eyes. Eyes with such unfathomable dark depths, she had a sudden dizzying sensation of drowning in them.
“No, I didn’t know.” His low voice rippled over her like smoke in the cool night air. “Though it doesn’t surprise me. Angus has used heavier handed methods than that to get what he wants.”
“Why is he so insistent on this marriage? And, more to the point, why are you?” she persisted, a desperate edge creeping into her tone. Was it her imagination, or was the night growing warmer? It was so difficult to keep her thoughts in order with that imposing form scant inches away and those mesmerizing eyes boring into hers. “You say you had no intention of marrying Lady Gabrina. Why, then, would you want me? It doesn’t make any sense!”
“Doesn’t it?” His fingers traced the line of her jaw. “Do you know when I first saw you, I thought you were Gabrina?” The fingers started drifting up and down the side of her neck, like flames licking her where they touched. “I said to myself, ‘How interesting, Uncle Angus has found me a bride who leaps out of trees half naked. He has more imagination than I gave him credit for. I may have to rethink this alliance.’”
“But I’m not Gabrina. You’re breaking the law by keeping me here. When I get out—and I promise you I will—I can have the lot of you arrested for kidnapping!” Tabitha’s voice sounded like sandpaper to her own ears. Alan had stepped so close she could see the pulse throbbing at the base of his throat, feel his breath on her brow when he spoke.
“I think not. You left Abilene of your own free will, remember.” His hand slid around to the back of her head and tangled in her hair. “You deliberately misled Angus as to who you were.”
“Only for a few hours. It was necessary. But I told him the truth as soon as I could. And I was honest with you from the start.” She battled back a wave of panic and heat. “Alan, this isn’t right, and you know it!”
Her breath caught in her throat with a ragged gasp as his free arm snaked around her waist, locking her so tightly against him, their two lengths were almost molded into one. She could feel every solid contour of his body grinding into her, hard in all the places she was soft.
“Are you a mind reader, Tabitha? You know what I know, do you?” he whispered, slowly drawing her up to her toes and pulling her head back to meet his. “Tell me then, dear…what am I thinking now?”
For answer, Tabitha squeezed her eyes shut against the fire in his. Already she could feel herself starting to melt, sense her body beginning its electric response to his. And she was powerless to stop it. It was maddening! Except she didn’t know who she was angrier with. Alan, for doing this to her? Or herself, for suddenly wanting him to.
Then without warning she was free of him, and standing alone and trembling in the chill of the courtyard. Her eyes flew open, and she drew in deep shuddering breaths, like a drowning victim breaking through to air. As her respiration slowed, she saw Alan, poised taut and watchful, a few paces before her. The last of the storm clouds had blown away, and the yard was flooded with an eerie incandescent glow, making the castle walls appear as if they were carved from green gold. Time seemed to dissolve into a distant mist as she stood, silent and shivering, waiting for…she wasn’t sure what.
Alan finally broke the spell.
“I just wanted to convince myself our kiss by the spring wasn’t my imagination. I needed to be sure that you reacted to me the way I remembered.” His voice wrapped around her like a velvet cloak. “But I’ll not kiss you here. I might not be able to stop with just a kiss. And the courtyard’s a bit muddy for anything more.”
It brought a hot new blush to her face. And raised a chilling new concern. What actually was happening here? How could he have such a powerful effect on her? A mere word or look from this…this creature, and she became someone she scarcely recognized. It went beyond confusing. There was something genuinely strange about it. Something almost… Diabolical?
She shook the thought out of her head.
I have got to get away from here. This preposterous place is starting to give me too many preposterous notions. The next thing I know, I’ll be suspecting him of black magic and worrying about demonic possession—and I have too many real concerns to waste energy on silly ones!
“Go to bed, Tabitha Tilda. We’ll finish this business later,” that velvet voice said as its owner stepped forward.
“The hell we will. My business with you is finished as of this moment!” She glued her feet to the ground as he reached to brush back a wild wisp of hair from her cheek.
With a wicked grin, he tucked it behind her ear. “That’s what you think, dear. Our business has only begun.”
Taking her by the shoulders when she refused to budge, he gently turned her around and propelled her toward the keep with a not so gentle swat on the bustle.
“Why, you—” She whirled back, intent on some serious swatting of her own.
“Later.” He chuckled, catching her hand in mid-flight and kissing it before she could jerk free. “Now to bed with you. But on your way there, I’ve a question for you to ponder.”
“Yesss?” she hissed, glaring murder at him.
“I want you to decide who you’re really afraid of. Me?… Or yourself.” The chuckle deepened into a full laugh at the fury on her face. “Now you’d best leave. Before I decide to ignore the mud.”
Almost strangling on her own tongue, Tabitha snatched up her skirts and beat a beeline to the keep, his laughter burning in her ears the whole way.
Chapter 3
“I should have scattered a trail of bread crumbs after myself when I left, so I could find my way back. I think I’m just going around in circles. Everything is starting to look the same,” Tabitha grumbled as she padded down what seemed the hundredth winding passageway she’d tried since reentering the keep. She’d found another lit candle, but it wasn’t helping much. “Honestly, this place is laid out like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. I’ll never reach my room at this rate.”
She sighed when the passage ended abruptly in a semicircular alcove. The area was bare, save for a few stools off to one side and a large, three-section Oriental screen standing near the back, looking rather incongruous. How curious. What could it be there for?
“Aahoooeeeeahhh…”
The sudden screech rattled overwrought nerves. Tabitha’s hair stood on end.
“Death… Death… Leave before it’s too late!” a banshee voice wailed. “Ahooeeeooahh…”
Uh-huh.
Silently, Tabitha crept toward the screen, like a cat stalking a mouse. With a single quick move, she grabbed the nearest panel and snapped it back. The screen wobbled, overbalanced and tipped over, landing on the wood floor with a heavy thud.
“Oh! Now see what you’ve done!” A tall, willowy young woman with extravagant red hair, piercing blue eyes, and an almost blinding canary yellow negligee stood staring at the screen in dismay. She stamped her foot. “If it’s been damaged, Uncle Angus will hang me by my thumbs and then have me hurled into the moat! That screen belonged to his mother.”
She glanced at Tabitha, her brows suddenly pulled together with thought. “Or, maybe it was his grandmother’s. I can’t remember. Anyway”—she heaved a dramatic sigh—“he’s very fond of it. Here, help me set it right. I’m Mary MacAllister, by the way. But I detest being called Mary—it’s too mundane—so I’ve changed my name to Esmeralda,” she chattered as the screen was lifted back into position. “What do you think?”
Tabitha was studying the ornate panels as best she could by the light of her candle. “It looks all right to me.”
Mary-Esmeralda gave a disgusted snort. “I didn’t mean the screen! Who cares about that silly old thing?” She gave it a kick that almost toppled it again. “I want to know how you like my name. Don’t you think Esmeralda has the wildest, most romantic sound to it?” She closed her eyes in ecstasy.
“Why, yes,” Tabitha said in the voice she reserved for small children and fussy lapdogs. “It makes you sound like a Spanish flamenco dancer.”
The blue eyes snapped open. “Oh, no! That will never do. I can’t sound like a flamenco dancer. They make far too much noise. All that heel clicking and those castanets—they sound like a herd of stampeding crickets!” She angled away, her brow furrowed with furious thinking. “I know! I’ll call myself Ophelia,” she exclaimed, spinning triumphantly back to face Tabitha. “What do you think of Ophelia? Or… Wait!” She flung out an arm for attention. “Flavia! Or maybe Angelique? Sophia? Desdemona? Oh, it’s so difficult to decide! What do you think?” she demanded, stamping her foot again.
“How about Cassandra?” Tabitha suggested, thinking of the beautiful, mad princess from Greek mythology.
“Cassandra?” The young woman’s head quirked to the side, as though she were listening to some distant melody. “Cassandra MacAllister… I like that very much, I think. It’ll look good in print, too. I’m going to be a famous playwright, you know. And star in all of them myself. Cassandra, it is then! Thank you, Tabitha.”
She smiled sweetly. “Oh wipe that silly shock off your face. Everyone here knows who you are. Didn’t you see your audience the other night when Alan dragged you up the keep’s ramp? That was quite a show you put on. I almost applauded. It didn’t fool me any, of course—I knew what you were up to—but it was entertaining, nonetheless. I may use it in my next play,” the redhead finally finished, because she’d run out of breath. She stared at Tabitha through narrow blue slits, a sly grin curling the corners of her mouth.
Tabitha stared back through equally narrowed eyes and the opposite of a grin tightening her expression. “What are you talking about, Cassandra?”
“As if you didn’t know,” the new Cassandra chanted, wafting dreamily across the alcove and seating herself on one of the stools in a billow of screaming yellow silk. “But enough of that. Here I am boring you with all this talk about yourself, when you must be dying to hear all about me.”
“Not really,” Tabitha said, still staring glaciers.
“I’m from Boston, and my father sent me out here last month because he thinks the theater is a scandalous career for a woman,” Cassandra cheerfully began, ignoring the ice. “He’s hoping I’ll marry one of Uncle Angus’s sons, instead. But I don’t like any of Uncle Angus’s sons. They’re all toads. And not the kind you could turn into princes with a kiss either.” She grimaced. “If I kissed any of them, I’d get warts.”
“So why don’t you go back to Boston.”
“No.” Mary-Esmeralda-Cassandra pressed her lips into a firm line, her eyes flashing blue fire in the candlelight. “You won’t trick me that easily, Tabitha. I know your game, but it won’t work.” She popped haughtily to her feet, shaking out her negligee like a queen shaking out her robes of state. “And I’m not going to tell you any more about me. You can perish of curiosity, for all I care.” Chin in the air, she billowed out of the alcove and was several catlike steps down the dark passage, when she whirled around and flew back.
“By the way, speaking of perishing, I’d keep my eye on Alan, if I were you. He may be a murderer,” she said brightly, gazing down at Tabitha’s stunned face with an angelic smile illuminating her own. “A murderer and a widower, to be specific. The two terms go together, you see, because he supposedly killed his wife. Her name was Heather, in case you’re interested.” Still smiling, she turned and drifted into the darkness, like yellow smoke vanishing in a midnight breeze.
And Tabitha fell, rather than sat, on the nearest stool. Her legs had turned to rubber. She was remembering the story of the original Cassandra and hoping that she hadn’t chosen too appropriate a name for her new acquaintance.
The first Cassandra had been a princess of Troy during its long ago siege. She had asked for and received the gift of prophecy from Apollo. But she’d also spurned the god’s advances, so he’d turned his blessing into a curse by declaring that no one would ever believe her. To all who heard them, Cassandra’s words sounded like the ravings of a madwoman, yet the poor doomed girl had spoken nothing but the truth.
Tabitha shook her head, jiggled one knee, then the other. The atmosphere of the castle had suddenly shifted. Before it had seemed a bit eerie, of course, but mostly just impractical and eccentric. Now it felt malignant and menacing.
She shot a wary glance around the alcove, the flickering glow from her candle making the curved walls appear almost as if they were pulsating. Even her own shadow looked somehow threatening. Steeling herself against a creeping panic, she cautiously rose to her feet, every nerve trembling like a touched fiddle string. Something hit against the hem of her skirt, and the squeal she let out hit high C.
She was that happy to see him.
“Hullo, angel, you always appear just when I need you the most, don’t you?” She knelt down to pet the cat. “You’re my little knight in furry armor.”
He dug his velvety head into her hand, that deep throaty purr of his vibrating like a hive of giant bees.
“You must know this castle like the back of your paw. Do you think you could show me the way to my room? Not that I really want to go there—I’d rather be far away from this dreadful place—but if I have to be anywhere here, I think my room is the safest. At least there I can lock the door and barricade myself in. Don’t you agree?” She gazed wistfully into his glowing amber eyes.
The eyes blinked once, and the cat gathered himself into a tight crouch beneath her hand. Like a spring unwinding itself, he shot around her and darted behind the screen. Tabitha heard a wild
scrambling, a muffled woosh, like something large and soft hitting the floor, and then… Complete, breathless quiet.
“Now what was that all about?” Her voice echoed in the stillness. “Did you hear a mouse?”
As if in answer, the candle flame flickered frantically for an instant, then wisped out, leaving her in a darkness so dense it almost suffocated her.
But not quite. From somewhere a breeze was blowing. A draft that hadn’t been there before. Heart pounding, she groped her way toward the source of the moving air—and found not only it, but a bright light in the passageway the cat had uncovered when he’d clawed down the tapestry that had hung behind the Oriental screen. It was rather strange she hadn’t noticed the tapestry before. But then, meeting Mary-Cassandra had been more than a little distracting.
She stooped to retrieve the light that the red haired distraction must have left behind when she’d entered the alcove—from this direction, apparently. It was one of Simon’s electric lanterns.
Tabitha stood blinking and puzzling a moment, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the glare and wondering why the catty Cassandra had been there in the first place. It was almost like she’d been waiting for me. And what was she doing with one of Simon’s lamps? Did he present one to every prospective bride who came to Castle MacAllister?
She heaved a small sigh. This was hardly a concern, considering all else she had to deal with—such as kidnapping, imprisonment, and a murdering fiancée—but it did smell somewhat suspicious.
Somewhat? The whole fortress and everything in it was beginning to stink like a kettle full of rotten fish!
Shaking her head, Tabitha glanced down the passage. Her black furred knight was nowhere to be seen, but that was all right, because she recognized where she was now and knew how to get from here to where she was going. She placed the lantern back on the floor and scurried back to her room.
