Eyes of the Cat

by Mimi Riser

  Storming to her feet, she hauled Tabitha up beside her and started steering the girl toward the keep. She gave a startled little cry when a quick hand stopped them—and Tabitha gave a loud one as she felt herself swung up into a muscular pair of arms.

  “Take it easy, Miss Jeffries. I’m merely offering some gentlemanly assistance. You don’t look in any shape to navigate the ramp,” sounded a familiar drawl. A lazy grin beamed down at her.

  Tabitha heaved a relieved sigh and sank back against the man’s solid chest while he carried her up the foot ramp to the keep’s second floor entrance. “I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but it cheers me tremendously to see you, Mr. Elliott.”

  “At least one of us is happy about it,” Mary muttered, and promptly choked on a second cry, as the trio’s way was blocked by the figure Tabitha had least wanted to see.

  Burning amber eyes glinted dangerously into Simon’s cool gray ones. Like fire and smoke, Tabitha thought as her heart threatened to skip the next several beats.

  “If you’re really a wizard, Mr. Elliott, prove it to me now by making him disappear,” she groaned into his lapel.

  Both men ignored the request. They looked like two stags in a face-off. Except they were locking gazes instead of antlers.

  “Thank you for your trouble,” Alan said to Simon, as though gratitude was the last thing on his mind. “But I can handle things from here.” His arms lifted to take her.

  “You’re welcome, but it’s no trouble at all. I’m happy to be of service.” Simon grinned, swinging his armful to the side and preparing to step past.

  “’Tis a service she doesn’t need.” Alan blocked them again. And he was not grinning, the armful noted.

  “Yes, I do!” she insisted, locking her own arms around Simon’s neck as Alan started to pull her away.

  An ear splitting whistle pierced the air. Three heads turned with a start, just in time to see Mary withdrawing two fingers from her mouth, her eyes blazing blue sparks.

  “What do you think she is, a rope in a tug-of-war?” She thrust herself between Alan and Simon. “Cousin Alan, be reasonable. Leave Tabitha with me tonight. She needs a woman’s care. You’ll only upset her more.”

  “I’ll upset you, lassie, if you don’t step aside.” He latched onto Mary’s forearm with an intimidating grip.

  The grip popped open, and so did his eyes, in astonishment, as her free hand shot out and landed an expert chop on his wrist that must have rattled his teeth.

  Too late, Mary realized the mistake. She glanced over her shoulder to see Simon’s smoky gaze studying her. Her own eyes began blinking, as though fighting back tears. “Oh, ow”—she sniffled—I hurt my hand.”

  “I’m so sorry. Would you like me to kiss it for you and make it better?” Simon offered with a grin.

  “No. But I’ll tell you what you can kiss, if you’re not careful,” she answered with a sinister sweetness.

  His grin broadened. “Mmm…if it’s what I hope it is, I’d enjoy that even more.”

  “Eww...” Mary gagged, a horrified blush staining her face. “You’re disgusting.” She pivoted back to Alan. “So are you! Both of you are disgusting. All men are pigs,” she told Tabitha, neatly prying her loose from Simon and helping her to stand. “We don’t need any of them.” Holding her chin in the air and her arms protectively around Tabitha, she tried to guide the girl through the keep’s smaller, foot-passage entrance.

  Alan back-stepped, yanked the door shut, and held it fast with one hand while he reached toward Tabitha with the other. The sudden tenderness of his tone hit her harder than if he had shouted. “Please… Let me take care of you. I’ll not do anything to hurt you further. I just want to be with you. ’Tis the only way I can be certain you’ll be safe.”

  “She’ll be safer with me, than she will with you,” Mary argued as Tabitha shivered against her. “Why do men have to be so blind? She’s been too long without care already, and you’re standing here wasting more time! Stop being an idiot, Alan. Move aside!”

  The door suddenly rattled on its heavy iron hinges. “Alan you say?” someone on the other side of it called. “Be that you, Alan MacAllister, holdin’ this door shut? Ye’d best open it, laddie, afore I take me stick tae you.”

  “Molly? Thank heavens! I was just coming to find you. That miserable toad, Dunstan, attacked Tabitha, and she needs help,” Mary answered. “Probably your charm for warts, too,” she added thoughtfully.

  “Tabitha, is it? Be that the lassie I sent the salve for t’other night? The one they say has just wedded Alan? I’ve nay seen her yet.”

  “Yes, that’s her, and she’s ready to collapse. Make Alan let us through. He’s being a pigheaded lout.”

  A soft chuckle sounded, then a stern: “Alan MacAllister, I bid you once open this door. Now, I’m biddin’ you again. If I hafta bid you a third time, I ken someone who’s gang tae be a very sorry and a very sore laddie. D’ye hear me, son?”

  Alan heaved a tremendous sigh—“Aye, Grandmother”—and reluctantly stepped aside. “What are you laughing at?” He glowered at Simon. “Don’t you have somewhere else you need to be right now?”

  “Actually, now that you mention it…” The other man grinned. “No.”

  “Well, go there, anyway!”

  Simon pasted on his wounded look (but not for long). “Oh, all right, if you’re going to be that way about it.” He dipped a slight bow to Mary and Tabitha. “Ladies, I’ll see you later.”

  “Not if we see you first,” Mary muttered.

  “Ah, but that’s just it, isn’t it? No one ever sees me first. I’m a wizard,” he told her, that lazy grin spreading slowly across his face. “I can appear in a puff of…smoke.” He watched a moment as every last scrap of color drained out of her, then turned and strolled off with a long, lanky stride.

  “Drat. And here I’d been thinking he was just some nosy tenderfoot,” Mary murmured under her breath. “I’m going to have to rewrite this show.”

  “Be you makin’ a new play, dear?”

  A female Leprechaun? No, that couldn’t be right. Leprechauns were Irish. This was a Bodach, a Scottish pixie, perhaps?

  One of the Wee Folk, anyway, Tabitha decided in her daze. The white haired woman smiling up at Mary was less than five feet tall and as wispy and delicate as a blade of grass.

  “You know me, Molly, I’m always working on some drama or other,” Mary said, looking as though she was deep in the middle of one right then.

  “Aye, dear, you’re a bonny, braw play actress. And this be me new granddaughter?” Her eyes crinkled for an instant as she seemed to read the whole of Tabitha’s injuries and half her thoughts in one practiced glance. “I’m sorry you’ve had such a rough welcome tae your new home, dear, but ’tis nothin’ I canna heal. Wipe that ugly frown fray your face, Alan MacAllister, and make yourself scarce. Mary and I will tend your bride. Your black looks be fearin’ the lassie,” she said. “I’ll send if you’re needed.”

  “You won’t have to send far. I’ll be right outside your door.”

  “Oh, ’tis one o’ them moods, is it?” Tiny hands on her narrow hips, Molly stood peering up and clucking her tongue at him. “Ah well, what canna be cured, mun be endured. Bring your bride alang then, you blackguard. But mind you go gentle. ’Tis a wicked knock on her head. If you worsen it, I’ll give you one tae match on your own.” Thumping her short staff on the floor with every step, Molly led the way deep into the heart of the keep, to her Stillroom filled with pungent potions, powders and salves, and fragrant bunches of herbs drying from the ceiling rafters.

  Tabitha rode the entire way in Alan’s arms. And in agony, too weak to lift her head off his chest and having to listen to the steady beat of his heart throbbing a counterpoint rhythm to the painful pounding in her skull. There wasn’t a single part of her that didn’t hurt. But the sharpest ache of all was the one that stabbed through her with the horrible realization that part of her wanted this. She wanted to feel his warmth
and his strength wrapped around her, holding her together, keeping her from flying into a thousand desperate fragments.

  It was worse than horrible. It was ridiculous. It made no sense. She distrusted him, feared him, hated him even. Yet being held by Alan was like being held by a rock. It felt like coming home after fighting a war in some frightful, alien land. But how? How could it feel so right when she knew the whole thing was so utterly, awfully wrong?

  She didn’t realize she’d been moaning aloud until she felt his lips grazing her brow and heard his low voice murmuring, “I’m sorry, dear, I’m trying not to hurt you.”

  It was the final blow. It burst the dam of her control, and hot, salty tears flooded over her cheeks, stinging open cuts. “Damn you. Everything you do hurts me. Why can’t you just leave me alone? Let me go.”

  He flinched, as though her words had been a knife thrust, and she felt his muscles tense.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, the tenderness of his previous tone gone. “’Tis not my intention to wound, but if that’s the way you feel, you’d best get used to it. There’s no escape, Tabitha—for either of us. You’re mine whether you like it or not. I’ll ride into hell before I’ll let you go.”

  And I’m almost in hell now.

  Tabitha struggled to choke back the sobs before they grew uncontrollable. None of her logical science training had prepared her for this turmoil. There was no logic here. She was out of her depth. And out of her mind. Alan’s declaration had sent chills down her spine—but not the icy kind. Nothing seemed to change her core reaction to him. Not anger, hurt, confusion… Despite it all, she was still beginning to feel that being in his arms was the only place in the world she was supposed to be.

  Chapter 5

  …Like placing one picture over a similar but not quite identical one, so the lines blurred together and it was difficult to tell where one image ended and the other began. That’s what the dream was like, Tabitha thought, as she lay between the sheets (sensible cotton ones, thank goodness), straining to remember it, her bruised eyes weighted shut with the effort.

  Alan had brought her back to their room, as he called it, after Molly’s skillful doctoring of her injuries. She’d been too drained by then, and too dopey from the painkiller the herb woman had administered to care where she was. She had barely even noticed Alan unwrapping her improvised toga, slipping a nightgown over her head, and tucking her under the covers like she was a small child. Then he’d pulled off his shirt and boots and slid in with her, cradling her against him until deep sleep claimed her.

  Which proved the worth of Molly’s potions. It was outrageous to think she ever could have slept in such a position otherwise, no matter how exhausted she was. Especially given the way Alan had spent the fuzzy interval before slumber rubbing her shoulders and stroking her back through the nightgown, and whispering soft words into her hair. Words Tabitha couldn’t remember now. And didn’t want to.

  That tender side of Alan seemed the most devastating to her. It rattled her to the core, because it was so incongruous to the rest of him. And because she was so defenseless against it. His growling and bullying was something she could lean into, brace herself for, and at least try to resist. But how did you fight gentleness? It was like one of those snares that used your own weight against you. The harder you struggled to loosen it, the tighter it became. She could feel the whole frightening situation closing in on her like a noose around her neck. And that weird dream had only pulled the rope snugger.

  Very weird, more like a memory than a dream, really. But a memory of something that had never happened to Tabitha. She’d been someone else in the dream, a girl slightly older than herself, who’d been locked in the tower room as she had, but during some earlier time. Tabitha had realized that because the tree outside the window had been so much smaller. She’d been squeezed into the window, staring out over the branches and waiting for someone, her heart pounding with a desperate longing and terrified dread at the same time. Who, exactly, she had been waiting for in the dream, she wasn’t sure, but she’d known it was a man, and that he was coming to rescue her. Although from what, she couldn’t remember, nor anything more than that.

  The rest of the dream was a blank. Except for the last part of it. In the final moment before waking, everything had been pitch black around her and heavy with the odors of smoke and blood. She had felt frozen, unable to move, and she hadn’t known where she was anymore. Then came the horrible noise of someone or something screaming in rage—almost like Alan’s cry when they’d pinned him in the yard—and she had awoken with a jolt, the agony of it still ringing in her ears…

  “Tabitha? I can tell you’re awake by the way you keep jiggling your knee under the covers. Do you feel well enough to sit up and eat something?”

  What… A pair of bruised eyes popped open, saw who it was, and a sore face managed a half normal smile. “Oh, it’s you. Good morning, Monique.”

  “It’s afternoon. And you can forget the Monique. I’m going back to plain old Mary for awhile.” She smiled back.

  “I’m glad. I always liked the name Mary. What time is it, anyway?” Cautiously, Tabitha pulled herself upright in the bed.

  So far, so good. My head hasn’t fallen off yet.

  Mary rose from her chair in a rustle of calico and started fussing with some covered dishes on the nearby table. “It’s almost two. You missed Dunstan’s noontime flogging, but I enjoyed it enough for both of us. They gave him twenty lashes. His back looks like a freshly skinned buffalo carcass, and the rest of him is starting to look like a boiled lobster. He has to hang in his ropes in this blistering Texas sun until nightfall. Do you want scrambled eggs, porridge, or both?”

  “Neither.” Tabitha pressed both hands to her suddenly churning stomach. “That…that’s barbaric! Poor Dunstan.”

  “Poor Dunstan, nothing!” Mary stared at her in disbelief. “How can you say that after what he did? He’s getting off lightly. I’d have beaten him senseless and left him hanging for a week.”

  “Oh, Mary, you don’t mean that. The poor fool was drunk. He didn’t realize what he was doing. And he’d been punished enough already, between the mauling and me cracking him with the bedpost.” Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Tabitha dropped to unsteady feet and staggered across the room to fumble her way into a lacy pink dressing gown she’d spotted draped over the top of the steamer trunk. There were matching slippers on the floor in front of it, and she half collapsed onto the trunk to slide them on.

  “And just where do you think you’re going? Molly said you’re to stay in bed all day.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I’ve cut Dunstan down,” Tabitha said, having no idea how she was going to accomplish that feat, but wobbling toward the door to do it just the same. “It’s too cruel to leave him hanging in the heat. On top of his other wounds, it could even kill him! If he dies, I’ll feel guilty about it the rest of my life.”

  Mary caught her before she was halfway out of the room. “Honey, that’s not going to happen. Dunstan’s a toad, but he’s an iron toad. You couldn’t dent him with a battle-axe. He’ll be fine. Unfortunately.” She put an arm around Tabitha and steered her toward the four-poster. “Now go back to bed. You’re still hurt, and you’re not thinking clearly. They’d never let you release him, anyway. The toad has to take his full punishment. It’s the MacAllister code. The only one who could possibly spare him at this point is Alan, because he’s the hereditary laird of the community. But I think Alan would cut his own throat before he’d cut lover-boy down early. He’s in the outer courtyard now, watching him with a look that makes my scalp feel loose. I can only imagine what it’s doing to Dunstan.”

  How lovely. Not.

  A view of Alan as Tabitha had first seen him—as the savage plains warrior—flashed before her eyes. She couldn’t help shivering as she was guided back under the covers.

  “You see? You’re all weak and trembly from moving around.” Mary plumped up the pillows behind her.<
br />
  Tabitha absently shook her head, making herself so dizzy for a moment that the bed felt like a raft riding over rapids. “No, it’s not that…” She clutched at the mattress to keep from falling off it. Drawing a few deep breaths, she waited for the white water to calm and for Mary’s three faces to merge back into one. “It…it’s…”

  It’s this crazy business about Alan thinking he’s a Comanche, she was going to say, but Mary cut her off.

  “It’s your head injury. That and Uncle Angus’s annoying fixation on introducing new blood into his clan’s breeding stock,” Mary said almost too wryly. “His brazen matchmaking would fluster a dancehall girl, let alone a decent girl like you. Not that I’ve helped the situation any,” she added with a sigh. “I was trying to save you from Alan, and I got you assaulted by Toad Dunstan, instead. I’m truly sorry about that.”

  Tabitha blinked up at the elegantly featured haze hovering above her. “You…you were trying to save me from… But you hardly know me.”

  “What difference does that make? You looked like someone who valued her vir…let’s just say virtue, and I thought it might be amusing to help you hang on to it.” The haze shrugged. “The storm woke me last night, and I saw that two-bit sideshow on the ramparts. Then later I saw Alan come in here. I waited in the corridor a bit, but when I didn’t hear any screaming or shouts, I figured you were either lost in this maze or hiding, so I went looking for you, and that’s when we met in the alcove. Only I couldn’t do anything then, because I heard someone behind me in the passageway. Spying on us, presumably. Though I don’t know who it was for sure.”

  “I think I do,” Tabitha mused, remembering the electric lantern. “It may have been Mr. Elliott. But I can’t imagine why he’d be spying.”

  “I can,” Mary said, more to herself than her charge. “But never mind that now. My point is I was only acting odd then to divert suspicion, as they say in the dime novels. I thought it might be Alan watching us, and seeing as how he expects that sort of behavior from me, I rather hated to disappoint him. He thinks I’m quite daft, you know.”