by Mimi Riser
He’s in no position to judge, Tabitha thought, as she watched Mary’s face coming back into focus.
“Then I devised that little tower act to draw him away from you. Not one of my better performances, I’m afraid, but the best I could do on short notice.” Mary studied her fingernails a moment. “I could have kept him there until dawn, too, if that wretched wall hadn’t given way”—she frowned—“almost as if it…dissolved. Most peculiar. I can’t figure it. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
As a matter of fact, yes. But Tabitha couldn’t bring herself to say so. It was like one of Simon Elliott’s electric lamps had flashed on inside her aching skull. I believe I know what he and Dr. Earnshaw are working on…
“Honey, what’s the matter? Are you sick again? You’re whiter than the pillowcase. Do you want me to fetch Molly?”
“Um, yes, that might be a good idea,” Tabitha half lied. Her head was throbbing, after all, but not just from her injuries. She’d been given too much to think about too quickly. She needed some time alone to sort through it.
“Thank you, Mary. I really am grateful for all your help,” she added sincerely as the redhead rustled to the door.
Mary paused a moment to look back, an unreadable expression on her classic face—or maybe it was just that Tabitha’s vision was still a little fuzzy around the edges. “Don’t mention it. I’d do the same for any girl who needed it. I know how…irritating unwanted advances can be.” Something in her tone made it sound as though she knew a little too well. “By the way, that’s one thing you needn’t worry about for a while,” she added more cheerfully. “Molly has given Alan very specific instructions to not do anything to jostle you for a few days, if you catch my meaning.” With a quick, catlike grin, she waltzed out of the room.
Tabitha gave her until the count of ten, then pushed back the covers and slid to her feet, hanging onto one of the bed’s three remaining posts for support while she shuffled back into the pink slippers. Along with everything else in her mind was the inescapable image of poor, foolish Dunstan crisp-frying in the blazing sun like a slab of bacon on a hot grill. That had been her other motivation for sending Mary away. She was still determined to set him free.
After that, she could ponder her own release. And what she thought Elliott and Earnshaw had created. And how she could use the latter to accomplish the first.
On her somewhat tipsy trek out of the keep, she kept glancing about, peering into corners and staring at shadows, half expecting to see the black cat, and half disappointed when he never materialized. But then, he was probably nocturnal, and spent the heat of the day curled up in some shady, secluded spot sleeping. The only times she had seen him, after all, it had been night.
The only times she had seen anything of the castle, it had been dusk or full night. This afternoon was her first view of the place in daylight. How curious. She’d been there for…what? Almost two days? And this was her first clear look at her prison. Or would be as soon as she was outside. The passing of time meant little in the large keep. Its walls were thick, its windows narrow and scarce. Here, there was no morning, afternoon or evening. Here, as far as she could determine, was only dim, dimmer, and dark.
Outside, however, with the high sun sizzling down into the castle’s inner courtyard, the glare was bright, brighter, and blinding. It almost blistered her eyes from their bruised sockets. Squinting and blinking into it, Tabitha grappled her way down the long ramp and into the yard, paused a moment, and then started shakily across it. She had no idea where she was going, but it didn’t seem to matter much, because she couldn’t see where she was going right then, anyway. The abrupt glare had hit her so sharply, she’d closed her eyes briefly to block out some of its sting.
That was how she managed to wander into the open shed, trip, and fall face first, full-length into the horse trough someone had left inconveniently lying about.
Or was it a horse trough?
Gasping, sputtering, surprisingly sticky, and trying to figure out what she had just landed in, Tabitha felt several sets of none too gentle hands hauling her out of it.
“’Tis Alan’s bride!”
“What’s she doin’ here, then?”
“Lookin’ for Alan maybe? There’s a joke for you.”
“Nay, spoilin’ the brew, ’tis what. And ’tis nay joke.”
“Aye, Geordie, you can kiss this batch g’bye.”
Beer? Oh dear, what a mess.
Feeling like an imbecile, Tabitha wiped the stuff out of her eyes and shot a sheepish look at the four faces staring at her. They belonged to three stocky, kilted men, and a plump middle-aged woman in a tartan skirt, white blouse and stained apron. None of them seemed particularly pleased to see her, and under the circumstances, she couldn’t blame them.
“I…I’m so sorry.” She began backing up, streaming brown puddles all over the floor. “The sun was in my eyes, and I couldn’t see where I was going. Um…I hope you’ll excuse me now. There…there’s something I need to do.”
Hair sticking to her head like wet string, her lacy dressing gown plastered against her like a second skin, and smelling like a brewery, she stumbled through the open door and had gone several steps into the yard when the woman called out irritably, “Laird Alan’s in the outer court, m’lady.”
“The outer courtyard? Is that where Dunstan is, too?” Tabitha glanced back at the glowering quartet.
“Aye!” the man named Geordie spat out. “Through the gate yonder, you’ll find him, and can gloat your fill.” He gestured toward a gap in a high wall about twenty yards in front of her, then stalked back to his ruined beer.
“I’m not going to gloat. I want to—”
She was cut off by grumblings of “Strumpet!” and “Witch!” filtering out of the shed. Her face burning, she hurried off as fast as her clinging garments and an oddly fuddled head would allow, and squished her way to the entrance Geordie had pointed out, leaving a wet snaky trail behind her.
The beer had been only partially fermented, but she had swallowed enough of it on an empty stomach, and on top of her head injury, and the residue of Molly’s painkillers to make her what is sometimes referred to as “loaded and ready for bear.”
Not that she realized it. Having never sampled alcohol before, Tabitha had no idea what its effects felt like. She only knew that her squishing slippers and sticky, sopping dressing gown were uncomfortable, constraining, and far more trouble than they seemed worth. Kicking off the former and ripping free from the latter just as she reached the wall, she tottered through the gap in it wearing nothing but her wet white silk nightgown, which hugged every curve as though it had been painted on her.
A rear view of Dunstan stopped her dead in her tracks. He was several paces forward on a rough scaffolding, wrists lashed to an overhead beam, and looking a little too much like a raw side of beef hanging in a butcher’s window to Tabitha’s blurry eyes. With a horrified cry, she dashed dizzily around to the front of the scaffolding, in plain sight of the butcher’s beef, plus a dozen or so people who were milling about the great yard on business. And Alan.
“Oh, Dunstan! This is awful!” she wailed.
Shouting something a bit more colorful and a lot less printable, Alan lunged toward her, snatching the shawl right off the shoulders of an alarmed matron who happened to be passing by just then, and bundling it about the girl.
“Tabitha! What the devil—”
“Cut him down!” she demanded, glaring green outrage up into his eyes—and realizing, with a start, that there were four of them staring amber fury back at her. “Both of you!” she added, getting another start as her gaze swung to Dunstan and then back to the Alans. “Both of you cut both of him down right now!”
The look in the amber eyes went from fury to astonishment. And there was suddenly a whole sea of them swimming before her.
“No, wait!” Tabitha flung up her hand. “You can’t all go up there. You’ll collapse it. Just you, the one in the middle, you cut the Du
nstans down. And be quick about it!”
“You’re drunk,” Alan said with amazement.
“I am not!” she declared indignantly. “I merely shlipped… I mean, splipped… Oh, hell, I tripped and fell into a damn vat of—hic—beer.”
“An’ hadta drink it, I’ll wager, tae keep fray drownin,” Dunstan reasoned from the scaffolding. “You can hardly blame her, Alan. ’Tis what I’d have done.”
“You shut up or you’ll find yourself hanging there till Christmas,” Alan snarled at him.
“No, you won’t, Dunshtan,” Tabitha told him. “Thish has gone far enough!” she told the Alans. “Cut him down now, or…or…” She thought feverishly for a moment. “Or I’ll hold my breath!” Her bruised cheeks promptly puffed out like two little balloons.
“Tabitha, stop that,” Alan ordered.
Her cheeks puffed a little farther, and her eyes stared fixedly ahead.
“This is utter folly. You’re behaving like a child.”
Her face began to turn pale blue beneath the bruises, and her knees started to tremble.
“I’m warning you… Do you hear me, lassie?”
Her knees gave out, and she sat down hard on the ground, but still refused to release her breath.
“Tabitha…”
She sensed her eyes crossing, and the sun going dark.
“Bloody hell, I’ll cut him down! Now breathe, for God’s sake.”
All the old air whooshed out of her lungs, and she sucked in a big fresh breath. Then noticed her bare feet sticking out in front of her. “Where are my slippers? Oh, thash right, I had to get rid of them.” She wiggled her toes. “They were squishing too loud.”
“Squishing?” Alan’s lips began to twitch.
“Yes, squishing. It was getting on my nerves.” She shrugged off the shawl. “Sho is this. It’s too hot.”
He reached down and wrapped it more tightly around her. “No. Leave it be.”
“You leave me be,” she fussed, awkwardly untangling herself from the tartan folds the moment Alan turned his back on her and mounted the scaffolding to free Dunstan.
“This is your lucky day, cousin,” he growled to the half-baked man.
“Aye.” Dunstan grinned crookedly, gazing over Alan’s shoulder at the shawl-less Tabitha, who had just struggled to her hands and knees and was crawling away from the men toward an enticing cluster of wildflowers she’d spotted a few yards distant.
Alan sliced through Dunstan’s last bond, swiveled, saw her, cursed, pounced off the scaffold like a charging panther, grabbed the shawl, and managed to wrap her into it and his arms almost in the same motion.
“Put me down! I wanna pick some flowersh.”
“I’ll pick some for you later, after you’ve had a bath and are back in bed,” he promised, carrying her toward the gate to the inner yard.
Dunstan had just finished painfully lowering himself to the ground as they passed the scaffold. “Thank you, lass.” He glanced shyly at Tabitha, then hastily lowered his gaze beneath Alan’s black glare.
“You don’t have to thank me. I only did what had to be done. It washn’t a fair punishment. You didn’t mean to hurt me. It was the whishkey,” she told him. “People aren’t re…reshponsible for themshelves when they’re drunk. You should remember that,” she slurred sternly to Alan.
“I’ll try,” he said very solemnly. “Now it’s back to bed with you, my tipsy lassie.”
“I’m not yours. I’m not tipshy. And I don’t want to go back to bed. I’m not shleepy.”
“You don’t have to sleep. Just lie there and rest. I’ll stay and keep you company.”
“Then I’ll never get any rest. All you want to do ish…ish play footshie.”
“Footsie?” Alan paused in mid-step, an amused curling at the corners of his mouth.
It irritated Tabitha tremendously. “You know what I mean,” she grumbled against his chest. “And I’m not interested. I won’t like it. I take after my Aunt Matilda. She washn’t intereshted in it, either. Sho there!”
“If you’ve never tried it, how do you know you won’t like it?” he argued amiably.
That irritated her even more. “What’s that got to do with anything? I’ve never been hit by a train either, but that doesn’t mean I think I’d like it. Both posshibilities sound too…too messy.”
Alan suddenly laughed so hard, he had to clutch her against himself to keep from dropping her. “You may be right,” he said, struggling to contain himself, as her look nearly blistered him. “Sometimes it can feel a bit like being hit by a train, I suppose. But I promise you, when the time comes, I’ll be as neat as I can.” And he had to clutch her again, as she tried to throw herself out of his arms on their way through the inner courtyard.
“Tabitha, shh…” Dropping onto a nearby bench, he held her on his lap, pressing her head against his shoulder to keep her from angrily tossing it about. “You have to be still. You’ve had a near concussion. This fussing could make it worse. Please, dear…easy… ’Tis all right. Quiet now. Shh…”
Tabitha trembled as the hypnotic quality of his musical baritone forced her to relax in spite of herself. The exertion had made her blurry and dizzy all over again. And she was still drunk—but still had no idea she was.
Alan did. “That’s better.” Carefully, he rose and carried her toward the single foot ramp that led into the keep.
“Wait!” She strained against him. “Not the middle one. It looks too wobbly. Take the ramp to the left.”
“Whatever you say, dear. Just relax… That’s a good lass. You’ll be fine.”
“I’m fine now. The only problem I have ish you. Stop trying to be sho…sho nice to me. I hate it when you’re nice. It makesh me wonder what you’re up to.”
“I’m not going to be up to anything till my grandmother says you’re well enough for it.”
Muddled though she was, the innuendo was enough to scorch her scarlet and clamp her lips shut until they were back in the bedroom, where two shy little chambermaids in starched aprons were filling an ornate brass bathtub that had just been dragged in. A third maid was unloading several covered dishes from a tray onto the small table.
And Tabitha, who had been consigned to a burgundy armchair in one corner of the room, was studiously engrossed in trying to pluck her beer-laundered nightgown away from her skin. The silken sheath seemed to have become glued to her, and the more it dried, the stiffer it became. “Now I know how a moth feels in its cocoon.” She did the only thing she could think of to loosen it.
“Tabitha!” Alan soaked his shirtsleeves to the elbows hauling her upright in the tub she’d just completely sunk herself in. “That was very silly.”
“I know,” she sputtered, haphazardly wiping water out of her eyes. “Beer is s’posed to be good for your hair. I washn’t planning on rinshing it out. But I forgot.” She forgot about Alan, too, as the sight of her nightdress billowing up around her in the warm suds caught her undivided fancy.
Sighing, as though it had only then dawned on him what a long afternoon this was going to be, Alan turned to dismiss the now giggling maids. Which gave Tabitha just enough time to grapple out of her nightgown and drop it in a puddle by the tub, so that when, in the next instant, a new face appeared in the half open doorway, she stood up in the bath to greet it, like Venus rising out of the sea foam.
“Hullo, Dr. Earnshaw, I fell into a vat of beer!” she announced, as if that explained everything. Which it did.
Cursing, Alan snatched up a large towel, bundling her into it and then the bed, where he yanked the covers to her chin—“Stay there!”—before turning to the steamer trunk to find her a fresh nightdress.
“Oh, now, don’t mind me, son. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. And very true to form.” Zachary Earnshaw chuckled as he stepped into the room. “You couldn’t keep clothing on that girl when she was tiny. It used to drive Matilda to distraction. She’d have her all dressed, neat as a pin, and the moment your back was turned, the little m
inx would be prancing about, naked and free as a pixie.”
“That can’t be right. You musht be thinking of shomeone else. I’d never do anything like that,” Tabitha declared, climbing clumsily out of bed, dropping her towel, and making it halfway across the floor, naked and free as a pixie, before Alan managed to catch her and wrestle an ivory satin nightgown over her head.
“So like Matilda,” the older man muttered to himself. Shaking his head, as though suddenly rousing from a dream, he reached into his vest pocket and fished out a small, leather-bound notebook and gilt pencil. “Here, I know what may quiet her.” He wrote for a moment, then handed the notebook and pencil to Tabitha, who had been re-deposited in the bed and was stridently resisting having her tangled, wet hair combed. “Tabitha Tilda, can you focus clearly enough to work these for me?” he broke into her fussing.
She halted in mid-squawk and squinted at the pages in sudden interest. “Of course, I can. A chimpanzee could work these.” Gripping the pencil, she began scribbling with a vengeance.
Alan stared over her shoulder. “What language is that?” He sounded perplexed.
“Algebra.” Zachary grinned. “An old trick of mine. Matilda used to bring Tabitha to my lab quite often when she was small, and I’d set her long lists of equations to solve to keep her out of mischief. Algebra was more fun for her than toys. The girl is a mathematical genius, you know… It’s in her blood.”
“No, I didn’t know.” Alan now sounded rather shocked. “Why should I suspect a lady’s companion was even interested in mathematics?”
“A paid companion? Good Lord, is that what she’s been doing?” If Alan had been quietly shocked, Zachary was loudly aghast. “Tabitha Tilda! Whatever possessed you? That’s not the work you were raised for. Matilda would have wanted you to finish school and continue her research.”
“Mmm…that’s what I wanted, too,” Tabitha muttered, flying through the equations, never missing a beat. “There was the little matter of eating, however. You may recall that Aunt Matilda didn’t trust banks. Most of our money went up in flames, along with the house and…and everything else.” She glanced up into Zachary’s eyes and a look that sobered her even more than the algebra had.
