My ladies knew very well that I was not gone to rusticate, but they did not call the wizard on his lies. Instead they made merry in my absence and divided my gowns and shoes among them like a conquering army splitting the spoils of war.
I found Hildithe clumping across the dance floor at a soirée in the east wing with her knobby feet wedged into my scarlet satin dancing slippers. I spied Livith gasping frightfully in the ladies’ retiring room, her stays laced within an inch of her life to fit the narrow waist of my sage-green velvet ballgown.
Some heretofore undiscovered instinct toward magnanimity bade me consider whether wearing my finery was, perhaps, punishment enough for stealing it. Try as I might, I could not muster more than a grinding sense of annoyance at my faithless ladies-in-waiting. I was angry to see them prancing about in my wardrobe, but not so angry as I would have been had my clothes proved flattering to anyone but myself.
I next went to the princess’s rooms. She was asleep, as was the pretty ginger-haired girl who lay with her head on Etheldred’s shoulder and her bare arm about Etheldred’s waist.
I hopped lightly onto the princess’s pillows and put my cold nose beside her surprisingly shell-like ear. “Psst. Your Highness. Wake.”
“Mnghh!” Etheldred raised her arm to brush me away, but when her hand touched fur she recoiled and woke.
“Shhh! Your Highness. Silence is secrecy.”
Her blue eyes grew round and she muttered, “A talking cat? I must be dreaming. I hate cats.”
“This is no dream.”
“A talking cat with the voice of that wretched Catriona? Perhaps I have been poisoned and this nightmare is the fever of my final hour.”
The ginger-haired girl stirred. “What, Theldre?”
“Nothing, my love,” the princess said, waking fully to soothe her lover. “I had a strange dream.”
“The one about the sausages again?”
“Sausages?” I whispered, laughter light upon my voice.
Etheldred turned red. “No, dear. Go back to sleep.”
The ginger-haired girl settled more heavily into her pillows as Etheldred slipped from beneath her satin coverlet and into her mink-lined robe. She led me from the bedchamber into a sitting chamber that was prettily decorated with plush carpets upon the floor, and woven hangings upon the walls.
She eased the bedchamber door closed, and sat in a high-backed chair as elegantly as a queen taking her throne. “Now,” her voice was every bit as measured as her carriage, “what the hell is going on?”
“Is it not obvious? I have been turned into a cat by that wretched ogre, Galfridus, and am now returned to tell you of my plans to see you married and set upon the throne.”
“Of course.” Etheldred put her face in her hands. “Perfectly obvious.” She sighed and looked at the ceiling. “How do you manage to complicate everything you touch, dear Stepmama?”
“Like beauty and grace, it is a rare gift, Your Highness.” I made her an elegant bow. By rights, I should have curtseyed, but the movement did not work well with my lovely new boots.
“You need a little hat to go with those boots,” Etheldred said.
I imagined the overall effect of my current ensemble. “I do believe you’re right. Perhaps something tall with a feather and some ribbon?”
“That was a joke,” Etheldred muttered through clenched teeth, “not an invitation to chat about millinery.”
“Of course, of course,” I said, my mind still half pondering the perfect hat.
“You said you had a plan to see me married and set upon the throne.”
“Ah, yes.” I dragged my attention fully away from thoughts of felt or straw, and red plumes versus white. “If you don’t mind marrying a husband of common abstraction—he’s intelligent, kind and handsome, and far too pleasant to play politics.”
“He sounds perfect for our purposes, Stepmama, but you know I must marry a titled man.”
“Then I shall make sure he has a title. The Marquis de Carabas.”
“There is no Marquis de Carabas.”
“There will be when I am finished. He’ll have lands and a castle—all that is fitting for a man of noble birth and great wealth.”
“And where do you plan to procure those trivial items upon short notice?”
“Galfridus has everything I need to set Julian up as a nobleman, and he will not make a fuss about my use of them if he is dead.”
“You plan to kill the wizard?”
“He is the root of all our problems. Without his influence, the council will approve a consort of your choosing. And when the wizard is dead, I shall be returned to my rightful shape.”
“A modest plan.” She gave me a wry smile. “I’ve little faith it will succeed but I will help where I can. What do you need from me?”
“Admission to your afternoon audiences. Please make sure your uncle and some other members of the council are present.”
“That is all?”
“Would you mind if I took one of these damask pillow-casings? I need something more illustrious than a flour sack to carry my things.”
Etheldred looked bemused. “By all means, Cat.”
“Thank you, Your Highness.”
“Now, is that all?”
“For now,” said I. “For now.”
With that mysterious pronouncement, I took myself off through the window and down three stories of vine-covered wall, through the princess’s gardens, and the public gardens, and the cloistered courtyard that stood between the east wing and the west. I found my rooms a mess—clothes, shoes and hats strewn about as though a whirlwind had passed through. After some searching, I found what I wanted—a miniature shako that had been made to go with my riding habit.
After stowing the hat in my new carryall I made my way outside again, and up five stories of vine-covered wall to breach the window at the top of Galfridus’s tower. The wizard was, thankfully, either abed in his rooms or out enjoying the evening with other courtiers, for his offices and laboratory were empty. I searched the offices first, rifling through his correspondence in search of letters stamped with the seal of the wizard’s estates, but writ on the thin, pulpy paper. I found several possible candidates, which I stowed in my bag.
Next I searched his laboratory, pawing over his shelf and bookstand to find anything that might be a book of spells. It would have helped had I been able to read the titles, but the deficiency was one I would just have to work around. At last I found a battered tome that looked much read. There were notes in the margins, and stains upon the pages. This, too, I stowed before taking the neck of the bag in my mouth and scampering off into the night.
When I returned to the room we had let for the night, I found it empty. The bed linens smelled of soap and sun, with not a trace of Julian. I stowed my boots and hat and bag of prizes beneath the bed, and made my way to the tavern on the inn’s ground floor.
The tavern was a raucous place, packed tight with drinking men and women. Over the noise of the crowd, I heard Julian’s voice. I leapt onto a shelf, and thence into the smoky rafters just in time to see a blowsy blonde lead him through the back door of the common room.
It took me some time to catch up with them. I had to cross the room jumping rafter to rafter—a task, I will add, which I accomplished with enviable grace. I ran into the hall beyond the exit, and caught the sound of voices coming from a storage room.
Unnoticed, I scurried through the crack in the door and hid myself on a shelf behind several bags of grain.
“Why not your room, love?” The woman’s voice was smoky as the air inside the tavern, and thick with the sound of sex.
“My traveling companion is in my room,” Julian said.
“I was there when you let the room. You didn’t have no one with you but that black cat.” She paused, and curiosity lit her expression. “Speaking o’ which, what kind o’ cat is it? I ne’er seen one that walked about in boots before. Just like a little man, it was.”
“Dorinda, did
you bring me here to discuss my cat?”
She laughed. “Oh, no, my dearie. We came here to discuss my cat. My pretty little pussy.” She flashed him a coy look. “Would you like to see it?”
He chuckled.
She raised her mouth for his kiss, and he obliged, meeting her lips with his, and then deepening the kiss by slow degrees. She caught his hands in hers and brought them to the front of her bodice. He tugged the ties and undressed her in a few swift moves. Between one moment and the next, it seemed, her dress and shift lay at her feet, and her breasts overflowed his hands.
“Beautiful,” he murmured.
Though Julian seemed to like her breasts well enough, I thought them rather vulgar. My own were high and round and pert, more than a handful, but lacking the suffocating weight of Dorinda’s ample flesh. Men tended to sigh and gasp when they saw my breasts uncovered, their faces twisted in expressions of such rapture as might befit a saint in a stained-glass window. Were I there in that woman’s place, I was certain Julian would be no different.
Where Julian’s hands were deft, Dorinda’s were desperate. She grasped at him, trying to touch him all at once. First tracing the muscled length of his back, then kneading the firm curve of his bum, then wedging in between their bodies to ascertain the state of his arousal—a discovery which elicited an almost feline purr of, “My, my.”
“My, my,” he said, mimicking her action. “You’re more than ready.”
“I’ve been ready since you walked into the tavern,” she said. “It’s not often a girl gets a chance at a man who looks like there are angels somewhere singing his name.”
He laughed. “No angels.”
“But satisfied ladies aplenty, I’d wager.”
He looked away. “I don’t often—that is—” He broke off as she pressed a finger to his lips.
“No more talking.” Her panted whisper barely reached my ears.
But for gasps and grunts and growls, they did not speak again until he had brought her screaming to her release. Julian was much more restrained when his own moment came upon him. His muscles tightened and he exhaled slowly, and that was it. A deep breath later he leaned his forehead against hers. “Thank you.”
“The pleasure was mine,” she said as he did up the side buttons on his breeches. “You looked lonely when you came into the tavern, and a handsome man like you need never want for company.”
“I suppose not,” he said, his eyes distant and lonely, even now.
Poor Julian! I wondered how that wretched woman could look at him and not see the intelligence shining in his gaze, the kindness in his white smile, the gentle strength in his perfectly formed physique. Yes, he was handsome, but it was the least of his virtues. He deserved someone better than the shallow serving wench. Someone who could see his sterling qualities and appreciate him. Someone like me.
Unaware of my presence, or my longing thoughts, he kissed her lightly upon the lips, and left without a backward glance. When he was gone, she allowed herself a private smile and then bent to retrieve her clothes.
With her head bent so close to the ground, I suppose it was inevitable that she discover my hiding place. When she spied me, she made a chirring sound and said, “Well I wonder if you’re the same cat he brought with him?”
She reached her rounded hand for me. I hissed and scored her knuckles with my claws before running from the storeroom.
I left through the back door of the tavern, and circled around to the front of the inn. Getting to our room on the first floor was easy enough, requiring only the application of my claws to the timbers dividing sections of the inn’s smooth-plastered façade.
I entered the room through the window that Julian had left open for me. He was lying on the bed, hands cradling the back of his head. His posture seemed self-satisfied, but the expression on his face was dark and lonely.
I cleared my throat.
“Cat? Is that you?” A genuine smile supplanted his earlier expression.
“None other.” I attempted to affect a jaunty tone.
“How was your secret cat business?”
“Successful.” I could not help the shortness of my voice.
“You sound angry.”
“Not at all. ’Tis the air that offends. You smell of sex and cheap perfume.”
That quick flush of color that I had earlier found so charming washed across his face now, and went its merry way in the blink of an eye. “A gentleman,” he said. “A gentleman doesn’t speak of the ladies in his acquaintance.”
I wanted to contradict him, to argue that Dorinda was not a lady and was not worthy of his attentions, but even to my reckoning the argument sounded shrill and jealous.
I could not blot out the memory of waking, human, beside him. Of taking his eager shaft into my hand. But what was memory to me was a mere dream to him. I had no right to expect him to be faithful to an apparition. To turn away warm and willing flesh in favor of a half-remembered interlude.
“Do not be angry, Cat.” His voice was gentle, a request and not an order.
“Why shouldn’t I be angry? While I am off assuring your future, you are here tumbling the help as though you’ve droit de seigneur.”
He had the grace to look ashamed. “It isn’t like that. Not that I’d expect you to understand it, you being a cat, but sometimes humans, we get lonely.”
“Do you feel better?” I asked. “Are you less lonely, now that you have had a stranger in your arms?”
He was silent a long time. At last he said, “No, but I feel better now that you are returned.”
“You flatter me.”
“No, Cat. I do but tell the truth. It is a comfort to have a friend near. I couldn’t trust my own brothers, but I can trust you.” He patted a spot on the bed beside him. “Come on. Let’s get some sleep.”
Without a word I hopped onto the bed and curled up at his side. You may believe I should have been cautious after what happened the night before, but I assure you, caution was the last thing on my mind. I hoped to wake as a human sometime in the night, because when I did I would take him so thoroughly and so well he would be ruined for all other women.
Chapter Seven: The Plan
When dawn broke, I was still a cat. A cat with a human mind and heart and soul. A sorry lovesick creature with nothing to show for a night spent at my Julian’s side but a well-rested body and a weary spirit.
Donning my boots and hat made me feel more like myself. True, I was no longer a beautiful human woman, but I was every bit as clever as I’d always been. And I had such excellent plans. Plans which required the help of a certain well-formed, oversexed lay-a-bed.
I nudged Julian awake with my nose upon his cheek, but he only squinted blearily and said, “What’s that on your head?” before falling back to his pillow and resuming his snores.
An hour later, he finally roused on his own, yawning and stretching as he said, “Cat? Are you there? I had the strangest dream.”
“Sausages?” I asked, laughingly thinking of Etheldred.
“No, it was rather horrific. You had this hat…” His eyes came slowly open as he spoke, and his words trailed off. “Oh.”
“You don’t like it?” I tipped the miniature shako (complete with jaunty red plume at the front) I had purloined from my closet at the palace. When I was human it had balanced precariously atop my coiffure, held in place by tapes and pins. Now that I was so much smaller it fit my feline head perfectly and gave me, I thought, an air of dash and mystery.
“Whoever heard of a cat in a hat?”
“Whoever heard of a cat in boots? No one, but I can guarantee you that a week hence the whole city will know me.”
He smiled and scratched me behind the ears. “I don’t doubt it, my furry friend.”
“Now.” I drew my bag of purloined goods from its hiding place beneath the bed. “Let’s get to work.”
“What’s this?” Julian pulled the book from the bag. He turned it over and flipped open the tattered cover. “Why
did you steal a book on magic?”
“Perhaps we might use some of the wizard’s own spells against him.”
“No.” Julian snapped the book closed. “Magic is dangerous enough for people who’ve spent their whole lives studying it. If you poke your nose into it, who knows what could happen.”
“But—”
“No. I don’t want you hurt.” He turned to the letters I had stolen from Galfridus’s study. “Let’s get on with this. We can win without magic.”
I cast one longing look at the book, but acquiesced. It was unlikely we would be able to use the wizard’s spells, and I was rather flattered that Julian had voiced such strong concern for my safety. I shrugged and turned my attention to the other contents of the bag.
At my instruction, Julian read through the letters I had stolen, one of which was a report from Galfridus’s estate manager detailing the minutiae of crofter issues, agricultural rotations and the like.
“That’s it,” I said. “Can you copy the writer’s hand and style?”
“With practice, perhaps.”
“Good. I want you to write a letter informing the wizard that there has been a fire on his estate. The grain stores burnt, or some other dire emergency.”
“Why? What exactly is your plan?” Julian asked.
His question brought me up short. I was not used to answering for my plans. Lyell had been putty in my hands since we were mere children. The king had doted on me, and the courtiers with whom I’d cuckolded him had always been smitten to the point of stupidity.
But I was not a beautiful woman anymore. I was a cat. A sleek, dashing cat, to be sure—but nevertheless, still a cat. I had my wits alone to rely on. No. I had one thing more than my wits—I had my friend, Julian.
“Galfridus knows me. He must leave the city if our plan is to succeed. Had I some days of leisure in which to travel north, I would grant truth to our current fiction and set his grain stores afire, personally. But time is short. We must fool the wizard if you are to gain the princess’s hand.”
Cat's Tale Page 6
