Eyes of the Cat (13 page)

“You’re right,” he whispered, grinning, as she quickly shoved the hand and what it held farther into the yellow folds. “That probably would
not
be a wise move.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She blinked at him with wide-eyed innocence and just the right amount of feminine pique.

“Yes, you do.” He grinned again. “And you know I’ll be watching you closely from now on, too, don’t you?”

She managed a very attractive, little blush. “All men watch me. They can’t help themselves.” She pouted prettily. “My beauty attracts them, like moths to a flame.”

“Mmm…yes,” Simon murmured, smoking her from head to toe with a visual assessment that turned the blush genuine. “That’s another good reason for it.”

He sauntered past her into the shadows, leaving Mary looking like a gambler who had just accidentally dropped all her cards face up on the table and was trying to convince herself that no one had seen.

Beside her, Tabitha was struggling to keep her uncooperative legs under herself and marveling that it could be so hot and so cold at the same time. She realized she was probably suffering from shock, but somehow that knowledge didn’t make the symptoms any easier to deal with. The only silver lining in the cloud was that she could hardly see Alan anymore. The courtyard and everyone in it were swirling into one big patchwork haze.

“Please, d-don’t let me pass out,” she moaned to Mary. “I don’t trust what will happen if I faint again.”

“Stand back! Someone get her some water,” Mary ordered. She resettled her charge onto the bench and began fanning her.

Tabitha felt her hair being pushed back off her face and shoulders, and cool air stinging the now exposed bite wound. She also felt Mary almost drop her and heard the young woman’s enraged shriek:

“Oh my God, he’s
bitten
her! She’ll get rabies!”

The noise yanked her back into enough reality to be disturbingly aware of Alan kneeling before her and glaring hard at something golden fastened in the sheet just below the wound.

The kilt pin.

“
Dunstan
.” Alan snarled the name like it was the vilest of curses.

He snarled it just as its owner happened to be lumbering out of the keep in an absolute idiocy of bravado. Dunstan had tidied himself up a bit and decided, apparently, that if he acted as though nothing had occurred, no one would be the wiser. He was that stupid. Or that drunk. Or both.

“Aye, cousin?” He staggered toward the cluster of people like a big, smelly, unknowing lamb on its way to the slaughter.

Though “slaughter” was perhaps too pleasant a term for what it might have been if two men hadn’t leapt on Alan to hold him back.

And then two more.

And two more…

In the end, it took seven hearty Highlanders several long, hellish moments to drag their laird to the ground. Even then an extra one was needed to keep him there. That one was Uncle Angus.

“Hold, lad— Hold!” he bellowed, doing a powerful bit of holding, himself, with a heavy hand buried in Alan’s hair. “If he’s guilty, Dunstan will be duly punished. But by
MacAllister
law, nay by yours!”

Straining furiously against the kilted tonnage pinning him to the damp earth, Alan gave a solitary, inhuman cry of defiance. It ripped through the great courtyard like the scream of a wounded panther, almost shattering the walls and hitting Tabitha with the force of a bullwhip. In the dazed, dizzy state of her shock, she felt, suddenly, like she was reliving something—some ghastly, heartrending experience. But she couldn’t remember what. She only knew it was something that had happened right where she was then, in the castle’s inner yard, and that somehow she’d heard that cry before.

“Even the laird canna change this! D’ye understand me, lad?”

Tabitha heard Angus’s question and Alan’s answering snarl of “Aye” as if the voices came from another world. She stumbled through the next moments like she was barely in them, like the whole thing was some weird, wavering masque, and she was simultaneously one of the players and one of the spectators.

Dunstan was led forward, mumbling some sullen, fretful nonsense about her being a witch and cursing him with her evil eye. Which Mary parried with “No, you idiot,
I’m
the witch, and if you don’t shut up, I’ll turn you into something worse than the disgusting toad you already are!” He had ended by accepting his fate stoically, however, not even trying to argue most of the accusations Tabitha had been required to state in front of all.

That had been the eeriest part, having to stand and recite what he’d done while that sea of curious eyes splashed over her—that and Dunstan’s abrupt rousing to deny the part about the cat. His wounds were from her, he had insisted. She’d fought him like a cat, that was all. Even in her haze, Tabitha found that unnerving. Why should he lie about the cat of all things?

“That’s not true! I was in no position to fight, that’s why he got as far as he did.” Foggy and fuming, she’d tried to make someone believe that. Good heavens, they were all staring at her like she’d just sprouted whiskers and pointed ears.

“Forget it, honey. What difference does it make? You must have been so frightened, you didn’t realize everything that was happening.” Mary guided her back to the bench. “All right, you vultures, the show is over,” she declared. “Shoot that oaf, hang him, chop his head off, or whatever you do with mad dogs and
get it over with
, so Tabitha can be tended to and rest!”

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.