Eyes of the Cat (18 page)

Tabitha finally gave in to habit and shook her head as hard as she wanted to shake Mary. “I don’t care. I’d rather take my chances with the prairie than with Alan. I’m leaving here tonight! Either through the dungeons or through the wall. Do you want to come with me or don’t—”

“
Shh
,” Mary hissed so sharply Tabitha almost bit her tongue as she bit back her last word.

“My, you two look as pretty as picture postcards,” came a lazy voice from behind her. “I’d like to put stamps on both of you and mail you home to Mother. You’d be so decorative in her curio cabinet.”

Marvelous.

Tabitha turned just in time to see Simon Elliott stepping out of a nearby patch of shadows.

“How sweet.” Mary beamed him a smile he could have read by. “But I’m afraid that would hardly be adequate compensation to the poor dear for the aggravation of having a son like you.”

Answering her with a low chuckle that could have meant anything, Simon turned his smoky gaze on Tabitha, who quickly moved closer to Mary. “Oh now, don’t look at me that way, Miss Jeffries. You ought to know by now that
I’m
not the big bad wolf around here.”

“You could have fooled me.” Mary wrapped a protective arm around Tabitha’s shoulders.

Simon ignored the jibe. “I
was
hunting you, however. We’ve just had a runner at the postern gate with a message from Alan. He said to tell you he’s sorry he’s been detained, but—
ahem
—he’ll make it up to you when he returns.”

The news was delivered with such an air of apology, Tabitha was half inclined to forgive him for it. But the other half won out.

“How sweet,” she mimicked Mary’s smooth sarcasm. “Did…did the messenger give any indication when Alan will be back?”

“Probably around sunrise. But cheer up. Sunrise is still hours away. You’re safe for the moment,” Simon said, that slow grin spreading over his face.

“I’ve asked you before, Mr. Elliott, to stop trying to cheer me,” Tabitha told him, frost crystals on every word.

He pretended to shiver—“
brrr
…point made”—then suddenly wiped the grin from his face. “I’m quite serious, though, Miss Jeffries. This is very dangerous country with all sorts of wild…animals on the prowl. You
are
safer here right now than you’d be outside these walls. Especially tonight. Please don’t try anything foolish. That goes for you, too.” He fired a stern look at Mary.

She shot back an angelic smile. “How nice of you to be concerned. But unnecessary. I never do foolish things. I’m a very practical lady.”

“Well, let’s hope you’re
practical
, anyway.” His smile returned.

Mary’s disappeared. “Why don’t you play wizard for us and vanish—before I forget my manners and do something…
catty
.”

A little amazed, Tabitha glanced from Simon to Mary and back again. It took barely an instant, and by the second time she looked at him, the man was his usual enigmatic self, but she knew she hadn’t been mistaken. For the briefest moment, the unflappable Simon Elliott had been swinging wildly in the wind, like a loose shutter.

And Mary was grinning like a kitten who’d just stolen a pitcher full of cream. “I merely wanted to make sure we understood each other,” she purred.

“Very kind of you, I’m sure,” Simon drawled. “I appreciate your having enough confidence in my chivalry to let me know.”

“Oh, I have no confidence in you whatsoever. I was simply demonstrating how much confidence I have in myself,” she said pleasantly. “Come along now, Tabitha dear, I’ll help you get ready for bed.”

Simon blocked her path. “A word of warning, Miss…ah, MacAllister. As confident as you are, even a cat has only nine lives, and you must have used up several of yours already. I’d be extremely careful if I were you. Unless, of course, you’re looking to get burned.” He grinned down at her.

She looked unimpressed. “And I wouldn’t worry about me if I were you,
Mr.
Elliott. As you said, Tabitha and I are quite safe behind these walls. There’s nothing to burn us here that I can see at the moment. Just a little
smoke
on the wind.”

His grin crystallized into a tight line. “Ah, but where there’s smoke, there’s also
fire
.”

“Yes, and where there’s fire, there’s always a lot of hot air!” She swished past him with Tabitha in tow. “Come on, honey. I don’t know about you, but I am exhausted. I think I’ll sleep late tomorrow,” she announced with just a bit more volume than seemed necessary.

Pulled along behind her in the growing gloom of the yard, it took Tabitha a minute to regroup her scattered wits. “What on earth were you two talking about?” she finally managed to ask.

“
Shh
, I’ll explain later,” Mary whispered, “when we’re in the dungeons.”

If Mary’s hand hadn’t kept her moving, Tabitha might have tripped over her own skirts. “You…you’re going to show me the tunnel?” she whispered back.

“Show you, hell. I’m coming with you! This game is over. I’ve played enough poker to know when to fold ’em and walk away. It’s time to cut my losses. That man infuriates me so much, I’ll have a murder charge added to my handbills if I stay here any longer. No amount of gold is worth that.”

Handbills?

Tabitha tripped for real, landing on her knees just as they reached the bottom of the keep’s entrance ramp. She was suddenly remembering the row of wanted posters she’d noticed through the train’s window back in Abilene Station, while Leslie and Gabrina were playing footsie behind her in the cramped compartment. Given the awkwardness of the moment, none of the posters had really registered on her. Except one.
A lady outlaw, how unusual
, she’d mused at the time. A very pretty lady, too, with large eyes and a classically structured face.

Like Mary’s.

“Oh, God,” she breathed. “You’re
Cat Kildare
.”

“In person, not a picture.” Mary-Cat winked and glanced over her shoulder—presumably to make sure they weren’t being watched—then helped Tabitha to her feet. “Except my real name is Kathleen. You can call me Kathy. That is…” She hesitated, her usual composure suddenly cracked by wavering doubt. “That is, if you still want to come with me. You’re a decent girl, Tabitha, the kind of girl who’s not supposed to associate with… I mean, I wouldn’t blame you if—”

“Are you joking?” Tabitha waved the issue aside. “With so many cultural scales weighted in favor of men, it’s a wonder more women don’t turn to crime. Good heavens, how you manage your life is your business. I’m not here to pass judgment on you.” She grabbed Kathy’s hand and took the lead as they rustled up the ramp and into the keep. “Frankly, I’m too relieved to learn you’re
not
a MacAllister to worry about anything else.”

She felt like she could breathe freely again after days of suffocating tension.

Unfortunately, the free feeling lasted only until they were back in the bedroom. Where Alan’s clothes still lay slung over a chair as he’d left them the previous day. Her chest constricted at the sight. Or maybe it was the sudden awareness that she’s never again see what had been in those clothes. She stood motionless a moment—trapped between hot memories and a chilling, unreasoning sense of loss—until Kathy’s voice broke the trance.

“This is outrageous!” she said, buried to the elbows in Tabitha’s trunk. “There are no riding togs here at all. I thought those British aristocrats were supposed to be such avid equestrians. What kind of wedding trousseau is this anyway?” She slammed the lid down and stood up.

“Lady Gabrina didn’t ride. She told me she was afraid a horses.” Tabitha felt the heat and the cold again as the simple word horse conjured the very un-simple image of a wild Appaloosa stallion and its wilder rider galloping full tilt across her mind’s eye.

“Well, in that case, Gabrina certainly would have been the perfect match for Alan,” Kathy quipped. “He’s practically a centaur. How about you?”

“Wh-what?” Tabitha rasped, her face burning and her pulse galloping faster than the image of the stallion.

“Relax, honey, I only meant can you ride? Or are you bothered by horses, too?”

“Oh”—
cough
—“I’m no expert, but I can usually stay in the saddle. I like horses.”

It’s Alan who bothers me.

“The problem with that, I’m afraid, is they don’t keep any saddles near the corrals, and we won’t be able to risk raiding the tack room near the courtyard stables. We’ll have to make it seem like we’ve gone to bed and then slip through the dungeons in a couple of hours when all’s quiet. If we leave the keep anymore tonight, it’ll look too suspicious. Have you ever ridden bareback?”

Tabitha gave a humorless laugh. “Only once”—she was remembering a moonlit ride with savage arms locked around her—“but I…I wasn’t on the horse alone.”

“Fine. You won’t have to do it alone this time, either. You can ride behind me; it shouldn’t slow us down. The two of us together don’t weigh much more than a good-sized man,” Kathy said half to herself, like she was thinking the whole thing through aloud. “And you can wear my riding skirt. I believe I’ll be a boy for a while. It’ll give me a good cover when we reach Abilene, and be safer for us on the prairie. I doubt we’ll meet anyone tonight, but if we do, we’ll be in a stronger position if they think one of us is male.”

“Then I should be a boy, too—if I can find the clothes.” Tabitha yanked her wavering resolve up by its bootstraps. She was darned if she’d let Kathy think she was some helpless little fluff-budget.

But that was, apparently, what Kathy thought. “Honey, that’s silly. I do have an extra pair of britches you could use, but you’d never pass for a boy. You’re way too pretty. Too delicate and feminine looking.”

Now that stung. And Tabitha was glad it did. The irritation was exactly what she needed to fasten her resolve in place until they were far away. Otherwise there was the unnerving possibility she might not be able to go through with this escape. The castle—or one of its occupants, anyway—was slowly but relentlessly dragging some alien person to her surface, someone she couldn’t control. Or was it just that part of her didn’t
want
to control these disturbing new sensations?

A rhetorical question, Tabitha decided. Once she was back in Philadelphia, in staid, familiar surroundings, she’d forget this experience like it was nothing but some hellish, bad dream.

You may be able to do that,
the voice in her head taunted,
but will you ever be able to forget the
heavenly
parts of this dream?

“Be quiet,” she told it, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What was that?” Kathy asked, too deep in her own planning, one hoped, to have heard.

“
Ahem
…” Tabitha cleared her throat and mentally slapped herself back to the business at hand. “I was just saying don’t let these ridiculous ruffles fool you. Underneath I’m quite a Plain Jane, not your feminine type at all. I can probably make a better boy than you can.”

“All right, we’ll both be boys, then. At least it’ll make it easier for you to move about in rough terrain.” Kathy laughed. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you if you don’t fool anyone.”

It was just the sort of challenge Tabitha needed to distract herself from the ruthless images in her head and the exasperating little voice that kept whispering, unbidden, that it made no difference how far or fast she ran.

You can escape the castle, escape Alan… But you’ll never outrun your own heart.

Chapter 7

The metamorphosis took most of the two-hour wait for the castle to fall asleep, along with some savage scissors work, a bottle of black ink, and some brown boot stain Tabitha found tucked away in a small cabinet in the memory-haunted bedroom. But the effort was worth it, if only to see Kathy’s eyes widen into blue moons, and her jaw drop down to her fancy silver belt buckle, when they rendezvoused in the passage outside the upper dungeons.

“Good Lord, Tabitha, you honestly are a witch! You’ve turned yourself into the cutest
muchacho
I’ve ever seen.”

“
Gracias
, señor, but my name eez Pedro.” The brown skinned lad grinned, giving his short black curls a little shake. “It was these loose cotton britches of yours that spawned the idea. They looked sort of ‘Mexican peasantry’ to me,” Tabitha added in her own voice. “If we meet anyone, I can be your servant. You need someone to polish those snakeskin boots and trim your phony mustache, after all.”

“Hmm…I’ll tell them I won you in a card game.” The black-clad gunslinger returned the grin. “And you can call me Señor Kid. Molly was right, you know, I am a bonny actress, in my own way. This is my Kid Connors costume. I use it for long rides over rough country. The Kid is young, but he looks sinister enough to make desperadoes think twice about messing with him. Don’t you agree?”

“
Sí
, señor, I shaking een my serape.”

“Serape, my foot. That’s a MacAllister tartan shawl. But it’s close enough, I guess… Where did you get those odd sandals? They’re the same tawny gold color as Alan’s good leather vest.” The grin went sly.