Eyes of the Cat (31 page)

Not that she was contemplating squirrels, exactly—even if she was tilting slightly toward the nutty side. She was remembering something she had once heard about another member of the wild kingdom. She was thinking about giraffes. Or a book about giraffes, anyway, and a little girl who had been asked to give an oral report on it.

The girl had read the text, then stood up in front of her class and stated with great solemnity: “This book told me more about giraffes than I wanted to know.”

That was what Tabitha was really thinking right then, that she had just been told a lot more than she’d ever wanted to know. She had received answers to questions that she hadn’t even realized existed. Questions and answers that she could have lived a very long, productive and satisfying life never knowing anything about.

No, that wasn’t correct. It was always better to know the truth; she did honestly believe that. It was just that the timing was so off. She had more pressing things to deal with. The truth had picked an extremely awkward moment to poke its awkward head up out of its deep, dark, awkwardly placed hole. If it saw its shadow, would she have six more weeks of wintry confusion, she wondered a little maniacally?

Now, that
was
nuts.

And the nuts, of course, brought her full circle back to squirrels. And a sudden, dizzy awareness of why her thoughts were all going bushy tailed.

“Oh my God!” she sputtered, lunging for the bedside table as the sickly sweet odor she had been inhaling finally became potent enough to penetrate the last logically functioning part of her brain. “Where are those scissors I had last night?”

Still on the table, thank goodness. On the table next to the lamp. The not quite extinguished lamp with its still smoldering wick wafting drugged vapors into her face, as she bent over it and scorched her fingers knocking the hot chimney free from its base and onto the floor in a tinkling shatter of glass. A hasty twist of the lamp’s key, a hastier slash of the scissors, and the smoking part of the wick landed among the chimney shards to be ground into a soot spot under the toe of a trembling, slippered foot. A second foot joined in wobbly rhythm with the first, as Tabitha pivoted and stumbled toward the already unlocked door to pull it open and let in some cleaner air from the drafty corridor beyond.

What blew in instead, however, was a tidy tartan frock covered by a grease spattered, white apron, and topped by a very startled, apple cheeked face.

“Oh! Beggin’ your pardon, m’lady. Master Angus said you feelin’ puny like, and sent me tae make sure you was safe abed,” Enid MacAllister lied.

At least, Tabitha assumed it was a lie, because the surprised maid had just removed a handkerchief from her nose and mouth, implying that she had been warned about the lamp fumes and, therefore, had to suspect something underhanded, regardless of what else Angus may have told her.

“Y’dinna look a’tall well, m’lady,” Enid improvised, as Tabitha stood staring at her, trying to decide her next move.

It might work, she was thinking. They were the same height, though the girl was a bit plump. But it was a loose fitting frock anyway, and the cap would be handy for hiding her short hair. It would certainly allow her to move about more discreetly. People rarely looked too closely at scullery maids.

“Let me help you oota your gown and back oonder the covers, m’lady.”

“Thank you,” Tabitha said politely, as Enid accomplished her kind offer. “And now I’ll help
you
out of yours!”

If the young maid had been startled at seeing m’lady awake and on her feet at the door, she was stunned by the sudden fist that connected with her rosy dimples. Stunned cold.

It surprised Tabitha almost as much. She had expected the job to take more than one blow. Whoever would have guessed such a sturdy looking lass to have a glass jaw, she mused with a slight head shake, as she stood at the desk in her new maid’s uniform, scratching out an apology:

Dear Enid,

Please excuse me for having to punch you, but I could not be sure of your motives, nor could I spare the time for negotiations. In exchange for your attire, I am giving you this lime taffeta gown. If you let out the seams a bit, it should fit you very well, and the color will highlight the roses in your cheeks.

Sincerely, Tabitha…

She paused a moment, then quickly finished the signature with E. MacAllister. She wasn’t entirely certain about the MacAllister yet, but the middle initial seemed a safe bet. This E, unlike the one on the key, did stand for Earnshaw. As she hurried about the room, placing a pillow under Enid’s head, a quilt on top of her, and the letter and gown beside her, she prayed that the wonderful but stubborn woman who’d raised her would forgive the acknowledgment.

“I’m sorry,” Tabitha murmured aloud, hoping her mother’s spirit could hear and understand. “I know you were trying to protect me from the trap that caught you, but the thing is, I don’t believe you realized exactly what trap you’d fallen into. You thought love was the trap. But what really snared you was your fear of loss. You let pain and pride make you cynical. You dug a wound in yourself so deep that you never were able to fully climb out of it. And I’m sorry, but I don’t want to make the same mistake. I hope you’ll forgive me…Mother…but I think I’d rather take my chances with love. It may be short lived, as you said it was, but is a sunset any less real or beautiful, any less precious because it only lasts a few moments? I guess that makes me sound like all the other so-called fools you always warned me about, doesn’t it? It makes me sound like a hopeless romantic.”

“No, child, not hopeless. Hope
ful
. It makes you sound a lot like me, in fact.”

A large lump suddenly filled her throat. Tabitha’s gaze shot to the open doorway and a pair of eyes as green as her own.

“I knew you must have inherited something from me besides your mathematical abilities,” Zachary Earnshaw added, with the smile that must have captured Matilda Jeffries’ heart years before.

It certainly melted Tabitha’s at that instant.

“Don’t forget the eyes,” she managed to squeeze out past the lump, as her feet somehow navigated the several steps into his open arms.

“Ah, but those aren’t entirely mine,” the man said, gathering his daughter close. “We both get those from my mother.”

“I know. Elizabeth MacAllister—or Elspeth, if you prefer the Scottish version. She was the one who freed the Panther and nearly got burned as a witch, right?”

“My goodness…
that
old story? You know, as many times as my father told it to me when I was a boy, I never was quite sure if I believed him. Fancy you remembering it after all this time.” Zachary chuckled.

So did Tabitha, but her laugh was more on the strangled side.

“Remember it? I’ve practically
lived
it these past days. Being here where it all happened must have dredged it up out of my subconscious. I’ve been having so many bizarre dreams about it, I thought I was going insane—or worse—until Elspeth’s skeleton key finally unlocked my memory,” she said, and abruptly found herself held at arm’s length.

“
You
have my mother’s key? I’ve been looking high and low for that,” she was told. “I placed it in the base of one of our electric lights on a whim. I was curious to see if the battery’s voltage was enough to magnetize it. But before I could take it out again, Simon had disappeared with the blasted contraption, and I haven’t seen the lamp or the key since. Where did you find it?”

“On the sill. But don’t ask me how it got there.” Tabitha slipped out of his grasp and turned half away, partly so she could gesture toward the window, but more because it gave her an excuse to avoid those searching green eyes peering down at her. All things considered, she had decided to take Angus’s advice and say nay more aboot black cats. Not that she had the slightest anxiety regarding the creature, herself—or about Zachary’s reaction, if she mentioned it to him. Her father would understand the truth of the cat as well as she did, being the one who had told her the story in the first place. But she was beginning to suspect that the castle’s walls were lined with ears.

And I’m allergic to smoke.

She wondered if the MacAllister’s private legal code still included the burning of witches. After all, if it allowed such quaint old customs as trials-by-combat…

“Oh my God—I’m wasting time! Uncle Angus is planning on killing someone with a claymore!”

She said it at exactly the same instant Zachary said, “Okay, we’ll forget the key for now, but would you mind telling me why you’re dressed as a scullery maid and Enid is asleep on the floor?”

Their voices overlapped, so each heard only half of what the other said.

“What’s this about Angus and a claymore?” he asked.

“She’s not asleep; she’s unconscious,” Tabitha answered the second part of his first question, because that was the only part of it she had caught. She answered in perfect unison with his second inquiry, so she missed that one completely.

“The little Mexican girl in the bed is asleep, though,” she added, gathering herself for a lunge out of the room. “Or at this point, she may just be drugged on lamp oil. Would you please stay with her? I have to find where Angus has taken Alan—”

She was hauled back by her apron strings before she’d even cleared the door.

“Tabitha Tilda, either you have fallen into the beer again, or there is something very odd in the works. You know, I came up here in the first place simply to assure myself you were all right. I heard someone being locked in the prison tower a short while ago and, with your recent record, I was half afraid it might have been you. Now, I would like some explanations, young lady. You are not going
anywhere
until I understand what is happening.”

“The minute I find out, I’ll let you know!” she promised, wriggling out of the stained apron and tearing down the passageway. Now that she knew where Alan was, there wasn’t a moment to lose.

Chapter 12

Was it the lingering influence of the drugged lamp vapors that made her reckless? Possibly. But it was more the inner lamp that had recently been lit, illuminating for Tabitha who she really was. And her father would forgive her for leaving him in the dust of confusion back there; it was exactly the sort of thing he would have done himself. She was a lot like him.

Her aunt—her mother, that was—had tried to push her into a different mold, one she’d thought would keep her daughter safe from the hurt she had experienced. But it had been about as successful as a bird trying to teach her offspring how
not
to fly. Because the fact of the matter was that prim, proper, safe little mold had been alien to Matilda herself.

There had never truly been anything safe or proper about Matilda Jeffries. She had flaunted convention right from the start by choosing a “man’s career” for herself. And when marriage to the man she loved had seemed to be cut off from her, she’d simply channeled all her energies into that career. She had always taken too many risks with her research. That was why the final experiment had ended in that fatal blast. It just wasn’t in her to stick to safe routes. She was too independent. Too adventurous. And too romantic.

But she never did stop loving my father, Tabitha thought as she hurried through shadowed passages.
Her pride wouldn’t let her marry him, but their friendship was always unique. After that one blunder, neither of them ever did look at anyone else. In their own unconventional way, they stayed true to each other to the last. Good heavens, I grew up with a beautiful example of die-hard romance and never even realized it until now.

The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, though, did it?

This is why I’ve been acting as I have—helping Leslie and Gabrina elope…and all the rest. Hypnotism be damned. No one has been making me do a blasted thing I didn’t really want to. I’m not possessed. I’m not going insane. I’m just In Love.

Which might possibly amount to the same thing. Her heart sank through the floor as one shadow larger than all the rest blocked the stairway to the prison tower.

“Enid? Have you done as I bid?”

“A-aye, sir. ’Tis sleepin’ like a bairn she be. She’ll nay wake till morn, I’ll wager,” Tabitha mumbled, keeping her face well lowered under the shade of her ruffled maid’s cap and hoping that checking on herself was all that Enid had been bid to do.

“Good lass. You can return tae your duties now.”

“Aye, sir.” Bobbing a quick curtsey, she turned toward the passage she thought led to the inner courtyard where the kitchens were, breathing a small sigh of relief.

The sigh was a little premature.

“Where you headin, lassie? You’ll nay find your pots that way.”

I won’t? Damn.

“Um… Aye, sir. I was gang for a fresh apron first. Me oother one was too greasy, i’twas,” she improvised without turning around.

“Aye? I’d been ponderin’ the lack of it, I had. But you’ll nay find the laundry there neither.”

“I…I was gang tae me chamber for one, maybe?”