Eyes of the Cat (3 page)

“Who were you talking to just now?” he asked.

The fellow might not be Alan, but he was someone with an apparent vision problem. Even in the gloom, her feline visitor was hard to miss.

“The cat, of course,” she answered warily. “Don’t you see him?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“But you must.” She glanced over her shoulder and suffered a sudden weird tingle down her spine. “Oh! It…it’s not there anymore.”

“Well, don’t let it trouble you,” he drawled.

Although Tabitha wasn’t sure what he meant by “it”—the cat’s disappearance, or the fact that she had seen it when he had not. Either way, she didn’t care for the man’s tone, nor the idea that he’d gotten into the cell without her hearing him.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“At the moment, I rather wish I were Alan.” He grinned, and she didn’t care much for that either.

“No, you don’t.” Her eyes slid over him like a glacier.

The grin broadened. “Perhaps you’re right. I saw what you did to Duncan and Dunstan. I’m Simon Elliott.” He looked as though he thought the name might mean something to her. When it didn’t, he shrugged and continued a bit cryptically, “You could call me a…a friend of the MacAllisters. I’m engaged in some…well, let’s just say some research here at the castle. Among other things, I’m studying old Highland customs.” He gave her another irritating grin. “Angus has been telling me all about you, Miss Jeffries. A fascinating situation you’ve landed yourself in, I must say.”

“I’m so glad you find it amusing.”

Her expression, which must have looked anything but glad, seemed only to increase that amusement.

“Oh, come now, buck up”—he chuckled—“I’m sure things aren’t nearly as bad as you think they are.”

“How would you know?” She turned her back on him.

“I’m a wizard. Wizard’s know everything.”

Marvelous. He was insane, too.

“Look at it this way, perhaps, when you two finally meet, Alan will decide that he doesn’t care for you—as unlikely as that seems. Or, you may decide that you
do
care for him,” Simon suggested. “I don’t, of course. He’s a little too odd for me.”

Tabitha gave a strangled laugh as she spun back to him. “
All
the MacAllisters are odd!”

“Perhaps. But Laird Alan is the oddest of the lot.”

Double marvelous.

“Did you climb all the way up here just to tell me that?” she asked icily.

“I came to cheer you up,” he replied warmly.

“Well, I’m sorry to inform you of this, Mr. Elliott, but you have been anything but cheering.”

“How unfortunate. I must try to do better.” He stooped to retrieve a black wood box from the floor near his feet. “See? I’ve brought you a gift to brighten your stay here. It’s one of my latest toys.”

Curiosity driving back her upset for a moment, Tabitha reached for it. It was a little heavier than she had expected from its size, and it had a glass globe covering a wire coil sticking out of its top. “How do you work it?”

Her interest appeared to please him.

“Place it on the table, and I’ll show you.”

When it was positioned, he touched something on its back with one hand, while flourishing the other in the air, declaring, “Let there be light!”

And there was. While Tabitha stood blinking in the glare of it, Simon quickly and quietly left.

“I told you I was a wizard,” she heard him whisper just before the lock clicked back into place.

“Yes, and I’m Cleopatra,” she said, unable to take her eyes off the contraption. What an annoying man. Rather ingenious, though. This was a very serviceable electric lantern. Smaller than the one Mr. Edison of New Jersey had come up with a few years earlier, but it produced even more illumination. The compact size with the increased brightness, in fact, were two of the improvements her aunt had been trying to perfect right before she died. If Tabitha had been older at the time and had had the funding to continue the work, she might have worked out something like this, herself. But the investors had been appalled. A woman scientist had been dubious enough—regardless of her sterling credentials—but a teenaged girl?

She shook her head. There had been nothing to do but finagle her way into a paid position with that prestigious service agency, ignore the foibles of the wealthy women she companioned, and plan for the day when she had enough money saved to continue her aunt’s research. It was a bit aggravating, naturally, to realize that someone had beaten her to the punch on this lighting device. However, modifying Mr. Edison’s idea had been only one of Aunt Matilda’s projects—everyone and their brother had been working on the same problem, it seemed—and there were so many more interesting and original discoveries waiting to be made.

But I’ll never get a chance at any of them unless I get out of here!

Reaching around the back of the box—obviously some sort of power storage unit—Tabitha felt for the trigger… Ah, there, a small lever. She flipped it and the bright glow popped out with a distinct crackle.

“That didn’t sound good. The voltage is unstable,” she muttered. “You had better be careful with your
toys
, Mr. Elliott. I don’t believe you’re quite as clever as you think you are.”

Something nudged the side of her foot. She jumped, certain it was one of the rat colony from the straw, and then laughed with relief.

“Oh, you’re back, are you? Where did you disappear to before?”

The black cat gave a long, resonant yowl.

“Goodness! You sound like an alarm siren, and I entirely agree. This predicament
is
alarming. But what can I do? I know it seems absurd, but I’m like one of those fairytale damsels-in-distress. Complete with the imprisonment in a genuine towered fortress.” Kneeling by the cat, Tabitha stroked him from the top of his satin head to the tip of his long tail, his purr rumbling like a steam engine at full throttle.

“I don’t suppose you know of any knights-in-shining-armor who could come to my rescue, do you? You’d think a castle this size would have at least one Sir Lancelot or Galahad. A Robin Hood, perhaps?” She sank back on her heels. “Right now, I’d even settle for Friar Tuck.”

Studying her intently, the cat yowled again, then leapt onto the table. He sniffed the lantern, arched his back, and gave a ferocious hiss.

“Yes, I agree with you there, too. Mr. Elliott won’t be any help. I’d already discarded that possibility, myself. Any other ideas— Oh! Be careful, you might hurt yourself!”

Her four-footed confidant had just lashed out and batted the lantern clean off the table. The glass globe shattered, and the box split open, spilling wires and coils all over the dusty floor. Tabitha stared at the mess, feeling her eyes bug. There, in the center of the jumble, was what must have caused the unstable current. A long, curious iron key.

The key to her prison? The key to freedom?

She looked at the cat, sitting motionless in the center of the table like a big furry black Buddha.

“Oh my,” she breathed. “Do you think we could possibly have misjudged Mr. Elliott?”

The feline’s only answer was to leap off the table, snatch the key in his mouth, and dart pell-mell across the cell.

“No! Bring that back!” She raced after him, but he’d already disappeared through the narrow recessed window. “I thought you were my friend!”

She could almost have sat down and cried, but that certainly wouldn’t have solved anything. There was nothing to do but slide into the window crevice after him. Due to the thick walls of the prison tower, it was nearly three feet deep and a bit of a squeeze, but she thought she could manage it.

However is he getting up and down from here, anyway?

“Heavens, what a monstrous tree! Why didn’t I notice that before?” she asked aloud, staring in fixed fascination at the massive branches grazing the outside of the tower.

“Because you didn’t check the window before, you nitwit,” she answered herself.

An understandable oversight, though. The window was so deep-set it was difficult to see out of, unless one actually climbed into it. And she’d known she was too high to make escape that way a possibility. Also, she just happened to have this absolutely ghastly horror of heights. It was the one habit her aunt had never even tried to cure her of. Because Aunt Matilda happened to be horrified of heights, too.

Probably an inherited trait, Tabitha mused, clutching the adobe sill with a white knuckled grip and trying desperately not to be sick as she peered out into the new spring leaves. There sat the cat among them, just out of reach, with the key jutting jauntily out the corners of his mouth and what appeared to be a highly amused expression in his large amber eyes.

“Oh, you think this is funny, do you? Don’t you dare yowl and drop it, you little imp. Bring it here to me.”

He stood up on his branch, stretched, and padded a few steps toward her.

“That’s right…that’s a good boy…come here…one more step…come on, angel,” she coaxed. “Oh! You naughty little devil!” She glowered as he spun and flitted back the way he’d come.

Key in mouth, he strolled about the nearest branches, pausing here and there to sharpen his claws, stopping occasionally to level that warm golden gaze on her. “I’ll give you the key if you’ll come here,” he seemed to be saying. “Come on, it’s perfectly safe. Look at me. It’s easy.”

It’s insane, Tabitha thought. Everything was crazy, the situation, the castle, the MacAllisters, the cat…

“And I’m the craziest of all. Oh, how I hate heights,” she groaned, sliding through the open window.

It was a heart-stopping scramble from the sill to the first branch. Tabitha never was quite sure how she accomplished it, because she’d had her eyes squeezed shut during the whole process. When she did dare look, there was the cat sitting two branches below and staring encouragingly up at her, as if to say, “You did that very well. For a human.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Now may I
please
have that key?”

“No. I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “It’s a cat’s purr-ogative, you know.”

At least, that was how Tabitha interpreted his response. What he’d done was to turn his back to her and leap down four more branches.

He’s right, she realized, gazing mournfully from the cat to the window. “I couldn’t possibly steel myself to climb back there, even if I wanted to return to that wretched room. The lesser of the two evils now is to continue the way I’m going.” The branches were large and sturdy, and there were plenty of them. With the worst part behind her, she supposed it wouldn’t be too terrifying to make it the rest of the way down.

She managed it surprisingly well—for a dyed-in-the-wool acrophobe who was certain she was going to pass out and plummet to her death at any second. Except the tree seemed to have taken a distinct hankering for her clothes. Anything they could catch on, they caught. And ripped. And left pieces of themselves fluttering festively among the spring leaves like gay tartan streamers.

She tried not to think about it—far too embarrassing—but by the time she made it to the lowest branches, she was down to hardly more than her corset, corset cover, plain white cotton drawers, and high button shoes. Even her modest black stockings had been shredded. Her long hair spilled about her shoulders; she was scratched, bruised, hot, flushed…

And extremely perturbed when she reached the final position, where the cat sat waiting, and discovered that there were still nearly five yards between her and the ground. Fifteen feet to go, and no more branches. Marvelous.

“All right, my fine furry friend, you got me into this. Now tell me how I’m supposed to get the rest of the way down.”

Blinking enigmatic eyes, he swiveled, crouched, and sprang, landing lightly near the base of the giant trunk.

“Yes, I was afraid you’d suggest something like that.” Tabitha sighed. “But are you sure that’s the only possible way? I mean really,
really
sure?”

He peered up at her a moment, pointed ears on alert, swishing his tail from side to side, then suddenly turned—the now useless key still in his mouth—darted around the tree, and was lost to view.

“I guess that means he’s sure.” She shook off an uncanny feeling that she was somehow being observed. Impossible, of course; there wasn’t a soul in sight. “I could call for help, I suppose… But that would rather defeat the entire purpose of an escape.” Not to mention, that whoever came would find her in little more than her undergarments. “I think I’d rather take my chances with the jump.”

It might prove fatal, but if anyone saw her like this, she’d die of embarrassment anyway. So, drawing a deep breath and clamping her eyes shut, Tabitha leaned forward, let go of her branch, and dropped—

Straight into a waiting pair of arms.

Her eyes flew open. So did her mouth, but her scream shriveled in a scorching blaze of shock. She was too startled to breathe, let alone make a sound. The arms that had caught her were attached to a… Well, not a MacAllister, at any rate. She supposed she ought to be grateful for that. But…

A Comanche?

The Comanche were the people who had once roamed this part of Texas, weren’t they? She had thought they’d all been moved onto reservations, but one, at least, had stayed. That much seemed definite.