Eyes of the Cat Read Free

have no intention of playing this charade that far. I shall never even see their horrid old castle. I appreciate your concern, but I assure you, I am quite capable of looking after myself.” She met his rigid gaze with iron in her own. “Now kindly move aside.”
    He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Absolutely not.”
    “Leslie is right, dear. We canna let you do this.”
    Tabitha resisted the urge to stamp her foot. “Good heavens, Lady Gabrina, it’s not as though I intend to marry the man. I’m simply going to distract them long enough for you and Captain Lawrence to get safely away. Do you two want to elope, or don’t you? We’re running out of time!”
    “Time? Why the time be near eight o’ the mornin’. Who asks?” a heavy voice brogued from the corridor just outside.
    “’Tis too late!” Gabrina squeaked, and promptly fainted again.
    Leslie tried to catch her, but was sent sprawling as the compartment’s door burst open, and a haystack in a short plaid skirt muscled its way into the small chamber.
    Oh, not a skirt…a kilt, Tabitha corrected herself.
    “C-cousin Alan?” she stammered.
    The haystack glared fiercely down at her, glanced at Gabrina and Leslie slumped motionless together on the floor, then fixed his bushy browed gaze back on Tabitha. A big, beaming smile split open between beard and mustache.
    “Gabby MacAllister! I’d ken you anywhere!” he roared. “Welcome tae your new home, lassie! The bonny bridegroom couldna come t’day. I’m your Uncle Angus!”
    Thank heaven for small favors, Tabitha thought, as she fought for air in his rib-cracking hug. At least this wasn’t Alan.
    Though, perhaps, Alan would be worse?
    She shoved that idea straight out of her head. Right now, she had to get Uncle Angus off the train before the good captain and Lady Gabrina regained their senses (and herself along with them—in a different sort of way). Already Leslie had started to stir. She watched in horror out of the corner of her eye as his lids fluttered open and he groggily struggled to sit up.
    “Uncle Angus, ’tis fair squeezin’ the breath oot o’ me, you be.” She giggled, neatly twisting out of his burly embrace and dropping her heavy traveling purse at the same instant. It landed on Lawrence’s head. “Ah, the poor laddie,” she said, as his eyes closed and he slumped forward once more. “’Tis exhausted he mun be.”
    “Aye,” Angus agreed, glancing downward. “Who are they, Gabby dear?”
    “I dinna ken for sure.” Tabitha batted guileless eyes at him. “They only boarded the stop afore this one, and we had such a wee time for speech.”
    Angus’s eyes abruptly narrowed, drawing his brows together into one big fuzzy blond caterpillar creeping across his forehead. “The lassie wears MacAllister tartan!”
    “Oh, aye.” Tabitha quickly laughed. “The poor dearie was splashed by a carriage just afore boardin’, and she hadna another gown, sae I made her take one o’ me own.”
    “Ah, now there be a MacAllister for you, generous tae the core,” Angus boomed. “Come alang now, Gabby dear. Me lads be fair hoppin’ oota their kilts tae see you.”
    “Aye, Uncle Angus.” Tabitha beamed up at him.
    I must be completely mad, she thought, following his broad back off the train.
     
    * * *
     
    “They’re mad!” A disheveled tartan-clad fury stormed across the dim chamber, flailing cobwebs out of her face as she went. “All of them!” She fumed back to the thick wood door, kicking through a pile of ancient straw on her way and startling a family of rodents. “Every last man Jack of them—completely and utterly stark raving mad !”
    Grabbing the door’s heavy iron handle with both hands, she braced her feet, threw her weight backward, and tugged with all her might.
    It refused to budge.
    Which was pretty much what she’d expected, having already tried to open it eleven times and gotten the same result with each effort. She hadn’t been able to resist a