Cat's Cradle

by Shannon Donelly

  CAT’S CRADLE

  Shannon Donnelly

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Bea, you shameless hussy, where have you gotten to?”

  Emaline Adair Pearson held the lantern higher to stare into the gloom, and her hand trembled slightly from nerves strung too tight. She should not be here. The dark, empty rooms seemed to mock her errand and rebuke her presence.

  She had no place here any longer. No claim.

  But she had to fetch Bea home.

  Oh, drat Bea. And drat this gloomy September day. And drat Newell, too.

  The lantern’s light reached a timid glow around her, slipping over a huge scarred, oak table. The yellow pool of light reached up the nearest wall to expose half-emptied shelves and dusty, rat-nibbled, leather-bound books too ponderous to interest anyone.

  Newell had certainly stripped the house of anything he could carry or have carried out, she thought, glancing at the single enormous mahogany, high-backed wing chair, covered in green hide and left beside the empty hearth. That, and the table, were the last occupants of what had once been a well-furnished library.

  Well, it served Newell right that he had lost the manor, for he had taken such bad care of the estate. But, oh, she wished she could kick him for endangering her home in the bargain.

  Her cheeks warmed at such uncharitable thoughts. John, if he looked down on her and the boys from Heaven, would not be pleased.

  A slamming of wood—no doubt a loose shutter buffeted in the autumn winds—startled her, making her jump.

  Clutching her woolen cloak closer with her free hand, she gave a nervous glance around the deserted library—a room she had once loved. She should not have thought of ghosts, of John, gone now these five years. Such thoughts in an empty house on a dying autumn day did not make for good company.

  Turning back to her errand, she peered into the darkness again. “Bea,” she called, trying to hold rein on a temper made short by her desire to be gone.

  Emaline had slipped in through a broken casement window that led to the shooting room—probably the same path that Bea had used to enter. A pane had been missing from the window for three years, but it had been longer still since Newell had inherited the house. He had promptly left for London and the restless life he had always wanted. It had never been what she wanted.

  She moved forward slowly. The floorboards creaked, but did not break, and no sign of damp streaked the ceiling or stained the wood. However, she could not but feel as if she were walking through a graveyard.

  A cemetery of memories.

  She could recall a time when a fire danced warm in the large, dark hole of a hearth, when books in Morocco red with gold lettering lined the shelves, all tidy and orderly. Aunt Mary would sit before the fire, next to Emaline’s own mother, both stitching, while Uncle Walter would read to them. Usually something improving, such as Milton.

  Emaline had loved the deep rumble of her uncle’s voice, but she had not been fond of the grim John Milton.

  Newell had positively hated the poet’s work.

  But all that had been in a different time. A time before influenza had carried off her mother and her aunt. A time before age had closed her uncle’s eyes for the last time. A time before she had married, and before she and the boys had moved to take up tenancy at the gate house.

  A time before that wretched Newell had lost Adair Manor.

  Oh, drat you, Cousin Newell. How could you lose the house!

  Regrets, however, were not a luxury she cared to indulge, and so she put back her shoulders to stand a little taller. She really must find Bea and get home before the shortened day turned to night.

  “Bea?” she called again, trying to make her voice coaxing. “Bea?”

  From behind her, an amused masculine voice nearly made her heart stop.

  “ ‘To be or not to be?’ Is that your question?”

  She whirled, her cloak flying out around her and the lantern bobbling in her grip.

  A dark figured leaned against the doorframe, ominously large and daunting. For an instant, she feared she honestly had summoned a spirit. But as the lantern wobbled in her unsteady hand, the shadow strode forward, sweeping the metal handle from her grip. The light danced over her specter, giving him life.

  He wore no hat, and his sun-warmed, brown hair spilled loose and curled over the collar of his coat. He was tall. So tall she had to lean back to stare up at him. An arrogant nose dominated a life-worn face, and she decided as she studied his face that he had to be one of Newell’s friends. He had that look of dissipation about him and far too sensual a mouth for any woman’s peace of mind.

  He put down the lantern on the oak table and said, humor still in his voice, “I would appreciate if you would not set fire to my house before I’ve had a chance to inspect it.”

  She had been frozen by his sudden appearance and the mortification of being caught where she should not be, but now she straightened, outrage coursing through her.

  “Your house?” Heat flamed up her neck and into her cheeks. So it was him. The gamester. She knew all about him from Newell’s letter, which had informed her he’d lost the house, the grounds—the gate house included. She narrowed her eyes and did not bother to hide her disdain. “Of course. You must be Sir Ashten Ravenhill.”

  Sir Ashten’s eyes widened. They were the color of an autumn forest, a mix of browns and greens in shifting patterns. Amusement danced in those colors just now, and it irked her that he found something in her words at which he might smile. She wasn’t used to bandying words with harden gamesters, and she did not want to become accustomed to such a habit.

  Oh, she could throttle Newell for forcing her into this position.

  With a warm smile, Sir Ashten said, “I didn’t know there was an ‘of course’ to my identity.”

  “My cousin wrote me of you,” she told him. “And how you gained Adair Manor from him. And I will have you know that he wrote me after I had sent him my six pound and five for next quarter’s rent, so you may apply to him if you wish the cost of my lease of the gate house to be in your pocket.”

  His smile lifted into a grin, and she wished now that temper had not led her into those hot words. How stupid. The man had just won a house—and no doubt all of whatever money Newell had had left to him. Six and five would hardly matter to him.

  “I shall keep that in mind,” he said, and perched on the edge of the oak table, one leg swinging free and easy. He wore riding clothes and a gray greatcoat with three tiers of rain-spattered capes.

  She glanced at his clothes, and envy crawled lose inside her. Oh, but they were lovely, made from fine cloth, cut to display his lean muscles and show off his male form. Self-conscious, she clutched her woolen cloak even closer over her twice-mended blue dress, which had the sheen of age upon it.

  Still smiling, he said, “Before we get into the issue of rents, there’s another matter I’d like to settle. You know of me, but who are you—besides Newell’s cousin? And why are you housebreaking?”

  Her gaze snapped back to his face. “I am not housebreaking.”

  “Someone invited you in, then?”

  “No. That is....well...I used to live here.”

  The colors danced in his eyes again, lightening them to almost pure green. He folded his arms. “So you invited yourself back inside?”

  “I did not think anyone would be here,” she said, faltering over her poor excuse.

  “Well, I can see how that would make it necessary, then, for you to break in.”

  She fought the urge to stamp her worn boot on the dusty floor over how aggravating he was being. “I did nothing. The window was already broken.”

  “And that makes all the difference. Well, you are quite the prettiest housebreaker I’ve met, but do not blu
sh, sweets, for I’ve not met all that many housebreakers. You’re my first, in fact.”

  He grinned again, and she clenched her hands to keep from giving him an unladylike box on his ears. Temper simmering, she glared at him. “I am not blushing. And I am not a housebreaker. And I—”

  A piteous mewing interrupted and she swung around, the provoking Sir Ashten forgotten at the sound of her cat in distress. “Bea,” she said, hurrying toward the far wall.

  Another mew led her to a giant oak press cupboard, ornately carved with flowers and vines, and large enough to take up twelve feet of the wall opposite the windows. Kneeling, she swung open the half-ajar bottom door, calling out, “Bea?”

  Yet another mew answered the name.

  From his perch on the table, Ash watched with interest as his pretty housebreaker poked into some monstrosity of a cupboard. He had not quite decided if he was dealing with the village lunatic or with that even more dangerous creature, a noisy and well-intentioned woman. In either case, he wished that damn cloak did not hide her other assets. Had she a stick figure under that rough, gray wool, or did she have curves to match that sweetly round face? She had fire enough in those tawny eyes of hers—at least she did when he poked at her—and she rather intrigued him.

  Her hair, pulled back from her face into a knot of loose curls, was the same color as her eyes. The tawny color of a good Spanish sherry, in fact.

  He’d always been partial to Spanish sherry.

  “Bea, there you are. Oh, why must you always kitten here, you wretched animal.” The words came out with such affectionate cooing that he had to smile. Sweet scolding indeed.

  His housebreaker turned away from the cupboard and demanded, her tone as prickling as a thistle patch, “Could you please bring the lantern closer? Bea is kittening.”

  He had been sitting there, swinging one booted leg, but now he stopped and stared at her. Who the devil did she think she was to be ordering him about in his own house?

  Taking off that awful cloak, she leaned forward to stuff it into the cupboard for her cat, and he forgot his affronted pride.

  Thin, blue fabric draped as shapely a rump as he’d seen on a female. Those curves made his hands ache and his mouth dry and his pulse skip to a happy gallop. He stared at her for a moment before he rose, took off his greatcoat, and brought the lantern closer for her.

  She knelt on the floor, stuffing her cloak around a mewing, striped cat and what seemed to be a mess of something sticky that looked rather like rats. He realized he was looking at four new-born kittens, their eyes closed, their pink feet wiggling, and their ears not even standing yet. A fifth seemed to be on its way.

  The mother cat—gray striped with white patches—mewed piteously, and turned large, yellow eyes up to its mistress’ face. The animal’s distress could not have shown more apparent if the creature could talk the king’s English.

  “Good Lord,” he said, rather appalled at the situation.

  Newell’s cousin turned up a pale face to him. He couldn’t blame her for that. New kittens and messy afterbirth did not seem a sight fit for any lady.

  “Do you have any old handkerchiefs?” she asked, her voice anxious. “Bea’s made something of a nest in the papers here, but she’s having trouble with this one kitten, and she may need our help.”

  Our.

  It took a moment for the word to settle in. He realized she must have no idea who he really was or she would not have used such a harebrained word.

  May need our help.

  He was not a man who helped anyone—other than himself, thank you very much. And he had a hard enough time doing just that.

  With regret, he glanced down at her sweetly curving rump, at her sherry-tawny curls knotted up over the white nape of her neck. He put down the lantern, turned, and started for the door. “I’ll send Knowles to you at once.”

  Hearing his words, Emaline glanced at Sir Ashten’s retreating back, his wide shoulders so admirably set off by his coat, and his black soul so plainly shown by his callous disinterest in poor Bea.

  If left to his own, the man would probably drowned Bea and her kittens. But what else should she have expected from a hardened gamester, a man who, if Newell were to be believed—and he generally was not—had cheated at cards to win Adair Manor.

  Well, she would not brand him a cheat—she had no knowledge of such a thing—but she certainly could judge his action in leaving so quickly and call him cold-hearted…and sinful.

  Which was fine with her, she told herself. Better to know the worst of him at once, so one could guard against the charm of his smiles. And she did not find him all that charming, she told herself as she turned back to helping poor Bea, or that handsome.

  And she was such a bad liar, even to herself.

  “There, there, sweet Bea. You’ve had three litters of kittens before this,” she said, smoothing Bea’s soft head and wishing she knew what else to do.

  But the fear lay in her heart that perhaps Bea was getting too old to kitten, and that perhaps this would be the first kitten her sweet Bea would lose.

  * * *

  Half an hour later Knowles came back into the kitchen, wiping his bloody hands on a rag, his mouth downturned and his black eyes tired. Short and round, he wore his black hair shorn to nearly nothing, and he’d been with Ashten for so long that Ash could not clearly recall how he had gotten on before Knowles came to tie his luck to that of the Ravenhills.

  “Well? Is she gone, and her cats with her?” Ash asked, looking up from the fire he had coaxed to life in the neglected hearth. He’d had to poke a broom handle up the chimney to clear the flue enough so that it would draw, and he had damn near ruined his coat in the process. However, he’d rather face a chimney than that woman. Chimneys never gave you accusing stares after you had disappointed them.

  Unable to keep the words back, he added, “Did the kitten die?”

  Knowles gave a sudden grin, one gold tooth glinting in the fire and candlelight. “Wiff me there, sir? ‘Course not. It may be touch-an’-go for a day or two, but the mite’s a fighter. And it’s Mrs. Pearson, sir. Mrs. Emaline Adair Pearson. She married the parson hereabouts, but he died five years ago, and she and her boys live at the gate house. She came here wiff her mother after her father died fighting some foreign war. Grew up in the big house here, it seems. And now, sir, we need a bit of milk for Bea, we do, sir. She’s mortal tired, she is, and won’t be up to rattin’ for a bit. But Mrs. Pearson says her Bea’s a fine mouser, and it’ll be a good thing if she’ll teach her little ones that for us here.”

  Ash stared at his manservant, a storm of emotions sweeping through him. Irritation at first to think his housebreaker married; relief and interest to think her a widow—possibilities danced in his mind—and back to annoyance that Knowles had found her so chatty and friendly.

  His voice dry, he said, “That’s a new record for you. A life of information in less than an hour.”

  Knowles shrugged his thick shoulder. “She’s lonely, sir. And that worried about her cat. Had her Bea forever, she has, and greatly attached to her. Well, you know what females are.”

  Ash snorted and brushed the soot from his hands. “Don’t I just. Well, where the devil will you find her that milk?”

  “She said as I could ride to the Wiberforce’s next door and ask the squire for a pint of cow’s own. We could use some for tea tomorrow in any case.”

  “I’d like to be fed myself,” Ash said, frowning. “That is if it’s not too much trouble for you to remember you’re my manservant, not that damn cat’s.”

  “Aye, sir. But you ain’t just had five kittens, and a hard time of the fifth. Don’t fret none. May as be I can cage us a few eggs for an omelet tonight.” He gave a nod, and before Ash could get out any more words of protest, Knowles slipped out the back.

  “An omelet won’t save you this time,” Ash shouted out. But Knowles was gone already.

  Muttering under his breath, Ash picked up a lit candle and made his way b
ack to the library.

  Knowles had lit a fire—the devil and Knowles himself only knew what he’d found to burn, or how he’d coaxed the chimney not to smoke. His pretty housebreaker still sat on the floor before the cupboard, her tawny hair tumbling down around her face, and talking soft nonsense to her cat as if it were a child.

  She heard his step or sensed him, for she turned and smiled at him, her face lit from within with a radiant glow.

  His senses reeled under the impact of that smile as if one of the immense timber beams overhead had swung down and clobbered him. It took him a moment to register that she had asked him something.

  “The kittens? Do you want to see them?” she repeated, her smile faltering.

  He scowled. He didn’t want to see a litter of kittens. Instead, he gave a quick glance to the neglected, empty house. He had thought that at last he’d finally gotten ahead in the game, but he had only ended with a ruin and a litter of cats in his library.

  He glanced back at his housebreaker, whose smile had faded into uncertainty. With a sigh, and all too aware he should not to act just to please her, he came forward to look at those damn kittens.

  Chapter Two

  Emaline could not say why it was important for him to see the kittens. Perhaps it was only that she wished to assure herself that he would not harm them. Or perhaps she thought it would allow her to better judge just what sort of man now had control over Adair Manor and her lease of the gate house.

  Or perhaps it was as simple as wanting to share the sight of five tiny kittens, now cleaned by their mother’s raspy tongue and nestled against Bea, their eyes closed slits, their fur fine as cut velvet, their little faces as innocent as Eden.

  She opened the cupboard door a little wider and lifted the lantern.

  Bea’s eyes opened, glittering like yellow diamonds. She opened her mouth as well, but was too tired to even utter a mewing protest. Beside her, five bodies wiggled, their noses poking Bea’s belly, each seeking its own nipple to suckle. Tiny paws stretched. Thumbnails of tails curled. One black kitten with a white ring around his neck. One striped gray and white kitten, like Bea. One tortoiseshell kitten. One orange marmalade kitten with white paws. One kitten gray as a morning fog.