Page 19 of The Homecoming (The De Montforte Brothers #6)

Chapter Fifteen

“ O h, dear me,” Lucien drawled, folding his arms and watching as the cat scrambled higher and higher up the tree, higher and still higher, until it was safely perched some fifty feet above the ground. “Whatever shall we do now?”

Mary’s screams drowned everything out as she ran to the tree. “My kitten!” she cried. “Oh, my kitten! ”

“Does it not have a name?” Lucien inquired innocently of his duchess.

Juliet stormed past as she ran to the child’s assistance. “For God’s sake , Lucien!”

Mary’s anguished wails were enough to penetrate her father’s fury.

Abandoning the fight, he lunged to his feet and gazed about for his daughter, leaving Ruaidri dazed and lying on the grass.

The Irishman’s cheekbone was cut and turning purple, and as he rolled to his side and pushed himself up onto one hand before getting to his feet, Nerissa ran to him with a little cry.

“I’m fine, lass,” he muttered, brushing himself off and turning, as did everyone else, to the tree where the kitten, a tiny shape amidst the branches, made a silhouette against the setting sun.

Meow ... meow ... meow.... the animal cried, plaintively.

“Papa, do something!” Mary sobbed, running to her father and clinging to his knee. “Please help her!”

“She’ll come down,” Charles assured her. “Cats always do.”

“Papa, she’s stuck up there! It’ll be growing dark, soon!”

Meow...

Mary ran back to the tree, reached her arms up the trunk, and her sobs grew louder and louder.

“Bloody hell,” Charles said under his breath. He turned and shot a glare at Lucien. “What the devil were you thinking?”

“My dear Charles. That ... miserable feline was scratching my cravat in its haste to escape. I daresay one of its claws caught my skin and I was a mere heartbeat away from getting shredded to ribbons. In fact, I—”

“You did it on purpose.”

“Yes, I believe I did. I do love this particular cravat.”

Charles made a disgusted motion, and fists clenched, stalked toward the tree. A little smile played at Lucien’s mouth, and he turned to Ruaidri, who stood watching Charles trying to console his daughter. He looked pained. Distracted.

“Hmm,” the duke said thoughtfully. He looked at the Irishman, assessing him for damage. “I wonder, Captain, if kitty will come down.”

“Cats usually do.”

Lucien rubbed his chin. The shadows were long now, the sun low in the sky and steadily sinking toward a bank of dark clouds on the western horizon. In the copper beeches, a gust of wind made the leaves shudder ominously.

“You’re a sailor, Ruaidri. Do you think we’ll have rain tonight?”

“I’m certain of it.”

Mary was trying in vain to climb the tree. Her father picked her up and walked around the trunk, gazing up at the stranded kitten. Turnip had lost interest and returned to the blankets, and there was a shriek from a servant as she tried to save the contents of someone’s forgotten plate.

“With rain coming in, that poor little thing will drown up there if it remains stranded,” Gareth murmured, coming up beside them. “What should we do?”

Andrew, with Laura’s hand clutched firmly in his own, shrugged as he joined them. “Cats always come down.”

Some distance away, Charles had picked up his sobbing daughter and was now heading back to the group. His face was tight. Bleak.

Thunderous.

“Y’know, Ruaidri,” Lucien mused, calmly watching him approach.

“You could save the day by going up and retrieving the kitten for my little niece. I’m sure you’ve climbed high masts in stiff winds, and it would be a small matter for you.

It would put Charles in your debt.” He sighed heavily.

“However, there is the matter of his pride, and if you do so, he may despise you all the more. I am not sure it is worth the risk.”

“Happy to do it, should ye wish me to.”

“I know you are. And between you and me, Charles is not fond of heights, so he won’t be eager to go up, himself.

No, no, forget I even mentioned it. If you’re seen as the savior, it will make things all the more .

.. difficult.” He watched as Eva and the women gathered the children up, all of whom were staring up at the tree in horror, some beginning to cry in fear for the kitten’s safety, and adopted a smile as Charles joined them, deliberately ignoring Ruaidri.

“I’m going up,” Charles said, putting his sobbing daughter down and looking back at the kitten, still stuck high up in the tree.

“Nonsense. You’re going inside. We’re all going inside so that the kitten has the chance to come down in peace and quiet.

Someone, grab the puppy, please. And no, Charles, please don’t argue with me.

Amy has most certainly heard this infernal .

.. commotion out here and is likely upset.

And I’m sure our little Mary here wants for her mother. Come, all of you.”

Agreement was voiced, and the children were gathered. Hoisting Mary back up into his arms, Charles turned toward the house without another word. His hand was on his daughter’s back, and the child’s broken sobs all but drowned out the sound of the stranded kitten.

Meow... Meow... Meow...

In pairs, the group headed toward the castle.

Turnip, sniffing around in the grass, found a discarded chicken leg and went to work on it, managing to bolt half of it before Celsie, looking back, grabbed him.

The servants began retrieving the blankets and baskets, the tables and food, and in the western sky, the sun sank behind a wall of rising clouds.

The wind rose. The trees began to shake.

Meow...

And high up in the copper beech, the kitten huddled, alone.

They entered the house. Little Laura clung to Celsie’s skirts, and upset by Mary’s wails, was now crying herself.

Augustus’s dignity had been sorely wounded by his fall from the pony and he was pouting and sullen.

Gabriel thought the whole thing was quite hilarious.

With a chastising glare at her brother, Charlotte went to her cousins and tried to console them, but her own face was tight with suppressed fear for the kitten stranded out there in the gathering darkness.

Gabriel volunteered to go rescue it, Augustus, seeing the chance to reclaim his dignity, told his cousin that the kitten was in his tree and he would save it, and Charles felt a headache coming on.

Tomorrow, and escape from this hell that his ancestral home had become, could not come soon enough.

He carried his daughter, clinging to his neck and still sobbing, upstairs and then strode down the hall to his old apartments. He found Amy sitting up in bed, the infant sleeping at her breast, a blanket covering them both.

Charles set Mary down, and she ran to her mother and climbed up into the bed.

“Hush, my little love. There, there...” Amy said quietly, gathering Mary close and stroking the child’s back. She looked up at Charles. “What has happened, now?”

He told her.

“Oh, Charles...”

“Lucien’s up to something,” he said darkly. “There was no reason for him to come out with that kitten and set it down as he did.”

“You are too quick to assign ill intent to your poor brother, Charles.”

“Well, why the devil would he do what he did?”

“Why does Lucien ever do what he does?”

Mary pushed herself closer to her mother, who gently stroked her hair. “Mama ... it is growing late ... my kitten. What if she stays up in the tree?”

“She won’t, my little lamb.” Amy tenderly dried the child’s cheek with a corner of the bedsheet. “Cats always wait until it feels safe to do so, then they come down.”

“But it will be dark soon!”

“And cats see very well in the dark. Don’t they, Papa?”

“Yes, they do,” Charles said, feeling miserable.

“Papa and Uncle Ruaidri were hitting each other again, Mama. I think that is why Uncle Lucien brought the kitten out. He knew that it would stop them from fighting.”

“I’m sure Uncle Lucien didn’t intend for the kitten to go up the tree.”

“I’m sure he did,” Charles said under his breath.

The child didn’t hear and moved closer to her mother. Her tears were soaking a hole in Charles’s heart.

“Would you like to sleep here with us tonight, Mary? Instead of in the nursery with your cousins? Your papa and I have several names picked out for your new baby brother here, and we’d like you to help us choose the right one.”

The little girl nodded, her eyes red-rimmed, her cheeks wet with tears.

Amy drew the blanket up over her daughter and the child snuggled close, her hands folded beneath her cheek.

Outside, the light began to fail and a sudden gust of wind pushed against the ancient windows.

Charles got up and looked outside. Far in the distance, he could see a column of clouds, advancing with the night.

He pulled up a chair and put his head in his hands.

He didn’t need to be a mariner to know that rain was on the way.

And he also knew that kitten wasn’t coming down anytime soon.