“Oh, no,” Iris whispered as she quickened her footsteps. “No, no; Satin, don’t—”
The moment Padraig’s hands closed around Satin’s middle, the cat turned into a screaming white dervish.
“Jesus Christ!” Padraig shouted, straightening and flinging up his arms, a living stole seemingly attached to his wrist. “Get it off!”
Satin was growling low in his throat, his front paws wrapped around Padraig’s forearm, his mouth clamped down on the fleshy part of the man’s palm below the thumb.
“Satin! Stop it this instant!” Iris hissed, reaching out to take hold of the cat by the scruff, but it was proving quite impossible with Padraig swinging his arm like a truncheon. “Master Boyd, hold still!”
She finally sank her fingers into Satin’s thick fur, causing the cat to uncouple from his victim and whip his head toward Iris.
“Don’t you dare,” she warned him through her teeth as she peeled the cat from Padraig Boyd’s person.
But he only yowled at her crossly for her effort, and Iris rolled him into a ball against her chest, still keeping firm hold on his scruff.
A door down the corridor opened. “What the bloody hell is goin’ on down there?”
Iris reached out and grabbed Padraig’s shirt and jerked him through the doorway and into her chamber, closing and bolting the door behind her.
She glared down at the cat, still restrained in the crook of her arm. “That was bad, Satin. Very bad.”
“Good God, what sort of hell beast is that?” Padraig Boyd demanded as he stood with the backs of his legs touching her bed, his right hand gripping his left wrist where a small trickle of blood was finding its way up his forearm into his sleeve.
Iris walked to the chair and sat, drawing Satin beneath her neck in a snuggling embrace. “He’s my cat, Satin.” She kissed his naughty, furry head. “Mind his dish there behind you, if you please. The pitcher is empty and I’ve no desire to trek to the kitchens again.”
Padraig snorted. “Fitting name, Satan.”
Iris sighed. “It’s Satin.”
“’S’what I said.”
“No, you said Satan,” she mimicked. “Perhaps, as we’ve discussed in our diction lessons, if you attempted enunciating clearly the whole sounds of each word you mean to speak.” They stared at each other for a long moment. “Satin,” she repeated slowly, her patience strained by both his large, unnerving presence in her tiny chamber and the interruption to her work.
“Satan,” Padraig repeated.
“He’s not the devil,” Iris said through clenched teeth.
Padraig drew back his head and looked away, muttering, “Me arm and me speech say different.”
Iris sighed around a reluctant smile. “Satin was born in an abbey of nuns, and thus doesn’t at all care for the company of men. But I couldn’t allow him to escape into the hold.”
True.
“He’d nae be hard to find—just follow the trail of blood. I prefer a dog, meself.”
Iris bit her lip, but the corners of her mouth ached from the urge to draw upward. “I’m not actually supposed to have him.” She winced toward his arm. “Is it very bad?”
He gave her an indifferent frown. “A scratch.”
“I think he bit you,” she ventured.
“I’m fine,” Padraig insisted, clasping his hands behind his back. He suddenly seemed at a loss for what to do with himself inside the chamber. He was too large for the little cell and seemed to take up all the space between where Iris sat in the chair and where her bed pressed up against the wall.
Iris wondered how old he was. She shook herself.
“You wanted to ask me something?” she prompted.
He blinked at her. “Aye. Aye, I did,” he rushed. “Ah…Searrach.”
Iris tried to steel her expression against the distaste she felt. “What of her?”
“How long has she lived at Darlyrede?”
Iris frowned. “Perhaps two months. Why?”
“Do you know from where she hails?”
“Don’t you?”
And then Padraig smiled too, and like all the other times he had forgotten himself, his face transformed, emphasizing the grand shape of his mouth, the merry tilt of his eyes. Iris didn’t think she’d ever met a man so blatantly…sensual.
“Scotland, aye,” he allowed. “But how did she come to be here? I assume she’s nae family with her.”
Iris shook her head. “She appeared on the bridge one day. Not unlike someone else recently. Only she claimed to have been attacked. She stayed on to work, once she had recovered from her injuries.”
Padraig’s face bore a keen expression. “Attacked?”
Iris’s cheeks tingled. “I can only speak to what the woman said. The band of criminals terrorizing Darlyrede’s wood and road are well known.”
He nodded. “Nae family, then.”
Iris shrugged. “I suppose not.”
“Is she to be trusted?” he asked suddenly, as if unsure whether it was the right question but desperate to know the answer.
Iris paused, feeling that she was suddenly on unsteady ground. She could see the discomfort on his face. “Trusted to what?”
His ears went red. “Hargrave was eager enough to offer her up. Either she’s worthless or he’s sent her to spy on me.”
Iris was impressed. For all Padraig Boyd’s inexperience, he seemed to have taken quick measure of the Scottish woman whom most of the other servants regarded with extreme wariness.
“I’m sorry, Master Boyd,” Iris said, letting Satin go when he slithered from beneath her hand and bounded to the floor. She stood. “You seem to have mistook my position at Darlyrede. I have been in the employ of Lady Hargrave, exclusively, until your arrival. Perhaps it would be better to pose your question to Sir Lucan, as you intended. I believe he is more familiar with such matters.”
True.
Padraig’s eyes narrowed the tiniest fraction. Perhaps someone else would have missed it, but Iris’s brother had taught her well.
“Should I nae tell him about your hellcat when I see him?”
Iris couldn’t help her smile. “They’ve already met. Our secret is safe with him.”
“Ah, I see.” Now Padraig’s smile was enigmatic, and his eyes bored into hers and rattled her in a way Iris couldn’t recall since his arrival
