Padraig stopped his retreat at once and then bent down obediently and reached his hands like two giant basketsheld sideways.
Satin likewise ceased his advance and began to shrink back on his haunches, a low, ominous mew his only warning.
“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 screamingwhite 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 PadraigBoyd’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 holdon 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 saidSatan,” 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 throughclenched teeth.
Padraig drew back his head and looked away, muttering, “Me arm and me speechsay 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 prefera 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. Sheshook herself.
