This one wasn’t impressed.
Indeed, the cat ignored him.
“Your mistress sends her greetings, laddie,” he said, glad none of his friends back on Skerray could see him now. “Come on out of there and we’ll be away.
“I’ll take you right to her,” he finished, waiting.
Gubbie didn’t move.
But neither did he bolt.
Bluidy hell.
Callum considered his options, half inclined to lunge for the truly round cat and be gone. He knew cats scratch and didn’t care. Sakes, he had enough scars from them. But he also knew any sudden move might send Gubbie racing around the room – a flight that could well be heard throughout the castle. Cats in a panic caused a ruckus loud enough to wake the dead.
Just as a certain fair-haired lass with sapphire eyes was tempting enough to addle his wits.
She’d told him how to catch her cat.
Annoyed that he’d forgotten, he pushed to his feet and went to the room’s hearth. A dying peat fire glowed there, not spending a sliver of warmth. Dried swags of silvered sea tang filled a basket that, he figured, usually held peat bricks. More of the ancient Yuletide decoration draped the nearby window arches, as did a few swatches of red-berried rowan. But he hardly glanced at what appeared to be her wish to celebrate a Norse-themed Yule.
Leastways, a seafarer’s Yule.
Not that he cared.
She could fill the whole of this miserable castle with silvered sea tang, mistletoe, or even red beribboned nettles, the stinging kind –all the better to keep things lively.
Only one thing mattered now…
He needed to find the lidded jar of dried herring the lady swore he’d see at once.
Too bad, he didn’t.
Not surprised, he jammed his hands on his hips and turned in a slow circle, surveying the room.
And then he spotted a round earthen jar on its side and half-buried in the floor rushes. It would seem Gubbie had knocked his treats off the narrow table by the window arches. Thor be good, the cat hadn’t managed to open the jar.
That Callum could, sealed Gubbie’s fate.
A truth made all the more certain when a shaft of moonlight slanted into the room, falling just across a leather-and-cloth sack neatly folded on one of the window ledges.
A large sack, and bearing sturdy straps.
Callum smiled, amused. Of course, the cat-loving lass had a means to securely carry her darling.
He just wondered why she’d not mentioned the sack.
No matter.
Glad that his task here was about to end, he opened the jar and retrieved a few bits of stinky dried herring. Then he shoved the re-stopped jar into a pouch at his belt, his smile spreading as he headed back to the bed, ready to again drop to his knees, this time luring Gubbie with a piece of herring.
As hunger often wins, he didn’t have to bother.
The cat met him halfway, even pawing at his leg in his eagerness for a treat.
“Here you go, laddie.” Callum leaned down, the herring on his open palm.
Gubbie moved in, eating delicately as many old cats do. Hoping the cat would forgive him, he swooped, snatching Gubbie and thrusting him in the carrying sack before the cat knew what had happened.
