However, despite his advanced age, Barkington wasn’t having that, and somehow managed to get in front of her before she could shoot upstairs with her flapping prey. The cat growled at the little dog in warning, her paw raised ready to take a swipe at him too, but Barkington stood his ground. He barked back at her and guarded those stairs with his life while the rest of them, Snifferson included, fanned out behind her to block every other conceivable exit.
Leo carefully shrugged out of his coat, trying not to do anythingto distract the cat from hissing at the spaniel, who was doing his level best to keep her attention. He knew from bitter experience that the only way to prise anything out of M’Lady Whiskers’s evil fangs was to ensure that the hissing devil was properly restrained first. And the only way to effectively restrain her, as he knew to his cost, was to wrap her up tight like a blasted Egyptian mummy.
He held his coat up like a net and lunged, miraculously managing to engulf the hissing Persian in the fabric, but she was having none of it. She wriggled and bucked like a thrashing salmon as he tried to bundle her up in it. Then, in a blaze of fluffy white and flapping black feathers, she emerged and decided to use her claws and the back of his scalp to haul herself out.
As he cried out in pain, Miss Kendall grabbed the cat’s back legs. “I’ve got her!” And clearly she had because M’Lady protested by sinking her front claws even further into his skull. “Can somebody try to prise her mouth open?”
Of course that somebody was Abigail, because Emilia, who was always about as much use as a chocolate teapot during a crisis, was still screaming.
The altercation now happening directly on top of him, Leo had to reach up behind himself and try to blindly unhook each individual claw from his skin, but no sooner had he freed one paw and started on the other, then in the claws went again.
“Let go, you wicked animal!” He had no clue what his sister was doing to the cat but whatever it was, it was done with tremendous exertion. “Release your damn jaws or—Urgh!”
Blessedly, the claws finally retracted from his scalp just as Miss Kendall hugged the cat to her chest with such speed that M’Lady’s grip on the blackbird lessened enough for it to escape. Panicked and afraid, it flew directly into Emilia’s screaming face as it made its own bolt for freedom, then straight into a window. It flapped disorientated above their heads for a few moments before it flew a haphazard course down the hall.
The cat, of course, took umbrage at that and greater umbrage at Miss Kendall, who was still hugging the hissing demon for all she was worth, despite the flailing claws that were slashing out now with a vengeance. Somehow, the darned cat twisted and hooked one of its paws into her hair. Then, as if M’Lady knew how to inflict maximum pain, she used Miss Kendall’s no-longer-neat chignon for purchase, arched upward, and tried to bite her chin. Yet still, with commendable bravery, his newest employee tried to keep the cat imprisoned—but she was fighting a losing battle.
Within seconds, M’Lady had broken free again and followed the blackbird down the hall in hot pursuit, nowhere near ready to give up her prize.
Both dogs then chased after her, closely followed by Miss Kendall and Abigail, while Emilia finally found the wherewithal to do something useful and helped Leo up from his prostrate position on the floor.
By the time Leo caught up with them, the terrified blackbird had sought refuge in his study. It flapped a squawking, warning circle around the ceiling while the cat menacingly scaled his bookshelf to get to it, both his dogs barked for all they were worth, and his poor wounded scalp throbbed like the devil.
“ENOUGH!” As he bellowed that at nobody in particular, the bird, with perfect timing, whizzed above his head and deposited a well-aimed and doubtless nervous splatter of droppings directly on his shoulder.
Chapter
NINE
“Enough!” Clearly at the end of his tether, and despite the sticky white mess now decorating his green silk waistcoat, the duke pointed a quaking finger at both of his dogs in turn. “Out!”
They immediately stopped barking and skulked out of the room.
Then he pointed at Portia and his sisters. “One of you go and get a blasted blanket so we can get the bloody cat out of here!”
Lady Emilia happily did that, and Portia closed the door behind her so that the blackbird couldn’t escape. Her hand shook slightly because her nerves were in absolute tatters.
She could not completely blame this debacle with the cat for that.
They had been in tatters since she had accidentally collided with the constable outside this very room mere minutes ago. Now, alongside the damning copy ofEquitasthat had incensed him so still staring up at her in accusation from the duke’s desk, there was a distressed bird flying hither and thither and a disdainful Persian with murder in its different-colored eyes.
“Perhaps once the cat is removed, the poor bird might settle so that we can rescue it?” The duke rubbed the back of his head and then huffed his disgust at the noxious deposit on his shoulder beforehe balked when he noticed the blood smudged on his fingertips. “I hate blood,” he said, turning almost as green as his waistcoat.
Lady Abigail rolled her eyes. “Pull yourself together, Leo! And if you cannot do that, try to at least put off fainting until the poor bird is out of danger.” She tossed him her handkerchief, and he took a deep breath before he used it to wipe all trace of the blood from his hands.
Then he glared at M’Lady Whiskers, who was trying to figure out a way to catch the bird from her precarious position hanging from the top of his bookshelf. “I hope you are proud of yourself, madam! Get down this second.” Unlike his loyal dogs, the cat was impervious to both his angry tone and his command and merely used her claws to scoot herself sideways along the book spines while her focus never left the bird.
Lady Emilia returned and squeezed herself through the thinnest possible crack in the door. She was about to throw the shawl she had brought back to her sister when Lady Abigail threw up her hands.
“Well don’t just stand there, Emilia, wrap the menace in it!”
Now it was Lady Emilia’s turn to balk. “Not on your life! That cat is vicious!”
“Oh for goodness’ sake!” Lady Abigail snatched the shawl back. “Heaven forbid you be of any use!” She half limped, half stomped over to where the cat still hung and without a moment’s hesitation, used the shawl to pin the animal to the bookshelf. The duke went to help and while he peeled M’Lady Whiskers off a couple of hefty encyclopedias, his sister bound the Persian’s fluffy white body tight in the fabric. “Can you at least open the doors, Emilia, so that I can shut Leo’s vile cat in the kitchen?”
Her wary gaze never leaving the hissing animal, Lady Emilia did exactly that, making sure to close the door behind them as they left, leaving Portia alone with the duke and the bird.
As it seemed like the most sensible thing to do, she opened the sash window as far as it would go, hoping that the blackbird would just fly out. When it didn’t, the duke tried his best to shoo it out, but all that succeeded in doing was sending the poor thing into hiding. Itpushed into the very top corner of the bookshelf that the cat had just been removed from, wedging itself into a tiny gap between the wood and the ceiling.
