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trembling spilled over into frustrated sobs, Tabitha felt angrier with herself than her captor. This was mortifying.
    “Whoa.” The Comanche reined them to a halt. “Listen, lass”—he wrapped both arms about her and lowered his head close to hers, his voice a soft purr in her ear—“I’ll admit ’twas a bit of folly to ride you off the way I did. You were so anxious to be rescued, I…I’m afraid I couldn’t resist. But my intentions at the spring were honorable. I simply wanted to…propose something, you might say. You just never gave me the chance to explain what.”
    “So explain now!” she snapped, her tears evaporating in the heat of a new anger.
    “Later,” he said. “You’re too miffled now, I think, to give me the answer I—”
    “Miffled?” Tabitha almost strangled on the word. “I’m a good deal more than miffled . Do you think I like the idea of being locked in a rat’s nest? Because I promise that’s what will happen if you don’t let me go.”
    “And if that’s all that’s bothering you, I can promise you’ll not be shut in the tower again.” He chuckled.
    “ How ? How can you promise me anything?” she blazed back. “Why should you even care? What difference is it to you whether I return to the castle or not? Who are you?”
    The Comanche answered by spurring the stallion forward into a furious gallop.
    “I’m the Laird of the castle!” he declared over the thunder of the hooves. “I’m Alan MacAllister—your future husband!”
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 2
     
    A battalion of water and hail blasted against Castle MacAllister’s thick adobe walls. Wind ripped through the great courtyards, shrieking like all the fiends of hell out on a bloody warpath. It sounded like the end of the world.
    Which was right in keeping with Tabitha’s mood as she huddled in the center of a big four-poster bed, listening to the assault. This was her second night in the fortress, and she was depressingly wide-awake, having spent her first night and most of the following day sleeping like a drugged person.
    In fact, she was irritably certain that she had been drugged—probably just after the impossible lord of the place had carried her in and left her. It couldn’t have been done before that, of course, because she’d been kicking and screaming too much. Not that she had believed fighting would do any good—the man was too strong—but she had seen no reason to make it easy for him.
    There could have been some tasteless drug in the water, she speculated. Or a topical narcotic in the salve that little maid had brought for her scratches? (The maid had also delivered a supper dish of haggis, but the drug couldn’t have been administered through that because Tabitha hadn’t eaten the haggis. Who in their right mind could?)…
    Whatever had caused it, she had only the sketchiest impressions of the past twenty-four hours. She knew there had been people hovering over her at intervals. Chambermaids, Tabitha thought, but she couldn’t recall much about them. There had been the queerest dreams, too. But she couldn’t remember much of those either—except that they had been unsettling enough to make her grateful she couldn’t remember them.
    And once, she had awoken briefly to find the black cat curled up beside her. Though he wasn’t here now. She pulled herself upright and glanced around. An oil lamp burned low on a table by the bed, bouncing weird shadows everywhere, but there were no cats hiding in them.
    She was in a different room, a large, handsomely furnished chamber on a lower level of the keep. They hadn’t shut her back in the rat tower. Her captor had kept his word about that, at least. Not that she’d trust him on anything else. Mr. Elliott had been right. Of all the MacAllisters, Alan was definitely the oddest. To say nothing of the most aggravating.
    Tabitha slipped out of bed and padded across the room. She had to see if the door was locked. After all, Alan had promised she