Cat's Tale Read online

  Cat's Tale: A Fairy Tale Retold

  Bettie Sharpe

  Cat’s Tale: A Fairy Tale Retold

  By Bettie Sharpe

  Once upon a time there was a scheming, lying tart who cared for nothing but her own pleasures and her shoe collection.

  Once the peerlessly beautiful Lady Catriona, consort to the king, Cat’s fortunes fall far when her aged husband dies. The king’s wizard turns her into a cat and tries to drown her in the mill pond. Fortunately Cat is a clever survivor and enlists the help of Julian, the miller’s youngest son, in her plan for revenge.

  She originally sees Julian as a mere pawn for her plans to break her curse, but as they work together Cat comes to know and care for him. Even if the curse can be broken, can a good-hearted man love a woman who has been as vain and selfish as Cat?

  34,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  I feel as though it was just last week I was attending 2010 conferences and telling authors and readers who were wondering what was next for Carina Press, “we’ve only been publishing books for four months, give us time” and now, here it is, a year later. Carina Press has been bringing you quality romance, mystery, science fiction, fantasy and more for over twelve months. This just boggles my mind.

  But though we’re celebrating our one-year anniversary (with champagne and chocolate, of course) we’re not slowing down. Every week brings something new for us, and we continue to look for ways to grow, expand and improve. This summer, we’ll continue to bring you new genres, new authors and new niches—and we plan to publish the unexpected for years to come.

  So whether you’re reading this in the middle of a summer heat wave, looking to escape from the hot summer nights and sultry afternoons, or whether you’re reading this in the dead of winter, searching for a respite from the cold, months after I’ve written it, you can be assured that our promise to take you on new adventures, bring you great stories and discover new talent remains the same.

  We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  www.carinapress.com

  www.twitter.com/carinapress

  www.facebook.com/carinapress

  To my husband, with love.

  I’d like to thank Janine Ballard and Evie Byrne for their critiques of this novella, my editor Alissa Davis for her excellent eye, my fabulous beta-readers, and the regulars at writechat.net whose challenges helped me get the words on the page.

  Contents

  Chapter One: The Lady

  Chapter Two: The Cat

  Chapter Three: The Miller’s Son

  Chapter Four: The Escape

  Chapter Five: The Friends

  Chapter Six: The Princess

  Chapter Seven: The Plan

  Chapter Eight: The Hunt

  Chapter Nine: The Talk

  Chapter Ten: The Morning After

  Chapter Eleven: The Journey

  Chapter Twelve: The Happily

  Chapter Thirteen: The Ever After

  About the Author

  Chapter One: The Lady

  Once there lived a count and his countess whose fortunes had fallen far. They longed for a son who would restore honor to the family name and money to the family coffers. Instead they got me.

  I was tiny and pale when I was born, and so sickly-looking the midwife thought I would not last the week. When Father learned of my dire prognosis, he shrugged and said, “If she dies, it’s all for the best. Girls must be cosseted and dowered. They cost time and money, and they offer nothing to their families in return.”

  He was not pleased when I survived my first few years, nor when I flourished in the years that followed. He might hate me still, had not my mother persuaded him of my value. Do not believe she argued on my behalf out of maternal love. My mother has never known such sentiment. No, when she pleaded my case on the eve of my sixteenth year, her voice filled with ambition, and pride that she had seen what my father could not.

  “She is beautiful. Beauty is power. This girl will do more for us than a boy ever could. She will marry the king.”

  “There’s a small problem with your plan, my dearest,” my father replied. “The king already has a wife.”

  “A minor obstacle.” Mother dismissed the current queen with a wave of her hand. “He will set her aside when he sees our Catriona.”

  As it happened, Mother did not need to worry about the queen for the good lady was kind enough to die of eating bad shellfish when I was barely eighteen.

  “If only she had died sooner,” Mother said when she heard the news. “Now we will have to wait out the king’s year of mourning before presenting you at court. You will be nineteen when he sees you—positively ancient.”

  “If he will allow us in court,” Father said. “We cannot afford the proper clothing, and there is the small matter of our familial disgrace.”

  Some years before my birth, Mother and Father had been on the wrong side of an attempted coup. Their involvement was minimal (or so my mother tearfully told the justice), thus they were allowed to retain the family title and the least valuable of the family estates.

  “Do not worry yourselves over the king’s mourning.” I waved a negligent hand. “I’ve no wish to be presented at court among a flock of other girls.”

  “Oh?” said my mother, sarcasm heavy in her voice. “And how else do you propose to meet the king?”

  “On my own terms and in my own time. I happen to have a plan. All I need is a fetching pair of sandals.”

  My mother laughed. “Why must every occasion call for new shoes? You’ve a dozen pairs of slippers and boots in your closet now.”

  “Please, Mother.” I batted my lashes. “Every grand plan begins with the right pair of shoes.”

  “Ha!” she said.

  “If my plan does not work, I shall do exactly as you say, without complaint.” I never did anything she asked without complaint. The offer was a great concession, though I was certain I would never need fulfill it.

  “Very well.”

  Not two months later, the king and his court removed to his lodge at the edge of the wilds for the hunting season. The splendor of the court’s grand procession was little dimmed by displays of mourning for the late queen. The courtiers wore cursory black armbands over their brilliant silks. The ladies wore jet jewelry and black plumes in their hair.

  The line of carriages and the courtiers on their prancing steeds drew to a dusty halt with one wave of the king’s hand. The reason for this interruption? The king had spied a fetching country miss sitting on the side of the road, wrestling with a broken strap on her sandal.

  When he motioned her close and she approached, he saw then that she was more than merely pretty, she was beautiful. Quite possibly the most beautiful woman in the land. She’d hair like ebony silk, skin as warm and golden as summer honey, and eyes the flashing green of new spring leaves. Her lithesome young body was a study of supple curves and sensual movement. And more than that, the ankles she had displayed while fixing her sandal were dainty and well turned.

  The king was smitten. He did as he always did when such passions took him, and offered the bucolic beauty a diamond brooch for the pleasure of her company. The country miss was aghast. Offended. Despite her pastoral setting and dress, she was a girl of good family, you see, and no one, not even the king, should proposition an innocent girl of good family. She turned her back on the king and his courtiers and left them there admiring the view.

  I was sad to leave the brooch behind. The setting was rubbish, b
ut the diamond at the heart of it was clear and well cut, flashing with an inner fire that sent little shudders of lust though my mercenary soul. Still, there was a higher purpose to the exercise. The king had seen me. He would not easily forget.

  A week passed, and then two. No communication came from the king. The third week, my mother mocked me for imagining I could ensnare a king with something so simple as a broken sandal. But the next week she had to eat her words, for one afternoon there came a great knocking on the castle door. Our guest was a handsome silver-haired man clad in the king’s colors. He had with him sundry material expressions of the king’s undying affection and a prettily worded, legally binding petition that I become His Majesty’s official mistress.

  The man was Galfridus, the king’s wizard and closest advisor. He had come as the king’s emissary, he explained, because the king thought this matter far too important to be handled by mere mortals.

  Mother and Father were flattered by the wizard’s presence. They saw diamonds and coin dancing in his pretty promises—coin enough to repair our family fortunes, and perhaps even raise them. They were set to sign the papers and sell me with no attempt to bargain.

  I tore the petition in two. “I am a moral girl.” Anyone who knew me might have disputed that assertion—indeed, Father had to hide his laughter with a fit of coughing. Fortunately, Galfridus did not yet know me, and I had dressed the part of the innocent that day, donning the plainest of my gowns with the narrowest panniers and my simplest pair of satin slippers. “I will not sell my honor, not even at the urging of a man as powerful and persuasive as yourself, sir.”

  The wizard puffed up, flattered as I had meant him to be. He held my gaze for a long, slow moment—until I broke the tension between us by lowering my lashes and licking my lips as though discomfited. He lifted my chin with the tips of his fingers, and I met his gray eyes.

  “I understand why he wants you,” he said. “You are quite possibly the most beautiful woman in the kingdom.” Then, without another word, he motioned for waiting servants to pack up the king’s gifts and papers. The wizard himself stayed only long enough to supervise this task before disappearing in a puff of smoke.

  Mother and Father were surprised by his disappearance, but I was not. There had been an uncanny pressure in the space around the wizard before he’d gone, like electricity gathering in the air before a lightning storm. It had raised the tiny hairs on my arms and at the back of my neck, and filled me with the expectation that something wondrous was about to occur.

  “Magic.” I breathed the word, envious of the wizard’s power. Had I such abilities, I would not need to marry the king, nor rely on anyone but myself for my livelihood and comfort. I sighed. It was a magnificent dream, but only that. As my mother had often told me, beauty was my only power, and I had best make the most of it before it faded.

  “You daft girl!” Mother’s slap snapped my thoughts back to the present. “You turned down the king and flirted with his emissary!”

  “You mad child!” my father shouted before I could answer my mother’s shrill complaint. “You claimed to have morals!”

  “I am neither mad nor daft.” My head hurt from my mother’s blow, but I was still serenely confident in my judgment. “I am clever. The cleverest of you all. You’ll see.”

  My parents had to admit I was right when the king’s wizard again appeared on our doorstep not a month later, this time with a proposal of marriage on behalf of the king. It was not all I would have wanted—the settlement named me consort and not queen—but I had built my game upon the guise of virtue, and I could not bargain for greater power without giving myself away.

  I did, however, manage to secure one small but important right—the right to order such clothes and shoes as befit the king’s wife. I might have pushed for jewelry but Galfridus got a suspicious glint in his eye, so I decided to bide my time and see what sparkling tokens of affection I might personally cajole from my husband to be.

  The night before I was to journey to the capital, there came a scratching at the panes of my bedroom window. I opened the peeling casement and was not surprised to find Lyell, son of the baron of the neighboring territory. He was a handsome young man, tall and brawny with eyes as blue and empty as a summer sky.

  “I have two horses,” he said. “Hurry, now, and I will take you away from here.”

  “Oh, Lyell.” I took his hand and urged him into my chamber. “You know I am to marry the king.”

  “That’s why I want to take you away. We can escape to the Midlands and be married. I will find honest work and a small house, and we shall be happy together ever after.”

  “What a pretty picture you weave, my darling,” I said. “But I cannot shirk my duty to king and country so easily.” I raised my chin, looking bravely into the distance. “Our king has but one daughter, and no son to rule after him. It is my duty—nay, my sacred responsibility—to spare our sweet virgin princess the burden of a political marriage. I will marry for duty so that she may marry for love. I will provide her with a brother so that she need never be bowed by the weight of the crown. You do understand, don’t you?”

  “Well—” his sandy brows drew together, “—when you put it that way, it seems very selfish of me to want to run away with you.”

  “That is it precisely, my darling.” I drew his face down and kissed him.

  It was a slow, hot kiss of the kind we had been wont to share on long summer evenings when we would each sneak away from our homes and meet in the shady dell beside the river. Lips sliding against lips. Parting. Tongues, seeking.

  It was the sort of kiss that can have but one satisfying end, and I was moving happily toward that end when Lyell drew away from me. “Beloved, we cannot. You are to marry the king!”

  “But, darling, if I am to marry that cold old man, may I not have one night of pleasure to keep me warm through all the rest of my days?”

  I turned, swiping at an imaginary tear, and sobbed, “I shall miss you terribly!”

  I was not lying. I would miss him terribly. I would miss his handsome face, and broad shoulders and muscled body. I would miss the heat of his smooth skin beneath my hand, and the way his flesh trembled when I traced the thin trail of hair that ran down his belly. I would miss him above me, beneath me, inside me.

  I would miss him right up until the moment I found a handsome courtier to replace him. But I was too kind to tell him that. So I held my tongue after “I shall miss you terribly.”

  “You are so brave, my love.” Lyell returned his lips to mine.

  His kiss was a cloying, closemouthed thing. It spoke of love and sacrifice and admiration. It was the embodiment of his deep regard for me, of his respect for my bravery and kindness. It was, in short, not at all what I wanted from him.

  “Open your mouth when you kiss me, Lyell.”

  “Of course, my love.”

  Lyell was ever the obedient boy. He was not nimble in thought, but in tongue, replacing what he lacked in eloquence with a strength and flexibility that could not be matched. He helped me from my clothes, using his clever mouth to explore each swath of skin we bared as though it were a virgin territory, something new and undiscovered. Something rich and full of mystery. And when I was uncovered, my mysteries revealed, he claimed me deep with tongue and teeth, softening the terrain, as it were, for the conquering thrust of his staff.

  His mouth fell open as he neared his pinnacle, and his breath came in great, heaving gasps. A moan rumbled from his throat. I slapped my hand over his mouth as he came, muffling the sound, and thus preserving the secrecy of our tryst.

  He dressed in silence, and did not look at me though I had remained naked for his enjoyment. He walked to the window.

  “Goodbye, my darling Lyell,” I said, my voice a sultry purr.

  Hand on the sill, he turned to me with somber eyes. “Goodbye, Catriona. I hope you never regret your choice.”

  Regret? What was there to regret? Two days hence I would be as close to queen
as any woman in the land could hope to be. I would be consort to the king, with dresses and jewels and ladies-in-waiting. I would have courtiers to flirt with, and a cobbler on call to craft me lovely shoes in every color.

  “Regret?” I closed the casement after Lyell. “I do not know it and never will.”

  I would not know it, not for years yet to come. But when at last I felt its bitter burn, I would remember the look in Lyell’s eyes as he turned away. I would remember and weep to think that I had treated love so lightly. That I had scorned a heart so true.

  The next day the king’s gilded traveling coach awaited me in our keep’s weedy courtyard. It seemed the solid center of a shifting whirlwind of activity—porters bustling to load my luggage, guards soothing their prancing steeds, and colorfully-clad courtiers lounging lazily in a pair of smaller coaches meant to travel ahead of and behind my coach on the road. It had all the makings of a grand procession. My heart thrilled at the thought of peasants and nobles alike watching with envy as my party rode past.

  I’d donned the last of the modest dresses I’d commissioned and paired it with a somewhat less-than-modest pair of blue leather carriage boots. The ladies sent to act as my traveling companions raised their plucked-thin eyebrows when I raised my hem to ascend the stairs into the coach.

  “My, what lovely boots,” a pale-haired lady who had been introduced to me as Hildithe said as our coach rumbled onto the main road. “They must have been expensive.”

  “I wouldn’t know. A lady does not inquire about such things.”

  She laughed softly, hiding her crooked teeth behind her stubby-fingered hand in a girlish gesture that seemed at odds with her harsh tone and pinched features. “Oh, but you shall cost the king a pretty penny.”